Ella’s flinch was answer enough.
“I wouldn’t have told him anything if he hadn’t figured out too much on his own.”
“I had my reasons for believing otherwise.”
“Did you? I’d love to hear them.”
“I know what Siren discovered when she touched the Council’s adnexus. I know it is you, not Elijah, that’s bound to us.”
Valkyrie’s blood chilled. “And you thought I wanted that? I was six when my father joined the Council. Was I a cold-blooded demon child plotting world domination in my fucking cradle?”
“You have to consent to being bonded to the adnexus,” was Ella’s only defense.
“What is the consent of a child who doesn’t understand what they’re doing? A child who spent her entire life having her father tell her he wanted to love her, but she wasn’t really his. She was the daughter of a monster, and daughters like that had to try harder. They had to work for it if they wanted to be loved.
“I consented because I wanted my father to love me. I didn’t even understand what I’d done until I was in my teens. By then, nothing mattered.” Valkyrie shook her head, wishing she could shake away the memories. “Are we finished here?”
“No.”
“No? What other accusations would you like to level at me? I can’t wait to learn what else I’ve done.”
“I know you have DuPont’s blood. And Kara’s and Theo’s. Does Random know why you’ve taken them?”
“Yes.”
Ella’s lips thinned. “And once you’ve stolen the adnexus, what do you intend to do with it?”
“Siren said if she had it, she thought she could break it without killing us.”
“Siren’s across the ocean. Why move for it now? Why involve my son?”
“Because I didn’t have a choice. Because Random got himself involved and there was nothing I could do about it. Because to keep him safe, it has to be now.”
Ella’s lips thinned. “Your father threatened him?”
“No, not Elijah.” Then, because she figured it didn’t matter at this point, she said, “Danvers.”
“Danvers?” Ella’s eyebrows lifted. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
But Ella just shook her head. “I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you. And if you did? Well, that might be worse. If you’re fortunate, you’ll never have to know.”
“Is cryptically refusing to relay information a side effect of joining the Council?”
“No.” If it weren’t that circumstances forced it to be otherwise, Valkyrie suspected she and Ella could make an entire conversation out of that two-letter word. “I have sympathy for what you’ve been through—”
Valkyrie snorted. Ella’s sympathy was worth absolutely nothing to her.
“—but you cannot expect me to sit idly by while you hand the adnexus off to Danvers.”
“I’m not an idiot. I’m not going to give it to him. But he will be watching me. I can’t tell him I have it if I don’t, and I need him to meet with me. If I kill him, Random is no longer in any danger.
“You understand why I can’t simply take this to the rest of the Council? It won’t matter to them whether I had a choice in how I was bound. It will only matter to them that, in truth, I am the Council’s fifth member.
“I wasn’t voted in. I wasn’t approved. With the exception of Siren destroying the adnexus, which they would never sanction, I cannot be removed except by death. They would kill me.”
“A death vote would have to be unanimous.”
“And you think it wouldn’t be? Would you have voted against it if you hadn’t walked in here and read me?”
Ella chose not to answer that. “You understand that the second that adnexus leaves council headquarters any one of us will be able to track it. You can’t hide it long enough to get what you want.”
If she was pointing that out then there was a chance, however slight a one, that Ella wouldn’t simply haul her in to the Council right now.
“I can’t,” Valkyrie agreed. “But Random can.”
“You would involve him that far?”
“He’s a grown man, Ella, not a child. However you may still see him. He makes up his own mind. I had the choice of cutting him off or keeping him close where I could protect him. I chose the latter. The only question is, are you going to help me or are you going to get in my way?”
Ella considered her. “Let us assume you were to reach the adnexus. It was never meant to be held by a single individual, even for a short span of time. The magic that binds us all is very old and very dark. I am not at all certain that, should you grasp it, its magic won’t consume you.”
“A risk I’ll take.”
“Very well.” Ella reached for the sugar bowl on Random’s counter, dumped the contents out into a small mound, and held her fingertip poised over the ceramic dish. Her Aspect opened a slice in her skin and blood flowed, plinking down into the bowl.
“Why are you helping me?” Valkyrie asked. She understood Ella not turning her in—it would ruin Ella’s relationship with Random—but she didn’t have to do this. “Are you hoping I’ll get myself killed?”
“As things stand now? No. But let me be very clear about something. If your actions get my son killed, you would do well to follow at the same time. Because the death I will give you will be far less kind than any you could find on your own.”
She took a handkerchief from her pocket and pressed it to the wound.
Valkyrie stared at the blood welling into the white cloth. “You haven’t asked what I intend to do about Elijah.”
“No, I haven’t. It may be that I think one problem will be solved by another.” Ella walked to the door and paused, her fingers on the handle. “And Valkyrie? I well understand that this may mean nothing to you given our...interaction here today. But you should know that I hope this all turns out for the best. Not simply for my son’s sake, but for yours, as well. Because I would much rather call you my daughter than kill you.”
Valkyrie stared at Ella as the woman opened the door. Had she just gotten the Death Queen’s approval to date her son?
Ella opened the door. Random came through it a moment later, took in the shallow bowl of blood on the counter, and Valkyrie. Whatever he saw on Valkyrie’s face, he clearly didn’t like.
“Aunt Ella—”
“You can relax, dear. It’s only her pride I hurt. For now.” She reached out and cupped Random’s face in her palm, a more tender gesture than Valkyrie would have thought her capable of. Then again, maybe that was the pot calling the kettle black.
“Be careful, boy. It’s a very dangerous game you’re playing and I can only help you so much.”
15
As soon as his aunt was gone, Random walked across the room and took Valkyrie in his arms. It was as if he was afraid that, if given the chance to think about it, she wouldn’t let him do it.
“Should I be apologizing right now?” he asked.
She tried for levity. “For your aunt or for this shirt?”
He winced. “Both? In all fairness, love, you just threw your clothes into a bag and left them. They were wrinkled.”
Yes, she thought, that would bother Random. “I would have preferred meeting your aunt in wrinkled clothing to meeting her in something that barely covers my ass.”
He ran his hands up her back and worked at the knotted muscles between her shoulder blades. It felt so good that she wanted to lean into him and forget the entire conversation. Devious of him.
“I didn’t know she was going to storm in. And besides.” He flashed her his trademark wicked grin. “I was right. You do look sexy as hell.”
She summoned her best glacial tone. “I am sure that was at the forefront of your aunt’s mind. ‘Yes, Valkyrie has beguiled Random into helping her with her personal vendetta, but hey, at least she looks sexy’.”
“Beguiled?”
“That would be the politest way of putting wha
t she accused me of. Did you know you’re very easy to manipulate? She thought I used your interest in me to sell you a fake story about an abusive father, shed some tears, and throw myself at you for political advantage.”
“She what?”
Valkyrie gave a small shrug. “She had her reasons. They were shit reasons, but she had them.”
“I would be delighted to hear them,” he said coolly.
“You seem not to have noticed what everyone else sees, so let me enlighten you. I am a selfish bitch, Random. I don’t care about anyone but myself. I am not nice. I am not pleasant to be around. There is no possible way I could secure your interest without resorting to emotional manipulation.”
“That’s bullshit. Everyone is an idiot. Aunt Ella, of all people, shouldn’t judge you on a façade she perfected decades ago.”
“Maybe not. But Elijah laid his groundwork well.”
He didn’t answer that statement immediately. She could see him puzzling through the words, no doubt adding them to her unexpected reaction to Elijah earlier. She hadn’t told him precisely what she’d intended to do when she saw her father, but he’d already guessed the original plan hadn’t been to publicly cut ties with her father.
“What do you mean?”
“I believe he’s been painting me as unstable for years.”
“Why would he do that, Kyrie?” His voice was that careful, low timbre that usually only reared its head when he was about to obliterate someone in court. She loved that timbre and the state of mind that went along with it. Loved it, and needed it now. Because she wanted someone to come up with an alternate explanation for the things she’d learned, and the things she suspected.
“Danvers plays a long game. He altered Siren’s Aspect and left her for sixteen years before he tried to do anything with her. He left the two Empaths with their adoptive fathers.”
“Okay,” Random said, “but we’re not talking about Danvers and his penchant for experimentation. We’re talking about Elijah and you.” When she didn’t answer he added, “Aren’t we?”
“At StellaMia’s Danvers told me—” She cut off. She didn’t want to tell him what Danvers had said, didn’t want Random to look at her differently. “He told me my mother was never the experiment. He said I was.”
Random’s hands, which had paused their gentle circles on her back, resumed working at her knotted muscles. “He was probably just trying to fuck with your head, Kyrie.”
“Maybe.” Danvers didn’t seem like the type to bluff. He was too cocky, too sure of himself.
“You don’t think he was.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Come here.” He led her over to the bar, nudged her down onto one of the bar stools. He stared for a moment at his aunt’s blood before delicately picking up the bowl and removing it to the opposite counter. Then, as if they were done talking about everything, he switched gears and said, “You need to eat something, you never got food at StellaMia’s.”
“Random.”
He was verging into caretaker mode, which meant he was concerned and upset. He opened the refrigerator. “I made fried rice yesterday, or there’s some roasted garlic soup from the day before.”
“Random.”
“Or I have leeks, I could make—”
“Random. I’m fine.”
He wasn’t. She could see that from the way his hand clutched the refrigerator so hard his knuckles were white.
“Whatever it is, just say it,” she told him.
“What kind of monster thinks of his own daughter as an experiment?”
“The kind who doesn’t think of family in the same way as other people. He has no emotional attachment to me. Using himself as a stud in his own experiment would have been the natural choice in his mind. I don’t know precisely what he aimed for with my creation, but he mentioned the early age at which I manifested.”
“And all of the Aspect records you broke?”
“Yes, those too.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “Say that you’re right. What kind of long game is letting Elijah Winters raise you? I understand why he left Siren for years. He left her with people who worked for him. But Elijah destroyed Danvers’ initial operation and stole you and your mother from him.”
“Danvers said that he and Elijah were contemporaries, once. It sounds crazy, but I think they might have been working together. Danvers said Elijah fell in love with my mother. That that’s when everything went wrong.
“You never met my mother.” She had died just before Random arrived in Seclusion. “You never saw my parents together. He did love her. I don’t think it was a very healthy love—it bordered on obsession—but I don’t think she ever let herself recognize that. To my mother, Elijah was forever going to be the white knight who rescued her.
“And he was so careful around her. The monster never showed when he didn’t want it to. And all those times he disappeared for weeks and months on end, ‘hunting’ Danvers? How is it, do you think, that someone with Elijah Winters’ connections, drive, and resources never managed to find him in over twenty years of dedicated searching?”
“Unless he didn’t have to,” Random said.
“Exactly. The things Danvers knows about me—he’s too familiar with my life for it all to have come from an interrogation of Elijah. It’s more like he received the information as it happened.”
“You think every time he was off ‘hunting’ Danvers he was just reporting to him?”
“Why not? I was firmly under control. And Elijah’s position with the Council was too useful for Danvers to give up.”
Random finally closed the refrigerator door and leaned back against it. “Why did Elijah leave a year ago? Why come back now?”
“I don’t know for sure.”
“I’ll take a guess.”
“Danvers had been looking for Siren for six years by that point. And he had recently obtained Lucille, an Oracle. Their visions may be difficult for the uninitiated to decipher, but I’d wager he gleaned from her that if Elijah ‘disappeared’ it would lead Siren to him.
“Because that’s what happened, isn’t it? When my father left, I called Jace home. I didn’t know where Elijah was, so I wanted Jace close.” She hadn’t been willing to take the chance that Elijah would decide to get rid of the son he blamed for his wife’s death. She’d needed Jace here, where she could protect him. “And Jace was the thing that made Siren sit still long enough for Danvers to try and reacquire her.
“As for sending Elijah back now—he did that to fuck with me. And—I think—so Elijah could quietly remind everyone that I’m unstable. Everyone thinks I’m completely devoted to him. Maybe I’m unhinged and devoted enough to take out the entire Council and put my father in their place.”
Random looked at the bowl of his aunt’s blood. “How much of this does Aunt Ella know?”
“Most of it, I suspect.”
“Then why the hell is she giving you her blood to steal the adnexus instead of taking this to the Council and having them throw Elijah’s ass in jail?”
“Because she cares about you.”
“What do I have to do with this?”
“You love me,” Valkyrie said softly. Random’s gaze snapped to her at those words, as if he couldn’t believe she’d actually said them out loud. She couldn’t believe she’d said them.
“I do,” he agreed cautiously.
“If Ella takes her suspicions about Elijah to the Council, if she convinces them that those suspicions are true, they won’t throw Elijah in jail. They will remove him from the Council. They will do that by severing his connection to the adnexus. When a councilor’s connection to the adnexus is severed, they die.”
“Where is the problem here?”
“The problem is that Elijah isn’t bound to the adnexus, Random. I am.”
Every time Random thought Valkyrie couldn’t shatter his world any further, she managed it with ease. “No.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
he managed to spit out. “How did it happen? How did the Council not know? How did Aunt Ella not know?”
“Your aunt quit looking at people with her Aspect years ago unless it was required in the course of her official duties.”
He stared at her. Last time he’d checked, Valkyrie and Aunt Ella didn’t meet for tea and exchange small talk about how they did or did not use their Aspects.
“Ella talks to Siren, Siren talks to me,” Valkyrie said. “Your aunt joined the Council after my father did. If she’d already been a member when he substituted my bond to the adnexus for his, maybe she would have noticed. But she wasn’t, so no one did.”
Random shook his head. This couldn’t be fucking happening. “There must be a way to undo it. How did it happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you remember?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing, as in it’s been a long time since it happened and everything is fuzzy, or—”
“Nothing, as in almost the entire event is a fog.”
“There isn’t an Aspect branch that affects memory.”
“There doesn’t have to be,” she snapped at him. “Not every situation has a magical explanation. Goddess knows the Null world has drugs that fuck the memory over just fine, no Aspect needed.”
Random shoved off the refrigerator.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
“To kill Elijah Winters the normal way. If he’s dead he can’t hurt you anymore.”
“You can’t do that, either.”
He paused in front of the door, his hands curling into fists, and strove for a calm voice. A reasonable voice. A lawyer’s voice. “Why not?”
“I told you the councilors are difficult to kill? Because of the benefits being bound to the adnexus confers? Elijah bound me to the adnexus for a reason. However he managed it, I suffer the disadvantages and he reaps the benefits.”
“Are you saying that if I kill him, I kill you?”
“I don’t know,” she said in that voice that told him she absolutely did know and wasn’t inclined to reveal the particulars.
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