Chapter 27
RYNETH
It had been over half an hour since Daven left, and Ryneth was getting more anxious by the minute. Moargan’s kitchen felt too loud, the terrace doors still open to the storm while the others barked over feeds and half-finished orders.
A faint smile touched the corners of Ryneth’s mouth.
They were loud and weird, and somehow they were starting to feel a little too much like home. Who would have thought he’d ever appreciate these guys?
Still, Ryneth stood exactly where Daven had left him. The worry had settled low in his stomach, made worse by the bond’s silence. It wasn’t empty. It was there, alive and distant, like something being held too tightly to reach him.
Daven said he’d left something at home, but that had been a lie. Ryneth’s hand drifted back to his multi-slate anyway, checking again just to confirm what he already knew. There was still no reply.
He read his own message again.
You’re not where you said you’d be.
Had he been too pushy?
Daven had read the message. Had chosen not to reply.
Which made no sense.
Since the bond had settled between them, Daven never stayed quiet for long. If he could not touch him, he sent something instead. A word. An insult. A promise. Some stupid possessive comment that made Ryneth want to smile even when he was angry.
Now the screen stayed blank.
Where are you?
Across the kitchen the others kept talking over the feeds, Kylix still unmoving on one screen while Yure chased glitches across three others. Rain-slick streets. Hospital corridors. Empty intersections.
Somewhere out there was Daven.
“Hold up.”
Ryneth’s breath caught at the sudden urgency in the engineer’s voice. “What is it?”
Yure’s fingers moved faster over the keyboard. “Something just shifted in Sector Seven. Fuck, I’ve got to be quick. I’ve got to—fuck! They’ve rewritten the grid again. Assholes.” He leaned back in his chair, hands in his hair. “Those motherfuckers. I lost the location.”
“What game are those assholes playing?” Moargan grumbled. “Kylix is standing right fucking there. How is it even possible that the Luminary doesn’t have access to the fucking building? They are on our territory.”
“Father—” Helianth started, but Moargan waved him off.
“I know.”
“Shit. Check this out.” The feeds on the wall stuttered. One camera froze. Another jumped forward. A third repeated the same corridor again and again.
“What the fuck?”
One screen locked.
“Is that the hospital entrance?” someone asked.
Ryneth stared as rain slid slowly down the large wooden doors. Yes, he recognized the building from when he’d been there with Daven to visit Norma Zephyranth.
Yure tapped on the keyboard. “They did that. They froze the fucking screen.”
His palm heated so fast it hurt. “That’s where he went.”
Moargan glanced over from the screens and snorted when he noticed Ryneth still standing there alone. “What, he really left you with us?”
Ryneth’s chest tightened. “He said he had to get something from home.”
“Yeah,” Moargan muttered darkly. “I bet he did.”
“He’ll be back,” Ryneth said, more to himself than to the others.
“He’d better,” Moargan said. “Of course. The stubborn bastard. Well, until he does, you stay under our protection.”
Yure’s fingers hovered above the keys. “Look at that.”
More screens flickered.
The rest of the cameras began sliding across the map of Helion as if something invisible were dragging the whole grid upward.
Yure blew the full city layout across the wall, camera nodes blinking and reconnecting in a pattern that pulled past the hospital district, past the towers, straight into the storm layer above the city.
One by one, the voices in the kitchen died away.
Aviel straightened slowly from the counter. “What the hell is that?”
Yure zoomed the map again.
The clouds shifted on the radar feed. A disturbance moved through the storm ring circling Helion.
Ryneth felt static crackle across his fingertips.
Helianth leaned closer to the screen. “That’s not weather.”
“No, it isn’t,” Yure mumbled, switching to storm radar while the wind patterns spiraled across the display, circling Helion in a massive rotating ring.
One section of that ring twisted out of formation, the cloud wall bending inward as a platform shape began emerging inside the storm.
Aviel stared at the screen, studying the shape forming inside the storm as the cloud wall warped around it. “It’s the outer ring.”
“Look.” Moargan traced the shape of the storm with his finger. “They want us to see that place. What’s up there, Helianth? In the outer ring?”
“It’s our defense mechanism. It protects us from attacks from other planets. Look at the storm.”
Ryneth felt his pulse steadying as the truth settled in his chest. He lifted his gaze toward the storm map spreading across the wall. “The storm,” he murmured to himself.
He had survived endless nights of storms guarding the Ward.
On Düren, they used to say you learned the truth of a storm by listening to what it hid. Sometimes Concordant sent rain. Sometimes dust. Sometimes the black wind that swallowed the lights beyond the wall. It always came from above.
He’d thought those were rumors.
Everyone stared at the storm map as the pattern finally made sense in his mind. This wasn’t random. None of it was.
“…Breaking Storm,” he breathed.
“It’s what she said,” Cyprian whispered through the silence that had spread through the kitchen. His yellow eyes had gone distant.
“Lover?” Moargan rushed to soothe him, but Cyprian’s charcoal slate wouldn’t stop scraping against the canvas, the sound cutting through the stillness. “What did you draw?”
Cyprian looked up, but his stare was vacant. Still, the drawing matched the display perfectly, the same structure suspended inside the cloud wall.
“Good Light,” Helianth whispered. “Look at that. Look—”
Cyprian had drawn something else in the corner of the sketch.
A woman behind a tall window, hands resting against the window while the storm gathered beyond the city.
Ryneth’s breath caught. His hand lifted instinctively to his chest as if something deep inside him had answered.
“Mama,” Helianth whispered. He stepped closer, staring at the sketch like he was afraid to blink and lose it.
His gaze lifted to Ryneth next, sharp and almost disbelieving.
Not because Ryneth mattered more, but because by now they had all seen it happen too many times.
The sleeping queen never reached for all of them.
When she stirred, it was always around Ryneth somehow.
Through the bond. Through whatever in him answered her.
“Did you hear her?” Helianth pressed.
“I heard her, yes.”
Nereth Solan.
Ryneth squeezed his eyes shut as the words tumbled down, voiced in a soft female voice.
“You are not alone,” Ryneth whispered, the words falling out of him in her voice. “You never will be. I love you so much, my beautiful boys.”
Ryneth’s head buzzed from the intensity, his shoulders sagging when she finally released his mind.
Cyprian caught his wrist before he could sway any harder. “Strange the first time, isn’t it?” he murmured, voice low enough that only Ryneth could hear. “You get used to it.”
Moargan and Helianth simply stood there, staring at him with a strange intensity in their amethyst eyes.
Ryneth hoped they wouldn’t ask questions. He wouldn’t be able to answer them.
Still holding his wrist, Cyprian turned back to the drawing and the storm map spread across the white paper. “If she’s been showing us this,” he said softly, pulling the room’s attention with him, “then this is what she wanted us to see.”
The storm radar had shifted above Helion, as if the rotation had tightened as the hidden structure inside the cloud wall had become clearer on the display.
Moargan stared at the drawing, then moved to lean forward over the island, one hand braced against the marble while he studied the pattern spreading across Yure’s screens.
“All this time, they’ve distracted Kylix and the Luminary while the real operation runs above the city.”
Helianth exhaled through his teeth and rubbed a hand across his mouth, staring at the storm ring circling Helion. “So they stall us on the ground…”
Cyprian’s gaze lifted from the drawing to the storm map again. “…while Attica hides in the clouds.”
At that exact moment, Ryneth’s multi-slate vibrated sharply against his wrist. Yure’s console chimed at the same time.
Every screen in the room flickered.
Then a new window forced itself across the display.
“What the fuck’s that?” Moargan barked.
“It’s an encrypted text.” Yure rushed to click it open. “They’re coordinates. And… Good Light—there’s a note.”
“What does it say?”
He turned the screen for everyone to see. “You have one hour.”
A timer appeared beneath the coordinates, the red digits beginning their slow descent.
00:59:43.
“Ryneth was right. That’s the Breaking Storm.”
“Then we have no fucking time to lose.” Moargan grabbed his coat and threw Helianth his. “We go now. Text Kylix. Tell him to abort the mission.”
“I’m afraid that won’t work,” Yure said miserably.
Now that the screens had switched back, they caught the last guard walking inside the glass door.
“Those motherfuckers let him in.” Moargan was already on his multi-slate. “I’m calling Father and asking for backup. Let’s go.”
Around him there was more commotion, but Ryneth’s gaze stayed on the frozen hospital feed, where rain was still sliding down the glass doors.
His palm was burning.
Daven, where are you, my love?
He should have taken Ryneth with him. Should have trusted him to help with whatever plan had formed in his mind. But of course he had gone alone. Stubborn enough to walk straight into danger if it meant keeping Ryneth away from it.
Lifting his gaze toward the storm on the canvas, he watched as it kept spreading even while the others rushed to leave.
Concordant had gotten exactly what they wanted. Divert the attention. Split them up. Pull the family in opposite directions and make each of them choose wrong. Just like that night when they had ordered Ryneth to come and talk. The night Lysa had come out.
Had the buyer ever been the real point in the first place?
Or had Ryneth always been the point?
Not because they wanted him for himself.
Because they’d known what would happen the second he was threatened.
They’d known the others would move for him.
Protect him. Tear themselves apart trying to keep him safe while Concordant built whatever they’d been hiding in the dark corners no one was watching.
It hit him then, hard enough to make his chest ache.
They really had protected him. Over and over again.
Not because they had to. Not because he’d earned it. Just because it was him.
His throat tightened.
No one had ever done that before.
And because of him, they’d been reckless enough to look the wrong way.
He had been their way in from the start. A cage, a message, a body moved across a border, and suddenly Helion’s most dangerous men stopped thinking like rulers and started thinking like family.
They hadn’t needed a random target.
They’d needed the one person who made all of them move.
Helianth checked his multi-slate. “Kylix is safe.”
“For now.” Moargan rolled his eyes. “Mirel, you stay here—”
“Mirel?” Cyprian looked up, eyes wide as saucers and filled with worry.
Aviel chuckled darkly as he unleashed Theo from the wall. “Ah, love. It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? He’ll be all right. He’ll freeze the entire planet if it means melting his Kylix.”
No one laughed.
Thunder rolled across Helion as the storm clouds above the city shifted slowly around the hidden structure.
And now they knew what had been waiting inside the storm all along.
* * *
Moargan grabbed his multi-slate, already opening a Luminary command channel. “Mobilize every storm-capable transport in the sector.”
Across the room, Yure layered new coordinates into the network. “I’m on it.”
Helianth caught the keys Aviel tossed across the counter, checking the charge as he turned toward the door.
Aviel jerked his chin toward him. “You drive. I’m taking Theo with me.”
There was no hesitation now, no discussion. Chairs scraped the floor as they pushed away from the island and crossed the kitchen in quick strides.
Ryneth still hadn’t moved.
The bond twisted sharply in his chest.
Where are you?
“Come on, Ryneth.”
He looked up to see Moargan standing by the door. The others were already gone.
Ryneth shook his head. “I can’t leave him. I don’t even know where he is.”
Moargan crossed the few steps between them and gripped his shoulder, giving it a short squeeze. “All the more reason you’re not staying here alone. If Daven’s not here, you’ll come with us. We’ll keep you where we can see you.” He nudged Ryneth toward the door. “We’ll find him. He’s family.”
The bond pulled hard.
A sudden pain tightened low in his chest, sharp enough to steal his breath. Ryneth’s hand lifted instinctively, pressing against his ribs.
It made no sense, but the feeling was unmistakable.
Daven.
Ryneth turned his head toward the storm map still glowing faintly on the white canvas.
Toward the outer ring. Toward where the clouds were breaking.
The pull tightened again.
Moargan opened the door behind him. “Come on. Now.”
This time, Ryneth followed.
The ride to the terminal passed in a blur. Along the way, more Luminary cars joined them as the storm kept raging.
By the time they hit the transport lift, more than fifty Luminary guards surrounded Ryneth.
The glass doors slid open and they stepped inside together. Helianth slammed the ascent control and the lift shot upward through the tower shaft.
For a moment the entire city of Helion spread beneath them through the transparent walls, towers blazing with light while the storm circled high above like a moving ring of black clouds.
The lift shot upward into the storm layer. The doors opened onto the transport bay, wind tearing through the launch gates as gunships lifted into the night.
Beyond the launch platform, the outer ring curved around Helion like a massive steel horizon, its segmented towers cutting through the storm clouds while lightning crawled across the structure. Far below, the city lights burned through the rain.
Movement rippled along the ring’s perimeter. Figures rushed across the distant platforms, white lab coats flashing in the lightning as they ran through the corridors. None of them wore Luminary armor.
Helianth pointed toward the nearest door while already moving. “Over there.”
They moved as one, breaking into a tight run across the platform. Moargan stayed at the front without slowing, while Ryneth kept pace as lightning split the sky above Helion.
Here, somewhere inside the storm, the real danger of the Breaking Storm waited.