“Turns out the Phrontistery had already contacted a mercenary team after a couple of their rare essence-wielders had gone missing. Though I doubt they’d want to be called mercenaries. An independent armed force of fixers, maybe. They were happy to expand the parameters of their contract with the school. I never got real names, though I suppose if I’d stayed with them, like they asked me to after we razed the Möbius fuckers from the city, I might have known. Apparently, a dragon on the team would have come in handy.”
Rought chuckles darkly. “That was a risk, brother. Revealing yourself like that.”
I shrug. “Whoever I’d scared enough to flee when I took out the essence brothel had already gotten more than a glimpse of me. Plus, fixers of those sorts want to keep you in their back pocket. Don’t they, Zaya?”
She nods thoughtfully. “The Möbius Group traffics in the rarest of the rare essence-wielders, along with one-of-a-kind stolen goods. Anyone who risks themselves, even when being paid well, to go after them isn’t going to turn around and sell information or even brag.” She runs her fingers along my tattoo again, elbow to wrist, then threads her fingers through mine. “And the girl?”
“Jing?” I say. “I’m not in direct contact with her. I figured that would have been way too traumatizing. But I check in with the professor and he with me every few months. She’s attending the Aukland Phrontistery. Some kind of empath, I think. In the way that an awry can be some kind of something.”
Zaya hums. “Makes sense.”
“Which part?” I say, my chest aching from dredging all these memories up even in this brief manner.
“That she stayed with you.” Zaya twists so she can meet my gaze. “She could have run, yes? Gone with all the others trapped or working there?”
I nod mutely.
“But you felt safe to her. Even in the middle of a full-blown rampage or even with your beast ascendant … she knew you were the safest choice.”
She touches my cheek, and I realize that I’m crying again. Just a few tears this time, but she wipes them away.
“That might have been us, together, in Shanghai,” she whispers. “We might have been those fixers … so … someone had to fulfill that branch of our destiny. I’m glad it was you. Even if the execution wasn’t ideal.”
I laugh wetly. “Wasn’t ideal …”
She grimaces. “You know what I mean, right?”
“I know what you mean.”
“You believe me, right?”
I believe in you, my Tempest, I whisper into her mind.
Ten
ZAYA
* * *
The armoire is still open at the top of the spiral stairs in the library tower. Just as I’d left it. Utterly selfishly, I’ve been hoping it would seal itself again, even if only for a few more days. The healer Isaiah’s words from the diner — about taking respite when offered — linger at the back of my mind. But I had wanted that respite to last a little longer than twelve hours, including the idyllic moment of sitting around a table sharing a meal and a conversation with my soul-bound mates.
Rath, at my heels and already collecting more books from the shelves along the staircase, steps over to add them to the piles already on the desk. Though those piles have sat there for over three months — and no, I still haven’t come to terms with just how long the Cataclysm managed to hold me — there isn’t any dust on the books.
Protection spells that I can’t feel must still be active in the tower, even though I caught Bellamy rather frantically cleaning downstairs when I arrived. Not as if the former dire awry needs to earn her keep, but more so that the months of dust was a personal affront to her. So whatever spells Disa’s mage, Ingrid, might have had on the rest of the house are wearing thin.
It’s also possible that Bellamy has too much energy to burn and is worried about reverting to old habits.
That’s yet another thing I’ll have to deal with soon, since I’ve accepted responsibility for the awry. If Bellamy loses control, there are too many people on the estate who might be caught up in the aftermath.
I cross to the armoire. Rath gives me space, though I can sense how instantly drawn he is to the two iridescent glass-like objects that are the inert threads of our soul bonds.
I ignore the severed bonds for now. I’m still not quite certain why Disa kept them in the first place. Except that perhaps having taken what she shouldn’t, she found she couldn’t allow them to dissipate into the aether. Perhaps she thought she could somehow reattach them? At least as some modified version of what they once were? But now that I’ve held a soul bond in my hands, I know the future it held was overwritten the moment I became the Conduit.
I reach for Disa’s missing journals instead, finding them arranged in order of year and taking the oldest. Aware of Rath’s gaze on me, I set the black-and-white photographs in the deep windowsill to the side, resting each on the ground against the bookcases that frame the window.
Rath settles at the desk, sorting through his chosen tomes and retrieving the notebooks that have been locked in here for the entire time the Cataclysm had me cut off from the flow of essence that fuels the world. Our world.
Our world.
