The edges of her lips angled downward while a tightness seemed to sit heavy in her eyes. Was it concern? Suspicion? Probably both. “Something has been off with you lately.”
I huffed out an impatient breath and rolled my eyes. “If one more person tells me that, I’m going to bring the palace down.”
The burdening weight and instability of my willpower caused by recent events boiled to a tipping point. If something didn’t happen in our favor soon, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold on. My magic had been feeling unpredictable ever since thenight I suspected I fed from an Endarkened in the prisons. My incessant need to replenish both sides grew incrementally each day. And as Orion had noted, darkness lingered on the outskirts of my mental acuity.
The fact that I came so close to killing a weaker Kinetic like Golden so callously unsettled me. Sure, he was a piece of shit and needed to be put in his place for touching Gray. But a gruesome death sentence was a bit far, even for me.
Not to mention, there was no telling what Valik had done to me when he prevented my death. I still wished he had let me die. I hated this life, but I had people to protect and vengeance to serve.
Whatever.
“Because there’s something going on, and it’s not healthy to hold onto shit, Chrome. Talk,” Peri insisted, doubling down by placing her hands on her hips, giving me a pointed look that told me I had no choice.
“Can’t. We gotta go meet Onyx,” I said, brushing her off. “Plus, there’s nothing wrong.”
She groaned, slapping her hands to her thighs. “Fine. Tonight. You and I are gonna talk.”
“Sure.”
Fifteen minutes later, Peri and I arrived in the weapons room, but Onyx was nowhere to be found. Making sure to be in the camera’s blind spot, I paced back and forth, bathed in anxious energy. I knew the Endarkened were down there—I’d felt them—but knowing King Forest had been using them to frame Elementals to start a war made my stomach sour at the implications.
“Where is he? He was supposed to be here five minutes ago,” Peri stated, leaning her back against the wall and fiddling with her fingers.
“Probably fucking Royal.”
“Gross.”
I snorted. “Yeah, I know. At least she’s not trying to get with me anymore.”
The weapons room door opened, and in strode Onyx. “Hey, sorry I was—”
“Cleaning your dick. Yeah, I know,” I snapped. “We gotta move, bro.”
Onyx narrowed his eyes at me, angling his head. “I wasn’t fucking Royal, dude. She did hold me up, though. There’s something you should—”
“Whatever,” I muttered, shaking my hands at my sides. The anxiousness grew too much to bear. I couldn’t sit around much longer. “You ready to go? It’s past time.”
“Yeah,” Onyx said, dropping his gaze and shaking his head, presumably from me cutting him off. “I’m good to go.”
I met Peri’s eyes and nodded before facing back to Onyx. “Go ahead and mask our energetic outputs,” I instructed. With Onyx’s infrared ability, he could prevent our auras from being detected by others so that we could remove our bracelets in the prisons.
Onyx’s throat bobbed and nodded. “On it.” Closing his eyes, the skin around his mouth tightened as he focused on directing his magic. A minute passed, and he opened his eyes and offered a stilted grin. “Done. You’re both covered.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” His suspicious look told me he picked up on Peri’s and Orion’s concerns regarding my aura, but he didn’t voice his questions out loud, thankfully.
I looked at my sister. “You ready?”
“Hell, yeah. This is the most excitement I’ve had since the time we snuck out to jump onto the moving train from the bridge,” she retorted, a buzzing energy emitting from her aura, tempting me to absorb it.
Repulsion at myself made me want to wretch. How could I ever be tempted to feed from my sister’s aura? I would rather starve a slow death.
My teeth hurt, and my temple pounded a painful droll to the pressure. “Let’s go.”
We filed out of the weapons room, being sure to avoid the camera’s all-seeing eye in the corridor separating it from the training room.
“Once we get to the stairwell, I’ll silence us,” Peri explained. We aimed to be as casual as possible, which was hard, considering Peri was dressed like Catwoman, ready to break into Fort Knox.
