It doesn’t help that I’m still carrying the not-a-glass-urn around with me. The other two bonds, I’ve left undisturbed on the shelf in the armoire. I’m still rolling my new understanding all around in my head, over and over as if trying to find the beginning of the threads so I can … what?
Weave them back together? Even when there’s nothing to attach them to? Just more of that emptiness I felt with the gifts arrayed in my windowsill. The lack of essence I felt when stuck in the in-between of the Cataclysm’s portal …
I think I’m mourning.
Mourning everything the soul bonds revealed to me. Mourning the literally soul-deep wounds — all four of them, including the bond with the cu-sith — that my aunt inflicted on me.
Even with the essence-wrought container in my hands, I have no idea how my aunt collected what she tore from me. Shouldn’t that future have just dissipated when it was no longer attached to me and Reck, to me and the cu-sith? Shouldn’t it have crumbled to ash? To dust? Into that nothingness? Even when Chains’s threads had lashed back against me after I snipped them to stop Presh from manifesting too suddenly, they quickly faded into the Aether.
Perhaps soul bonds are different. Composed of different strands of essence that are somehow more densely woven than fate or life force? Or perhaps Disa genuinely thought she could reattach them somehow, at some specific time?
But I am no longer Zaya Gage, and everything etched through the soul bonds belonged to Zaya Gage. The soul bonds I’m now carrying around the house with me, setting them aside for only long enough to perform whatever other tasks I’m barely functional enough to do.
I’m the Conduit now.
Desperately empty, lonely, I perch on the end of the sectional couch in the TV area, staring sightlessly out at the stretch of overgrown, vibrant-green yard between me and the ocean edge. Staring at the blue of the open ocean beyond.
A thought flickers through my mind. I might find a still-working phone or tablet in Coda’s trailer … but then I let that idea be smothered. Suffocated under the weight of all I’m literally holding in my lap.
Then I remember the warmth of Isaiah’s touch in the diner. Of his and Ani’s power combined, so willingly given, and the connection I allowed myself to accept …
And I remember the life lesson he’d leveled on me — about taking respite when it was offered.
Anger at having that peace stripped from me only hours after I accepted it shifts through me. Anger directed at my aunt. At the Cataclysm.
And at my untethered soul-bound mate.
I get off the couch.
Holding the soul bonds that once tied me to Reck and the cu-sith in my lap, I drive all the way to and through Newport. Not a single head turns to watch me pass. Not even the shifters wearing Outcast leathers and clearly doing patrols on their motorcycles notice me.
Directed by a somehow innate knowing … or maybe just by intent … I drive all the way to the hotel that the Outcast MC has been using as their temporary headquarters since the attack that destroyed their clubhouse. On the way, I pass that under-construction clubhouse, noting that the roof is once again intact. The building looks just days away from being useable again.
I park the car, noting the row of motorcycles and the hulking Authority-issued SUV in the hotel’s exterior parking lot.
I skirt around the hotel, entering through the bar instead of crossing through the lobby as I did the last time I walked these sidewalks, took these steps. The outside door opens easily enough, but the bartender wearing an Outcast cut doesn’t look up at my entrance.
The universe wants me unimpeded for what needs to come next. Or maybe it’s all me now. I walk unimpeded because I subconsciously will it so.
Maybe it’s simply easier to blame my actions on the universe, as if I have no control, no responsibility.
A thought for another time and place, perhaps.
The tables in the seating area have all been rearranged, some turned upside down and set on each other, most pushed off to the sides. A large map of the Federation occupies a section of the far wall to my right, with borders and what I assume are possible strike points or weak spots clearly marked. A command station set with numerous computers stands to the right of it, no one working there.
A dark-haired, dark-olive-skinned man looks up, looks over at me from the last booth cut into the far wall. He’s sitting facing the front door. The hallway to the back offices — where he tried to fuck Bellamy thinking she was me — opens up behind him.
Eyes widening, mouth dropping open, he stands, stumbling from the booth and knocking over a bottle of whatever mage brew he’s been drinking.
Reck.
I let the door close behind me.
He stops himself after a few steps in my direction, flexing his hands as anger clearly overrides the sudden surprise of seeing me.
I cross toward him, slow but steady.
The bartender’s head snaps up from whatever he was prepping behind the bar. He swears, then lunges for his phone.
