Chapter 58
FIFTY-EIGHT
EMMA
I stood frozen as Gordon released my chains of sedation, sensation rushing back in a disorienting wave.
“Don’t worry,” he said, sounding softer now, almost reassuring. “I’ve kept the Chiefs alive for you. You will still have your vengeance. All I intend to do is detain them, until you decide how they should be handled.”
I was still too stunned to speak. I could only watch as he calmly opened a portal and sent all fifteen bodies through it—one by one—into a holding cell somewhere deep beneath the Bastille.
Holy shit. Was he…on my side?
“Caden and James?” Their names came out rough, as if I hadn’t spoken in months.
“They’re here. Also detained, which was necessary to convince the Chiefs of my ‘loyalty’ to them.” Gordon snorted. “Na?ve fools.”
I blinked, my thoughts rearranging fast. “If that’s not really the case, you can let them go.”
“I will, after we’ve had a chance to talk.”
I crossed the room, with my Skindo out and stopped inches from him. I raised it to his throat, the hum of translation gathering beneath my fingertips like a promise.
“Where are they?”
“They are alive, Emma. I promise you I will bring you to them, after I speak my piece.”
I shook my head once, unwilling to risk either, any longer. “Now. Or you die without the pleasure.”
Gordon smiled. “You are stubborn. Excellent trait to have.”
Before I could respond to that weird-ass statement, he opened a window in reality—not a portal but a screen, like the one I’d watched Saoirse be murdered through—and revealed the cave beneath the Bastille.
Where I saw them.
Both hung from their wrists, arms stretched above their heads, blood pooling beneath their feet.
Caden’s head lolled forward, dark hair plastered to his blood-smeared face. His bare chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths, if you could even call them that.
James’s face was twisted in pain, blood dripping steadily from his split lip. His shirt hung in tatters, exposing the angry bruises blooming across his ribs and abdomen.
Their bodies were slack. Vulnerable. Broken.
Both unconscious, which, honestly, was a mercy considering the state they were in.
“I do apologize for their condition,” the man standing before me said lightly. “As I said, it was a necessary evil to convince the Chiefs of my loyalty to their ridiculous cause long enough for you to show up.”
I was paralyzed, my body locked up as something cold and unfamiliar cracked through my chest.
When I spoke, I didn’t sound like myself. “You let me heal them right fucking now,” I warned, each word clipped. “Or I run you through with my weapons.”
Gordon simply snorted. “If you think I can’t stop a Skindo from killing me—”
Before he could finish, I translated the secret Caden and I had spent weeks perfecting. A red-tinged Chela materialized in my other hand, glowing like fresh blood, and I leveled its tip at his throat.
“Let’s see how well you dodge a Skindo,” I murmured, “after I’ve drained you of all your magic.”
Whatever reaction I expected him to have, it definitely wasn’t the way his eyes lit up with…pride?
My voice may have sounded a little shaky, but my command was as clear as filtered water. “I said: release them.”
“They stay where they are,” he said maddeningly even, entirely unbothered by my threats, “as insurance.”
“Insurance requires risk,” I snarled, my impatience flaring fast. “Spell out the policy.”
A flicker of amusement crossed his face. “Insurance to keep you from doing anything…impulsive before we’ve finished talking. When you and I are done, you will all be free to go.”
Right. Because men like him always honor their terms.
“And what,” I asked, tightening my grip on both weapons, “is supposed to stop me from killing you right now?”
“The simple fact,” he replied smoothly, without a hint of urgency, “I am the only one who knows where they are. If you kill me, whatever chance you have of finding them dies with me.”
I didn’t blink.
“When I kill you,” I said evenly, “the bubble collapses. They’ll have their own energy back to portal out themselves, and I won’t need your cooperation to find them.”
“Ah,” he said softly, tilting his head as if indulging a clever child, “but then you’ll never get the answers you want so desperately, answers you crossed worlds and bodies to reach.”
“That’s an assumption,” I shot back. “Not leverage.”
His gaze sharpened then, the deliberation unmistakable, and after a beat a fucking smirk curled across his mouth. “Then let’s compromise, shall we?”
I pressed my blades closer to his throat, close enough to feel his pulse jump under the steel. “You don’t get to renegotiate from a position you created. And you have no compromise to offer, when your survival solely depends on my restraint.”
“I’ll heal them,” he offered, still infuriatingly calm, “but you agree to let them wait out our conversation in the cave beneath the Bastille, where they’ll be safe, watched, and very much alive. Once we’re finished, I’ll return them to you myself.”
I hesitated for a second, hating he’d bought even that much time. But their wounds mattered more than my pride. “You let me heal them first,” I said carefully, “and I’ll honor your deal.”
He gave a curt nod in agreement, and I lowered my weapons—slowly—without sheathing them.
“This is why you took them?” I asked as he tore open a portal, green light spilling across the stone floor and climbing the walls like something alive. “To make sure I’d hear you out?”
“Well, that…” He smiled as he took a few careful steps toward me. “And I had to get your attention somehow.”
“Ever heard of a Nexus?” I asked dryly, angling my body toward the portal as its pull tugged at my skin. “I hear they’re pretty effective.”
He chuckled, then gestured with a courteous little flick of his fingers for me to go first. “I bubbled in an entire country,” he said lightly. “I assumed that would be effective enough to make you hunt me down. But clearly, I miscalculated. My guess is, a simple nex wouldn’t have done shit.”
The portal hummed. I didn’t look back as I stepped through it.
The world folded.
Cold stone slammed under my boots as we emerged in the cave beneath the Bastille, the air damp and heavy with mineral rot and old magic. The ceiling arched low, jagged with shadows, green light bleeding in from the portal behind us before it snapped shut with a sound like breaking glass.
Caden and James hung exactly as they had appeared on the screen. Chains cut into their skin so thoroughly it felt like a vacuum in my chest.
Without hesitation, I unleashed my golden haze—on both at the same time—letting it rip through me like a dam giving way. Power poured out of me and into them, flooding shattered nerves, sealing torn muscle, knitting bone and magic back together as I gave them everything I had.
“Please don’t tell me you bubbled in an entire country just to get my attention,” I muttered over my shoulder as I worked my magic, my focus split between keeping these men alive and not turning around to kill the one who put them in this position.
The cave filled with light, gold reflecting off wet stone, my hands shaking as I anchored the haze to their bodies and refused to let go. I healed until it hurt, until my vision blurred, until the world narrowed to the sound of their heartbeat growing stronger beneath my palms.
“No.” Gordon’s answer came easily. “That wasn’t the reason. Though after the future I showed you in New York, I didn’t expect you to simply…walk away. Not without continuing your search for me. Especially when you knew you could translate beneath the bubble.”
He gave me a quick once-over. “But apparently getting comfortable with Mr. Colt took precedence.”
“Which is exactly what you wanted,” I shot back as the last threads of my haze faded. “Isn’t it?”
Gordon’s smile deepened. “Let’s say I’d hoped my portal to the future would counteract the Chiefs’ threats enough for you to make your own choice.”
I jerked my chin toward the men—alive now, healed, still bound—ignoring his last statement until more important things were settled. “Cut them loose.”
Gordon shook his head once. “That wasn’t the deal. You said to allow you to heal them. You never said anything about cutting them down. You did what you wanted. Now you go back with me, and we talk.”
“You can keep them here,” I snapped, stepping closer, “but not with them hanging unconscious like livestock in a slaughterhouse.”
“Honor your word, Ms. Thompson.” His tone hardened, the warmth instantly gone.
I let out a shaky breath, forcing myself not to look back at Caden and James, forcing myself to hold on to the fact that they were stable, and alive.
“Why do this?” I asked as firm as I could. “Why drag me in here, and dangle them in front of me?”
“All I’ve ever wanted for you, my dear girl,” he said gently, almost indulgently, “was for you to make your own choices. But I need time to explain your options.”
“Why?” I demanded, the word tearing out of me. “Why would you want that for me?”
He shrugged and reopened the green portal, its light spilling across the cave floor like a slow, toxic tide. “Because choices are important.”
I rolled my eyes, impatience snapping through me. “Oh, thank the gods,” I said dryly as I stepped toward the portal. “For a moment there, I was worried you’d be vague about it.”
Gordon smiled faintly, the corner of his mouth curving with quiet sadness. “Fearless. Sarcastic. And beautiful.”
The reverence in his voice caught me off guard, so unexpected it made my step falter for a heartbeat, right before I jumped through the damn portal again.
We landed back in the small room. Gordon sealed the opening behind us, trapping the space in silence before he spoke again. “You are so much like her.”
“Like whom?”
His back went rigid as a flash of raw grief sliced across his expression. “Your mother.”
I blinked. “You knew my mother?”
A muscle twitched beneath his eye. “Aye.”
My brows knit together, confusion tightening my chest. “How did you know her?”
Unexpectedly, a flicker of sympathy softened the hard lines of his face. “When I met your mother, she and your father weren’t married yet. They broke up for a few weeks, right before he proposed to her.”
The way his tone dipped lower, his shoulders turning slightly inward…
Oh gods.
“Your mother never cheated,” he said, slower now. “It’s important to me you know that. Especially considering what happened to your parents... And I need you to understand, I’ve been trying to find out who gave the kill command on my Lucia, exactly like you have. And like you, I’ve come up short.”
“My Lucia?” I echoed, the words catching in my throat. Gods, please tell me I misheard.
He exhaled slowly, then started pacing, tight, controlled steps like he didn’t trust himself to stand still.
“When I met your mom—a beautiful, brilliant woman, not unlike yourself—I fell hard. Even though she wasn’t over your father, I fell head over heels for her.
With that kind of intelligence, it was impossible not to.
She never knew what I was, what I was capable of.
And when she chose your father over me, I was heartbroken, but I respected her choice. ”
I didn’t breathe. I wasn’t sure I could anymore.
He stopped, his whole demeanor taut beneath the weight of the memory. “That might seem out of character for me, but I could never be honest with her about who I was. And I didn’t want a life of lies for either of us. For her, I wanted more.”
His eyes found mine, piercing and heavy with sorrow. “But I couldn’t help myself. She was always my weakness. After I left, I checked in on her from time to time.”
His mouth twisted. “Which is how I found out about you.”
“About me?” The question came out in a whisper, and I was scared as hell for what was coming next.
Silence.
I didn’t need him to say a word, because the truth was already clawing its way through me.
The realization didn’t come gently. It hit hard and fast, slamming into me with the force of a freight train I hadn’t seen coming until it was far too late.
“You believe to be my father.”
Saying it almost made it real. Saying it nearly undid me.
He stepped closer, gaze dark and steady. “Emma. I am your father.”
“And I have been bending over backward for the last twenty-five years to make sure you got everything anyone could ever want.”