None of it made sense to me, like a riddle with pieces missing.
I rubbed my face, the headache that had plagued me all day remaining. It felt as though pins rested behind my eyes, so each time I looked anywhere, a short, sharp pain drove through my temples.
“It’s been a while.” The voice drove the pain away entirely, a sensation of ice filling me instead.
I swallowed hard, reminding myself I was an adult now, not a child, before turning to face Mr. Yorn. He wore a black suit, the same type he’d always worn at Obsidian, at the place I’d grown up.
The years had taken their toll on him, as though a reminder that no matter what he did, who he thought he controlled, he was still human at the end of the day. It felt like a cruel joke, yet not nearly so cruel as he deserved.
“Mr. Yorn.” I kept my voice blank, not wanting to give him a speck of information to use again me—and he certainly would.
“Is that the only greeting I get? And here I thought we were closer than that.” He offered a half-grin, but I saw past it. I saw the years where his face was the only one I’d seen, the only one unobscured by a mask, when he’d pretended that he gave adamn about me and twisted my understanding of family, of love, of humanity.
If I was nothing but a broken toy, he was the bastard who had stomped me to pieces.
“I’m not due for another checkup for months.”
“I’m not here for that.”
While the words would normally have relieved me, I knew better than to accept them at face value. Mr. Yorn wouldn’t travel for nothing, after all, which meant if he’d come here, he had a reason.
And never, in my entire life, had his reasons ever signaled a single good thing for me.
“So why are you here?” I didn’t dare pry into his mind, knowing better than that. His brain was so warded that an attempt would only hurt me.
“I was contacted by someone here. Apparently, there is a rather interesting guide present.”
Thathad my back straightening. A guide? He could only mean Yun…
But Mr. Yorn and Obsidian as a whole had only ever cared about espers. Their work went into taming, training, and exploiting espers. They only cared about guides so far as they kept their precious test subjects alive.
So the idea that Mr. Yorn—and Obsidian, since that was his baby—knew about Yun and had come this far because of her did not bode well.
I pulled my shoulders back without meaning to, standing taller. I said nothing, words thick and cloying in my throat, unable to push them through.
He let out a dark chuckle, one I’d heard so many times throughout my life. Sometimes I’d caught it between my screaming, when I had drawn in broken panting breaths beforescreaming through the pain again, and that laugh had filled the space between.
It made my knees weaken and my stomach clench.
No.I screamed the word in my own head. I wasn’t a child anymore, not under the control of Mr. Yorn. I might have to report for physicals there, but otherwise? As an adult, I didn’t have to answer to him, didn’t have to submit to him.
I wasn’t some kid, wasn’t powerless anymore.
Even as I fought with myself, knowing my expression was the same as always—blank—Mr. Yorn stared back at me. He watched me, taking in every tell, the man who likely knew me on a level no one else ever could.
A way I’d want no one else to know. The last thing I’d ever want would be for those around me now to know what had happened back then, to see me pleading for my life, for my death, for anything that would end the torment.
I snapped myself away from it, cracking my mind as I’d learned to do before, separating the child I had been from the man I’d grown into.
That trauma was for the child to carry, not for me.
“Well, I’ll get going. I’m quite certain I’ll see you around.” Mr. Yorn offered a polite nod before walking away. To anyone else, the conversation would have appeared civil, like old acquaintances who still spoke from time to time. Then again, Mr. Yorn had always been good at that, at playing the part, at making everything else seem the way he wanted it.
He could trick damn near anyone—which was probably why he ran Obsidian, why he had so many donors, why those who went up against him always failed.
And why I had left the moment I turned eighteen and avoided that place—and him—to best of my ability.
I couldn’t bring myself to move at first, frozen in place like a puppy who spots a much larger dog. No matter how much I toldmyself to go, to not show that it meant a damn thing to me, my body refused to cooperate.
