It wasn’t enough to be willing to die, I had to be willing to kill. Myself.
“I would take Wu with me.” I turned it over in my head, and I saw the pieces fitting together in a way I never expected. “That’s the idea, isn’t it?” A bitter taste coated the back of my throat. “My death seals the lower terrenes and his seals the upper. Together, we could place Earth in a protective bubble.”
“He wasn’t going to tell you until you defeated Ezra, or didn’t, but I wanted you to know. When Ezra had me … ” His voice faded to a whisper, and he had trouble finding it again. “My best friend, such as he is, knew what was coming and did nothing to stop it.” He closed his eyes, fists tight at his sides. “He didn’t stop it.”
“He knew Ezra was coming for you.” How could he not? Ezra had contacted Kapoor, given his list of demands to him. And Wu and I had blown him off, stalling as best he could while we gathered our forces. In retaliation, Ezra had apparently decided to crucify the messenger. “Wu let you get taken.”
“I let myself get taken,” he admitted. “I could have run. I chose to stay.” He let his attention drift behind me. “I’m telling you this because you have a mate, and you have a child. I didn’t think either mattered before, but now I see it’s all that’s important. Spend what time you have left with the ones you love.” His somber gaze met mine, held. “You deserved to know the truth, the whole truth, and now you do.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m going to lie down now.” He pivoted on his heel, eyes distant, voice rough. “I’m tired.”
I watched him go then waited on Cole to join me, certain he had wandered off to give us privacy but not so far as to visit with Dad.
Sure enough, he strolled up the hall a few minutes later with Phoebe racing down his shoulders and across his back, her nails drawing pinpricks of blood he didn’t appear to notice.
“Ezra broke him.” I stroked Phoebe’s head when she spotted me. “I didn’t see it at first, the cracks were too small, or maybe Wu spackled over them, but the more time he spends doing nothing but staring at walls, the wider they get. If we’re not careful, he’ll fall through.”
“The desired outcome determines the method used.” Cole shook his head. “Ezra hurt him, physically, but it’s nothing beyond a charun’s ability to mend, especially with intervention from Thom. Psychologically? Those wounds take longer to heal, and they leave scars.”
“I’ll ask Wu if there’s someone he can talk to,” I decided. “Kapoor was in therapy. We can track down his therapist, get them to do more sessions with him.”
And hope that was enough, that anything we did for him at this point would be enough.
“She likes your father,” Cole said when Phoebe’s nose started twitching in the direction of the hallway they had just exited. “He smells like you.”
“That explains why she didn’t terrorize him.” I shrugged. “Much.” She had eaten a cat, but it could have just as easily been a bite out of him. “She understands he’s family.” Then what he said hit me. “You can communicate with her?”
“I can’t speak to her while in this form, but I understand what she’s saying. For the most part. She’s still a young child. Half of what comes out of her mouth is what you’re hearing — happy noises.”
Unable to resist the temptation, I cupped his cheek to cradle his smile in my palm.
Phoebe, unhappy to lose our attention, wound her tail around my wrist and yanked my hand down onto her back where I started scratching, as requested. “Like father, like daughter.”
Cole leaned over and kissed me full on the mouth. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” I touched my lips. “I’m not complaining, but what did I do to earn a kiss?”
Before he could answer, Phoebe leapt from his chest to mine and rammed my mouth with her scaly muzzle hard enough to have me tasting blood. Fluttering her wings at me, I could tell she was impressed with her newfound kissing ability. I, on the other hand, wondered if I could get away with wearing a mouthguard around her.
“You exist,” he answered after wiping his thumb across my tender bottom lip. “That’s enough.”
As much as I hated to ruin his reunion, I had no choice. “We can’t stay here.”
“We need to have a chat with Wu about more than Kapoor,” he agreed. “Will your father mind babysitting?”
“You can shift and communicate with her that way?” I traced the tiny claws hooking my shirt. “I want her to understand she can’t eat Dad, or hurt Dad, or maim anyone else. She shouldn’t eat anything except what he gives her.”
With the Rixtons in residence, I couldn’t risk Nettie appearing too pink and plump for Phoebe to resist.
“I’ll make a list,” I decided, passing Phoebe back to Cole. “You two go catch up.”
After they had gone, and I was alone, I backed into the wall then slid onto the floor. I tipped my head back and stared at the ceiling, seeing nothing.
I never expected to survive the war. Not really. The odds had never been in my favor.
Learning I was the sacrificial lamb on my way to the slaughter felt … par for the course, honestly.
It didn’t surprise me much. I think I ran out of that emotion a while ago. Maybe I went into shock the night they broke the news I was charun and never emerged. That might explain the numbness.
I could almost accept the role outlined for me, almost, in an academic sense, but forcing me to slit my own throat? No wonder no previous incarnation of Conquest had done the deed.
Cole would forbid me from fulfilling the role Wu had designed for me, and Dad would too. The coterie and the Rixtons would throw their weight behind them as well. But what if the cost of peace, true peace, was my life? What if the price for atonement for all Conquest’s sins was my blood? Would I woman-up and sacrifice myself? One soul in exchange for billions of others?
I wasn’t sure I could do it, but I wasn’t convinced I wouldn’t under the right circumstances.
The wiggle room in that thought terrified me, so I did what I did best. I packed it away with all the other horrors, the other maybes, the other possibilities. I stuffed it in the back of my mind to pull out and examine after we defeated Ezra, all the while telling myself there would be an after.
For now, I hauled myself onto my feet and padded to the exit, to the ledge overlooking a sheer drop-off. In the distance, a mighty dragon looped and dove while a tinier version of him bobbed and weaved on air currents that lifted hairs into my eyes. While I watched the pair play tag, I took as many mental snapshots as I had memory to save.
When Phoebe winged over to me, trilling joyously, jerking her head toward Cole, I understood I had been invited to play.
The world would still be ending tomorrow. I might as well enjoy what remained of today.
And so I stepped off the ledge, gave myself over to the feral heart that beat harder when I spotted Cole looping back for me, and I soared.
EPILOGUE
Farhan sat on his bed in his room at Haven. The mattress was soft, his sheets fragranced with soothing lavender. The television played softly in the background. The atmosphere was tranquil, quiet. Things he once longed for but now grated on his over-sensitized nerves.
The things Ezra had done to him …
The things Adam had known he would do … and let it happen anyway.
Charun held too much power in this terrene.
Farhan had grown up believing he was human. Just a boy. Nothing special. Just like everyone else. Discovering his mother was other had been a wicked jolt to his system, one he never recovered from.
Not until he felt his blood draining drop by drop, his consciousness swirling down a cosmic drain. Before that, he hadn’t given his mother a second thought in over a decade. She didn’t deserve to occupy one ounce of headspace, but there she had been. There she still was, lurking in his memories.
As they hauled her away, screaming his name, kicking and biting, she fought to get back to her son.
As they told him the truth, showed him the truth, he wept like a child. And when he turned sixteen, they beat him half to death to trigger his inner charun.
What exploded from his skin was him and not him, and it was terrible and beautiful. They had never seen anything quite like it, which made him wonder if his mother had refused to reveal herself. Had they clubbed her? Punched her? Kicked her too? Worse? Had she kept that secret, her identity, to the last?
Farhan didn’t know, and that sat heavy on his conscience. His mother was the only reason he had betrayed Adam today, even that little bit. Telling Luce the truth had been a gamble, but it was worth the risk. She was set on her path. He saw it in her eyes when she absorbed the blow, a kind of relief that the worst was known, that the other shoe had finally dropped, and she had no way to avoid its impact.
All he had done was given her a chance to make her peace. Likely, she had already begun the process, but he wanted her to understand she had to get a move-on if she wanted to mark all the names off her list.
The phone in his pocket rang, and he answered without looking at the screen. “Hello, Adam.”
He wasted no time getting to the point. “Luce is there?”
“She’s playing with her kid.” He made a fist with his free hand. “Have you ever watched a family of dragons together? It’s the most beautiful damn thing I’ve ever seen.”
“No.” He sounded wistful and yet irritated. “I haven’t.”
The mate bond made it hard for Adam to appreciate things like Luce having a mate or their having a child.
“I told her what’s required to seal the terrenes,” Farhan admitted.
The line filled with silence, and then Adam sighed. “She didn’t back down, did she?”
He sounded like he wished she would fight it, fight him, but she was an arrow soaring toward its mark. She wouldn’t miss. Her aim was too good.
“She’ll do whatever it takes, assuming her mate doesn’t stop her first.”
Reminding Adam she belonged to someone else was a low blow. He might not love Luce, but he admired her. For all that he pretended otherwise, he desired her. Under different circumstances, Cole might have a fight on his hands. But under different circumstances, she wouldn’t exist.
“Cole will have to be dealt with. He won’t let her go easily.”
The difference in how their individual mate bonds worked never ceased to amaze Farhan. Each species’ biological needs echoed through that connection. Some mated for life, some for a season. Some lived on, some died. Some required it to procreate, others bred like rabbits.
Luce was caught in the middle. Adam had killed her before she had a chance to begin, and Cole would die before he lost her and faced life alone.
“The kid’s awake.” A distant part of Farhan couldn’t believe he actually spoke the words. “That’s all the leverage we’ll need.” A child screaming for its parents was far more convincing than the solemnity of the pod she emerged from. “They’re leaving her under Edward Boudreau’s supervision.”
Humans were no obstacle for them, and Boudreau hadn’t fully recovered from his bout with poison. He would be easily subdued, easily manipulated. An obstacle easily overcome.
“Good,” Adam said, but there was too much regret there to pass as genuine sentiment. “I’ll call when it’s time.”
“I’ll be here.” He ended the call, stared at the blank walls. “Figures.” He flopped back on the mattress. “Finally get some time off, and I can’t sleep.”
Guilt pressed too hard on his chest, regret mired him too deep in his thoughts, and the roil in his gut when he recalled with vivid clarity how far Adam was willing to go to see this through left him too close to spilling his lunch.
He hoped Luce took his advice. He hoped she said her I love yous and goodbyes.
Death was coming for her, and he didn’t mean cadre.
Death, for her, would look like an angel.
Rise Against: A Foundling novel (The Foundling Series) Page 27