Trey
I didn’t want to leave her.
I woke up with Nova curled up next to me. She looked so fragile compared to the woman glowing in that bunker yesterday.
We all need to figure out that’s the same woman.
She’s more than I ever dreamed.
I can tell by the time I get downstairs that none of us slept all that great. Locke’s already at the table with coffee he’s not drinking. At least Vaelor’s at the counter doing something with eggs that smells amazing.
Rane comes down while I’m pouring coffee. Hair still half-flattened on one side.
“She okay?” Locke asks him before he’s even reached the bottom stair.
“Sleeping.” Rane gets his own mug. “I think she’s just exhausted. She’ll be better now.” He pauses. “She’s going to be better now.”
Nobody argues with that.
I hope he’s right.
I pull out a chair and sit.
“So, Silas,” I say.
And suddenly they’re all looking at me.
Alright, that got their attention.
“He’s not going to let this go,” I say. “I know him. He doesn’t lose and move on. That’s not how he works.”
“He lost yesterday,” Locke says.
“Yeah. Which is exactly why we have a problem.”
Kyron turns from the window. “He walked in on his father telling Nova things he probably wasn’t supposed to hear. He got publicly shut down. Then she lit up and he flinched.” His jaw moves. “He’s going to need to make that mean something else.”
“And Harrick?” Rane asks.
“Harrick’s an idiot,” I say. “Always has been. But he’s Silas’s idiot and he goes where Silas goes, which means he’ll be back too.”
Locke’s hands wrap tighter around the mug. “Let him come.”
“We need to be smarter than that,” Kyron says. “Letting him come is how we end up here again.”
Locke looks at him. Doesn’t argue. Which means he agrees and doesn’t want to say so.
Something hits the pan. Vaelor doesn’t look up from the stove.
“Then we’ll be ready,” Locke says.
I nod.
“Shouldn’t be too hard to be smarter than Harrick,” Rane mumbles into his coffee cup.
Kyron grins and shoves at him.
“Hey!”
I chuckle before I realize it. I missed this.
Beckett closes his laptop.
“She was fucking spectacular yesterday.”
Locke’s mouth moves. Almost a grin.
“You should have seen her with Laith.” He shakes his head.
There’s something in his face, pride maybe, but bigger than that.
Fiercer. “She walked in there alone and she just — he didn’t know what hit him.
I guarantee he thought he was going to manage her.
And she just looked at him and started pulling the whole thing apart. ”
Kyron’s face lights up. “I wish I had fucking seen it.”
Same.
“She walked in there with her shoulder still healing,” Beckett says. “And told him too bad when he said she was running out of time.”
“Yeah.” Locke’s still grinning. “That’s what I mean.”
“And then Silas,” Beckett says. “When she went white — the wings — the look on his face.” He closes his laptop the rest of the way. “He was scared of her.”
Good. He should be.
“She didn’t even finish the sentence,” Rane says. “Just — if you fucking touch me — and that was it. Done. The fucker standing there like he suddenly remembered he was mortal.”
Kyron’s laugh bursts out of him.
“And Brent,” Rane adds.
Everyone’s face turns serious.
Vaelor turns from the stove. “He found us after. Told us what he told her.” He sets the pan down. “Her crying. The wound healing.” He’s quiet for a second. “All that time and he never stopped looking for her. On his own. Without anyone asking him to.”
Nobody says anything to that.
“Heard Eli got hurt,” Kyron says. “In the fighting.”
“Zoe said bed rest for a while. He’ll be okay.” I wrap my hands around my mug. “Someone needs to tell Nova.”
Nods around the table.
She’ll want to know. She’ll probably also try to do something about it. My lips twitch at that.
Rane takes the eggs Vaelor puts in front of him. Eats. I catch the crow settling on the windowsill outside. Kyron glances at it. Doesn’t say anything.
“It makes me sick,” Vaelor says.
He’s still at the stove. Not looking at any of us.
“What they did to her.” His voice is even. His hands aren’t — the spoon in his grip is too tight, knuckles pale. “Like she was a thing. Like she wasn’t a person.”
He shakes his head.
“A variable, Laith called her. A variable,” Beckett adds. I’m not sure that was helpful, but it makes my stomach twist.
Vaelor sets the spoon down hard. “She has nightmares. She reaches for food like someone’s going to take it away. She spent all that time alone because of what they decided to do with her life before she was old enough to know her own name.”
Rane opens his mouth.
Closes it.
Looks down at the table.
I look at my hands around the mug and think about the chair they had her in. The gown. The way she looked when Beckett carried her out. All of us taking care of her when she wouldn’t wake up. Okay, Vaelor mostly. But we all helped.
That morning she saw me in front of the house.
Fuck.
The sound she made when she finally understood we were alive. When she ran into my arms.
And she still walked into that bunker yesterday.
Alone.
That’s the part I can’t get past.
“She keeps apologizing,” Locke says quietly. He’s looking at the table. “For being taken. For being the person they keep coming after. Like it was something she did.”
“I know,” Kyron says. He looks like he’s sick suddenly.
And then it hits me.
He’s thinking about how he acted in the Community Hall when we all woke up on those mattresses. When we realized she was gone.
“She said sorry to Brent. For what happened to him. In the fighting.” Locke’s jaw tightens. “He’s the one that was injured and she’s the one apologizing.”
Nobody has anything to say to that either.
The crow shifts on the windowsill. Ruffles its feathers once and goes still again.
“I won’t let them take her again,” I say before I can stop myself.
Vaelor stops cooking and turns toward me. Determined.
“No, we won’t.