“It pissed me the hell off, but what could we do? I’d rant to him, and he’d watch me, but he couldn’t hear. It was nice in some ways, but it was pretty fucked.” Zephyr turned his head away suddenly, then ran a hand under his eyes. I looked away quickly to give him some privacy. We’d reached a tentative truce, and I didn’t want to ruin it.
I felt for him, but another emotion was prodding at me.
Anger.
Toward Levi.
A picture was being painted in my mind, and it only served to piss me off. I imagined Skye, young and desperate, trying to connect withher only father while he ignored her. She blamed herself for something awful, and heignored herinstead of comforting and reassuring her.
Something was very, very wrong with that.
The relationship between Skye and Zephyr didn’t point toward uncaring parents. An uncomfortable weight settled in my stomach as I tried to consider what would lead to Levi’s actions. He couldn’t possibly have blamed Skye for what happened. That didn’t seem right, especially when Zephyr wasn’t harmed, either.
But if Levi wasn’t her father, as Rafe and I suspected…
“What happened to him?” I whispered, not expecting Zephyr to answer. It was the one missing piece of the puzzle that I couldn’t put together. How had he ended up paralyzed? Zephyr wasn’t harmed in the blasts, probably because of his incorporeality, but Levi…
It was on the tip of my brain, but Zephyr stopped next to me, and I turned to face him, my worry growing at his serious expression.
“The Pilgrims beat him,” Zephyr said flatly. “An affinate stole his oxygen. They choked him out right in front of us. He went without oxygen for too long.”
“That’s barbaric,” I rasped, shaking my head.
“They wanted Skye,” Zephyr said, his voice lowering. “They were using him to get her. She panicked.”
“How did you manage to escape?” I murmured.
Zephyr took a deep breath before looking past me, to where Marion spoke with a group of women, all with a thousand-yard stare.
“She killed them,” he said flatly, then met my eye. “There were a dozen of them, at least. She squeezed her fist, and–” He flared out his fingers in a sign for an explosion.
I winced.
“It changed her,” he said quietly, looking up into the blue sky. “Even having seen the blast, having seen our mom and Ben, she was still the same girl when we went into that alley. But whoever we’d been died right there when she squeezed those men.”
Marion stoppedin front of a large canvas tent, turning to face me and Zephyr with a concerned expression.
“It’s not good,” she said lowly. “Mostly infections. Flood water is nasty stuff.” She rubbed her shoulders. “The sickest are at the back. I’ll take you there, now. There’s a little girl who I can’t crack. She’s been hours away from organ failure for nearly a day now. I haven’t had time to recharge completely. It should have been a simple fix, but–”
“You’ve done a wonderful job so far, Marion.” Zephyr said smoothly. “The Prince is here, now. He’ll handle everything.”
Marion eyed him before nodding. Even I was impressed, though I wasn’t surprised. Zephyr and Skye were fantastic actors. They had an entire lifetime of practice.
Marion pulled back the tent flap, and my stomach dropped.
“Fucking hell,” Zephyr breathed.
He was right.
This was hell.
The inside of the tent looked like a picture straight out of an old war textbook. Sick people were on cots, too close together, lining the walls. Parents were sharing beds with their children. A few children were on the ground, on top of dirty blankets.
“Skye is going to kill someone,” Zephyr whispered. To me, I realized, almost jumping when I glanced at him to see his pale gaze on me. “Wyatt, this is really bad.”
He wasn’t wrong.
We followed Marion to the back of the tent where sure enough, things were worse.
