Chapter 29
Callan
The fire is warm at my back, and my attention is fixed on the stars. They’ve only been fully out for an hour or so, but that’s far too long for my dwindling patience. I keep repositioning myself on an old crate, bouncing my knee as if that will make this go any faster.
“Come on, Cin,” I whisper, leaning forward to brace my elbows on my thighs.
It’s not that I don’t think she’s capable; I do.
Wholeheartedly. It’s the risk we took—sending her into completely uncharted water—that’s making it hard to focus on anything else.
There was a time when I knew Streatham well.
All of us did. But it’s been over twenty years since we saw the inside of the Estate. We sent Lucina in blind.
It’s different than Albatross or initiation.
She hadn’t been familiar with those rites, but I was.
I knew what to expect, and I knew what it would take to keep her safe.
Even in our training sessions, grueling as they might have been, I had the control.
I knew exactly what the risk was, and I knew the bounds of what she could and couldn’t handle.
I don’t know this risk. I don’t know what she walked into. No one does. And it’s driving me insane.
It’s only night one—the stars have been out for an hour at most—and I already want to crawl out of my own skin.
Unable to take it any longer, I draw on the well of power at the base of my spine and snuff the light of a small star above me. I replace its glow then steal it again, flashing out one word:
Safe?
Then I watch the star like my life depends on it, panic swelling in my chest the longer it remains untouched. A bright, burning beacon taunting me from the sky.
Out of my peripheral, someone sits on the crate beside me. “Give her some time, Cal.”
I look over at Pax, his chin tipped to the sky. He’s calm, unaffected, confident. But he isn’t in the same position I’m in. He doesn’t understand it. What I’d give to have his kind of patience.
“I don’t really have a choice,” I remind him.
“Lucina is smart.”
“I know that.”
Pax exhales, pretending not to be frustrated with my clipped tone. Impeccable patience. “And,” he adds, “she has an extra layer of defense. She’s better off than any of us.”
I know that too. And all I did was make her feel bad about it before she left. I opened my stupid mouth and spilled things that should have stayed buried. My inner turmoil is my burden to carry, not hers.
Rolling out my neck, I try to erase the image I have of her, staring blankly back at me last night. No emotion on her face. I’d broken her so badly that she completely detached from the feeling.
I blow out a breath, returning my attention to the sky. “Yeah.”
Pax’s head turns, staring into my profile, but he doesn’t say anything. I’m content to let the silence swell between us, but that’s wishful thinking. Especially with Paxton.
“We haven’t talked about it.”
His words sink like weights in my gut. “Talked about what?”
Pax snorts, his voice muffled around the bottle of cider he lifts to his mouth, “You’re so bad at that.”
If I wasn’t so focused on the sky, I’d spare the time to knock him off his seat.
“Despite how badly I know you want to bury it, Cal, you can’t do that with this. You know that, right?”
“I’m fine,” I assure him, and I don’t mean for it to come out as snappy as it does, but I’m frustrated and tired, and I’d rather walk through the fire behind me than dissect my feelings right now. “I appreciate the concern, but I’m not burying it. I’m…prioritizing.”
“Gods, Cal, you can’t—”
I cut him off with an arm across his chest.
The star above us flashes three times. Three. Times.
Safe.
“Thank fuck.” I can feel the relief sweep in and wash everything else away. Everything. I waste no time signaling back to her, manipulating the same star in a sequence of quick flashes.
Hurt?
“She’s good?” Pax asks.
Two flashes follow almost immediately. No.
“She’s good,” I confirm, a much-needed smile tugging at my lips. But as soon as the star finishes flashing with her next response, it falls right off my face.
Hundred.
“What’s she saying now?” Easton joins us, moving to stand behind me.
My mouth has gone dry, so it takes me a second to form the words and even longer to voice them: “She…found them.”
“Chiaros,” Pax curses.
I hear the approaching footsteps of the rest of my coven but don’t look around to confirm, focusing entirely on that one little star. It’s my only tie to her. The only proof I have of her well-being.
Easton nudges my shoulder. “Ask her about the ward.”
Most of our words will have to be spelled out, one letter at a time, but this one we translated. We agreed it was most important.
Ward, I ask her.
Lucina is quiet for a long moment. Long enough that I begin to bristle, fisting and flexing my fingers, then lacing them together to stop the fidgeting. I’m seconds from signaling to her again when the star begins blinking.
Working on it.
“What did she say?” Easton asks, eager to know if all their research on wards was actually worth a damn.
“She’s working on it,” I translate, not breaking my stare with the tiny star as I signal back to her.
Be safe.
Lucina’s response comes a second later: You too.
My shoulders sink, a pleasant heaviness settling over my body. Knowing she’s okay—at least for now—is grounding. I’m safely attached to the earth again instead of drifting into the void that is my own stress and anxiety. I swear to all the gods I wasn’t like this before her.
In Lucina’s defense, I’ve never loved anyone the way I love her.
And in my defense, she finds trouble everywhere she goes. She’s a magnet for it.
Pax claps a hand on my shoulder, and I snap back into my body with a jolt. “Feel better?”
He’s grinning when I look over at him, the orange glow of the fire flickering across his face.
“Yeah, I do.” I shrug him off and stand, picking up my half-eaten dinner and taking a seat across the fire from Devon.
Pax joins the rest of us, and I listen half-heartedly as my coven talks about nonsense. May’s cooking skills, the lingering stench in the bunker, and then the conversation shifts from Lucina’s scary-identical illusion of Alesi to Nix telling the story of how he met his late girlfriend.
“I just wouldn’t consider that a meet-cute,” Hunter snorts.
Phoenix looks up from his meal and squints back at him. “What the hell do you know? You weren’t there.”
“Yes,” Hunter corrects him, “I was.”
Nix’s brows pinch.
“You used the hilt of my knife to knock her out and then you ordered me to stand watch while you dragged her out of the courtyard.”
Devon snorts, and Easton huffs a laugh, scooping more stew out of the pot over the fire.
Nix opens his mouth to retort, but no sound comes out. Instead, he settles back against his crate and shakes his head at his dinner. “That’s not how I remember it.”
“I’m going into Streatham tomorrow,” I blurt out, feeling the shift in tension as soon as the words leave my mouth.
I keep my attention on my food.
“And why would you do that?” Devon asks over the crackle of the fire.
I look up then, noting the concern on their faces. They don’t understand it. No one does, and the only person who might is in a place I can’t get to. I thought I’d be able to handle it, but I don’t think I can.
“Because I can’t just sit here and do nothing,” I tell him. Tell all of them.
Hunter’s brows pull together, looking around the group of us like he’s missing something. “What is there to do?”
Easton chimes in, always the realist, “Nothing. There’s nothing we can do until Lucina finds a way to take down—”
“I’ve got to do something.”
Anything is better than sitting here, counting down the seconds until the stars come out, having no idea what she’s going through until then. I can’t do it. I simply can’t.
Devon leans forward, glaring at me over the top of the flames. I expect him to tell me I’m a fucking idiot. To prattle off at least three reasons why it’s a bad idea. But then he says, “I’ll go with you.”
No argument. No judgment. No scolding.
Pax looks just as confused at his response as I am, but I think Devon knows I’m going either way. With or without him. And there’s no way in hell he’d let me go alone.
So, I nod, returning to my dinner.
Blissful silence falls, the crackle of the fire and the occasional ruffle of leaves the only sound.
I finish my dinner, setting my plate aside with everyone else’s and return to my seat, watching Pax beat Phoenix in another hand of cards.
Nix curses, sliding a handful of candy into Pax’s pile of winnings.
Easton has a book open, something about wards if I had to guess, and he looks pensive about whatever it is he’s reading. So does Hunter, who leans over his shoulder, trying to make sense of what he’s looking at.
Devon reaches over the fire, moving to grab the empty pot off the metal rack, when an explosion of sparks knocks him backwards.
I jump to my feet.
“What the fuck?” Pax curses, standing so fast he knocks over the crate he and Nix had been playing on.
“Was that you, Nix?” Hunter asks, slowly circling the fire.
“No,” he denies, raising both hands in front of him. “I swear.”
I pull my attention off the fire only long enough to look at Devon. “D?”
“I’m good.”
Another burst of sparks explodes between us, and the flames triple in size. Deep red and orange hues burn so high I can no longer see Devon across them.
Beside me, Easton surges forward, his hand extended to snuff it.
“Wait!” I rush out, grabbing his sleeve.
He freezes, noticing it in the same moment I do—the shifting of the flames. One second, they are moving like fire, and the next, they are curving into shapes. Twisting into the spitting image of—
“Delia?”
Her face appears between the sparks, her head turning in my direction. “I have to be quick,” she says, her voice distorted.
Gods.
“Holy shit,” Nix swears.
Apparating is a power reserved only for the Dianic coven—to appear in a place your body isn’t. It’s rarely used because of the toll it takes on their bodies and their magic. Even a few minutes of the act can require weeks of replenishing.
What the hell could be worth that risk?
“The Nyrith had a vision,” Delia confesses, and my blood runs cold.
Pa hasn’t had a vision since we were kids. Diviners can catch glimpses of future events, suggestions on how things will play out, but a Nyrith vision is a forced revelation of Fate. They are rare enough that we really don’t know much about them.
The image of Delia burns a deep orange, a pinch between her brows the only indication that this is draining her. “A vision...of the Hound.”
Easton shoots me a glare, brows halfway up his forehead in a silent ‘I told you so.’
He’s the only one who thought it might be possible—the Hound on Vita. He’d suggested we be prepared just in case, but there is no preparing in that scenario. There’s no fighting, and there’s no running.
“What exactly did he see?” I ask, ignoring the weight of Easton’s stare.
“He couldn’t say where he’d seen him, just that he’s here. On this planet.” The Dame’s eyes meet mine, and there is no mistaking the fear in them. Even through the sparks crackling over her face. “He has been for some time.”
“Gods,” Pax exhales, turning from the group with both hands on his hips. He stares out at the dark city of Streatham, and my heart sinks.
“And he’s sure?” I bite out, hardly able to hear my own voice over the sudden rush of blood in my ears.
“He was adamant that I tell you,” Delia explains. “You’ve got to be…” Her face twists, voice crackling out like static. “…careful. All of—”
The image of her vanishes.
The fire returns to low-burning flames, and the silence that settles around us is deafening.
I run a hand over my face, feeling the weight of my coven’s attention, but I have no insight into how to approach this. No idea what to do or how to handle it. All I can do is hope and pray to every fucking god that the Hound is anywhere but Streatham.
Anywhere else.
“Pax,” I rush out, and he whirls around to face me. “I need you to go back to Pirn first thing in the morning. See what else you can figure out about the Hound and this…vision.”
He doesn’t need any convincing. “You got it.”
I force down a few deep breaths, and when none of them soothe me, I start moving—gathering my things, slipping weapons into their sheaths, tying my bag off and slinging it over my shoulder.
“What are you doing?” Easton asks.
“I’m going to Streatham.”
“Tonight?” Hunter exclaims, at the same time Devon snaps, “Absolutely not.”
“Even I think that’s a bad idea,” Phoenix adds, moving to block my path.
“Well, I didn’t ask you, did I?” He stares blankly back at me. They all do. Readjusting my bag on my shoulder, I push past him. “I’m going.”
Devon surges around the fire. “It’s a bad idea.”
“If the Hound is in Streatham,” I throw an arm out in the direction of the city, “they will be talking about it. I’ll spy on them the same way Hunter, Nix, and Pax did a few weeks ago. We have to figure out where he is and what he wants. We can’t just sit here with our dicks in our hands.”
Devon’s glare only deepens. “If the Hound is in Streatham,” he starts, “it’s the Rogue’s he’s going for. The wicked and unredeemable? Remember? That’s his whole fucking job, Cal. If anything, he’s on our side. Cin’s too.”
I grit my teeth, moving to step around him.
He shoves himself in front of me. “You feel guilty because Lucina is in there alone, but she volunteered to do this. She wanted to do this. Let her do her job, and you do yours. We’re no good to her dead.”
My pulse is a violent thing in my ears, but his words manage to hit their mark, digging deep into my conscience.
It takes more than a few seconds to be reeled back from the edge of whatever I’d been about to fall into, but I manage a full breath. Then another. And another.
“We’ll leave at first light, and I’ll go with you,” Devon promises. “We’ll do everything we can, okay? But please, not tonight.”
I glare back at him, fingers still wrapped tightly around the strap on my bag. There’s a war still raging inside me, but when I dip my chin in agreement, the tension in the air dissipates.
I spin back around and throw my bag in the dirt.
“We’ll take first watch,” Easton announces, gesturing to himself and Phoenix.
Hunter and Pax nod, confirming with a silent glance to Devon that he’s good with handling me before they make their way to the bunker.
Jaw clenched and muscles tight, I ignore the weight of Devon’s stare and make myself comfortable on the ground.
Rolling my jacket up as a pillow, I throw my head back and fix my attention on the stars, content to stare up at them until they disappear with the sun.