His hand rises to his chest, to the spot where I know his skin is marked beneath his shirt. “I fucked it up, I broke the most precious thing I’ve ever been given, and no matter what happens, no matter what those assholes come at us with next, I’m going to be fighting to my last breath to make it right again. I just hope my last breath doesn’t come in the next hour or two.”
His words have sent wave after wave of churning emotion through me. The last sentence jars me out of the haze. “You think it’s that dangerous, going in there?”
Andreas grimaces. “I don’t know. But this is big, and we don’t have anything close to the full picture… I can’t shake the feeling that we might be walking into something we can’t come out of, one way or another. And I didn’t want to take the chance of that being true without telling you how much you mean to me.”
He touches his chest again, over his heart this time. “We are blood.”
My fingers curl toward my palm of their own accord, wanting to rise to the same spot on my own chest.
“We are blood,” I murmur. “I don’t—I don’t know how the rest will go. But I want to find out exactly what that means. And then… whatever else we do, whatever else happens, it’ll begin there.”
“Yeah.”
Andreas searches my face for a moment, but if he was hoping for more absolution from me, I can’t give it to him. Dominic did an amazing job mending the torn-up pieces of my body, but my feelings are still jagged shards scraping against each other from the base of my throat all the way down to my gut.
Drey doesn’t push for the answers he wants this time. He simply dips his head and turns slowly to give me time to recognize that he’s returning to the others, so we can walk together.
I keep the same definite distance the whole way back, but maybe some of those broken pieces inside me don’t scrape quite as sharply as they did before.
We reach Jacob and Dom just as Zian does from the other direction.
“I couldn’t see anyone else inside,” he says quietly. “Engel is there—or at least a woman who looks like how Drey described her. Sitting in the living room with a mug and a book. The rest of the place is empty.”
We all exchange a glance. I raise my chin and speak before Jacob can give the final command.
“What are we waiting for, then? Let’s see what she has to say.”
Thirty-Three
Riva
Jacob uses his power to unlatch the basement window and nudge it up bit by bit with the softest of rasps. Zian’s keen sight spotted an alarm system mounted near the doors on the house, but Engel hasn’t protected the windows as well.
One after another, we slip into the dark space. The tang of pine sap hangs in the air, no doubt from the stacks of logs that fill most of the unfurnished room.
The chill follows us in from outside. As soon as Zian has squeezed through, the last of us, Jacob eases the pane shut again.
Who knows if Engel is sensitive enough to notice a strange draft? But then, she’s going to know we’re here soon enough.
We prowl between the stacks of logs to the narrow staircase that leads to the ground level. There’s no door at the top of the stairs, only a rectangle of light that a current of warmth wafts through.
Andreas goes first based on prior agreement. We don’t know if he’ll be able to get a look at Engel and read her memories surreptitiously, but if he can get the chance to, we want him to take it.
She might be at odds with the facility we escaped, but we have no way of knowing how she’ll welcome us.
Zian described the basic layout of the house to us from his observations, and what we emerge into matches what I pictured from his words. The main floor is an open-concept space with the basement doorway at the far end of the expansive kitchen. Dark wooden cabinets and black appliances gleam around us.
A matching kitchen island, several feet across, sections off the kitchen from the dining and living rooms beyond—and hides us from the rest of the building while we stay crouched. We creep across the smooth tiles toward it.
When he reaches the island ahead of the rest of us, Andreas peeks around the side. He cranes his neck for a few seconds and then glances back at us with a frown and a shake of his head.
He can’t see Engel to get a lock on her mind from here. We’re going to have to rely on our other skills—and her potential willingness to talk.
Jacob makes a gesture of caution, reminding me of the instructions he gave before we entered.We approach slowly, staying alert, watching in case she has a weapon. I’ll be ready to disarm her if I need to.
We shouldn’t go in too strong,Dominic put in back then.She might not be a real enemy. We have to give her the chance to let this be a peaceful conversation.
Jacob made a face but nodded. That’s what we’re all hoping for—no more fighting, just answers.