Chapter 62
SIXTY-TWO
EMMA
“Maurice?” How the hell…
I blinked a few times before reality caught up with me. “Hold on. You’re Maurice and Gordon and my father and the person who created the bubble?”
The words felt like acid in my throat. I spat them anyway.
Maurice—Gordon—inclined his head. “All one and the same.”
Seriously, what is up with these magi and their identity reveals at every turn? Isn’t anyone who they say they are?
A hundred questions surged to the front of my mind, crashing, and tangled, desperate for answers.
How? Did you know who I was when we met? What else are you hiding? Why tell me now? Why any of this?
They pressed against my ribs like they were trying to claw their way out.
But Maurice lifted a hand, already shaking his head. “I know you must have a ton of questions, but there isn’t time for all of that, Emma. I know you want answers—hell, you deserve them—but explanations will have to wait. Things are moving faster than even I anticipated, and—”
The door exploded inward.
Not opened.
Not kicked.
Obliterated.
Shards of metal and splinters of stone blasted across the room as two familiar silhouettes filled the doorway: bloodied, furious, very much awake.
Caden’s eyes were obsidian wildfire.
James looked ready to murder the entire continent.
And both were holding ridiculously small weapons.
“Maurice?” James breathed, sounding small and stunned.
Maurice simply sighed. “Of course. Wouldn’t be fucking complete without fairy-dust–snorting Bert and Ernie crashing the party.”
The guys shared a quick look—both clearly exhausted, irritated, and in pain—and muttered in perfect unison, “You’re Ernie,” before crossing the room and flanking me on either side like they hadn’t just broken out of an impossible cage.
Caden stopped close enough that I could almost feel him. Our eyes met for a heartbeat, and the tight, aching knot in my chest gave way all at once.
Without a conscious move, gold energy flooded the space between us, erupting without thought or permission, spilling from me like a breath I’d been holding for too long. It wrapped around him, sunk into every wound I hadn’t been allowed to see.
Every fracture, every strain, every hidden place pain had taken root. I felt it mend him as surely as if it were my own body, knitting bone, soothing torn muscle, erasing damage both visible and buried too deep for words.
When the light finally stilled, we were still facing each other.
No questions. No apologies.
Only the unspoken certainty whatever this was, whatever was about to come next, we were in it together.
“How the hell are you alive?” James demanded, the small knife still clenched in his hand. “I fucking watched you die!”
Maurice’s composure faltered, just a hair, but enough. “Look, we don’t have time for this. Emma needs to understand her role in the greater scheme of things, and—”
“Then make time,” I hissed, as my patience snapped clean in half. “I have a lot of questions, father, and I want every single one answered.”
“Father?” Caden echoed.
“Oh, yes.” I let out a humorless laugh. “You’ve missed some very fun surprises.” I gestured at Maurice. “Meet Gordon—also known as my genetic father—also known as Maurice. Creator of the bubble.”
“What the hell?” James mumbled, blade raised high, his grip white-knuckled. “Why the hell would you bubble in our entire country? It killed three Cyclos children!”
Maurice didn’t flinch. “And I am sorry for my part in their deaths,” he said coolly. “But the bubble was necessary.”
“Why?” The word scraped out of me, thin and shaking.
Maurice’s gaze locked onto mine, assessing me. “You really don’t know?”
“To catch me?” I said, even as the answer felt wrong in my mouth, but it was the only reason I could think of.
“To catch you?” His laugh was short and incredulous. “Why would I ever create a bubble you can translate beneath if my goal was to catch you?”
I blinked, my thoughts stalling. “Then…to catch someone else?”
Caden cursed under his breath. “Of course. I should’ve known.”
My head snapped toward him. “Known what?”
But Caden wasn’t looking at me. His stare was fixed on James, with his jaw tight. “We haven’t been able to reach him all year,” he said grimly. “All year, he’s been looking for Gordon. Who’s been here all along.”
My stomach dropped when realization sunk in. “You bubbled in an entire country,” I said slowly, as I turned my focus back on Maurice, “to find Stephen?”
“How else do you catch a rat with Specialist powers and diplomatic immunity across the entire world?” Maurice snarled, before he flicked his wrist.
Reality ripped open beside us—a portal this time—and the stench of blood hit me first.
Then I saw him.
Stephen Stone chained to restraints bolted into stone, what remained of his body slack, head drooping against his chest.
His arms ended in ragged stumps where his forearms should have been, blood dripping steadily from torn flesh and pooling beneath him.
His skin was split open in too many places to count. His face—Gods—his face was almost unrecognizable.
He looked worse than anyone I’d ever seen survive anything.
“Jesus—fuck,” I breathed, the air tearing out of my lungs. “You’ve had him all along?”
Maurice nodded, maddeningly calm. “Yeah. And as you can see, I’ve had a lot of fun with him.”
My gaze snagged on what was left of Stephen’s arms, the empty ends of them. “Why?” I whispered. “Why torture him to this extent?”
“I needed something he wasn’t willing to give.”
Caden scoffed beside me. “Thanks for that elaborate clarification.”
James shook his head; weapon still trained on the man he used to call a friend. “You release him now, or I cut you from ear to ear.”
Maurice raised a single brow before the knife vanished from James’s hand, translated clean out of existence.
Well.
That was…sort of anticlimactic.
But my ‘father’ wasn’t the only one with powers here.
My gaze snapped to the open portal, still pulsing faintly, still holding Stephen suspended on the other side.
Time to get some real answers.
“Emma,” Maurice warned, his eyes following my gaze. “Stephen Stone is not your ally.”
I shared a quick look with Caden, who only shrugged, the barest roll of a shoulder, as if to say your call.
So I called it.
With a flick of my wrist, I pulled Stephen through the portal, guiding his half-collapsed weight as he stumbled forward. He barely stayed upright before I maneuvered him into a solid chair, my grip firm, controlled.
A quick twist of my fingers, and invisible bindings snapped into place, tight enough to hold him, gentle enough not to hurt.
Then I let the golden haze loose.
It poured over him in a slow, luminous sweep, knitting torn skin, sealing bruises, coaxing breath back into strained lungs. Cuts faded. Blood vanished. But without the missing limbs, I couldn’t reattach them. Though I did manage to take away most of his pain.
His body stilled beneath the magic.
When Stephen finally came to, his eyes flew open in shock.
His gaze jumped; from me, to Caden, to James…
And then landed on Maurice, eyes blazing. “I thought you were my friend.”
Maurice’s jaw tightened, the smile finally gone. “I was,” he said harshly. “Until you nearly got my daughter killed in a fucking car accident, just so you could play hero and save magikind from your little nightmare visions of the Trackers.”
“You were the one who sent me to Boston in the first place!” Stephen shot back, straining against the bindings.
“I sent you to the Human World to retrieve her,” Maurice snapped, anger cracking through his accusation.
“Like we’ve done with every Humanborn for cycles.
Not to have her hit by a godsdamn human car so she’d translate, you asshole.
Not to have her experimented on by your Crown goons.
Not to have her bloody arm mutilated on your godsdamn command! ”
Maurice was breathing hard, his nostrils flaring.
Stephen shook his head slowly, then lifted his gaze to mine, eyes burning with something caught between guilt and defiance. “You were never supposed to get hurt…”
Before I could reply, Maurice snarled, “Really? Is that why you went to the Chiefs about her?”
“He did what?” Caden’s question was a low, threatening hiss, his eyes full of fire aimed at the silver haired man.
Maurice’s spoke mainly to me. “One of my sources told me he’d gone to the High Chief.
Told me he spoke to them about the role you three will play in our future.
I didn’t know exactly what he told them, only that as a result, the United Chiefs decided you and James should be forced into a True Bond. ”
“When was this?” I breathed.
“I found out right after the Great Exposure.”
I let that sink in.
“Let me get this straight,” James reiterated. “You learned Stephen went to the United Chiefs about Emma, and your response was to bubble in an entire country just to flush him out?”
Maurice nodded once. “I convinced the president of the US to let me bubble it in. Told him he had a lethal, unstable magus on his hands. Told him I could neutralize all magic in his country until his people calmed down about the exposure.” He shook his head in mock-disappointment. “He fucking jumped at the opportunity.”
Maurice’s gaze snapped back to Stephen. “And then I hunted down the rat who thought he could sell you out and live.”
Stephen lifted his chin as much as his restraints allowed. “I didn’t want to ‘sell out’ anyone. You know exactly why I did what I did,” he shot back. “And thanks to your actions, I’m pretty sure your daughter will side with me when she finds out.”
What? The hell did that mean?
“What. Did he. Do?” Caden’s tone was clipped and every syllable laced with venom.
Maurice smiled now. “Let me show you.” He tilted his head toward Stephen. “Let me show you the memory I pulled out of this piece of shit.”
“How the hell can you show us?” James snarled, clearly having lost every shred of his patience.
My father’s attention stayed fixed on me. “You know how to leak a person?”
I nodded once.
“This is the inverse,” he said calmly. “Instead of you pulling it from me, I’ll give it to you. I’ll share what I saw, but since it’s my memory of watching Stephen’s, it will play more like a projection.”
“It’s still subjective, though, right?” James asked. “Not like jumping through a blue portal. What we’ll see is Stephen’s memory filtered through your interpretation.”
Maurice gave a curt nod, confirming the deduction.
Just like when I’d only managed to pull a partial warrant from that human I leaked, because that was all he had been focused on.
“You’ll share it with all of us?” I asked.
Maurice’s tilted his head. “If that is what you wish.”
My gaze caught Caden’s, who gave me an almost imperceivable nod. “Fine. Show us what you saw.”
Without another word, the master-manipulator inhaled slowly.
And then his haze unfurled.
It didn’t explode outward the way mine did when I translated. It spread, thin, deliberate, a cold pressure sliding across my skin like fog creeping over water. The atmosphere thickened instantly, every instinct in my body screaming that this wasn’t natural.
“Don’t fight it,” Maurice said softly. “It would only make things…unpleasant.”
The haze reached us—not entering, not forcing—simply touching. Brushing against my consciousness like fingertips testing glass.
Then it opened.
It projected.
The room dissolved at the edges, the stone walls bleeding into shadow as something else bled through, sound first, then light. A second reality layered itself over the first, like being dropped into the middle of someone else’s nightmare.