His throat felt strangely thick. “Deal, princess.” Shaking off her hand, he reached over to caress the long fall of her hair for just a moment before he gently but firmly shoved her down below the window. “Now keep yourself down and let your mate work.”
Speaking against her knees, Atria squeaked, “Work?”
“Yeah,” he answered, shifting the vehicle into reverse just as the door began to swing inward, revealing the long barrel of a bolt rifle. Dropping his boot onto the gas, he added, “This is the kind of work I’m best at.”
ChapterTwenty-Four
Everything after findingthe m-siphons was a blur.
It was as if someone smeared Vaseline on the lens of her memory, making everything just a bit fuzzy,removedfrom her. The only thing that felt real was Kaz, his hands on her back, the scent of him in her lungs, the steady current of his emotions. For the first time since leaving the Sanctuary, she found herself doing what she swore she’d never do again: tethering herself to another.
Empaths were built with the inherent need to sift through emotion, to untangle knots and soothe old wounds, but they were also prone to becoming too attached to people in the process. How could they not? When they sank into that meditative state and lost themselves in another person’s emotions, was it any wonder that they didn’t always want to let go?
For a Bonded priestess, tethering was a requirement. To give yourself over entirely to your pilgrim, to love them, to lose yourself in them, was their duty. Letting that person go when the healing was done was their sacrifice. Atria was great at tethering, but her selfishness, thatdefectin her soul, made it almost impossible to let go.
Since leaving the Sanctuary, she had steadfastly avoided that tempting connection.Always pull back before you tether,she’d told herself again and again over the years.Losing yourself in someone else means it’ll just be harder to let them go.
But after she heard the bolt slam into Norman’s body, she’d reached out instinctively for Kaz — a self-defense mechanism as fear and grief gripped her. Atria dug her metaphorical claws into his aura and held on for dear life as he reversed their vehicle through the garage door.
She drew on his calm as bolts slammed into the grille of the SUV, and she let herself get lost in the deep ocean of his aura when he jerked the vehicle around, rammed it into someone, and then sped on.
Calm. In control. Determined.These were easy feelings to let herself drift in. Atria buried her face in her knees and imagined herself curling up in his fathomless deep, comforted by the weightlessness, the gentle drift of his current as he surrounded her.
I’m safe here. I’m welcome here. I’m tethered here.
It was easy to let herself go. If she didn’t, she would be forced to face the horror of what she witnessed, as well as the terrible truth of Norman’s betrayal and downfall.
M-siphons,a scared little voice in the back of her mind whispered.Is that why he moved? So he could keep his terrible crimes a secret? Is that where sweet Chloe went?
Never would she have suspected him capable of something as vile as using another being —beings —as living batteries. Norman had always been more ambitious than her, but abduction and imprisonment of people to facilitate his research was so beyond her scope of comprehension it defied belief.
Of course, he had the abilities and the knowledge to do it. He was a genius with sigilwork and was only a step or so lower than her in terms of raw power. Creating his own m-siphons would be laborious but certainly possible. He might have even gotten a good idea of how to do it through watching her work toreleasepeople from those very same siphons. It might have even been downright easy for him.
It just happened to also be entirely morally bankrupt.
The vehicle jerked again, nearly sending her shoulder into the door, but Kaz’s steady hand on her back held her in place. “Stay down for just a little longer.”
Atria squeezed her eyes shut so hard, spots floated behind her eyelids. Drawing on his calm, she managed to ask, “What about the m-siphons? We can’t just leave them there. What—”
“We’re getting clear first,” he answered. “Then I’m going to make an anonymous call to Enforcement.” Kaz’s hand drifted up and down her back, rubbing a soothing pattern there even as he maneuvered the SUV around tight turns at high speed. In a gentler voice, he added, “We’re not leaving them there, okay?”
Tears stung the backs of her eyes and dripped down the back of her throat when she whispered, “If I hadn’t said no to him, he wouldn’t have hurt those people.”
Kaz’s answer was immediate. “Bullshit.”
Guilt rippled over her, defying the heavy peace she’d blanketed herself in. Nausea roiled her stomach. “He wouldn’t have needed them if I bonded with him. I probablymetone of the fey trapped in those siphons, Kaz. Iknewthem.”
“Atria, I need you to listen to me.” His fingers drifted up until one huge, baseball mitt-sized hand cupped the back of her head. In a voice as hard as orc-forged steel, he said, “If you’d bonded with that motherfucker, you’d be the one trapped — and there’s no way your power would have been enough. A man like him never would have been satisfied with what he got. All it would have gotten you was abuse as he did this shit anyway.”
He stroked her hair as he made another turn, then another. In a softer voice, he continued, “None of this is your fault. Your dipshit ex got in with the wrong people and thought he could use you to make good with them. That’s no more your fault than anything my father did was mine.” He paused. “I know it doesn’t feel like that, so I’m going to keep saying it until you believe it.”
She desperately wished she could grab his hand and clutch it, anchoring herself to him with skin and warmth, but she didn’t dare when he might need both hands at a moment’s notice. Instead, she tried to distract herself by asking, “Your father?”
Kaz grunted. “Teddy and I share a father. You’ve probably heard of him.”
A thread of apprehension wove through his steady current. Instinctively, Atria reached out for that weaving stream. Magic hummed between them, bright and hot and natural. She imagined herself moving her hands over that stream, smoothing it, before passing it through her fingers to drift off into the deep in whisper-thin ribbons.
She heard him suck in a shuddering breath. His fingers briefly stilled in the strands of her hair before they resumed their steady rhythm.
