I’m here, she whispers through my mind. Rought’s grin confirms that he can also hear her, but …
Can you hear me? I try to direct the question directly to Zaya, not through Rought.
Yes.
“It’s a closed loop, maybe,” Rought says. “I can’t speak telepathically to anyone but Zaya and now you.”
“Through the bond only, but it’s likely a primary ability of the gryphon,” I murmur. “I need to get back to the tower library.”
“That was the story?” Zaya asks. “Just about getting an essence-enhancing tattoo and not remembering?”
I grimace. “No.”
“It’s easier if you just barrel through, brother,” Rought says, grimacing. “Then we should test your air-manipulation abilities before you get buried in books.”
It was the air abilities that the tattoo had enhanced. Before. Before bonding with Zaya. I stop myself from testing them because I do just need to get through my story. That’s what Zaya asked for — something no one else knew.
“The tattoo wasn’t the only new thing I woke up with,” I say, lowering my gaze because I can’t look at either of them. “There was a … kid … about fourteen, huddled under a bunch of blankets on a broken chair in the corner of the room. I … I thought … I was worried that I’d … hurt her. That was my first thought. My arm on fire, the obviously luxury room freshly trashed, and a kid totally knocked out.”
Neither Rought nor Zaya say anything. I take a shuddering breath.
“She woke the moment after I sat up. Her eyes were … she was Asian, but her eyes were purple. The same purple yours were, Zaya, when we first met.”
“Awry,” Zaya murmurs.
“I’d somehow stumbled upon or into an essence brothel. I don’t know … getting lost in Shanghai … I don’t know if that was before or after the tattoo, or if I went there for the tattoo and saw the girl …” I shake my head. “I trashed the entire place. Or it was me and whoever else was trapped there against their will. They fled. The place was entirely empty when I woke. The girl stayed with me. I’d … I’d apparently told her I could get her away. Her family sold her when her eyes turned purple. She wasn’t even manifested yet. Just …”
“Worth a lot of money to a lot of groups,” Zaya murmurs.
“I don’t know how the group that ran the brothel, or wherever the fuck we were, could afford her, then just … use her for the sex trade?”
“Some people are attracted to danger,” Zaya says, her voice too steady.
“She was a fucking kid!”
Zaya lays her hand on my forearm.
I take a deep breath. “So, there I was with a traumatized awry kid, who’d probably watched me trash the entire fucking place before passing out, in a fucking city where I had no contacts beyond connections and professors at the Phrontistery. I couldn’t hunt down whoever had taken her. I couldn’t hunt down and punish her parents. I wasn’t even sure I could get her out of the country.” I scrub a hand over my head. “I already knew I couldn’t bring her here. Not only was she not a shifter, but she …”
I glance up at Rought, but he’s not looking at me. His attention is firmly fixed to Zaya. My mate is watching me, not a hint of rebuke in her gaze.
“Too many memories to bring her here …” I huff out a breath. “But … I knew then, after I got the kid situated, I knew I needed to go home.”
“You rescued her,” Rought rasps without looking at me. “Like you couldn’t rescue Zaya. Then it was okay to come back and try to make a life here.”
I squeeze my eyes shut against a flood of hot, painful tears. “I didn’t know it at the time …”
“The girl?” Zaya prompts.
I take a shaky breath. “There was a visiting professor, his bond mate was awry. I just …. I just fucking carried the kid all the way through the city, fucking daring anyone to come at me, to try to take her from me … hoping that someone would so I’d know who it was. We talked a little, enough for her to fill me in on some details. Then my professor opened the door to his suite, and his bond mate was taking her out of my arms before I even got half the story out. I stayed with them, still hoping someone would come for the kid, until I watched them get on a plane. They dropped everything to get her out of the country, took her home, adopted her. With the help of the Phrontistery and …”
I fall silent for a bit, replaying the sequence of events in my head.
“Who was it who had held her?” Zaya asks. As if she already knows me, knows what I would do to find out.
“The Möbius Group.”
She nods, not surprised or confused.
