Locke
I open my eyes but I don’t know where I am. I’m looking at a ceiling, but it’s not our house. The light is wrong. My neck hurts like a bitch and I can’t remember why I’m on my back.
I need to move.
“Hey. Take it easy.” Lena, with a cold compress on my forehead and her hand on my shoulder pushing me down. “You’ve been out a while.”
“I’m fine.” I sit up anyway. The room tilts, then steadies.
The Community Hall. Cal is at the door, Jonah at the far wall, Brent by the kitchen entrance with his arms crossed.
There are mattresses around me with bodies on them. Rane with a dart mark on his neck, still out. Kyron beside him. Trey, Vaelor, Beckett. All here. All breathing. All unconscious.
Great.
I count them. Count again.
“Where’s Nova?”
Lena’s eyes go wide. She looks at Cal, then at Brent, then at Jonah. Her mouth opens but nothing comes out.
Brent walks over. His face is flat and controlled. Barely.
“She’s gone, Locke.”
I stare at him.
“What the fuck do you mean she’s gone?”
The hall goes quiet. Mara freezes halfway through the room with a tray. People in the doorway stop moving.
“We couldn’t get to you,” Brent says. “Not without casualties. You were surrounded. When we finally broke through, you were all down. Darts in every one of you.”
“And Nova.”
“Gone.”
“How long?”
“Yesterday morning. You’ve been out a full day.”
A day. She’s been gone for a full day.
“There were bears,” Cal says from the door. “Memory bears. But not just Memory. Shadow ravens. Reverie wolves.”
Three Houses coordinated together. That’s not Silas. He doesn’t have the pull for cross-House assets. That’s Laith. That’s Order leadership.
“This was sanctioned,” I say.
“At the highest level.” Brent’s jaw is tight. “Silas was the face, but whoever organized the extraction had resources from three territories. That doesn’t happen without the top signing off.”
I look at the guys on the mattresses around me. Six men, all taken out with darts before we could do a single goddamn thing.
They knew what we could do. They planned for it. Hit me first because I’d have shifted fastest. Had darts ready for all of us before Silas even opened his mouth.
“Where did they take her?”
Brent looks at Cal. Cal looks back.
“Nightmare Order headquarters is our best guess.”
The most heavily secured location in the realm, built on the ruins of the convergence space.
Mara sets her tray down and walks over. She adjusts a blanket over my legs without saying a word and I don’t stop her.
People keep coming in to check on us. Darcy appears in the doorway with her kid on her hip. She doesn’t say anything, just stands there looking at the mattresses and the space where Nova should be.
The whole town is here. The people she stood up for. The people she promised to fight for.
Of course she did.
I should be on my feet. I should be planning, maybe breaking a few things.
But I can’t move.
“We’ll figure this out,” Brent says. “We’ll find a way—”
“No.”
He stops and stares at me like I hit him.
“Three Houses coordinated against us. They walked into the Hollow like it was nothing.” I look at him. “We’ll never get her back.”
“Don’t say that.”
“She’s gone. Really gone.”
Brent opens his mouth, then closes it. He doesn’t argue because there’s nothing to argue with.
Lena replaces the compress on my forehead. I let her because it gives her something to do and I get it.
Somewhere behind me a kid asks why the big man is sad. A mother hushes him.
I’m not sad. I failed her. That’s different.
She’s everywhere in this town. Every room, every face, everything they built because of her. And she’s not here.
Beside me, Rane is waking up. He groans as his hand goes to his neck where the dart hit.
His eyes open, unfocused. He looks at me and whatever he sees makes his face go white.
“Locke?”
I can’t say it again.
He looks around the room and counts the bodies. Gets to the same number I did.
“No,” he says.
I close my eyes.