Word and Breath (Wordless Chronicles)

by Susannah Noel

  This time, he didn’t try to hide the finality in his words.

  “We’ll be expecting news first thing in the morning. Don’t disappoint the General Director again.”

  Largan rolled his eyes but gave the man a polite farewell before he hung up.

  Sometimes, he felt like he was the only official in the Union who used his brain and could see a larger picture beyond each narrow event. Zealots groups—particularly extremists opposed to reading—were always popping up. The core values of the Union could easily be perverted into fanaticism.

  That kind of extremism—and the way it so often turned to violence—made Largan sick. There was too much value to be had in reading, in history, in preserving the past to let movements like that continue.

  He wasn’t a Reader himself, but he knew better than anyone that the Union needed them.

  They’d lost one this afternoon. A good one. One of the best. And Talon had known the Old Language as well.

  They shouldn’t have lost him that way. Talon’s death was a blow to them all—despite, as Smyde had been quick to point out—his potentially treasonous tendencies.

  They couldn’t afford to lose Riana Cole.

  With a sigh, Largan flipped his phone open and called his assistant, but there had been no news in the last half-hour.

  He tried to clear his mind for the rest of the ride home, but he wasn’t successful.

  So, when he stepped onto the platform and trudged the mile to his row house in one of the suburbs of Newtown, he was exhausted and just as stressed as he’d been when he’d left work.

  It wasn’t a good way to come home.

  When he stepped into the entryway, the nurse was waiting for him. “Sorry I’m late,” he told her. “I’m sure you saw the news. I got here as soon as I could. How is she?”

  “Not bad. She had a lot of pain this morning, but she’s been sleeping most of the afternoon.”

  Which meant she’d probably be awake most of the evening. He thanked the nurse and closed the door as she left.

  Then he went into the den which they’d turned into a bedroom last year after his wife was diagnosed.

  His wife’s eyes were open, and she gave him a weak smile. They’d married forty years ago, before the Union had started strongly discouraging marriage. He loved her so much he might have married her anyway.

  He smiled back and sank into the chair next to her bed. “You’re awake. I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

  “Of course you did. Your voice booms.” Her tone was teasing.

  “I’ll work on that.”

  Her shoulders shook and she huffed out some breathy laughter. “Hopeless case.” Then her face changed as she studied him. “You look tired.”

  For some reason, the mild comment—the aching irony of her saying such a thing to him—made his throat hurt so much he couldn’t immediately speak.

  Then he finally let out a long breath and admitted, “It’s been a long day.”

  ***

  Riana wasn’t sure how she’d come to the realization.

  It never would have occurred to her if she hadn’t met Tava and learned more about what Soul-Breathers could do. All evening, she’d been noticing hints and clues about Mikel’s true identity, and as she drifted to sleep she’d unconsciously put the pieces together in her mind.

  She’d fallen asleep in much the same way she had the night before—with the most urgent of her anxieties being lifted away from her conscious mind.

  It all made sense. The knowledge came to her with the weight of truth, instinctive and unshakeable.

  It wasn’t a frightening truth or a horrifying one. It just was.

  Mikel must be a Soul-Breather. It would explain why there had always been depths to him that were mysterious and unnamable. And perhaps why she’d grown attached to him so quickly—why she felt she’d known him much longer than she had.

  So when she’d woken up to the feel of his presence and seen him standing across the room—handsome and quietly powerful, his startlingly black eyes soft as he watched her sleep—she hadn’t been afraid at all.

  She’d just smiled at him groggily and said his name. Then saw the shift in his expression as he knelt beside her and touched her hair.

  He might be a Soul-Breather, but he was fond of her. And she didn’t have anything to fear from him.

  She knew it. On the edge of sleep and before her conscious mind could take over. She knew it. So she’d asked him the next question, genuinely expecting him to answer.

  Instead, Mikel jerked—as if he’d just been struck—and stumbled to his feet without his typical ease and grace. “What?”

  His reaction shoved Riana into full awareness. She sat up on the couch, wincing as her sore muscles and injured arm resisted the move. “You’re a Soul-Breather, aren’t you? I asked if you were going to tell me.”

  There was no sense in backing down now, although Riana was already starting to regret the blunt question. Her soft sleepiness had entirely dispelled, and her stomach felt heavy.

  Mikel just stared at her for a long minute, his hands clenched at his side and his face unreadable. She assumed he was thinking things through, trying to decide what to admit to her.

  Finally, he let out a hoarse breath and lowered himself slowly into the straight chair next to the sofa. “How did you know?”

  His matter-of-fact tone was a relief. At least he was telling her the truth. “I recognized what it felt like when you...you did whatever you did to help me sleep. The other Breather I met—I told you about her—did the same thing last night. And there were other things...” Her voice trailed off and she felt her cheeks reddening. How was she supposed to explain the kinds of feelings his presence had evoked in her? “Anyway,” she concluded lamely, “It just suddenly made sense to me.”

  “I was supposed to be more subtle than the other Breather you met.”

  She looked at him curiously, realizing he was annoyed with himself for the failure of his skill. “If you would have told me the truth, I might have let you help me sleep voluntarily. You didn’t have to go sneaking around—”

  She broke off abruptly, as something occurred to her for the first time.

  The weight in her stomach surged upward into a painful knot in her chest. All the instinctive acceptance she’d felt transformed into a sharp betrayal. “You didn’t run into me by accident. Did you?”

  His eyes closed briefly at the hoarse accusation in her voice, but then he met her eyes evenly as he admitted, “No.”

  She jumped to her feet, feeling exposed and vulnerable in her torn clothing and loose hair. “All of this was part of a plan? You were using me, lying to me—” She broke off again, the knot in her chest now lodging in her throat. More of the pieces started falling into place, forming an appalling whole.

  Mikel took a step closer and reached out a pacifying hand. “Let me explain—”

  “Explain what?” she choked. “That you’re working for the Union? That this was all some sort of scheme to get information from me? That everything you’ve said has been a lie?”

  Fury and betrayal threatened to swallow her up, and her vision blurred as she tried to process the storm of emotion. There was no reason for her to feel this betrayed and hurt. She’d only known the man for a little more than a week. She should have suspected he wasn’t what he seemed.

  But she’d been so sure of him. She’d trusted him.

  And never in her life had her trust been so violated.

  “It hasn’t all been a lie,” Mikel began, his expression anxious and sincere.

  More lies. She couldn’t hear them. “How often were you using your...your powers on me? Stealing thoughts and feelings from me against my will?” She wasn’t screaming. It hurt too much for that. “Did you take what you wanted from me?”

  “No!” Mikel had been relatively calm in the face of her outrage, but at this his control evidently snapped. “It wasn’t like that.” He stepped forward, moving to take her by the arms in his urgency. />
  Riana jerked away from him violently. “Don’t touch me! I’m not going to let you take anything else from me.”

  Mikel dropped his hands, his face going momentarily blank. “I wasn’t going to—” Then he shook his head curtly. “I know you don’t believe me, but if you’ll just let me explain... Yes, you were part of my assignment. But it wasn’t what it seems—”

  At his words, another recognition hit her, making her momentarily dizzy. “You were waiting for me on the street earlier. Weren’t you? Did you know about the shooting? Were you part of Jenson’s death—”

  “No! I knew nothing about it until it happened.” He was holding his arms tightly against his side, as if he had to will himself not to touch her. “Riana—”

  And then the final piece of the puzzle slammed into her. She swayed on her feet, trying to process what it all meant.

  A rage she’d never experienced before overwhelmed her. And she felt herself lunging at Mikel, hitting at him with her fists. “Where’s my sister?” she demanded, her voice like nothing she’d heard before. “Where’s Jannie? Where is she?”

  Mikel grabbed her shoulders and held her away from him. Even in her rage she realized he’d avoided touching her bare skin or her injury. “Riana, stop! I don’t know where your sister is. That’s the truth. I have no idea who took her or why.”

  She fought against his hold for a minute, but then all of her furious intensity drained out of her in an instant. As the energy left her, she went limp and—to her horror—started to cry.

  They were choked, painful, ugly sobs, but there was no way she could hold them back.

  Mikel made a distressed noise in his throat and started to take her in his arms. “Riana, don’t. Don’t.”

  At the feel of his arms around her, however, she found enough energy to raise her defenses. She shrunk away from him, terrified at the idea of his touching her in any way.

  He dropped his arms immediately, mumbling an apology.

  He didn’t touch her again, not even when she almost stumbled as she went to sit on the couch, not able to rely on her legs to support her weight anymore.

  She stifled as many of the sobs as she could. She was mortified at her breakdown—especially in front of Mikel, who had violated her more than anyone she could remember—but there was no way she could help it.

  When she smelled something strange, she asked hoarsely, “Is something burning?”

  Mikel cursed under his breath and went to the kitchen to take something off the stove.

  When he returned, he knelt in front of her. He reached out toward her as he began to speak, but jerked his hand back abruptly before it reached her knee. “Yes, I work for the Union. I was assigned to you. The job was to get to know you and retrieve certain information from you that the Union wants to know. You must know by now that you have some sort of knowledge that is valuable to more than one party.”

  She was still shaking and shuddering, but she was listening to him. Against her will, she was listening to him.

  “This is what I do. It’s my job. It wasn’t personal, although I certainly understand how it feels that way to you. I didn’t know you. I was just doing my job.”

  Of course, he was. Why would she have meant anything to him at all?

  “But it changed. Riana, I swear to you it changed—almost immediately. I deceived you, yes. And manipulated you. And I was following you all day today so I witnessed the shooting and then arranged it so you’d run into me in front of the coffee shop. But it wasn’t all a lie. I do want to help you.” His face twisted strangely as he admitted, “And I didn’t turn you in to my employer when he called about you this afternoon. I’m not going to betray you. Please let me help you.”

  She believed him.

  The worst thing about the whole situation was that she still believed him. Every instinct in her body was insisting that he was honest in this, that he was telling her the truth.

  But her instincts had led her wrong about Mikel from the very beginning. And she’d never been a fool.

  At least, not until last week.

  “How am I supposed to believe you?” she whispered, too exhausted to rage anymore.

  Mikel looked torn and pained, but at her question, his expression shifted again—as if he were genuinely considering an answer to it. “There’s no reason why you should,” he admitted. “I guess we’re in a hopeless—” He broke off suddenly. “Unless...”

  She recognized hope in his last word, and stupidly, her own heart responded with hope of its own. “Unless what?”

  “Do you trust that other Breather you met?”

  Riana nodded, trying to follow his train of thought.

  “If you trust her, you could ask her to open a connection with me. Soul-Breathers can’t lie to each other in an open connection. She could verify that I’m telling the truth now.” He glanced away and sounded suddenly uncertain. “Assuming you want to bother...”

  Riana closed her eyes and thought hard. Part of her didn’t want to bother. She’d been hurt and lied to, and she wanted to raise her defenses and burrow into a tight little ball and never come out. But she was still in significant danger. And Mikel could either help her or hurt her.

  And Jannie was still gone. She wouldn’t be able to find her alone.

  It was worth the emotional effort it took to give Mikel one more chance. She needed to know where he stood one way or the other.

  Tava would let her know if he was serious about having changed his mind or whether this was all part of some scheme.

  Riana hadn’t made a decision about whether she was going to contact the Front again. But this made the decision for her.

  She couldn’t do this alone. An aching truth she had to accept.

  She needed help to stay alive and to find her sister.

  So she swallowed hard and avoided Mikel’s intense gaze as she pulled her phone from her bag and dialed Tava.

  Nine

  “You didn’t sleep again last night.”

  The words were more of an accusation than a question, and Tava’s gaze was more annoyed than sympathetic.

  Connor brushed away the issue. “I’m fine. Stop nagging.”

  He hadn’t slept the night before, any more than he had the previous night. He was too worried and wound up, and he couldn’t relax or let down his guard enough to go to sleep.

  “You’re not fine. You’re exhausted. And you’re going to break down if you don’t take care of yourself.” She flopped down onto the sofa in his office and scowled at him. “If you weren’t so stubborn, you’d admit it.”

  Connor had known the beautiful Soul-Breather for years, and they were more like brother and sister than colleagues. Which is why he didn’t hide his grumpy tone from her as he replied, “You’re pushing it, Tava. We’ve talked about this before.”

  “I don’t care what we’ve talked about before. You can give me all the lectures on boundaries you want. I’m telling you that you need to let go a little bit. You’ve been riding on nerve and will for three days, but they’re not going to take you much farther.” She reached out to him with one slender hand. “Why don’t you let me help you let go of the reins just a little? I can just—”

  “No!” He was just as surprised by the bite of the one word as she was. “I don’t need you to poking around in my psyche and artificially trying to fix things.”

  As soon as he said the words, he regretted them. Even more when he saw her face crumple slightly before she looked away.

  He’d hurt her. And all because she was right. He was barely holding on here, but he just couldn’t stop pushing himself. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, heaving himself up from his desk chair and trudging over to slump beside her on the couch. “That was uncalled for.” He nudged her slightly with his elbow to get her to look at him again. “I didn’t mean to imply that your gifts were unnatural or less than a blessing.”

  Her features had smoothed out, the deep eyes wide and earnest again. “I just want to help, Connor.
It’s not weakness to use what I can offer you. Any more than it would be to let a friend give you a back rub. I can’t stand to see you hurting this way.”

  For some reason, the fact that she’d said “hurting” instead of stressed, anxious, and overwrought—which were the words Connor himself would have used to describe himself—caused his throat to close up with a sudden pressure of feeling.

  He ignored it. “I know. And maybe later I’ll let you help. There’s too much I need to do right now, though.” Checking her expression, he added, “And I’m serious about valuing your gifts. Just because I’m wound too tightly to let you use them on me at the moment doesn’t mean I think they’re dangerous or that only the weak would want to use them.”