“She, um, the healer, she left sometime last night,” the half-strangled shifter says. “Or maybe the night before? But, you know, there are mages who work … at … at … the hospital … if it’s not food poisoning … Jewels thought that was safest. She said not to disturb you, but —”
“Right,” the Cataclysm says. “Get eyes on all three outposts, report back to me.”
The blond nods. “Already in progress, Prez.”
“Bring my fucking truck around.”
The shifter who hasn’t spoken once, likely due to whatever the chain of command is among the three, takes that opportunity to race off down the hall.
“And … send a trio of hunters after the fucking healer and her fucking guards. I want their heads by morning.”
“And if they’ve made it over the border?” the blond shifter asks. Into the Navajo Nation, he means.
“I’m sure the hunters will find their way,” the Cataclysm croons creepily.
The blond shifter nods. “I’ll go myself.”
“No,” the Cataclysm snaps. “You two stay. What you guard here is far more important than anything else.” Then he pivots, grinning at me. “Please excuse me for a moment, Conduit.”
I don’t bother answering him, but he doesn’t lose the grin as he steps out into the corridor and yanks the door closed. It hits the doorframe, or maybe the end of its upper track that I can’t see buried above it in the concrete, with a brutal bang. Then the latch clunks into place.
The Cataclysm doesn’t know his own strength.
Good to know.
I get up and cross to the door, laying my hand on it and trying to keep my head clear of thoughts that are a near-constant tangle in my head.
Nothing else happens.
Smirking, though I’m still utterly exhausted, I cross back to the table with the long silk dress dragging behind me. Avoiding the broken china and glass littered across the floor — I’m still barefoot — I yank the linen tablecloth free from the tipped-over table, then reach for the mostly full crystal water pitcher on the sideboard.
I eye the carving knife but leave it for now.
My blood might be necessary to get through the runes etched on the door, but I’ll try the water and some scrubbing first.
No point in weakening myself — as I constantly admonished Bellamy — if it’s not necessary.
Three
ROUGHT
* * *
Eighty-seven fucking days.
Despite the low-lying early-morning fog along the coastline, the fruit trees on the Gage estate are losing their flowers, starting to set fruit and leaf out.
Eighty-seven fucking days.
I’ve missed celebrating yet another of my soul-bound mate’s birthdays. Zaya turned thirty years old without me. Eighty-seven days, and the pain that radiates through my chest is entirely different from the last time I lost her. Both better and desperately worse. Better because even as I gaze across the abandoned estate that I once again can’t set foot on, I know my mate is alive. I can feel my tether to her. Worse because I know what it’s like to truly and fully bond with Zaya — the comfort, the stability, of having our souls once again entwined as they’d been within the aether of the universe. Only to have that stability disrupted before it settled, cemented.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, but I ignore it, sitting astride my bike on the road next to the locked gate and looking for any glimpse of Zaya, any hint of her pending return to the estate. And finding none.
The gryphon stretches restlessly inside me, talons expanding to scrape along the insides of my wholly human fingers. My sight shifts for a moment, sharpening as my beast peers through me to confirm what we both already knew before climbing on the bike before dawn — Zaya hasn’t returned. And I’m still stumbling around, shoring up the perpetually crumbling aftermath in her absence, and nowhere closer to my mate.
Eighty-seven fucking days.
And taking this moment — succumbing to the need to greet the sunrise, to force myself to accept yet another day without Zaya — is the only way I keep moving forward. As I’ve done every morning since I returned from the barrens without her, excepting those days that my search for her has forced me away from my monitors and algorithms.
