Chapter Thirty-Three
Lia
I’m frozen, caught in the crossfire of an unseen storm. I sense the venom swirling inside Blair, a dark energy directed at Kylo.
She isn’t the sister from his memories.
“Kylo? Is it really you?” she gasps, sounding almost convincing.
Beneath the performance, I know the truth. Blair’s emotions pull inward like a black hole, dragging bitterness and something volatile into a dangerous core.
“Blair.” Kylo’s voice is taut, his usual composure shattered.
Read her mind, I plead silently.
I hone in on that incandescent, familiar pull of his presence, but I hit steel.
Kylo, I urge, throwing every ounce of my will at that barrier. Something is wrong with her.
“Come with me.” I tug his hand. “We have to find Leo.”
He goes rigid, wrenching his hand back. “I need a minute with Blair.”
“I need your help.”
“Lia, stop. I need time with my sister. Go. I’ll catch up.”
He doesn’t look at me when he says it.
A wide smirk spreads across her lips. She knows exactly what she’s doing, and Kylo is walking right into the trap. She shoots me a scornful look.
Kylo doesn’t notice. He doesn’t glance my way. It’s like I’ve ceased to exist.
I don’t wait for a second dismissal. I turn and sprint down the hall.
Door after door flies open, but none of them hold what I’m looking for.
“Leo!” I shout. “Leo!”
Where are you?
Forcing the frantic rush of thoughts away, I pull in one long breath, then another. Slowly, the chaotic swirl inside me steadies—until it’s there again, like a tiny thread of light guiding me forward. My fingers brush the walls as I pass each door, a strange certainty leading me.
This is it.
The door flies open. The stench of iron and old blood hits me first. Leo is crumpled in the corner, his limbs bound, blood smeared across his jaw. One eye is a dark, swollen bruise.
Knife in hand, I saw through the ropes. “Leo, I’m here,” I whisper, my fingers fumbling over knots slick with his blood. “I’m getting you out.”
The ropes fall away. I ease down beside him, cupping his bruised face in my hands. His skin is clammy and too pale. I press two fingers to his wrist.
A pulse. Faint, but there.
“Come on, Leo. Come back to me.”
I pull him into my arms and conjure the energy inside me, drawing it into him. Heat surges across my fingertips, spreading through my palms like sunlight.
His eyelids twitch, then slowly, he blinks. A tired, luminous smile curves his lips. “You did it.”
My brows knit. “I did what?”
“You siphoned my healing,” he rasps.
I wrap my arms around him, holding him as if he might disappear. “I found you.”
He squeezes me back, his strength returning in small, shaky increments. “Have I mentioned I fucking love your siphoning ability?”
Despite everything, I laugh.
The reality of the room rushes back. I glance over my shoulder at the white door. “We have to get out of here. Kylo is—”
“Wait.” Leo grips my wrist. “There’s something you need to know.” He hesitates. “Mom was a siphon.”
“What?”
Draven wasn’t lying.
“She was a triple threat: a siphon, vision seeker, and shielder. She kept it hidden from everyone except me. Joaquin found out shortly before she died.”
“How?” I ask, the word brittle. “How did Joaquin miss it?”
“Mom was strategic with her shields. She knew if she kept them up constantly, he’d get suspicious. She chose exactly when to let him in. She curated every thought he was allowed to hear.”
“You knew and you kept this from me?”
This colossal truth—and he let me live in the dark?
Everything I thought I knew was a lie.
“It wasn’t safe. Not with Joaquin in your head. Mom and I were the only ones who could shield. We were the only people he couldn’t touch,” he says, his eyes downcast.
The past rearranges itself around his words.
“Mom said when you were three, you started showing signs. They weren’t consistent like mine or Draven’s.
Yours came in waves. You mimicked the powers of whoever touched you—me, Mom, even Draven once.
It was textbook siphon emergence. Luckily, Joaquin was too preoccupied with the Aether Hunters to notice. ”
“The siphoning wasn’t what scared Mom. It was your empathy. You’d cry for hours for no reason at all. You felt every subtle shift in the house: Joaquin’s rage, Draven’s confusion, my sadness, Mom’s heartbreak. You were a lightning rod for everyone else’s pain.”
I squeeze his hand, urging him to continue.
“Mom realized you heard a thought she never voiced. You weren’t just a siphon and an empath. You were showing signs of telepathy, too.”
I search my mind, but I find nothing. There’s a vast, empty fog where those memories should be.
“She knew Joaquin would figure it out eventually. Your empathy drew too much attention. She was terrified he’d find out, so she made a choice. She siphoned your powers away.”
My stomach bottoms out.
“It was the only way to keep you safe. After that, she called an old friend to make you forget you ever had them.”
Siphoned away. Manipulated.
“What old friend?”
Mom didn’t have friends. Joaquin made sure of it.
“Her childhood best friend, Piero Radshaw.”
“Their uncle?”
“I never had a vision about meeting Carter and Kylo,” he confesses. “Mom told me about Piero, and where to go if anything ever happened. His compound was always the fallback.”
“But Carter said he had a vision?”
“Carter did. I didn’t.”
Meeting the Radshaws wasn’t a coincidence. None of this was.
“How did I get my powers back?” I ask, swallowing past the betrayal.
“Right before she died, she returned them to you.”
Returned. Because they were stolen.
It all lines up. The powers. The sickness.
“That’s why I was sick? For weeks?”
“Mom warned me that might happen. Your body needed time to adjust to that kind of power.”
I twist a strand of my hair around my finger until it hurts. It’s the only thing that feels real.
The rest is a house of cards.
A life built on secrets.
“Why didn’t you tell me after she died?” I demand. “I was terrified. I had no idea what was happening to me, and you said nothing.”
“I couldn’t. It was too soon.”
“Too soon?” I snap. “This is my life. My abilities. You don’t get to decide when I’m ready for the truth.”
I think of Kylo’s narrowed eyes, his constant suspicion. He thought I was hiding something. He thought we were liars.
He was right.
But not about me. I didn’t know.
Leo did.
“She could’ve stopped him.”
I remember the suffocating silence of the house, the fear that one wrong move would leave bruises. I remember the muffled screams that used to carry through my bedroom walls, followed by her crying.
She would lock herself away for days. I can still hear the snick of the lock, the way she’d disappear behind that heavy oak door and leave us to fend for ourselves.
I remember the relief that flooded my chest every time Joaquin’s car pulled away from the driveway, knowing we had a few days of peace before the devil returned.
We spent years painting on smiles, pretending we were a family whenever the neighbors looked our way.
It didn’t have to be this way.
“She was waiting for the right moment,” Leo says. “She knew the cost of staying, but she was looking at the bigger picture. She was tracking the threads of the future. She knew she wasn’t meant to stop him. You are.”
A cold realization settles in my gut. “She foresaw her own death.”
“She didn’t plan it, but she knew her fate. She’d seen it.”
“You took what was mine. If I’d had my powers, I could’ve saved her. Stopped him. We could’ve ended this before he killed more people.”
“Why do you think she did it?” His hands fly up. “Joaquin would’ve killed you, Lia. Or worse—he would’ve turned you into a monster like Draven. She’d already lost one child to him. She wasn’t going to lose another.”
He’s kept this secret for years, watching me struggle, knowing I was powerless to do anything—and now he has the audacity to tell me this war is mine to finish?
“I never wanted to keep this from you. I had no other choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
They were closer than I thought, bound by a secret that left me so fucking alone.
“I know you’re upset, but we have to move.”
He starts toward the door, then stops. His gaze sweeps the empty hallway behind me, his brow furrowing. “Where’s Kylo? Why isn’t he with you?”
“He ran into Blair. He chose to stay with her,” I say, the words tasting bitter on my tongue.
“Blair? He stayed with her willingly?”
The way he says it twists the knife. “Yes,” I bite out.
“I’ve seen what she can do. She’s in charge of torturing their prisoners—me included.”
“She tortured you?”
I look at the bruises on his face, seeing them in a new, horrific light. “Leo, what did she do to you?”
“That’s not important right now.”
“Leo—”
“Tell me what Kylo did.”
Stubborn, stubborn man.
“I felt the malice inside her,” I explain. “I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen. He shut me out.”
“We need to find him or she’ll finish what she started with me.”
“I don’t know where to go. Kylo has the map.”
“I know this place,” Leo says coldly. “I’ve bled on every floorboard in this building. Follow me.”
We hurry down the hallway. A thunderous explosion rips through the air, and I stumble. Leo grabs my elbow to steady me.
“They’ve breached the perimeter,” he says, scanning the corridor. “This way—go.”
He leads us to a narrow metal staircase.
My instincts wail like a warning siren.
We step into a dim training bay. Shafts of light cut through the shadows cast by high, windowed panels, stretching across the turf—vast and empty.
“Yep… definitely not the setting of a horror movie,” I quip, sidling closer to Leo.
Hundreds of bulbs ignite at once, engulfing the room in a white glare.
The space is half-converted into storage—crates stacked against the walls, gear scattered across the ground.
Draven stands at the center, unmoving, his presence a black hole that strips my oxygen.
Six hunters flank him, all armed and ready.
“Lia, run!”
We bolt for the flashing orange exit sign. I swing the door open, and we’re barely across the threshold when an invisible force slams into us.