Chapter 13 - Gage
My fists slam against a wall of solid darkness without a sound or dent for my efforts.
"Mars, let us in!" The shout tears out of me raw and full of rage. "Open this up right now or I swear to God, I will tear it down myself!"
Beside me, Torrin, Jules and Reid are pounding on the curved black surface, all of us shouting over each other.
The wall just sits there, cold under my hands, swallowing our voices and giving nothing back.
Luna is trapped in there. She's having a panic attack behind that wall with the one person in this house she doesn't trust. I need my hands on her, need to see her face, need to fix whatever broke loose in her.
Instead, I'm locked out by a man I’ve already hit once today.
I'm going to kill that motherfucker for this.
The worst part is how fast it all went wrong.
One minute she was smiling beside me at the counter, spreading peanut butter and stealing crusts for Penny.
The next her whole body seized up and her light whited out the entire room, sending Penny whimpering away.
My head is still spinning trying to find the cause between those two moments.
Under the floor my power stirs, ready to peel the ground open with a thought, and makes the hardwood hum against my boots.
I shove it back down hard, because she's standing on that floor, and there is no version of tearing this dome of shadows apart that doesn't risk her.
"What in God's name is going on in here?" Elenor's voice cracks across the kitchen as she comes in off the deck with Kara right behind her, wet hair soaking the shoulders of Luna’s borrowed robe. "Why is there a giant black egg in my granddaughter's kitchen, and why are the four of you hitting it?"
Before anyone can answer, the wall of shadows disappears.
There's no unraveling to it, no fade. Between one blink and the next the darkness is simply gone, wiped out of existence with nothing left behind, and my eyes flash to Luna so fast I almost get whiplash.
She's standing a few steps back from Mars, upright, breathing, and dry-eyed. The relief hits me hard enough to stun, because she looks steady and recovered. The only thing left on her face from whatever happened inside that dome of shadows is an expression of anger and it’s pointing right at the motherfucker who deserves it.
Jules gets to Mars first. The punch snaps Mars's head sideways and staggers him into the island counter. I don't move one muscle to stop it, and neither does anybody else.
"Luna, hold on." Mars ignores the blood at the corner of his mouth completely, his eyes locked on her, one hand reaching. "Please, just wait."
"I'm fine, Mars." She bites the words off around a frown, looking at all of us and none of us. Then she turns and walks out of the kitchen without another word.
Nobody speaks, and nobody moves. Her footsteps climb the stairs, measured and even, and the whole room stands there listening until her bedroom door slams hard enough to rattle the last of the glasses in the cupboard. Then the kitchen erupts.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Jules is in Mars's face, shoving him back against the counter. "She's terrified, and your genius move is to lock her in a box?"
"She was having a panic attack, and you sealed her away from us!" Reid's voice cracks up an octave, wet curls flying as he throws both arms wide. "Do you understand how backwards that is? Can you even imagine what that could have done to her?"
"I just told you to fucking stand down." Torrin doesn't yell it, which makes it worse, every word coming out cold and precise. "Minutes, Mars. You couldn't even give her one."
"Who the fuck do you think you are?" I spit, furious as I step in close enough that he has to look up at me.
"Coming into this house and doing this? You don't get to wall her off from her family, and you don't get to decide what she needs.
You lost that right, left it behind two years ago, and every single one of us stood in the wreckage and watched what it cost her. "
Mars's jaw is tight, his eyes flat, taking the hits without swinging back, and that lack of fight only feeds mine. The four of us are all talking over each other again, louder and louder, until the sound of metal-on-metal cuts through the room.
Elenor stands at the stove banging a frying pan with a metal serving spoon, over and over, until every last one of us shuts up and turns to look at her.
"Good, that's better." She sets the pan down with terrifying calm. "Now all of you be quiet. Except for you." The spoon swings around and points straight at Mars. "What exactly just happened in this kitchen?"
Frustration rolls across Mars's face, visible and hot, and then I watch him wrestle it down, breathe through it, and answer her in a level voice.
"She was having a panic attack, and it was sending her power out of control.
" He straightens off the counter, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist. "The light was building with nowhere to go, so I contained it, and I held the rest of you back with my shadows because you crowding her was making it worse, not better.
" His eyes sweep the room, daring anyone to argue.
"She was losing control and I was afraid of what might happen.
She might think it's nothing but a light, but it’s more.
There's cold heat in that glow, and it could hurt someone badly if she's not careful with it. I've seen what it does."
Every argument in my head surges up at once, and I open my mouth, but Elenor's hand comes up flat in my direction stopping me without her eyes ever leaving Mars.
"What was the panic attack about?"
"I don't know." The answer comes out of me anyway, bewildered and honest. "It came out of nowhere. We were making sandwiches, we were talking, and then between one breath and the next she was gone into it."
"No, it didn't come out of nowhere." Mars shakes his head slowly, and his eyes find mine, and there's no attack in them, which somehow makes it worse. "She said you were all leaving again, that everyone leaves her, over and over, and it sent her into a spiral she couldn't pull out of."
"That's rich coming from you." Jules's laugh has no humor anywhere in it. "The fucking king of leaving her."
The words hit the room, but I barely hear them, because Mars's answer is still going off inside me. Fuck, fuck, of course she panicked about us leaving, and it hit her this hard. I stood in her kitchen an hour after she got us all back from not knowing if we were even alive and told her three of us were driving off into the dark. Somehow, I expected her to nod and keep spreading peanut butter. She’s spent two years clawing her way back from losing her parents and Atlas in a single night.
There were two years of nightmares and therapy and slowly learning to let us out of her sight.
This week tore up every bit of that progress.
The moon broke, and every person she loves vanished into the chaos.
She sat in this house all that time not knowing if any of us were alive.
It was stupid, so stupid, to just carry on with logistics and to-do lists while pretending the last week never happened.
Treating a farm run as nothing was worse, because the last time we all walked out her door, the world ended.
I did this. I set her off. The difference between me and Mars tonight is a lot thinner than I want it to be.
"That's enough, Julian." Elenor's voice cuts him off cold, and her sharp eyes travel around the whole circle of us, stopping on each face in turn.
"Enough from all of you. Take a good look at what's happening outside these walls and then tell me we can afford this.
The sky is about to fall on this province, we leave in the morning, and my granddaughter is upstairs crying into her pillow because you all were screaming at each other in her kitchen.
The stakes are too high for infighting, and they're far too high for two years of stored-up drama leaking into every room of this house.
So, we're going to clear the air, right now, before we're trapped in a mine together with it. "
She turns to Mars, and the spoon lowers, but her voice loses none of its steel as she waves her hand at him.
"Now's the time to explain yourself. If you have an explanation, that is, as to why you left."
The room goes still around him with all of us waiting to finally hear his answers.
I cross my arms over my chest and plant my feet, and honestly, I don't give a single shit what comes out of his mouth next.
There's no reason on this earth good enough for leaving the way he did, no story that unbreaks what he broke.
Whatever pretty words he's had two years to polish, they change nothing about what I have to do.
Luna doesn't get hurt again, not by Mars, not by anyone, not while I'm still breathing.
If his explanation so much as puts one more crack in that girl, I'll finish what Jules started and throw him to the ash myself.
Let him talk.