Jesse
I pressed my fingers against the window and read the weave for the hundredth time. The threads of my father's cage had gone slack enough that I could push two fingers between them now. Not enough to cut. Not yet.
It should have felt like hope. Instead, it weighed heavy on my shoulders.
Christian hadn't moved in two days. He'd gone the color of old ash under his tan skin, and he refused to feed because Ryan was already way too thin. I couldn't help either of them even if I wanted to. Mated vampires took from one vein only, and my blood was worthless to him.
Besides, if he died, my sister would still live. She would be devastated, of course. But she'd get over it. Eventually.
Shea slept against my shoulder, the feeding I'd given her four days ago wearing off. I'd put the pilots under for the fifth time an hour ago.
Ryan came down the aisle and folded herself into the seat across from mine.
Cruthú immediately abandoned the headrest she'd been plucking at with her beak and went to her lap.
Ryan's fingers found the raven's feathers without looking, and I was happy she found some comfort there.
My friend was suffering along with the rest of us, and my anger was indescribable every time I looked at her.
How we were all still alive, I didn't know. But when we got out, it would be my life's mission to kill my father.
Ryan glanced back at her mate. "He won't take from me," she said.
"I know."
"He thinks he's protecting me."
"He's an idiot. It runs in the species."
She almost smiled as she glanced at Shea. "She feeds from you."
"That's because I don't give her a choice."
Looking out the window, she chewed on that for a minute before changing the subject. "What was she like?" she asked suddenly. "Our mother. The real one, not the—" She gestured at nothing. "Not the coven story."
My eyes roved over my sister's beautiful red and blond hair, so much like the mother she never knew. "She burned everything she cooked."
Ryan blinked at me.
"Everything. Toast. Water, once, I'm fairly sure." The memories came easily when I wanted them to. "She hated shoes because she said shoes muffled the ground. And she was extraordinarily rude to anyone who thought well of themselves. Council elders. Visiting High Priestesses."
Ryan laughed, small and cracked. Then her expression changed.
"Did she ever talk about me?"
I could have lied, but it wasn't in me to be that cruel. Not to her.
"No."
Her jaw tightened and her eyes filled with sadness. I leaned forward before she could misunderstand.
"Ryan. A name is a handle. It's the first thing a djinn grabs.
She scrubbed you out of the coven records with her own hand, and she died without ever saying your name so our father could never take it off her tongue and find out about you.
She sent you away to protect you." I nodded at her hands.
"You tap your thumb against your first finger three times when you're thinking.
She did the same thing. You didn't learn that from watching her.
She's a part of you, and she always will be, just as you were always a part of her. "
Ryan looked down at her hand. Her thumb stilled mid-tap.
She didn't cry, but I could tell she wanted to, and maybe she would've if she wasn't so exhausted and dehydrated.
I looked out the window as she put her hand over her mouth and gave her what privacy I could until she pulled herself together.
When I looked back, Cruthú was pressed into her stomach to comfort her.
She liked Ryan almost as much as she liked Shea now.
"Okay," she said eventually. "Okay. Thank you for telling me."
"You're welcome. I'll tell you more if you want, when you're ready."
After a while, Ryan tipped her chin at the window. "Tell me about the window thing."
"You don't want the window thing right now."
"Yes, I do." She sniffed hard. "I need something to be angry at."
Fair enough.
"The cage he's holding us in is weakening. It's been weakening since our first week here, but it's accelerated now. Which means he's distracted."
"But."
"But my father has never let go of anything he wanted.
" I put my palm flat on the window again and felt the hum of his magic come up through the bones of my hand.
"He built this to hold four people he considers valuable.
Two of them are his children. And yet, he's stopped paying attention to it completely. "
Ryan pushed herself up out of the seat and put one knee on the empty seat by the window, and put her own hand on the glass beside mine, trying to feel for herself. "What do you think it means?"
"Not anything good." I watched her face for a moment. "Can you feel it? The magic?"
She nodded. "I think so. Probably not as well as you." Suddenly she stilled, like she was listening, and then she took her hand off the glass. "He's not distracted. He's high."
Removing my own hand, I rubbed my palm on my thigh. "What do you mean?"
"It's not just distraction," she said, her voice low. "I know what that feels like. This is... euphoria."
If anyone would know that feeling, it would be my sister.
She hadn't had an easy time with her powers until she met Christian, choosing to quiet the voices with drugs instead of learning to work with the spirits who tried so hard to talk to her.
Her addiction would've taken her life, and it was the one thing I was grateful to Christian for. His blood saved her.
The spirits haven't spoken to either of us since we boarded this plane, however. Their silence should've warned me something was off.
Cruthú shifted in her lap, sensing the tension.
Ryan's gaze flicked to the window, to the gray nothing beyond it. "He's not just distracted, Jesse, he's intoxicated."
A cold knot formed in my stomach, even as my heart warmed hearing her say my name.
Ryan leaned forward as much as she could without crushing her raven friend. "When you're high like that, you don't care about anything else. Not food, not sleep, not the fucking air you're breathing. All that matters is the next hit." She looked at me, her green eyes too bright.
"Why don't you try again to get Christian to feed?" I suggested. I needed time to think.
She stared at me for a long moment. "Okay," she finally said, then she gently put Cruthú on the arm of the chair and slowly made her way back to her mate.
Alone again other than Shea sleeping beside me, I finally let the pieces fall where they'd been trying to fall for weeks.
My father never acted on impulse. He methodically targeted each Moss generation, always starting with the most powerful witch—and I suddenly understood who that was.
Everyone thought it was the male, like me.
But we were wrong. We were all horribly wrong. He wanted his family to join him, yes. But the one he was really looking for was her.
The one he lost so long ago.
As my sister pointed out, my father wasn't just distracted. A distracted enemy could be outmaneuvered.
But an addict?
An addict would burn the world down for one more taste.