I open my mouth, maybe to defend my aunt, maybe to echo his judgement.
But Rath cuts me off. “I’ve read her journals, Zaya.”
Rought jogs ahead of us, climbing the stairs to open the door.
The cu-sith settles back against the house on the patio to my far right, between the windows of the kitchen eating area and just to the side of the huge oak tree. The beast’s gaze swings from tracking me to gazing out at the bluff.
“Your father holds the Asian intersection point?” Rath asks me, still reading the journal he holds in the hand not pressed to my back — and sounding just a little pissed.
“He’s the current head of the Zhen family. My mother called him Qi. We’ve had less than a dozen conversations in my life, two of them the night my mother died.” I leave all the unasked questions unanswered. “You’ll stand with me,” I say instead. “When I speak with him. That will keep it all clear in his mind.”
“Keep what clear?” Rath asks.
“That I’m the Conduit now. And he’ll treat me as such.”
Coda places a laptop down on the dining room table before me and my soul-bound mates. We’re sitting along the longest side with our backs to the windows, facing the kitchen. Rought is on my right and Rath on my left, though I need to push the laptop back to stop them from being cut off from the camera view.
“You and I are going to be having a conversation about you having well-placed contacts in parts of the world where we both could have used them,” Coda mutters to me as they lean over and activate the microphone on the video call. “There was some gatekeeping shittiness from this one,” the tech adds caustically, and more than loud enough for the microphone to pick up. “So you’ll have to deal with her bullshit to get to your father.”
I settle my gaze on the woman framed on the screen of the laptop. She stares back at me, mouth twisted in concern. Or maybe disbelief, given the roundness of her eyes. Dark skinned, with light-brown eyes and almost-black hair slicked back into a tight bun, she’s about my age. So around thirty, if I looked my actual age.
The yellow designer suit jacket that fits her like a glove helps unearth the memory I have of her. Of the young girl playing in the snow that I saved from being crushed when a delivery van skidded out on ice. A van that delivered my birthday cake to my father’s castle. Yes, castle. Or maybe it was the balloons?
It was all only hours before I watched the Cataclysm kill my mother. Though I didn’t know the cake and balloons were for me. Not then.
“Sedi,” I say, her name not even a solid memory until I voice it. I don’t know what role she fills for my father as an adult, though. Perhaps she’s a combat mage, like her own father.
She blinks at me. Again.
“How is your father?” I ask, trying to be polite — and then epically failing because I’m seriously peeved that my own father hasn’t taken my call. “Still a prejudiced asshole who hates the awry?”
Anger that might be mostly born of frustration finally breaks through whatever fear or concern is seemingly freezing Sedi in place. She tries to cover it, just as unsuccessfully as I did. “Your father is on his way, Zaya … ah, Conduit. We couldn’t risk having your tech in our system, hence the delay.”
Coda snorts, loud enough that Sedi must hear it. “Like I couldn’t hack you in a fucking second, even from here and using only a tablet.”
I don’t admonish the tech because I’m pissy about the delay myself, and also because Coda can do and say whatever they want. Though I doubt getting into my father’s systems would be all that easy, given that the intersection point here has given the awry hacker a fair bit of trouble even though I’m the one to hold it and I formally invited Coda.
Sedi shifts in her seat, then stiffens as if catching her own reaction. “My father is fine, thank you for asking. Though it took him some time, if I’m remembering correctly, to heal from helping save you.”
I laugh. The sound is harsh but brief.
Sedi visibly flinches.
“We remember that evening very differently. I remember Tau not heeding my mother’s warning, not getting us to a vehicle and off the property before it was too late. I remember my mother fucking dying because your father stood in her way until it was impossible to change the fate she’d already foreseen.”
Sedi pales, her lips thinning. Rought and Rath lean closer to me, their expressions hard but blank. Sedi flicks her gaze to each of them, then back at me.
I knew facing my father wouldn’t be a smooth, easy-going conversation. And seeing Sedi has dislodged a cascade of suppressed memories, none of which are her responsibility.
“I also know …” I try to soften my voice. “That I saved your fucking life earlier that day.”
“That’s …” She blinks for the umpteenth fucking time. “What … when?”
I smirk at her. “Maybe ask your daddy.”
I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. I’m never confrontational like this … and I never hold people’s fates over their heads. Ironically, likely due to the trauma from watching my mother murdered — the memories of which I know I’ve deliberately suppressed — I never give a fuck about the past or who might have treated me …
No, not me. My mother.
