Chapter 10 #4
I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me.
I’m never confrontational like this … and I never hold people’s fates over their heads.
Ironically, likely due to the trauma from watching my mother murdered — the memories of which I know I’ve deliberately suppressed — I never give a fuck about the past or who might have treated me …
No, not me. My mother.
Maybe I have it mixed up in my head.
Maybe there never was enough time for Tau to have actually listened to my mother instead of fighting her and insisting he and his mages could protect us —
Under the table, Rath takes my hand. I allow myself to look away from Sedi, to glance over at him and to deliberately soften my expression. Gaze locked to mine, he grins. Just a small private moment between us.
Rought reaches over to the laptop and toggles off the microphone. “Do we need to do this right now?” he asks, face turned away from the camera so Sedi can’t read his lips. “Can you just message him instead of a face-to-face?”
“My apologies, Conduit,” Sedi says formally, not muted on her end. “The next time you call, I’ll be sure to —”
A hand lands on her shoulder. She presses her lips together, stifling a shudder under his touch, but I catch it in her expression. Almost everyone I touch reacts the same way. Then she slides out of her seat, giving her chair to the newcomer.
I find myself staring at my father, face-to-face for the first time in years. As far as my memory can tell me, he hasn’t aged a day since the first time I laid eyes on him. Dark haired, tall and slim, with violet eyes edged in violence.
Okay, that might be a little fanciful on my part.
But I know what he can do with the immense power that runs through his veins.
I watched him teleport into a room and drop the Cataclysm with a single word.
A single word he presumed would instantly kill the interloper who murdered his lover.
It hadn’t, but I now suspect that wasn’t due to any shortcoming on my father’s part.
“Zaya.”
He says my name like he loves me.
I just gaze back at him, memories of his face ricocheting around in my head.
I’m not certain why it feels so raw, though I suspect it might have something to do with releasing the severed soul bonds and realizing how interconnected everything was from my mother’s death forward. From even before my mother’s death.
Perhaps this is just another task leveled on me by the universe — a push to say farewell to everything that once formed Zaya, and to welcome becoming the Conduit.
“Zaya?” he says again. His English is barely accented, but I remember how that accent thickens as he gets frustrated. “Tell me what you need. Then we’ll discuss where the fuck you’ve been and why you haven’t returned any important calls. Or messages.”
Rought snorts. “Bossy. No wonder she doesn’t want to call you daddy, brother.”
Rath half laughs, half chokes. “I’m not interested in filling the role.”
And just like that — and completely inappropriately, because it’s clear my father has no problem following the muted conversation given his deepening glower — I find myself smiling. Once again, I feel settled in my skin.
I reach forward and toggle the microphone on. “Zhen Qi,” I say formally. “These are my soul-bound mates, Rath and Rought.”
Zhen’s glower turns into a narrow-eyed frown. “I thought …”
“You thought that Disa disposed of them?”
He huffs. “I thought she discouraged the relationship, given her connection to their father. I didn’t know you were soul bound, to anyone.”
“In 1918, your family tried to take control of the North American intersection point the moment it transferred to Disa. The moment she became the Conduit.”
My father blinks, clearly thrown by the change in topic. “That’s … that was before my time, and I’m not certain it happened quite in that order. But yes. The Zhen … Dynasty wanted to ensure that the intersection points were always held by the strongest of the awry.”
“Wanted … past tense?” I ask, allowing myself to be diverted for a moment. Also, probably good information to have.
“I’ve … curtailed the practice. Your mother …” He swallows, dropping his gaze from me for the first time since he sat down. “I’m not certain you knew, but your mother and I were soul bound as well. But … the rivalry ran deep between the Gages and the Zhens.”
“Rivalry …” I echo, a little heavy on the sarcasm. Though I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to lose a soul-bound mate. And his daughter at the same time.
My father schools his features. “May I ask why it’s of such importance that you would break your vow of silence and actually reach out?”
“The intersection points are vulnerable through the transitions, yes?”
He nods. “If there isn’t a network in place … or the power isn’t voluntarily settled on the successor. And if the transition is abrupt.”
“The attempted takeover of the North American intersection point in the early twentieth century fucked with the political landscape of the entire continent.”
“It was unstable to begin with, but yes.”
“The night my mother was killed, your intersection point was compromised —”
“By nulls, not by essence-wielders,” my father says, interrupting my train of thought. “The shifters were clever, though even following on the nulls’ efforts, I still have no idea how they breached the castle.”
“Oso was Disa’s mate,” I say, my heart aching. “Even with a rejected soul bond, he holds enough of a tie to the intersection point that he can cross through the boundary. I thought it was just here, but then … I realized the connection between my mother’s death and my own first death.”
A myriad of emotions flicker over my father’s face, as if he can’t figure out how to even begin to react. His voice is cool, stilted, when he finally speaks. “Oso?”
“According to her journal, Disa was in the process of assuming the power of the Conduit and the guardianship of the intersection point when she found her soul-bound mates. Three of them. She believed they must have been called to her, because without the power fully settled, she needed help defending the intersection point. From you.”
“Not me,” Zhen snaps. “I wasn’t even born.”
I push on, needing to just get all my thoughts out, to see if I’m correct. To see if he can help me, even just a little. “Something happened in the defense of this intersection point … and it … cracked.”
“Cracked?” Zhen echoes doubtfully.
“There is a wound here … possibly in the fabric of our dimension.”
He frowns deeply.
“And … something came through … maybe it was just an influence, whispering in Oso’s ear.
But then he picked up a knife and killed his brother, who was also bound to him by the universe.
Disa rejected him, and I think that served to deepen the otherworldly connection.
Then Oso killed my mother. He killed me.
Disa did something to him in defense of me.
Or maybe he came for the intersection point and I was in the way.
Either way, he is no longer a man, no longer just a shifter once bound to the Conduit. ”
Zhen is shaking his head, though in disbelief, not denial. I can’t really blame him. I’ve just shoved a shitload of half-formed thoughts at him.
“Oso?” he says again.
“The Cataclysm,” I say. Then I give him the clarification he really wants.
“The Cataclysm can cross through the boundaries of a claimed intersection point. The Cataclysm has tried to take an intersection point for himself, at least twice, but maybe three times. The Cataclysm killed my mother, your soul-bound mate.”
Zhen slumps back in his chair, mind clearly whirling. “You think … you think the boundary to another dimension has been compromised. Enough for a creature to come through and inhabit a shifter?”
“A shifter tied to the Conduit.”
Zhen falls silent for long enough that it’s Rath who prompts me to continue.
“Another dimension? That’s … based on what exactly, Zaya? I know this isn’t all just supposition.”
“Based on the portal the Cataclysm threw me through, expecting I would just pop out the other side at his compound in the Federation,” I say, keeping my gaze on my father. “He was wrong.”
“You were trapped,” Zhen says, thinking out loud. “Because … you … you were cut off from all essence.”
I nod, pressing my hand over the amulet hanging around my neck. “The shard saved me. Or more specifically, harnessing the essence contained in the shard helped.”
“You believe in the theory of dimensional layers?” Rath says doubtfully. “Or … that the portal could have been connected through another world within our universe? Same dimension, but different planet?”
I shrug, shaking my head and honestly not really knowing the answer. “You believe that nine gods laid down their power and their lives to create a barrier around the earth,” I finally say. “That their essence, anchored in the intersection points, fuels that barrier and threads through us all.”
“You believe,” Rought adds quietly, “that another goddess still walks this earth, all that energy threading through her … all our fates, our life force, drawn from the universe and threaded through us all.”
“Nine soul-bound essence-wielders,” my father murmurs. “Even if you don’t subscribe to the gods theory …”
“And what does the boundary truly protect us from?” I ask, already certain I know the answer but needing my father to confirm it.
“Seventy years, if I’ve got the timeline right.
For seventy years, something has whispered in Oso’s ear.
Something spoke of great power, maybe even infinite power, playing on natural jealousy.
Until Oso commissioned a knife, somehow whetted it with Disa’s blood, and managed to murder his younger brother Ward with it.
Maybe intending to kill his other brother, Ari, as well.
Disa’s attempted rejection of the soul bond was another blow, no doubt, allowing the being speaking to Oso to gain a greater hold. ”