“She’s bonded to all four of them.” Yas breathed out the words as though afraid of the very statement, but the few mumbles of agreement about the room seemed to bolster her resolve. “How is this possible? How was this never verified? Miro? Silas? Why was this never reported?”
“Our father,” Quillan grunted out the response, apparently unwilling to extrapolate.
Silence met his statement and I felt cold arms wrap around me. The touch was familiar and welcome, so I turned toward it, burrowing deeper into the embrace until Cabe’s rough voice sounded in my ear.
“Thanks, little healer.”
I threw myself at him, locking my arms around his neck and veritably crawling into his lap, needing to get as close as possible. He chuckled, but the sound was strained. I wanted to hide away in him again; to lose myself in his unique brand of brightness until the horror of the world simply didn’t matter anymore… but I couldn’t do that.
The horror was a part of me.
The horror was a part of us.
I disentangled myself, pulling to my feet as Noah and Quillan approached. We hadn’t intended to rally together, but it was natural to want to be close with the tense energy that lingered in the air.
“I think arresting Silas is going to be out of the equation for now,” Jack stated calmly. “So why don’t we get everyone cleaned up, and we can deal with this in the proper way? I assume you’re all done with trying to go about whatever it is you’re doing in secret?” His eyes landed on me as I nodded my head slightly. “Good.” He smiled. “Sophia? Why don’t you take her to our house; I’ll take care of the others.”
Sophia walked toward me and I cast one more glance at Silas and Cabe before I edged around Noah’s tense form and allowed Sophia to take my hand. Poison was the only one who made to follow us, and nobody attempted to stop her. They probably assumed that she wanted a change of clothes too, since she was still dressed as a stripper. She grabbed my hand as we passed over the blood-stained footbridge, and I gripped her fingers tightly, trying to convey my gratitude. Sophia’s house was another of the stilt-houses over the water, though it had proper doors and walls instead of the billowy mosquito nets that some of the other houses had. She showed me to a bathroom and left me alone with Poison, probably assuming that I needed a bit of time to get myself together. Poison turned on the shower and stripped to her underwear, climbing inside and sitting down, pulling her knees to her chest. I laughed humorlessly, recognising the parallel of our current situation to the night Aiden had died. Her strained smile matched mine, and I pulled my own clothes off, huddling beside her in my underwear.
The hot water pooled over me as I leaned my head on her shoulder. Neither of us tried to speak for a few minutes, instead allowing the water to work its magic.
“Danny is still out there,” I eventually whispered.
“And Silas almost killed Cabe,” she added tonelessly.
“And Weston is missing.” I nodded my head against her shoulder.
“And the Klovoda knows your secret,” she concluded.
“Things are looking up, aren’t they?”
We both burst into sudden laughter, which caused Sophia to knock on the bathroom door, asking us if everything was okay. I could see why she might be concerned; laughter in this situation was a sure sign of insanity. I turned off the shower and wrapped myself into one of the towels that Sophia had provided, handing the other one off to Poison as I moved to open the door.
“Come on out.” Sophia smiled at our appearance, indicating the bed that had been covered in a wide selection of clothing. “You know that’s a pretty big secret you’ve all been keeping, and for such a long time, too. You shouldn’t even have a pair, Seraph.”
I nodded absently, plucking at a t-shirt as I tried to fight past the secrecy that I had grown used to. When it became clear that I wasn’t going to speak about it, Sophia didn’t seem annoyed or suspicious, as I had expected her to. Instead, she only smiled kindly and backed out of the room to let us dress in private. When we were done, she escorted us back to the Klovoda’s meeting room, keeping her questions to herself.
After we returned, I sat immediately between Noah and Cabe—the latter of whom was also freshly showered and dressed.
“You can ask your questions now,” Quillan spoke up, standing off to the side with his arms crossed. He seemed to be guarding Silas, who wasn’t entirely visible from his position sitting behind Quillan. “But you’ll direct them to me. Seph won’t be answering anything tonight.”
“This isn’t a trial, Miro.” Jack spoke easily—seeming the least unsettled by the evening’s turn of events. “We want to protect her as much as you do, but if that’s the way you want it, then fine. We’ll ask you our questions instead. Who’s first?”
“Where is Weston?” Yas spoke up immediately, her gaze fierce on Quillan, though her arms shook as she crossed them over her chest.
“Weston is in a secure location,” Quillan answered easily. “As is Danny.”
“Danny?” several voices questioned at once.
“Danny is the one who has been stalking Seraph. Silas… detained him. They’re both locked in Weston’s prison at Le Château.”
I tried to peer behind Quillan, but Silas remained stubbornly in shadow. I supposed that they had managed to speak in private while I was gone, because it didn’t seem as though Quillan was lying.
“Danny?” Yas echoed, shock lining her face. “Danny has been stalking her?”
“He has the Dead Man’s power,” Quillan said by way of confirmation. “Somehow none of you noticed that, even when he was younger. You blamed another girl—”
“Eva,” I supplied, my voice cracking.
Everyone turned to look at me, but Quillan quickly demanded their attention again.
“The incident that you locked Eva up for was actually orchestrated by Danny. The death of Aiden and his pairs was also orchestrated by Danny—that’s why you didn’t find any wounds or signs of organ damage on any of the victims. Danny used his power on Aiden. Initially, he only knew about Seraph’s bond with Noah and Cabe, and his main focus was separating her from them. That focus shifted at the end of last year, when Dominic Kingsling arranged to have Seraph kidnapped, which ended in the accident—an accident that you are all aware of. What you aren’t aware of, is the fact that Dominic had her locked in his basement for days following the accident. At some point during this mess of events, Danny saw Seraph’s second mark. Silas found out who Danny was while Weston had him hostage. I’m sure you all know how…”
“Yes, I suppose we do.” Alice sounded thoughtful, but also a little shaken. “Weston has always tasked Danny with torture and interrogation projects. He has never been fond of the boy—Danny represents a failure to Weston, since he never declared an ability. We always assumed that Seraph had stolen Danny’s power somehow while the two of them were in the womb. It made sense, seeing as they should have had one each and yet she was born with two and he was born with none—”
“Except that he wasn’t.” Obasi drew everyone’s attention to where he and Nahab were once again positioned against one of the walls. There was a dark undertone riding his words.
“Does he also have two powers?” Nahab asked, his voice thickly accented.
“No.” I spoke up, since I wasn’t sure that Quillan could answer that question. “Not while we were younger, anyway.”
“Takeo,” Alice interrupted suddenly, turning to the silent Japanese man behind her. “Grab your instruments. You’d best come with me; Danny always liked you best.”
Takeo inclined his head slightly and we all watched as he reached down beside one of the chairs and pulled up a black briefcase before following Alice out of the room. I waited for Adie to follow them as well, but he stayed where he was, blue eyes fixed on their retreating forms until they slipped through the mosquito nets and disappeared outside.
“Takeo took Danny on as an apprentice of sorts,” Jack explained, seeming to direct the statement to
everyone who wasn’t a Klovoda member, since his attention bounced from Quillan, to me, and back. “He knows Danny better than the rest of us; he’ll have a better chance of dealing with this.”
I frowned, thinking about the fact that Danny had worked with people in the past—people who knew that he was doing bad things… but if Takeo was one of them, then any other member of the Klovoda could also be involved. The entire Klovoda could be involved. I turned my frown on Jayden, who met my expression with raised brows.
I wanted to voice my concern, to ask each of them to give me a good enough reason to trust them… but there wasn’t any point. There was no way to tell a truth from a lie in this room. Instead, I would wait. I would wait for their true colours to show, just as Jayden’s had.
For now, I only wanted to get my pairs as far away from Danny as possible.
The Klovoda could do their job for once, and deal with the rest.
“How?” Jack snapped the word into his phone, his voice projected in distress for the first time since I had met him. “How long? How did they get out?”
It had barely been half an hour since Alice and Takeo had left, and I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. Apparently, the others were just as shocked as I was.
“They escaped?” Sophie jumped up from the couch, her legs eating up the distance to Jack, who met her eyes and tipped his head in a subtle imitation of a nod.
I tried to catch a glimpse of Silas, who had his head in his hands and was still being guarded by Quillan. He wasn’t fixated on Jack like everyone else. He didn’t seem to care. Jack was giving no outward hints as to what was being said on the other end of the line, so I returned to examining Silas. A scream of frustration rose up in my throat, but it never made it past my lips, because a fearful realisation quickly grabbed it back.
They’re coming for us.
I casually rose to my feet, making my way toward Sophia. “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked her.
“You can go back to our house and use that one.” She spoke distractedly, her eyes intent on Jack and Sophie. “You remember the way?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Thanks.”
I moved toward the doorway, avoiding eye-contact with the others until I was standing beside Silas’s chair, where I paused, chancing a quick glance behind me. Everyone was still focussed on Jack, waiting to hear what else he would say. I touched Silas’s shoulder and then walked out. At first I wasn’t even sure that he was following, but when I stepped onto the bridge and turned around, he was right behind me. I sucked in a breath, raising my eyes to his face, but there wasn’t any time to linger, so I only diverted my attention over his shoulder to make sure that nobody had followed us out before I spun around and hurried across the bridge. He didn’t say a word until we had passed through the boathouse and were moving toward his car, which I discovered by the side of the road.
“So I’m your getaway driver again.” He spoke gently, the usual strength behind his voice lacking so that I wasn’t even sure whether he had been simply stating a fact or asking a question.
I reached for the passenger door but he shot out a hand and snapped the door closed, his turbulent presence seeming to become distended, swelling around me and pressing in on me. I shrank back against the car. I had been avoiding examining him too closely ever since I had healed him in the hospital, but there didn’t seem to be any use in preventing it anymore. He had already proven through his actions to be altered beyond what we could have prepared for. Almost unwillingly, I dragged my eyes up his chest, noting that his breaths were too shallow, a hint of panic edging each draw of oxygen.
My fingers twitched as I looked higher, drinking in his familiar face and mentally tracing each new scar that dug its way across his skin. All of them were a depthless white texture, marked by my valcrick power with a faint shine that melded them to his normal, bronze skin texture. His eyes were still spitting fire at me, as they used to, but where previously the fire had been a smoulder, it was now something more. There was more darkness, more depth, and the heat was impossibly hotter. I could feel the warmth scattering over my cheeks and down the back of my neck, raising the fine hairs there to stand on end.
“Find what you were looking for?” he whispered, ducking his head to increase the effect of his eyes tenfold, placing his face right before mine. “Or were you looking for these?”
He pulled his car keys from the pocket of a pair of jeans that I assumed to be Jack’s, dangling them between us. I tried to reach for them, my attempt to dredge up a reply falling flat as the words caught in my throat. He pulled them back as soon as my fingers grazed metal, shoving them back into his pocket. He took a step forward until I was forced to retreat backwards, my borrowed flats slipping against the edge of the curb. Silas watched without helping—though I didn’t really need it. I couldn’t help but suspect that my short scramble had pleased him in some way. He had said the night he kissed me that he wanted to hurt me, but that he couldn’t. I wondered if he had changed his mind.
Maybe he hated me now.
Or maybe it had all been an act…
“So?” he prompted. “Where are we going?”
I swallowed, my courage disappearing, my attention diverting back to his chest. I shouldn’t be thinking about my fear of Silas—especially with all of the more pressing threats occupying my mind… but no, that wasn’t right. I wasn’t afraid of him. I was afraid of us. I was bonded to all of them, yes. There were expectations that I might get involved with all of them, yes.
But…
I knew that Silas didn’t like it. He didn’t like our forced connection and he didn’t like my connection to the others. I wasn’t sure which he hated more, but I was beginning to think that it was the latter. He didn’t want them touching me. He wanted to own me, the same way he felt that I unfairly owned him.
It was the wrong time to be agonizing over it. I needed to set it aside.
“We’re going back to Le Château,” I mumbled at his chest. “We’re going to draw Danny away from these guys so that nobody else gets hurt. Le Château is so isolated and as far as the others are concerned, anywhere near Weston would be the last place that we’d go right now, so it seems like a good location.”
Silas nodded thoughtfully, the promise of a looming fight working to dampen his intense mood. He dug a hand into his pocket and pulled out a phone; it couldn’t possibly work anymore, not after being submerged in the water. He tossed it to the ground and reached for the pocket of my borrowed jeans. To his apparent surprise, the pocket was sewed shut—as though it was simply a decoration pocket. I could have told him that. He frowned, reaching behind me, his fingers skimming the back of my jeans, searching for another pocket. I froze, my breath halting in my chest. I could have told him that there were no pockets back there either, but I couldn’t seem to summon the words.
I also didn’t want to tell him where my phone was hidden.
His fingers skimmed further down, unnecessarily following the slight crease in my jeans at the tops of my thighs that hugged the curve of my butt. His hands ended up at my sides as he examined me carefully. He wasn’t searching for my phone anymore. He was searching for something in my eyes—some kind of telling tick in my expression. I had no idea what, but I couldn’t stand the intensity of it all. I lowered my eyes.
“Don’t.” The command was projected lowly. “You don’t hide from me. That’s not what you do.”
“What do I do?”
“You open up.” He pressed me back against the car, one of his legs edging between mine, his hands curling around the outsides of my thighs. “I press, and you let me in.”
“Maybe things have changed.” I didn’t want to acknowledge what was happening, but I knew… I was having trouble coming to terms with everything that he had done. I was having trouble reconciling it all in my head. I wanted to draw him close and shut him out all at once.
He had killed Gerald. He had almost killed Cabe. He had lied to us. He had tricked me.
�
��I’ve realised something.” His fingers twitched, tapping thoughtfully against my thighs, his eyes heavy on my face, his intensity weighing down on me. “I can’t pull you away from them. I can’t pull myself away from you. We’re connected, we’ll snap, and snapped, we’re no better than dead.”
“I know.”
“I meant what I said, before, angel. I won’t leave again. I won’t ever punish them for touching you.” He sucked in a breath, as though the admission had pained him. “That leniency doesn’t extend any further, though. You need to know that. If you’re ours, I’ll break the next person outside of us that touches you. I don’t mean I’ll break their fingers. I’m mean them. Their whole person. I’ll break their connection to this world.”
I could hardly breathe, and it wasn’t because of his violent threat. He was ready to commit to something that none of us had even properly agreed on. I had thought that I had been the strong one all of this time; the mature one, accepting the bond and moving forwards. I had been strong enough to realise that my expectations had been reversed—that the very unsettled nature of my bond had been the reason for my reluctance with the other three, and that my true feelings had been the jealousy, the need, and the vulnerability that I had been desperately ignoring for so long.
But of course… nobody was as strong as Silas.
While I had accepted the truth of everything that I had done and everything that I had felt, he was vowing to go against his very nature. He would share. He would allow a bond—something that he had no control over—to dictate his life. He would relinquish control. For us.
Things would never be the same again—not with him, or with the others. We had all done terrible things. I had stolen them, and they had each betrayed me in their own ways, with the exception of Quillan. But Quillan had his own issues; I was sure that the death of his previous girlfriend was a contributing factor, but I also knew that he was hanging onto some kind of misplaced sense of duty. He felt responsible for me, and that sense of responsibility warred directly with the non-platonic nature of the bond. We had all hurt each other, betrayed each other, lied and manipulated each other… but we kept finding our way back. We couldn’t help it.
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