THE PHYSICAL CHANGES to the Sanctuary after the explosion that took out the Tac Training Center are a glaring reminder of the loss within the community.
I can’t walk down to North’s offices without passing through the town center, which has now been turned into our makeshift training area. When we first moved here, I couldn’t help but gently poke fun at North’s intense need for aesthetic perfection for the areas that he’s in control of, and the town center is no different.
With perfectly cobbled pathways and a large fountain in the center of a landscaped area, it’s the perfect place for members of the community to sit and eat lunch or meet up with friends. It’s something that I’ve always hoped to do but never quite felt comfortable enough to, thanks to all of the eyes that are constantly on me. It’s idyllic, the center point of the entire town, and it faces both the dining hall and North’s offices, with a small road that leads to the Tac Training Center. It has always felt like the heart of the Sanctuary. The very first day that Kieran Transported us in, it was here that I got my very first view of the town. It was a beautiful introduction. Now it’s covered in training mats and bodies, people flooding the areas as they work through their stances and wait for their turn in the sparring ring.
I stand and look over the lines and lines of Tac personnel with a critical eye. With this many bodies, you would think that there would be some dissent or disorganization, but as a testament to how the entire Sanctuary has pulled together since Vivian’s death, there is none of that.
More surprising than anything else, there have been lots of new recruits. Dozens of people from Top Tier families have finally come forward to offer their services, adding a huge arsenal of Gifts to our skill set, and I can see the respect in North, Gryphon, and even Nox at the families’ apparent change of heart.
I haven’t been brave enough yet to ask Gryphon if there’s an ulterior motive in play.
I’m sure there has to be one, but instead, I focus on what this means for whatever comes next with the god-bond. The god-bond who wields Pain and has reportedly gone insane because of the years of rebirth. The one who killed Nox while targeting North, happily taking out his brother instead.
I get the feeling we will need all the power we can get our hands on.
I watch Gryphon as he scrutinizes the recruits. It’s one of my favorite things to do, to guess how he’s feeling about their progress before he opens his mouth. I like to see if I can read him as well as the rest of them can read me. It’s surprising to me how quickly I have come to know my Bonded as well as I know myself.
The reactions these days hardly ever surprise me. Even when I’m caught off guard by something, I have such security now in our relationships, both individually and as a whole. I know exactly where I stand with all of them, and there’s nothing quite so incredible as all of us working together as a cohesive unit.
I wait until I’m sure that Gryphon is too busy to notice whether I’m here or not before I head back up to North’s office, leaving him behind with a quick, cordial nod of my head. I see the dark look in his eyes as he watches me walk off. I know that he is far happier with PDA than North is, but it still feels entirely inappropriate to engage in such things in front of his TacTeam. Especially only meters away from where the flowers for Vivian’s monument still stand, growing little by little every day as the community continues to mourn him. I get choked up if I stare at them for too long, and I duck my head as I step into the building.
There’s a few operatives in there, a couple of them getting changed in the locker room, but each of them smiles and nods at me respectfully as I move towards the elevator without a word.
It kills me a little inside to know that it took Vivian’s death to bring people together like this. When the doors open to North’s office, I find him sitting behind a table, working through the plans for the council vote. There is a coffee cup the size of my head sitting next to him, already half-empty, and the vicious muttering under his breath lets me know exactly how well this is all going.
“I don’t for the life of me understand how there are so many ways to cheat at voting. The corruption in this world is baffling.”
I smile and shake my head at him. “You always told me I was naive for thinking people could be good. Sounds like you’re confused.”
He places his pen back down on the desk and then leans back, his hands rising above his head as he stretches, and I enjoy the sight for a moment. The long lines of him, even covered in his suit like this, are a welcome sight.
His voice is a seductive drawl to me. “I’m well aware that men will always be corrupt. It just pisses me off that it becomes my problem to deal with.”
I blow out a breath and move to the window to look out at the lines of Tac personnel as they’re put through their paces on the sparring mats. I watch as a son of one of the Top Tier families uses his Telekinetic power to throw someone away from himself, marveling at his ability to do so.
My bond is quiet in my chest, happy to sleep and build up energy for what’s to come, and I leave it be. It has always known best about these things, even when it didn’t know how to communicate that to me.
North’s old assistant, Penelope, is the perfect example of that.
The hatred and utter loathing it had for her, even before it knew why, was something that we should have never ignored.
To think that we had a fledgling god-bond in his inner circle for so long sends a chill through my body now, as facing the Elemental had only days ago. I’d watched the entire fight through my bond’s eyes. Seeing Penelope there with her arms stretched out wide, her eyes glowing, black voids, all of it had set my temper off all over again.
I’ve been very good about not rubbing North’s face in it, but probably only because of Vivian’s death.
“Are you really that worried about corruption now, considering the way everyone’s acting?”
He can hear the resentment in my voice, so he steps up behind me to sling an arm around my waist, moving me closer into his body as he watches the sparring with me. “It wasn’t just Vivian, Bonded. It was the council dissolving as well. You know? A lot of those men and women down there felt as though they couldn’t join TacTeams because of their family legacy. If they ran off on a mission and died, who would take up their council seats? What would happen to their families? There’s a lot of responsibility on all of them, one that I understand keenly. Dissolving the council and making it a popular vote has changed a lot of things for some of these kids.”
I scowl for a moment out the window, but I know there’s no point in arguing with North. He wouldn’t lie to me anyway. It serves no purpose.
I grumble under my breath, “So now they’re just free to go off on missions and die without having to think about what their parents will think of it? That also sounds pretty crazy.”
He chuckles and dips down to press a kiss to my shoulder. “I don’t think any of them believe that they would die on a mission, Bonded. Especially when they haven’t been out there before. There’s a recklessness when they first join that takes a few missions to shake out of them. I have no doubt that some of them are using this as a campaign platform. They’re planning on going out on a few missions, and then they’ll run for the next council seat using their experience as a party platform. I have no doubt that a lot of them have ulterior motives, but there are a handful that Gryphon has found who are genuine. Plus, the strengths that they all bring are useful, no matter what has led them to this point. Quite frankly, we can’t afford to be picky right now.”
I sigh and lean back in his arms, letting my head drop back against his chest and enjoying a quiet moment with him.
One of our last.
I’M SURPRISED, but not completely shocked, when the next part of our plan comes together thanks to the work of Sawyer and Nox.
Both Sawyer and Sage have made comments to me about their work together, and I was surprised when Sawyer was so nonchalant and calm about it. He’s only really gotten snappy about the lack of organization on the Bassingers’ part when it came to their digital records.
“Considering how fucking perfectly they’ve archived all of their paper shit, they really did not give a fuck about labeling files or setting up any sort of indexing matrices. Honestly, I feel like showing up at your house and punching Atlas in his smug, rich-boy face in the hopes that his dickhead ancestors feel it. But I also like my soul where it is, so that’s probably not the best idea,” Sawyer had snarked at me when I showed up at their house to check in on Kieran and have lunch with Sage.
Unfortunately, even with Felix’s full attention and his Bonded’s healing abilities, Kieran is on a slow track to recovery. Every bone in his body had been smashed to pieces, and that’s not exactly something that’s a quick fix. The stress it’s put Sage under makes me feel bloodthirsty all over again.
The only upside to this is the fact that Wick has stepped up to the plate for his Bonded Group and the community in a big way, filling in with Gryphon in the Tac Training sessions beautifully, without complaint or any need for praise. I can see why he was such a great candidate for the TacTeams when he studied at Draven. There’s no mistaking that he is a leader in his own right. Even with the cloud hanging over their house that comes with Kieran’s injuries, I can tell how united and settled Sage’s Bonded Group has become.
It’s an immense relief for me, even while I am concerned about Kieran. Vivian’s death has brought up old traumas I was hoping to leave in unmarked boxes tucked away in the back of my mind, never to be opened again, and yet here we are.
Nox and Sawyer aren’t exactly the most obvious duo to pair together on missions, however all of the work that the two of them were doing has paid off. Going through the Bassingers’ files, both digital and the hardcopies that Nox managed to categorize and get home safely, has been a full-time job for them both.
Between that, and the memories that the Corvus has been filtering through to Nox, a plan becomes very clear to him. The problem is that he hates the plan with a vehemence that has him searching for something, anything, else for weeks.
Nothing else comes up.
Once he accepts that it’s our only option, he’s forced to broach it with North and I. He does so before the rest of our Bonded Group, and that in itself sends warning bells into my mind.
“Under no circumstances will my Bonded be used as bait. Find a new plan,” North says in his most savage and firm tone, one that I have never heard in our Bonded Group’s direction, let alone his brother’s, but Nox doesn’t react to it, he simply crosses his arms and raises his chin in defiance.
It’s a fighting stance that I know so well, and I start to mentally prepare for the fallout of this conversation. I already know it’s going to be horrendous.
“You’re making it sound as though I’m going to drug her and string her up somewhere, nothing more than cannon fodder. That’s not what I’m talking about. The information that the Bassingers had been collecting concurs with what the Corvus has said. The Pain god uses its power as a trap to separate us; it always does. That’s exactly what it’s going to do, North. It will drive a wedge between us once it has lured us into a trap. As soon as it gets Oleander alone, it will kill her.”
North shakes his head at him. “It can’t. We’re stronger than it now. There are also six of us and one of it. There is no chance that it will get the better of us.”
He doesn’t sound cocky, merely confident, stating the facts that the god-bonds have said to us over and over again, but I still feel the same pit of unease in my gut.
We’re going to be stronger than the Pain god-bond, thanks to our Bonding, but are we going to make it out alive? We currently have a success rate of zero in hundreds of lives, so I don’t find myself feeling very optimistic about it, even knowing the difference of this lifetime from the last. I feel stronger than I ever have been before, but who knows if it’s enough?
Who knows if it will ever be enough?
Nox keeps his eyes on North, staring a hole right into his brother as he does whatever he needs to do to win this argument. “The Pain god will use that against us. It will use our confidence against us. We both know it, because that’s exactly what we would do. As much as we all might want to think differently, it’s smart. Smart enough to have survived this long and to start an entire movement amongst the Gifted community to hide within and build resources against us. It has manipulated the strongest of our community, over and over and over. If we let our egos into this conversation, it will win again.”
North shakes his head, and then his eyes catch mine and he shakes it all over again. “The risk is too great. Find another plan. Send me… or you. Send any of the rest of us, I don’t care. Not Oleander.”
My bond prickles inside my chest at the very thought of that, but I understand the hypocrisy there. The moment Nox suggested I be used as bait, I was happy to throw myself headfirst into the danger that is sending such a chill through North’s blood, the evidence so clear on his face.
“It won’t come after one of us, and you know it. It always takes the Eternal first. The only way it can beat us is by taking the Eternal first. Hundreds of lifetimes—it always goes for her. Why do you think it hunted her parents the moment it heard of her ability? Why do you think that it wanted to carve her into pieces? It wasn’t just Silas Davies, you know. He was just the idiot that lost her, in the Pain god’s eyes. Whether you like it or not, brother, it has always come down to Oleander. Even now, we can’t deny that… no matter how badly we want to.”
North shakes his head again, pressing his hands against the table as he searches through the paperwork like a ‘Plan B’ might suddenly spring out of the words there, but all that stares back at him is the black ink.
There is no arguing with Nox about these things, and we both know it. He’s the researcher. He always has been happiest losing himself in books and data, building a path for us once he’s sure he has checked every angle. If he says that using me as bait is the only way, I don’t actually need to hear anything else.
I trust it.
I also trust him, not just because he’s my Bonded, but because I’ve seen the heart of him. I’ve seen every moment of his life, every second to this point. There’s no doubt in my mind that he wouldn’t even be suggesting this to North if there was another way, and he certainly wouldn’t be suggesting it if he didn’t think that we could win. He would still be tucked away in that little library of archives, searching for a loophole.
If he doesn’t believe that we need that, then that’s enough for me.
“I can do it, North,” I say confidently. He shakes his head again, turning away from us both, but I force my voice out even stronger.
I push away from the table and circle around to North, forcing him to meet my eye. “I want to do it—and I’m going to—with your blessing or not. My bond and I are sick of this cycle, sick of death and the way that it just seems to follow us no matter what we do. My bond is tired. It wants us all to be safe and together. It wants the future that we just keep promising will someday be here. Instead of promising it, it wants us to work towards it, and I agree. If Nox has a plan that he believes will work, that’s enough for me.”
North turns back to me, and I see the stark fear in his eyes, the terror that we’ve gotten to this point, and that no matter how brave or how in control he might have been up to now, everything is spiraling slowly out of his grasp. Now that we’re facing the end, I see it all. I take it in, and it only strengthens my conviction. I give him a nod and then one to Nox.
“Let’s get this over with.”
North stares down at me for a moment longer, and then he looks back up at Nox, a snarl curling his lip for a moment before he gets it back under control. “Fine. Tell me the plan, the whole thing. We’re not leaving this room until I’m positive there’s no holes in it. If anything happens to my Bonded out there, I’ll let the shadows consume everything until we’re all in Hell. It’s the least we’ll deserve.”
