He took another sip from the bottle of vodka.
"What color is your haze?" I asked forcefully, finally connecting the pieces of the puzzle and realizing I hadn’t seen him translate once since I’d met him. Except for now.
He looked up at me. "It's a deep shade of red. Same shade as Emma's, I assume. Haven’t caught her translating yet. But she possesses my energy, so it’ll be the same shade of scarlet. She will become the most powerful maga to have ever walked this earth if she…"
The unspoken words hung between us like a fragile thread. He was on the brink of saying, “if she survives,” but I wasn’t ready to face any other possibility.
“This is why you left during the battle at Alliance? And when the Radicals attacked Cyclos? Why you didn’t come with me to Coastal to save Emma? Because you were scared I would recognize the color of your haze or notice that it’s the same as Emma’s?”
Julian nodded. “You or someone else. I know you think I was a coward for doing that, twice, and I was. I have no excuse, but the actual reason. If someone had seen me translate so close to Emma, both our shades too similar, the evidence would’ve been…” He trailed off.
I dragged a hand down my face, frustration knotting in my jaw. “Tell me what happened next. After Emma survived you fucking mind-raping her.”
Julian flinched, his cheeks flushing deep red at the accusation.Oh well, cry me a fucking river, asshole.
“We decided our world wasn’t ready for the knowledge we had,” he said stiffly. “It’s not like we could observe her for a few years, see how her powers developed, and make a call later. We only knew one thing—her energy was man-made. Artificial. And we had no idea what that actually meant.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, then let out a slow, controlled breath.
“So, we made a choice: let her live among humans, suppress her powers, and give her a normal life. One where this—” he gestured vaguely between us, “—never happened. Where no one would ever know what she was.”
Another pause. This time, his breath filled his chest before he slowly exhaled it through his nose.
“And it worked—her powers stayed dormant except for the occasional eruption of magic whenever her life was in danger.Still, nobody found out about her because it wasn't traceable, and if Stephen hadn't been there right when he was, she would have never been…"
My head was spinning. I had a thousand questions clawing their way forward, but only one made it out, "How in hell do you make a maga’s powers dormant?"
I’d never heard of such a thing.
“You have to understand—we were protecting her,” he said, turning sharply toward me. “Everyone, magi or human, would’ve tried to exploit that kind of power. And once we realized her translation was untraceable, she wasn’t safe in our world anymore.” He gestured toward the sky, then let his arm drop heavily.
“She had to stay human. If we hadn’t subdued her abilities, she would’ve been a danger—to herself, and to others. We’d have had no choice but to bring her in. And then she would’ve become a lab rat. A case study. An untraceable haze, James. Do you know what kind of chaos that would cause?”
I snapped at him. “Get on with it Julian, what the hell did you do?”
He rubbed both hands over his face as if trying to wipe away the memory itself.
“I used the True Bond to put a damper on her powers. When faced with genuine fear of death, my translation would surface, but other than that, she’d live a translation-free life.”
Julian had started crying actual tears, but I felt not an ounce of compassion. I was beyond any ‘normal’ form of rage. I felt sick, sick to my stomach, and I had to actively keep myself from either hurling or killing him on the spot.
Yet, something not so unimportant did occur to me.
"So she neverchoseyou? To bond with? She never wanted to be bonded to you? You only manipulated us into believing she did?"
“Yes.”
"And her haze when she accepted your bond…" I pressed on.
"It was mine you saw, same shade as Emma's. I didn't really do anything, neither did she; it was all smoke and mirrors to deceive you," he admitted.
"You fucking asshole," I hissed, trying to restrain my rising rage-haze.
He swallowed hard. "I'm not disputing that."
"So you've been bonded to her this entire time?"
He nodded again, explaining, "Yes. I can shield against it because it’s my own energy. Since my arrival, I have never used the bond. Her thoughts and feelings have remained private, I promise.”
