She whispered the last part, but we all heard. Rone tried to reassure her: “We’ll be careful, but we can’t leave him there any longer. His circumstances have changed, and we’ve let him handle this on his own for too long already.”
She took a long moment to answer. “I understand,” she finally said. “Asher would do the same for any of you. You should save him. I just… Let me come.”
That was immediately shot down by everyone. “It’s too dangerous,” Rone told her, a bite in his voice. He rarely used that tone with Larissa; he was gentle with her in ways he wasn’t with anyone else, but this got him fired up.
“If Maddi is going, we’re going,” Ilia said stubbornly, finally coming up for air from Calen.
Axl, who was still calculating something on his paper, lifted his head then. “Maddi is one of us. Part of this world. She’s also connected to Asher somehow. This is her fight, but you two, you would be liabilities.”
Ilia took offense, even though Axl was merely stating the facts as he saw them. “I’ve never been a fucking liability to anyone, Axl,” she snapped; her anger brought a shocked look to his face. “Not one person or supe. So you better switch your argument up right now.”
Axl might be a buff, over-six-feet-tall Atlantean genius, but under Ilia’s ire he looked like a child chastised by his mother. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just, you’re not Atlantean. We might have to swim deep, and our bodies can adjust, but yours cannot, among other things. I know you’re a very strong and well-trained fighter. And your attack magic is second to none. But this is a different set of circumstances.”
Iliawasvery good at what she did. That was the reason she had the job of tracking and returning lost supes. She was almost always an asset. Except under the water, she would be exactly as Axl had said: a liability.
Red flared across her high cheekbones, and Calen must have seen the signs of her impending explosion, because he started gently rubbing his hand over her back—one of the very things that told me this was more than just sex between them. He cared.
“How long will you be gone?” she asked, her voice controlled.
“The jet leaves in two hours,” Jesse said, walking back in the room. “I sent a message through to them. But I have no idea how long we’ll be gone.”
There was literally no way for us to know. We might find Asher in five hours, or it might be five days.
She looked at me for a long time, then shook her head. “I don’t like this at all. But I do understand that this is Atlantean business and I’m not going to be that useful.”
Larissa sniffled at her side, shoulders curving forward. I wrapped my arms around them both. “I love you guys,” I said.
Ilia growled as she squeezed me tighter. “Don’t start that bullshit. You’re coming back okay. You’re more powerful than you believe. You can do this.”
Larissa sniffled louder. “I’m so scared for you all. You’re walking into a danger you know nothing about, and I’m afraid I’ll lose someone. You’re family to me now.”
Vampires could be very cold with anyone outside of their immediate family, especially when they’d suffered the sort of trauma Larissa had in losing her mother. She’d closed herself off for years—until this year, when everything had changed. And now we were heading straight into the sort of danger that supes didn’t return from.
I understood her tears.
We hugged for a long time, and then Ilia and Larissa pulled themselves together and took off to distract Princeps Jones so that he wouldn’t delay us.
35
Asher’s plane was nothing like I expected. It was fancy: thick plush carpet; gold inlaid fittings; Locke Industries insignias across the wall panels; and huge captain’s chairs made from leather so soft and buttery I was almost certain it was magic. And the best part: it had a specially designed engine and electronic panel that was protected from our energy, so hopefully it wouldn’t fall out of the sky.
When we were all buckled in and ready to go, the pilot announced that we were about to taxi down the runway. Nerves took hold of me. Flying had always felt foreign, like we were never meant to soar in the clouds. Discovering I was supernatural didn’t change that feeling. If anything, I was more certain that Atlanteans should not fly. We were built to swim.
Jesse, who was the closest to me, reached out to take my hand. I clung to him with almost embarrassing strength, but it didn’t seem to bother him. The initial takeoff threw me back in my chair a little, and my ears felt funny as we rose in the air, but after another five or so minutes, my fear faded, and I was more fascinated with the clouds out the window.
“Incredible,” I breathed, my hand pressing against the glass, like I could reach out and run my hands through the fluffiness.
“I love all your firsts,” Axl said, shooting me an odd look. “You’re the best thing that happened to the five of us. We needed…” I waited with bated breath for what he was going to say. “You,” he finished. “We needed you in our lives.”
“It’s true,” Calen added from the chair behind Jesse.
“Yep,” Jesse chimed in.
Rone didn’t say anything, but he shot me his version of a smile, and my heart fluttered at this sweet moment. No one had ever said anything like that to me before. I’d never been needed or wanted. I’d never been anything.
“Thank you,” I whispered, reaching out to squeeze Axl’s hand, and then Jesse’s. Jesse had been my rock these last few months as we searched for the library and I dealt with my powers and school, both of us missing Asher with a desperation that was borderline obsessive. I wasn’t sure I would have made it through without him.
Without them all.
