Am I sad about that? I won't miss tending bar, or drunk customers. I won't miss being behind on rent payments, or the smells of the city, or when my car breaks down on a snowy day. I won't miss a lot, actually…but I'll miss my mom. My mom, who I've been too busy to fret over, and who is probably losing her mind with worry over her only child. "Oh, Kassam, my mother—"
Kassam nuzzles my face, all affection. "I will speak to the Spidae and make a bargain with them. It won't be the same as your thread. Hers will be whole." He draws up, suddenly remembering. "If I ever hurt you again, you have to tell me. I had no idea I'd pulled so hard that I broke you. It wasn't worth it. Nothing is worth your pain, my sweet Carly."
"There's nothing to be done over it," I say. "It's in the past. All of that is." I touch my chest, where my stitches are, and to my surprise, they feel loose. My skin suddenly itches, and when I scratch at the stitches, they fall away, revealing smooth, bare skin. "What—"
"He has healed you."
My skin prickles and I sharply look up at Kassam, because that's his voice, but…it's different. Richer. Full of strange, deep, echoing tones like the High Father's was, tones that remind me of the forest. As I stare up at my husband, his silver eyes seem ablaze, his bronze skin luminous, as if he's glowing from within. The broken horn atop his head repairs itself as I stare, surging out and then branching tall and proud. He suddenly looks like more. He radiates power, his scent that of open air and flowers and pine trees. Vines crawl up his skin, twining in his thick hair, and he's the most gorgeous, most untamed thing I've ever seen. Kassam takes my hand in his.
I can tell the moment the bond between us kicks in again. After weeks of feeling not much at all, the moment our fingers touch, my stomach growls, my mouth feels like a desert, and my libido rears its head. I orgasm immediately.
Just like old times.
The look he gives me is positively devilish as he kisses my fingertips. "Come, my little light. Let us go home."
56
We stay at the Spidae tower for a few more hours, as Kassam works out a bargain with the Spidae in order to bring my mother over into this realm. Yulenna keeps me company, and now that all the tension is gone between her masters and mine, she's a chatty thing. She gossips with me about the other anchors of gods that came over to this world as we eat a feast of food that I try not to think about the origins of, and I tell her about Seth.
It seems the High Father is making a lot of changes. Seth is poised to take Riekki's spot and the High Father is going to allow it. Both Death and War have permanent anchors (in addition to Fate). The goddess of magic's city has been destroyed. And of course, Kassam is returning.
"It's been quite an eventful Anticipation," Yulenna says between bites of the world's worst bread.
"Are most not like this?" I sop the hard crust of bread with a bit of oil, avoiding the sausage set out for both of us. Yulenna admits she's not much of a cook and they have a trader that brings them goods every now and then, but most of their diet is…meat-based thanks to the spiders. I stick to bread, as hard and stale as it is.
Yulenna pops a bit of meat into her mouth and shakes her head. "My masters let me peer at the threads sometimes and I've seen many of the past Anticipations. They had some big events, like when Lady Tadekha took over the Citadel and launched it into the skies, or the War of Thirteen Lords, but nothing like these events."
"What about the future?" I ask, gnawing on a bit more bread. "Do you ever ask to look at that?"
Her eyes go wide and she shakes her head. "No. Not after I've seen what it does to poor Zaroun. He can't tell what time-thread we're in, or what is truth and what was a possible event that never happened." Her mouth pulls down into a frown. "I stick to the past and present threads. Everything there has happened in the past or is happening now, so I feel comfortable watching them while I knit or sew."
I guess when you don't have television, you have a lot of spare time. I'm about to comment on that when there's a tickle in the back of my nose. I sit up, blinking…and then I sneeze.
"That'd be Kassam working on my garden," Yulenna crows happily. "I guess they reached an agreement."