Chapter 18 #2
But the weight of recognition pressed in, the impossible familiarity of her body, her mouth, the way she sighed when he touched her just there. He'd known. He'd always known.
Depth is a trap. Don't go that deep.
He grabbed for the rationalization like a lifeline, hauling himself back. Residue. Echo. The quipu was messing with his head, making connections where none existed. He was Flash. SEAL. Never anyone else.
He pulled her down, kissed her hard, desperate to drown the thought in sensation. She responded, warm and willing, but her stillness held a question.
The knock rapped against the wood.
“Food first, then sleep," he murmured against her mouth before she slipped off the mattress and they got dressed. "We've got the hike tomorrow. The effigy. We need refueling and rest."
She settled against him, her breathing slowing, her body relaxing into trust. He held her, his face buried in her hair, and stared at the wall where the fading sun cast shadows through the gauze curtains.
The conviction waited, heavy and sharp as a stone in his gut. He was Cisco. He knew it with a clarity that made his hands tremble against her stomach. She had killed him, and she’d kill him again, if the font demanded it, if the world required sacrifice.
He shoved it down. Buried it deep, beneath operational focus, beneath the mission, beneath the lie that he was only who he appeared to be. He packed the earth over it, tamped it down, built walls.
But as he lay there in the dark, holding the woman he loved across lifetimes, the truth leaked through. Pooled in the silence between his thoughts.
Somewhere in the distance, or perhaps in his memory, the waterfall roared.
* * *
The warmth beside her shifted. Lechuza's eyes opened to the barely setting sun filtering through gauze curtains, and to Flash, sprawled on his stomach, one arm thrown across the space she'd vacated, his face turned toward her in sleep.
The miracle of it stopped her breath. This man.
This impossible, inevitable man, still here, still breathing.
She pushed up on her elbow, the sheet sliding to her waist, and let herself look.
Her gaze traced the architecture of him, the stubble darkening his jaw, the mouth that had learned her body with devastating precision.
She knew this face. Had known it before he'd kicked down that door in Caracas a year ago, before he'd ever spoken her name.
The recognition hummed beneath her ribs, terrifying in its surety.
Her hand hovered over his shoulder, not quite touching.
The danger was this pull toward him that operated on laws older than choice, older than the fierce autonomy she'd built her life around.
Sovereignty had always been her scaffolding.
Controlled access, her security protocol.
Yet here she was, waking beside him with her walls in ruins, wanting not just this morning but more.
A life. A string of days that would never be enough.
The wanting scared her more than any mission, any enemy.
Many fucking lifetimes might not be enough.
The thought arrived fully formed, utterly true.
She loved him so deeply, she had no words for the depth, had no idea where it began, but she was positive she saw no end.
If what she feared was true, if this thread stretched back almost five centuries, to Quri standing over Cisco's body with blood on her hands, then Lechuza had already killed him once.
Had been the instrument of his ending, and if the font demanded payment, if the quest that had hollowed out North and left his body breathing but vacant in a room downstairs demanded more...
She could be the hand again. She knew it with a resolve that made her stomach clench.
She slipped from the bed, pulling on her leggings and Flash's discarded hoodie, the cotton holding his delicious scent. The estate slept around her, silent except for the distant hum of generators and the ever-present whisper of Peruvian wind through the eucalyptus. She moved through hallways she’d run through as a child, descending stairs, her bare feet silent on polished marble.
The room they had placed him in was originally storage, naturally cool, easily protected.
He was lying in a comfortable bed, his powerful body covered with a sheet.
She paused at the threshold, her hand finding the doorframe, her nails digging into the wood.
Kuntur stood, his bulk filling the room, and…
Twister. Her father, bless him, had sent his strongest staff member to watch over their treasure.
“You’re supposed to be resting.”
Twister nodded. “I just needed to check on him before I sleep.”
“Sure. You’d have tapped yourself out. Kuntur, if he comes back after I’ve gone, you haul him back to his room.”
Twister chuckled. “Okay, I’m going.”
“Twist?”
He stopped and turned. “How much time does he have…if he’s in the Veil?”
Twister’s jaw clenched and he looked away. “I can’t keep him like this indefinitely. The longer he’s gone, the worse it is for his physical body. Four days, probably. This is all new to me, but my Veil healing energy is screaming at me to get him back.”
He didn’t have to spell it out for her. If North’s body died, he would have no way to get home. That knowledge was in Twister’s eyes as he left.
“Give me a moment,” she whispered to Kuntur. He nodded and slipped out of the room.
North lay there, centered in the bed like an offering.
The power Twister had used to preserve the shell of him while his soul wandered the Veil hummed with a familiarity under her skin, its energy radiating a soft blue light.
She'd seen men die before. Had caused death herself, precise and necessary.
But this was worse, this suspended animation, this waiting, this physical manifestation of the cost they'd already paid, lying in state while the team held their breath and hoped.
She crossed to him. The stasis field prickled against her skin as she entered its perimeter, raising the hair on her arms. North's chest rose and fell in an eerie cadence.
His face was peaceful, untroubled by the war being waged for his return.
She reached out, her fingers brushing back his hair, just to touch him, ground herself that he was still alive. His skin was warm, his hair soft.
What else will you take? she asked the silence. How much heavier does the scale tip?
Bagh? O-voo? One of Flash’s teammates. She closed her eyes, her throat so tight.
Beneath the grief and worry lurked the question that wouldn't settle.
How am I connected to her? Fly's analysis had ruled out direct descent.
Quri had died without children, and Cisco's line ended with him.
But Lechuza felt the resonance in her bones, the way the quipu had known her.
Cousin lines. Collateral branches. Some thread of DNA that had survived five centuries to coil in her blood, waiting.
The door whispered open behind her. She knew his step, his presence, the way the air changed when he entered a room.
Flash's arms encircled her from behind, solid and warm, pulling her back against his chest. He said nothing, just held her, his chin resting on her shoulder, his breath stirring her hair. They stood together, watching North breathe, Twister’s magic real and solid for a soul that had wandered elsewhere.
"Couldn't sleep," she said.
"No." His voice rumbled through his chest into her back. "You left."
She leaned into him, letting him take her weight, and the choice to do so burned in her throat. This was the vulnerability she feared, her sovereignty surrendered. She chose it. Opened the gate and let him in, knowing the cost, knowing the risk.
"I keep thinking about balance," she said, her eyes fixed on North's still face. "About scales." She paused, the words assembling themselves, heavy and sharp. "Do you think we have to pay a debt later? In our lives, our...evolution? That nothing's free, that the universe keeps accounts?"
The question hung between them, charged.
He tensed, and she noted the almost imperceptible hitch in his breathing.
He'd buried something last night. To spare her?
Fear reaching her fearless SEAL? The wall went up behind his eyes when she'd asked whether it was real.
Now her question struck against whatever he'd hidden, and she felt the reverberation through his body.
"I think," he said slowly, carefully, "that we pay as we go. That the cost is the choice itself."
She turned in his arms, finally facing him, and the blue light carved shadows beneath his eyes, into the hollows of his cheeks. He looked haunted. Looked like a man holding something heavy.
"If the choice is love?" she asked. "If that's the currency?"
His hands tightened on her waist. "Then we spend it anyway. We spend it all."
She rose on her toes, kissed him, tasted the lie he was telling himself and the truth he couldn't quite bury. When she pulled back, her palms framed his face, her thumbs tracing the tension there.
"Don't hide from me," she whispered. "Not about this. Whatever's waiting in the dark, we face it together. That's the only way this works."
He closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against hers, and the war in him also raged in her. The need to protect her from what he suspected, the dread of speaking it aloud. But when he opened his eyes again, he only nodded, silent, and pulled her back against his chest.
They stood there, holding each other in the humming blue light, watching North breathe, both of them keeping their secrets close, both of them choosing, again and again, to stay anyway.
She pressed her face into his neck, his hoodie warm against her skin.
“When we met…in Venezuela, I was naked too. You gave me clothing.” Her throat tightened. “Cisco did the same thing at the waterfall.”
“He didn’t—”
“He did. The echo of it sits in my heart.”
He sighed. “Fuck.”
They stood there for a few more minutes. “I have a favor to ask.”