Chapter 60
SIXTY
EMMA
My knees hit the ground with a painful crack. Acid still burned up my throat, and tears stung my eyes as the room spun around me. My hands dug into the floor, trying to ground myself, but the bile kept rising, the horror twisting deeper into my chest.
When I finally forced myself to rise to my feet, the blue portal was already waiting. A thin, shimmering line of energy spiraling at the edge of the room.
I didn’t hesitate, and jumped through, more than eager to leave the past behind.
Back in the present, my hands were still shaking, as I turned to face the man responsible for my next set of nightmares. “You wanted me to have magic… That’s why you asked Julian to force the True Bond on me?”
Gordon nodded once. “Yes.”
I blinked up at him. This man gave me life. And then stole it to make me fit.
“All of this, just so I wouldn’t be human.”
“So you wouldn’t be weak,” he snapped back. “So you wouldn’t die of something pointless like old age. So my own daughter would have a fucking chance of surviving in a world hell-bent on war.”
“You don’t even care you did this to me, do you?”
“I care that you survived.”
My head spun, the room tilting slightly beneath my feet, while a thousand questions clawed at my throat.
“How? How did I survive Julian mind-raping me?”
He stared at me for a bit, before his invisible haze snapped to life around his hand. It coiled up his forearm in thin, bright strands—alive, electric, patient. “Because I’m a Healer, Emma,” he said, all calm. “A gold-wielding Healer. Which now I know for sure…you are too.”
The haze drifted closer—not touching, only circling the space between us—then flared, arching toward me like it sensed something underneath my skin. It pulsed once, and gods, it felt familiar.
“Julius’s haze,” Gordon said as he took a seat. “No other human baby could’ve survived that amount of power being forced into them. But you did. Because when he attacked your body, it activated mine.”
My arms felt suddenly too light. “I healed…myself?”
His eyes gleamed with pride. “Yes.”
My heart kicked violently, every beat slamming into my ribs like it was trying to get out.
“I don’t…” I shook my head once, barely breathing. “If I was human…how did Julian’s energy trigger your magic? There wasn’t anything inside me to activate. I didn’t have…”
I trailed off, the thought refusing to finish itself.
Dread curled cold in my chest as I looked at him.
“You mind-raped me too?” I asked, the words scraping on the way out.
“No, Emma. I certainly did not.” His answer came immediately. “I only asked Julius to do so, because he at least had the theoretical knowledge on how to force a True Bond on a human.”
“Then how?” I demanded. I took a step closer without meaning to. “How the hell do I carry your haze as well as his? If you didn’t mind-rape me, how am I a golden Healer like you?”
He didn’t answer.
He simply watched me. With intent. Like a man staring at a candle, waiting for it to catch.
Was he lying?
If he was, then why show me his past? Why hand me proof?
And if he wasn’t, then how the hell had his haze ended up inside me?
The realization hit me out of nowhere, and I had to sit down before my legs gave out. There was only one way a single act of Julian’s could have forced both hazes into me.
“You…” My voice faltered as the pieces locked into place. “You were bonded to Julian.”
He nodded once. “We formed the True Bond a few cycles ago, yes.”
My stomach dropped. “So when…when Julian…” The word stuck, bile rising in my throat. “When he mind-raped me…he didn’t just force his own haze. He forced yours into me too. Both at once.”
“Yes.”
“And that…triggered your bond. Instantly.” My voice came out hollow.
Another nod.
I swallowed hard. “That’s what healed me. That’s how I survived.”
“Exactly.”
My brain was starting to catch on.
“Which is also how I survived the bubble…because you imposed it, and through Julian—since we were both bonded to him—I share your translation.”
“Yes.”
I shook my head, still in shock. “How could you have loved my mother if you were bonded to another?”
He barked a laugh, loud and joyless. “The True Bond isn’t about love Emma, it’s about power.”
He leaned back slightly, his expression unreadable. “When you reach a certain age, loneliness becomes one scary beast to face. Julius and I bonded long before I met Lucia, and we stayed off each other’s continent until one of us felt the need to…collaborate.”
My mouth curled in disgust. “You used him.”
“We used each other. Such is the nature of the True Bond. Power drawn from power.”
Gordon’s gaze darkened, his tone lowering to a dangerous hum. “I gave him something of mine, and in return he gave me something of his. And now both our magic runs through you.”
I dragged a hand over my face. “Which is how you, as a Healer, can open a blue portal. Here, and back in New York…because Julian was a Specialist and his translation runs through your veins.”
My father smiled with pride in his eyes. “Exactly.”
My mind flashed back to Julian’s proposal at Cyclos, right before he’d faked the bond with me. “Which is also how he knew,” I said slowly, “he could form a True Bond with more than one person.”
Gordon shrugged. “It’s rare, but it’s absolutely possible.”
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think past the buzzing in my ears.
“So, you being my father…” The words trailed off again.
“Julius tried to replicate his success with you in the years that followed,” Gordon added softly. “Experimented as often as he could. He failed every single time. The only conclusion was that my blood—running through your veins—was what allowed your body to accept it.”
Click. Click. Click.
Every piece of information crashed into me and splintered my already fragile grasp on reality. My breath hitched, the weight of all this truth pressing down hard enough to choke me.
“Then why let me be raised by my parents? If you had me with you long enough to force the True Bond, why give me back to them? What happened?”
Gordon’s expression shifted. “My own weakness happened, that’s what.”
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “After injecting you with translation, my plan was simple: take you with me. Train you. Turn you into the most powerful person the world had ever seen.”
His mouth twisted. “But I made one mistake.”
His gaze drifted past me, as if he were seeing the memory unfold all over again. “I opened a window in reality,” he said quietly. “Only to look in on the hospital room one last time. I was holding you in my arms, watching your mother sleep through the screen.”
He still wasn’t looking at me. “And then someone came into the room, telling your parents you were gone.”
“Your mother…” Gordon paused, gathering himself. “She was the toughest woman I had ever met. But the scream she let out in that moment…”
His hands curled into fists at his sides.
“It was excruciating.” His voice roughened. “And I couldn’t handle it.”
I stilled completely.
“It changed everything.”
He sighed deeply, then shook his head. “I’ve done horrible things in my life, but the one thing I couldn’t do was make your mother suffer.
I couldn’t let her live through that pain.
Nor could I wipe your existence from her memory without altering too much of who she was.
It was the one miscalculation in my plans. ”
His mouth flattened into a thin line. “I made your powers dormant, put a temporary damper on your haze, and allowed you to be raised as human. I returned you to your parents, making the staff acknowledge a simple mistake.”
“You’d only been gone half an hour, no one exactly cared where to, when you returned safely. I gave you back to your mother and figured, with your endless lifespan, it didn’t really matter when I would retrieve you and take out the damper.”
Jesus Christ. How was I ever going to digest all of this?
No weakness, Emma. You’ll figure it out. You’ve been here before, you survived, you’ll fucking survive again.
“Why am I here?” My voice was still too quiet, barely a whisper.
“You are here to learn about your role in the great scheme of things. And you are here because I am a weak man who wanted to see his daughter in person again.”
“That might have gone a bit smoother had you not, you know, abducted and hurt the people I care about to get me here.”
He inclined his head, completely unfazed. “My apologies. I’m new to the whole father thing.”
That made me almost snort, until my brain caught up with something he’d said. “Wait… What do you mean, you wanted to see me in person again? When have you before?”
He leaned back in his chair, perfectly at ease, which only made the knot in my chest tighten. “On quite a few occasions, actually.”
“Aside from when I was born? Because I think I would’ve remembered meeting you.”
“I’m flattered.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
Gordon stilled for a beat, the casual ease slipping enough to notice. “How much do you know about your healing powers?”
I shrugged, deliberately careless. “I’m still learning. But I know how to heal myself and others when the injuries aren’t too complicated.”
He studied me for a beat. “You need to learn to hone your powers on instinct rather than knowledge. I’ve acquired all the knowledge there is,” he said calmly, “so your haze will respond accordingly.”
I snorted. “Thanks for the tip, dad.”
He ignored the jab. “You’re a Specialist, an Offensive, and a Healer, Emma. You possess more power than anyone on this planet, myself included.”
I frowned. “More?”
“Yes.” He leaned forward now, interest overtaking ease. “Because you’re born human, your hazes never fully meshed with each other. You carry two separate hazes, where Julian’s haze—and mine—absorbed the other.”
Okay. Not too bad for the ego.
Gordon rose to his feet and crossed the room to the window, hands clasped behind his back. “Have you ever tried to alter your appearance?”
“I haven’t enlarged my boobs or anything,” I muttered, “if that’s what you mean.”
He didn’t snort. Didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile.
“But you do realize,” he said evenly, “that healing means you can influence the body. And influencing the body means changing your appearance.”
I nodded once. “Seems fairly straightforward.”
Gordon’s voice softened into something silky and lethal. “Our golden healing abilities are so powerful, they allow us to alter our appearance enough so no one recognizes us unless we choose to be recognized.”
The smile on his lips was cold enough to curdle blood.
“You say you don’t remember meeting me. Maybe you’ll recognize me more like this.”
A swirl of transparent light rippled across his face—soft at first, then violent—twisting bone, re-forming skin, reshaping the man in front of me like clay being molded by a sculptor with no regard for mercy.
The shimmer crawled down his jaw, up his cheekbones, across the bridge of his nose. His eyes shifted, his mouth changed, the entire structure of him bending into something sickeningly familiar.
And then, standing where Gordon had been, stood a man from another life.
A man I had fought beside.
A man we’d trusted.
A man we all believed had died fighting the Radicals at Crown.
Maurice.