If it bothers Engel that Andreas has picked that information up from her mind, she doesn’t show her discomfort. “Some members of the Company had been capturing the shadow creatures and running tests on them, experimenting with the essence they’re constructed of, toward a goal I suspected was untenable. But I saw the possibility for taking some of what made the fiends such formidable foes and enhancing humans with it.”
Jacob’s mouth twists. “So, we have some of that monstrousness—that essence—mixed up in us?”
“Yes. I wanted to create humans who could match our enemies while standing alongside us.” A trace of wryness colors Engel’s tone. “Unfortunately that required starting from scratch at infancy, but this war has always been a long game.”
A lot of things suddenly make so much more sense than they did before. “That’s why we’ve had all that training,” I burst out. “Keeping us physically strong, making sure we could fight, practicing our powers.” I’m not sure what the missions were for—maybe this little tasks they sent us on worked against these shadow creatures in some way we didn’t realize?
Did the guardians justify the more torturous parts of the training thinking they were preparing us to face something even worse?
Andreas frowns. “But why did the other guardians make you leave? It was your project—you set everything up… You haven’t seen us since we were around ten, it looks like?”
“And we haven’t seen you at all since… since as long as we can remember,” Dominic adds.
Engel whisks the heating chocolate mixture some more, trickles of steam starting to rise from the pot. “Yes. Over time and with changing circumstances, I came to have different ideas about how the project should proceed than most of my colleagues did. About what our specific goals should be, about how you should be treated.”
A slight edge creeps into her voice. She wasn’t happy about how they treated us.
“But if you were the one who started everything, couldn’t you decide for the others?” Zian says.
Engel sighs. “I didn’t have all the power—I’d needed to seek funding and guidance. I was overridden, limited in my involvement and then pushed out completely, other than when they feel the need to consult me.”
The bitterness in her tone sends another quiver of uneasiness through me, but I can’t explain why. It sounds as if they treated her badly—why shouldn’t she be upset?
The question tumbles out of my mouth. “What did you want to happen to us?”
Did she see how cruelly the others were treating us and want to set us free? Is that why she’s seemed so calm about us showing up like this?
Her smile returns, appearing to confirm my guess. “I’ll be able to show you. Now that you’re here, I can see my intentions through.”
“Is there a way to takeoutthe shadow parts of us?” Dominic asks abruptly. “If we don’t—if we’d rather not—”
The shoulder area of his parka shivers where his tentacles must have twitched underneath.
“I’m afraid not,” Engel says, “or I’d happily do that for you. But the shadow essence is entwined with your genetic code. It would be like attempting to carve the musical talent out of a violin prodigy or the coordination out of a natural athlete.”
Dominic’s face falls, and Zian’s expression tenses too. My gut clenches.
If there’s no way to remove the thing that’s been growing inside me, trying to take me over…
Jacob crosses his arms over his chest. “What do we do now? How do you see things going from here? The guardians will probably figure up we came out this way soon, and—”
Engel pauses in her stirring and cuts off his concerned statement with a dismissive wave of her hand. “You don’t need to worry aboutthem. When they mentioned you were roaming around, I told them I doubted you’d have any interest in me, that they shouldn’t waste their resources up here. The nearest reinforcements are hours away. I knew they’d only want to recapture you.”
Her comments should be reassuring, but my apprehension rises more. She hasn’t actually answered the question, has she? Despite the fact that both Jacob and I have asked.
As she clicks off the burner on the stove, I take a step toward her, scanning her posture, trying to figure out what my subconscious is picking up on. “What doyouwant?”
“Give me a little more time to gather my thoughts, and we can get into that.”
Engel gives me another smile, but the scent that catches in my nose at the same time makes me freeze in my tracks.
Shesoundscalm, and she’s acting as if she’s glad we’re here, but she’s giving off an unmistakable tang of stress. If she isn’t worried about the guardians crashing in on us, and she isn’t worried about us hurting her, then what could be wrong?
I drag in a deeper breath, and recognition sets off a spike of alarm through my nerves.
It isn’t the same kind of stress I tasted from the guardians we’ve interrogated, sharply metallic with fear. It’s closer to the pungent anticipation I breathed in so many times in the fighting arena, from opponents both worried about my reputation—and determined to crush me.
Like she sees us as enemy combatants, ones she stands a real chance against.