29. Jules
Jules
The room is too quiet.
Not normal quiet. Not the post-show kind where everyone is too exhausted to speak and we simply exist together until breathing stops feeling like work. This silence has weight, like moving too quickly might crack it open.
We are back at the hotel after medical checks, statements, and an evacuation everyone is already calling a technical failure. Blaire stayed behind with Camille to manage the fallout, which means the four of us have been deposited in one suite with strict instructions not to leave.
I sit on the edge of the bed with one leg extended because my knee is already stiffening. Someone wrapped it backstage. I don’t remember who. There is fresh support around my ribs too, tight enough to remind me every time I breathe too deeply.
Cool. Love that for me.
Mina sits on the floor with her back against the bed, knees drawn to her chest and hands clasped so tightly her knuckles have gone pale. She hasn’t said anything since we returned.
Not a joke. Not a complaint.
Nothing.
That’s how I know it was bad.
Remy paces between the window and the door. Not erratically. Nothing Remy does is erratic. But she has not stopped moving, which says more than panic would.
Kaia stands near the window with her arms crossed, staring out over Tokyo as though she expects something to follow us back.
No one speaks.
Which means I have to.
“Okay,” I say, because silence has never been my thing. “So. That was…”
I stop because I don’t actually have a word for it.
“Not ideal,” I finish.
No one laughs.
Right.
I scrub a hand over my face and immediately regret it when the movement pulls at my ribs. “Love the energy in here.”
Still nothing.
I look at Mina. She does not lift her head.
Yeah. No.
I lean forward as far as the bandaging allows. “Hey. Moonbeam.”
She flinches.
Only slightly, but enough to tighten something in my chest.
“Mina,” I say more softly.
She inhales like she has been underwater too long and only just remembered how breathing works. When her eyes finally meet mine, there is something in them I have never seen before.
Not fear exactly.
Recognition.
“I saw it,” she says.
Her voice is quiet and flat, like she is trying to keep the words from giving it shape.
“Yeah,” I say lightly. “We all did. Big fan. Would not recommend.”
She shakes her head. “No. Not the Mouthpieces.”
Remy stops pacing.
Kaia turns away from the window.
The room changes.
Mina’s gaze remains fixed on mine. “The shadow. The Patron. I saw more of it this time. It was definitely the same thing from Harbor’s Edge.”
The words land heavily.
That thing in the harbor. The presence behind the demon. The one Mina Saw watching through it before it followed us back to the Tower.
The one we never understood.
My stomach twists.
“That’s…” I start, then stop because even I cannot joke my way around it. “That’s not great.”
Understatement of the century.
Remy runs a hand through her hair. “That tracks. The structure was too layered. Too coordinated.”
“Coordinated,” I repeat. “Fun word for something that tried to wear me like a costume.”
“You weren’t fully taken.”
“Wow. Comforting.”
Kaia steps away from the window. Her expression is steady in the way that makes everything feel slightly less likely to collapse.
“Mina,” she says, “what did you actually see?”
Mina swallows. “Not all of it. It wasn’t fully here. The Mouthpieces were, but they were only pieces. Ways for it to reach us.”
“Like hands,” Remy says.
Mina nods. “Or eyes.”
A chill slides down my spine.
“It was stretched through the screens and the crowd,” she continues. “When Heartglass reflected it, I could tell most of it was still somewhere else.”
“But it was watching,” Kaia says.
“Yes.”
Watching.
Not attacking directly. Not fully manifesting.
Watching like tonight was an experiment.
My fingers curl into the blanket beneath me.
Because I felt it too. Not the way Mina did, but there was a moment before Camille shut the channel, when the pressure inside me changed. It stopped forcing me to move.
It looked through me.
At me.
Like it knew exactly what I was. What I could become. What it wanted me for.
I shove the thought away.
Nope.
Not unpacking that tonight.
“Okay,” I say, forcing my voice into something closer to normal. “Big creepy cosmic thing is still out there. Love that journey for us.”
No one corrects me.
Which is worse.
Remy folds her arms. “Camille disrupted the channel, not the source.”
“Translation: we broke the speaker, not the sound system.”
“More or less.”
Great. Amazing.
I lean back on my hands, then immediately adjust when my ribs object. Everything hurts. My knee. My chest. My head. Parts of me I did not know could hurt have apparently decided to participate.
Underneath all of it is another awareness.
Camille.
The bond places her somewhere beyond the suite. Not close enough to hear or touch, but present. Focused. Controlled. Furious at someone.
Probably Voss.
Still working.
Of course she is.
The thought should annoy me. It doesn’t.
Also not unpacking that.
I drag my attention back to the room. “To be clear, we did win. We’re alive. The Mouthpieces dropped. The channel is closed. That counts.”
Remy tilts her head. “The primary channel is closed.”
“Okay, wow. Not helpful.”
“The distinction matters.”
“Does it have to matter tonight?”
She looks away.
Apparently not.
Kaia intervenes before I can turn sarcasm into a full defensive strategy. “We survived. That’s what matters right now.”
Right now.
Yeah. That phrase is doing a lot of work.
I look at Mina again. She still seems half caught in whatever she Saw.
“The Patron isn’t just sending things after us,” I say slowly. “It recognized me.”
No one interrupts, so apparently I have to keep going.
“When it was inside the system, when it was using me, there was a second where it stopped pushing.” I swallow. “It knew I was there. It knew what I was.”
The admission feels too close to the sensation itself.
Mina nods. “It wasn’t surprised by you. It was waiting.”
My body remembers every camera showing my face and the crowd moving when I moved.
Then Camille stepping into it.
I choose you because I love you.
My chest tightens for a completely different reason.
Bad timing, heart. Read the room.
“We’ll deal with it,” Kaia says.
Future tense.
Not denial. Not avoidance. Only not tonight.
I nod because, yes, not tonight.
Remy starts pacing again, slower this time. “We also need to determine what remains active. Camille terminated our direct access, but the larger structure didn’t collapse.”
“She’ll figure it out,” I say.
The words come too quickly.
Three heads turn towards me.
I lift my chin. “What?”
Kaia studies me. “Nothing.”
“That was definitely a something.”
“She said she loved you,” Remy says.
Heat climbs into my face before I can stop it.
I lift my chin. “Yeah, well. What’s not to love?”
The satisfaction in my voice is probably embarrassing, but I don’t care.
“And the entire internet may have heard it,” Mina adds softly.
The official feed cut before then, but thousands of phones were still raised.
I have been deliberately avoiding that thought.
“Good,” I say, then immediately realize how that sounds. “I mean, not good. Obviously. Privacy. Boundaries. Terrible.”
Remy gives me a flat look.
Kaia’s mouth twitches. “You look very upset.”
“I’m devastated.”
“You’re blushing,” Mina says.
“I’m injured. My body is doing random things.”
“Very heartfelt, specific things,” Kaia adds.
“Can we stay focused on the cosmic horror?”
Mina’s mouth twitches.
Progress.
I point at her. “There. That almost looked like a smile.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Liar.”
Some of the tension finally leaves her shoulders.
Not much.
Enough.
Kaia sits beside me on the bed. “Blaire knows we hid something.”
“She deserves the truth,” Mina says quietly.
Remy stops near the window. “We still don’t know who has access to her communications.”
“She protected us for years,” Kaia says.
“I know.”
“Then we tell her,” Kaia presses.
Remy’s jaw tightens. “Camille said—“
“I know what Camille said.” The sharpness in Kaia’s voice makes the room still again.
I understand both sides, which is deeply inconvenient.
Camille was right. We did not know who was listening, and warning the wrong person could have destroyed the only advantage we had.
But Blaire stood in that room and asked whether we were hiding something. We looked her in the face and lied.
It feels wrong.
“We needed her tonight.” I rub my thumb over the edge of the blanket. “We tell her when she gets back.”
Remy exhales. “Camille may disagree.”
“Then she can disagree.” The words surprise even me.
I trust Camille. Apparently enough to let her rewrite the magical structure attached to my soul while I was being possessed in front of millions of people.
But trust does not mean she gets to decide everything alone.
Mina lifts her head fully for the first time. “Together?”
“Together,” Kaia says.
Remy is silent for several seconds before nodding.
Good.
One problem temporarily arranged into a shape we can survive.
I push myself straighter, ignoring my body’s immediate protest. “So, summary. The Mouthpieces network is down, the people it hijacked are alive, and our contracts are no longer serving me up as the world’s most emotionally unstable buffet.
The Patron is still out there, and it has now developed a personal interest in me. ”
“That is reductive,” Remy says.
“Is it inaccurate?”
She considers. “No.”
“Great. So we didn’t stop it.”
The words hang between us. No one rushes to soften them.
Kaia meets my gaze. “No.”
At least she’s honest.
I release a breath that is almost a laugh. “Cool.”
A beat passes.
Then, because apparently I do not know when to stop, I add, “It knows we can see it now.”
No one disagrees.
And somehow, that is the worst part.