16

BEIJING

I CAME BACK to consciousness slowly. 

It felt like wading through a wide, lost space...a sea of warmth and light with no markers or reference points. My body felt far away, like something foreign, uncharted. I felt sick from the drugs. My neck hurt.

I felt him there, too. 

He never left me, not through any of it. 

He was busy again. The focus behind it was a little overwhelming, even a little unnerving at times. His mind seemed razor-sharp, even through the lingering tiredness I felt on him...and well beyond any specifics, which were too clouded by the collar and the drugs for me to understand much of anyway.

I felt the promise behind it, too.

He was coming for me.

I couldn’t even pretend that the knowledge didn’t fill me with relief.

THEY’D BROUGHT ME somewhere. 

Since the soft, warm place where I lay no longer vibrated, jerked, jostled or hummed, I had to believe we’d stopped somewhere, at least for a time. The view behind my eyes no longer spun or dipped periodically, either, so the drugs were wearing off, too...which meant some kind of construct. 

Knowing Balidor, it meant the Fort Knox of constructs, to use another of my dad’s out-of-date expressions.

I fought to sit up. 

I got as far as propping my shoulders up under my elbows. Then I had to stop, mostly because it felt like something evil pounded at the back of my head with a mallet covered in glass shards. 

I couldn’t remember a time where I’d ever felt quite so badly. 

Well, excluding that blank stretch of hell in the tank.

The collar hurt my throat. My light refused to leave it alone, to stay behind the artificial boundaries it erected, so a constant, throbbing pain remained with me from the second I opened my eyes.

I could feel him there, in faint whispers, beyond it.

By then, I knew exactly what Balidor had done. He’d tested the bond, and it held. In fact, his little “test” nearly killed me.

It only occurred to me afterwards that I’d known that it would.

Gripping the thick mattress, then the wooden wall behind me, I tried to pull myself up to a sitting position. My arms felt as weak and as tentative as a child’s. The painted wooden walls on four sides confused me, along with the feather mattress that sank under my hands. The bed’s walls seemed to sit in a larger space, but I felt like I’d been squirreled away inside a cubbyhole that felt too much like the tank right then. Surrounded by a heavy, ornately-carved wooden frame and thick curtains, the bed felt more like the inside of one of those forts I used to make with Jon when we were kids, with couch cushions and blankets. The walls beyond the wooden box felt very far away. 

Briefly, I felt trapped. My breath grew short...

Revik surrounded me within seconds, coiling into my light...at least as much as the collar would allow. 

Pain arced through me as he tried to understand where I was, what had happened to make me afraid. I found myself reassuring him that no one was hurting me, or shooting me in the chest.

He relaxed slightly. I still felt him trying to determine where I was.

I looked around, unsure myself. As I did, I felt myself calming down, and him along with me...although slower, more warily.

It crossed my mind that the last time I remembered being awake, I’d been on a train. Or it felt like a train anyway...rhythmic thrumming under my body as it clicked and clacked at each connecting rail.

I remembered Jon had been there, and Cass, although for less of the time. Balidor had been there, too. I couldn’t look at him for long though, even inside my mind, not without feeling Revik’s rage rise to a near heat behind my eyes. 

I’d never felt him angry like that before...never. 

I realized at least part of the reason lay in the fear I felt around his light. I was vulnerable from his perspective, still in the camp of the enemy.

I avoided thinking about Balidor after that.

I pushed open the drapes and found myself facing a room that bewildered me somewhat, and also filled me with awe. I gripped the thick curtain in one bony hand, letting Revik see pieces of the same view through me. 

Cavernously large, the room was so richly furnished I felt like I’d been locked inside an ancient temple. Wooden walls formed the boundaries of a wide open space, stretching around the fort-like bed and covered with more of those detailed carvings. One of those walls had been cut with a circular door, and stood directly across from where I lay. In the light from the parted curtains, I saw silk sheets wrapped around my legs, which still looked way too thin, even to me. The long, round pillows looked distinctly Asian, especially with the elaborate silk covers and tassels. I leaned on square pillows too, also covered in embroidered silk. 

Outside the bed, swords hung on one wall above a shrine with incense burning. Delicately painted vases and silk paintings lined the walls on either side.

It all looked very, very Chinese, I realized. Like Ancient China, Chinese. 

When I peered up, a stained and carved wooden ceiling met my eyes, mainly consisting of dark, reddish-tinted wood cut and placed in square segments, each painted with a similar pattern, almost like wooden tiles. Lanterns hung down with silk tassels, tiered so that they looked like bird cages, or silk kites. Thick drapes stood corded on either side of the circular door. Jade figurines and ivory carvings decorated low, lacquered tables inlaid with abalone and different-colored stones. I saw a game board as well, placed on one of those delicate tables between two wooden chairs. 

The doorway itself, of a darker wood than the red of the ceiling, had been carved intricately so that its patterns jutted out into the room. The carvings made it look as if the branches of two trees intertwined in the door’s center arch.

Overall, the whole setting looked like something from a kung fu movie. I half expected a fight to break out in the middle of the room, or someone to jump down from the ceiling to steal a sacred scroll.

Or maybe I’d just watched way, way too many kung fu movies with Jon, staying up late in his apartment in San Francisco.

The memory made my chest hurt briefly.

I felt amusement on Revik, though.

He tried to say something to me, but I couldn’t quite get it through the collar. I was still straining to hear him when a voice jerked me out of my attempt.

“You might want to take care with that, Alyson,” it said.

I looked up, a little thrown to see Vash standing there. I admit I felt relief looking at him, too.

Then I noticed he wasn’t alone.

A woman stood beside him. The first thing I noticed about her, apart from her delicate, almost porcelain beauty, was her eyes. Bright yellow and sharp as the sun, they contained vertical pupils, like a cat’s. They stared at me unapologetically, holding an overt curiosity, tinged with the faintest flavor of aggression. She wore an embroidered Chinese dress of deep, indigo blue, and a black sash. Her face was striking, hard to look away from.

She asked Vash something in what sounded like Mandarin. Not like I spoke Mandarin. Or could tell it from a half-dozen other languages, for that matter.

I gave Vash a questioning look.

“Yes,” Vash said to the woman. He spoke Prexci, smiling at me a little. “Yes, this is indeed her. Alyson the Bridge.”

The woman’s mouth quirked.

I wasn’t sure how to take that expression.

“Is she as young as she looks?” the strange woman said, switching to heavily-accented Prexci. “She looks very young...her light, I mean...” she clarified, still fixing me with that narrow stare. “She looks only recently awakened. Untrained...”

Frowning, and suddenly reminded of Kat’s initial reaction to me in Seattle, I found myself taking in the woman in more detail. 

She stood at probably six-two. Not unheard-of for female seers, but still fairly formidable. Her black hair had been done up in what looked like a traditional Chinese design, with a high bun fixed in place by a jeweled comb that left long pieces hanging down on either side of a face with dramatic cheek bones. The black sash cinching her silk dress showed a narrow waist between long, butterfly sleeves that made her look, yet again, like someone out of a Kung Fu movie. 

She didn’t look Chinese, though, not exactly. She did look like she belonged there, however. The clothing and the hair appeared so natural on her, I could only assume she’d adopted the style as her own, and quite some time ago.

Maybe she was the assassin.

Vash smiled a little wider. “This is Voi-pai, Alyson. She is the head of the Lao Hu...a sort of Adhipan-like group based out of China.”

“The Tiger People,” I muttered. 

I struggled to sit up more, interested in spite of myself. 

I remembered hearing about the Tiger People from Balidor’s debriefings, way back when Terian had been starting wars between the Americans and the Chinese, and a few hundred thousand seers still lived in Seertown. To counter some of the problems Terian had started, I’d been trying to strengthen ties with some of the Chinese seers, who tended to be standoffish with the rest of the seer community. At the time, I’d wanted to approach them for a possible alliance. 

Terian’s one and only human body, Wellington, had been President of the United States at the time, and seemed hell-bent on starting war between the two most heavily-armed human nations. He’d come pretty close to succeeding, too.

I’d gone to the front lines almost daily for a few months before Revik got back and everything went down in Seertown and with the boy, and with me getting kidnapped by Terian. A few thousand got killed in border skirmishes before the incident in D.C., but luckily, all of the war-mongering with China died down when the Speaker of the House took over, since neither the President nor the Vice President survived the raid on D.C.

I was reasonably certain the woman in charge of the United States now wasn’t affiliated with Terian’s old group...or even a seer...but I couldn’t be absolutely certain. In any case, President Brooks had deescalated the war with China within weeks of stepping into office.

Not like she had much choice. She had her hands full with the rampant paranoia about seers and extremist human and seer terrorism at home. Hell, half the country had been rioting for those first few months. If they’d tried to fight China, too, the government might have imploded.

So far, anyway, I liked Brooks. She seemed pretty level-headed.

The Chinese humans had a different relationship to seers than the rest of the world. Seers, in one form or another, had been incorporated into Chinese mythology for millennia...although they hadn’t always called them that, of course. 

Therefore, following official first contact between seers and humans at the turn of the twentieth century, the Chinese reacted differently than the other human nations. From the very start, they adopted seers in almost a proprietary fashion, as a kind of cultural mascot. A select group of seers from the ranks of monks in the Pamir were invited directly into the royal family of the Chinese Emperor at the time, and brought to live in the Forbidden City in Beijing. 

Since the Chinese Royal Family requested this of the seer’s Council of Seven formally and only accepted volunteers, the arrangement was never viewed negatively by the seers themselves. If anything, it had been seen as more of a sociological experiment of sorts...even an honor.

The children of those early monks had become the Lao Hu, or Tiger People. 

Now, a little more than a century later, the Lao Hu were considered some of the most elite infiltrators in the world. 

A number of those same monks supposedly peopled a monastery in Beijing as well, but the majority of the second generation had opted to be trained to aid their human patrons. By then, seeing the carnage and mistreatment of their seer families by the other human societies of the world, they had become intensely loyal to their sponsors among the Chinese humans. 

Mythology blended on the two sides.

As the Chinese incorporated elements of the Third Myth of the seers into their own national religions, so the seers themselves grew to believe that they were warrior sages who would lead the worthy among the Chinese to the next evolutionary level.

Ancestor worship played a part in both religions as well. In the Chinese version of the myth, the Lao Hu had been incorporated into the halls of the most ancient of the Chinese families, thus entwining their futures even further.

Because they viewed the approach of most humans to seers as barbaric, at best, the Chinese continued to allow their elite, the Lao Hu, to live within the Forbidden City’s walls...as a form of mutual protection.

Of course, by now, it also related to concerns around Chinese national security. 

From what Balidor told me, the average Chinese person understood seers far better than the average human from the United States...or even India, where large numbers of seers also had been living alongside humans, pretty much since first contact. For years, the Chinese had the only human population that mingled freely and on a near-equal footing with seers and their culture. Yet the Chinese seers also remained strangely protected, even isolated under the system that grew around their quasi-religious status.

It made sense that Balidor would bring us here, I thought. It was about the only place left that Revik might actually be cautious about approaching.

“It is true,” Vash said, in response to my thoughts. “...The Chinese are less naive about seers. And the Lao Hu, of course, are quite powerful infiltrators.”

He smiled, bowing respectfully to the female, Voi Pai. 

“...It makes them slightly paranoid about your presence here, Alyson,” Vash added somewhat apologetically, although I wasn’t sure to whom. “They know that where the Bridge goes...divisiveness follows.” He smiled wider, winking at me as he glanced at Voi Pai. “They are a little wary of my presence here, as well, if it reassures you...”

The female seer folded elegant arms in front of the indigo dress. Without taking her eyes off me, she gave an articulate sniff at Vash’s words.

“No,” she said, her eyes still boring into mine. “It is this one we fear, old man. Not you.”

I flinched a little at the lack of respect she showed Vash. But I held her gaze, feeling her push at me, trying to see how I would react. 

Tightening my light around myself, I smiled at her.

“I mean you no harm,” I said, gesturing respectfully.

Voi Pai smiled. “Maybe not, Esteemed One. But you have already made us very visible. Too visible, in my opinion...I have my people to think of.”

She paused, looking at Vash once more, her voice and eyes hard. 

“She brings Death to us, old man.”

Vash purred, holding out his hands in a gesture I recognized as a seer apology. Clearly, her informality didn’t bother him. But then, not much bothered Vash, really.

“Death,” I muttered. I studied her gaze. “I take it you mean that literally, sister? You’re not being poetic?”

“Why did you come here?” she said.

I raised an eyebrow, combing my long, rather greasy hair out of my face with my fingers. Looking down at my body without the sheet, it occurred to me that I wore nothing but a white silk shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. I still found it uncomfortable to look at my legs and arms, with how thin they were. I’d need to do something about that, and soon. 

“Didn’t Vash tell you?” I said to her. 

“I wish to hear the reasons from you...if it pleases, Esteemed One.”

I hesitated, then gestured apologetically. “I was asleep, I’m afraid. I did not make the decisions for this leg of our journey.”

“Who did?”

“If I was asleep, honorable Voi Pai, then how would I know that, either?”

Vash smiled at this, clicking somewhat humorously.

Voi Pai, however, did not appear amused. Her eyes narrowed further. 

It occurred to me again that she almost looked like a statue, with her flawless pale skin and that black hair swept up above an athletically thin but voluptuous body. She reminded me of a Chinese version of Ullysa, an infiltrator and prostitute Revik had befriended during his years watching over me in the United States. But that comparison wasn’t quite right, either. Voi Pai’s whole being exuded power, whereas Ullysa’s had exuded a kind of calm repose. That same power in Voi Pai’s light made her difficult to look away from, and intimidatingly beautiful, even without the silk dress and dramatic make up.

She quirked her lips at me, but her eyes only hardened more. 

“Do not tempt me, Bridge,” she said. “...Only a fool would lie with the mate of Syrimne d’Gaos.” 

Her eyes drifted out the door to my right, where I glimpsed the overhanging trees of a sculpture-filled garden. I saw flowers there too, what looked like cherry blossoms. Inhaling deeply, I realized I could even smell them.

Replaying her words, I smiled in spite of myself. 

“I wasn’t asking,” I said.

The woman frowned again, her yellow eyes locked on mine.

After another pause, she looked away, clicking softly to herself as her eyes roved over the room’s walls. Even the way she clicked at me seemed to carry an accent. She gestured fluidly with one hand, a sign of respect.

Her words carried less respect.

“Why don’t you run along now, little Bridge?” she said. “We honor you, but we do not want you here. Go back to your mate...reassure him for awhile until he stops making war with us...”

I swallowed, looking from her stone-smooth face back to Vash.

“Is that a possibility?” I said to him in English.

“Do you want it to be, Alyson?” the old seer asked.

“I meant,” I said, feeling my jaw harden. “Is he here? Revik?”

“He will be, soon enough, I’m sure,” another voice said. 

I turned my head, found myself looking at Balidor.

“...especially with the way you’re constantly telling him where you are with your light whenever you wake...” he finished, giving me a wry smile.

Humor stood in his eyes, but it struck me as a mask. Beneath it, he looked exhausted. His gray eyes appeared clouded, and he had at least two days’ growth of gray and blond-streaked beard. Beneath it, his chiseled face looked thinner than I remembered...and older, too.

He entered through the same open door to the garden where I had been gazing out at the cherry blossoms only seconds before. He wore a black cotton outfit that also looked vaguely Chinese, but positively Western compared to Voi Pai’s get-up. It reminded me more of the formal costume of the Adhipan, which I’d only really seen worn in sims and through Barrier glimpses at the past I’d witnessed in the Pamir.

Behind Balidor stood Dorje, Jon and Cass. Baguen stood behind them, too, looking even larger inside the carved wooden doorway, with the light from the gardens against his broad back.

“...do you wish us all dead that much?” Balidor added, raising an eyebrow at me. “Or is it only me you’d like to see in such a state?”

I rolled my eyes at him, but I didn’t look at him long. I could feel Revik around me again, although the collar seemed to block most of his light again, mysteriously.

Glancing for only a hair’s breadth at Balidor, I wondered how much of that had to do with him as well. 

When I looked back at the woman, I saw her scrutiny trained unmistakably on Balidor. She measured him with her eyes, the same way she had me minutes before. Then she looked between the Adhipan leader and me, and smiled without humor.

“As I said,” she murmured. “Only a fool...” 

Her eyes stayed on Balidor a beat longer, then swiveled back to me.

Refolding her arms, she stepped closer to where I lay.

“He is angry, your Death,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact. She looked back at Balidor. “...Especially at you.” She smiled a little, her voice turning coy. “What did you do to make him so angry, Adhipan leader?”

“He shot me,” I said.

Voi Pai smiled wider. She looked again at Balidor, then back at me.

“Is this true?”

I nodded, wincing a little as I straightened up more.

“He shot me in a good way though...right, ‘Dori?”

Balidor’s eyes relaxed. His smile seemed almost genuine.

“It was very well intended, Esteemed Bridge,” he agreed.

“You see?” I told the woman. “One big happy family.”

Voi Pai continued to hold my gaze. I felt her light coil briefly around mine, but didn’t get even a whisper of her thoughts in that rather overly-intimate pass through my aleimi. Something told me I wouldn’t have gotten much even without the collar.

I was still trying to decide what to say to her, when I found myself staring at the woman walking up from behind her. My chest clenched. I felt Revik react as I grasped the side of the bedposts, gesturing towards Balidor.

“Gun,” I said to him. I stared at the approaching female, backing into the wooden headrest. “Gun, Balidor!”

“They do not let me carry in here, Alyson!” he said.

But I couldn’t take my eyes off the new woman’s face.

Elan Raven stood next to Voi Pai, her striking, turquoise-blue eyes boring into mine. The last time I’d seen those eyes, I’d been in a cage in the basement of the White House, naked and beaten bloody by one of Terian’s bodies, who’d decided to rape me to teach me a lesson after I’d defied him. I stared up at that angular face, and felt my chest clench again, remembering her staring at me with that same expression through the bars of the organic cage.

Revik’s attempts to reach me grew more urgent.

“What is she doing here?” I demanded of Voi Pai, my eyes still on Raven.

Voi Pai looked at Raven, too, then smiled. 

“She is my guest, Esteemed Bridge,” she purred liquidly. “...And my cousin. There is no message here, in terms of your safety. She will not harm you...”

At her openly scornful tone, I felt my jolt of fear bleed into something closer to rage. I sat up taller in the cushions, gripping the wooden walls of the bed, my jaw hard.

“And if I asked you to kill your cousin, devoted Voi Pai of the Lao Hu,” I said evenly, still staring at Raven. “...As a favor to the Bridge, one of your intermediaries...would you comply?”

“Al!” Jon said, his voice shocked. 

I turned on him, switching to English. “This bitch watched Terian rape me, Jon. She watched me bleed on the floor of a metal cage for hours...and lied about it to the boy to save her own ass. I almost died. I probably would have died, if Nenzi hadn’t come along when he did...”

Jon didn’t at first seem to have an answer for that. He looked at Raven, then back at me. 

“Oh,” he said.

Raven glanced at Balidor, and at the seers from the Adhipan who had moved closer from the garden. She studied their faces, one by one, with narrow eyes...then looked back at Balidor, who she seemed to recognize.

I saw fear in her eyes, as she looked at him. 

Balidor’s face looked guarded now too. He had taken a few steps closer to the bed, so that he stood between Raven and I.

“Do I have no authority here?” I asked the Lao Hu leader.

Voi Pai studied me clinically, her yellow eyes holding more interest now. Not surprisingly, I seemed to have gone up some in her estimation once I started ordering beheadings.

Raven startled me then. She bowed to me deeply, falling to one knee.

“...I humbly apologize for my hand in your captivity, Bridge Alyson,” she said. Her voice trembled, enough that I almost believed it. “My loyalties at the time may have been misguided...but I assure you, I meant only the best for the Bridge and her mission here. I thought it was advantageous for you to mate with the boy, and you seemed unwilling to do so...” 

Her turquoise eyes looked down the length of my body.

Panicking at my hard glare, she looked up at Voi Pai once more, as if for help, and I saw from her eyes that it wasn’t all an act. I’d actually managed to scare her with my threat.

“...Whatever I can do to make amends, Bridge Alyson...I will gladly pay any compensation you deem appropriate. I will do anything, wait on you...serve you...”

“Where is Maygar?” I said.

Balidor and the others looked at me in surprise, and I felt my jaw harden.

I hadn’t told them everything that had happened in D.C. For one thing, I’d been fairly certain Revik wouldn’t be the only one who wanted Maygar dead after they knew he’d been a party to my captivity there.

“Maygar, Esteemed one?” Raven said.

My jaw hardened further.

“...I apologize, Bridge Alyson,” she amended swiftly. “My son is no longer in China, Esteemed One. I meant only to protect him...”

“Where is he?” I said.

“New York City, Esteemed Bridge,” Raven said promptly.

I nodded, folding my arms, then wincing when the position pulled at the half-healed scar of the gunshot wound on my back. Unfolding them more carefully, I placed them again at my sides, feeling like a bird with clipped wings as I stared down at them. 

“You are staying then?” Voi Pai asked me, her eyes wary. 

When I looked up at her, frowning, she made the respectful gesture again, the one reserved for holy sages, or members of the Council. 

“...You are of course welcome to stay, Bridge Alyson,” she said politely, although I heard something else altogether in her tone. “...For as long as you desire.” 

I glanced at Balidor. He quirked an eyebrow at me in return, but I saw the humor in his eyes. It struck me that he found it funny that I’d finally realized I had authority over these people. 

I considered demanding a turkey pot pie, just to throw my weight around a bit, but instead, I felt exhaustion wash over me.

“Yes,” I said, my voice subdued. “We are staying. For a short time at least. I thank you for your hospitality.” Gesturing to her in the formal seer hand motion, I looked again at Raven. “She may live...for now. I will not tolerate her in any room in which I am again...for as long as I am here. Not unless I specifically ask for her,” I added, thinking I might want to question her some more. Thinking about this further, I added, 

“...And she cannot sleep within this construct. She must go, for as long as I am here. I don’t care where, as long as it’s away from me and my people.”

Raven’s eyes flashed with relief. 

It occurred to me again, that she really had thought I would kill her.

“Yes, Bridge Alyson,” Voi Pai murmured. She bowed to me, then looked at Raven, indicating with her hand for her to leave.

I watched Raven slink quickly out of the room. She glanced again at Balidor as she left, her eyes nervous, but Balidor only mirrored my warning stare.

Once she was gone, he glanced at me, nodding in understanding at my look. 

He would make sure she didn’t come back.

I saw the question there though, and knew I wasn’t off the hook for the Maygar thing. He would want to have a little chat with me about that, once we were alone.

“I need to sleep,” I said, a little louder than necessary.

Voi Pai glanced at Vash, who also had a glimmer of humor in his eyes. Clearly this woman wasn’t used to being told what to do in her own home.

But hell, she kind of forced my hand. 

As if hearing me, Vash winked at me. Then he answered Voi Pai’s silent question with a shrug, seer-fashion, indicating with a nod that she should look to me for clarification, instead of him. She turned to face me once more, a smile plastered stiffly on her face.

“Yes, Bridge Alyson,” she said.

I watched as she withdrew from the room. 

Patting my arm gently through the hole in the bed’s square frame, Balidor chuckled a little out loud before he turned to leave as well. Jon followed, shaking his head at me, and Cass and Baguen followed them, leaving only Vash. 

“Do you require anything of me, Bridge Alyson?” he asked humorously.

“Thank you,” I mouthed at him, exhaling in a sigh before I let myself collapse back on the mountain of silk pillows.

Smiling, he bowed, and removed himself from my presence. 

Curling up on the thick mattress, I closed my eyes.

I didn’t have long to wait. 

Within seconds, he slid around me again, wanting to know what he had missed. I told him, as best as I could through the collar, wincing a little as the restraint charge off and on kicked in, paralyzing my light before I could finish articulating whatever it was. I felt glimmers off him, humor at my standing up to Voi Pai and a brief flush of anger at Raven...personal enough that I realized he knew her somehow. I felt a pang of jealousy before I understood the cause; I couldn’t hear his response when he sent some form of reassurance.

More flashes of frustration came off him when he couldn’t see what I described, when he wanted to know more about my location... 

I also felt wanting there, a thick pull that was starting to affect me again, even without the stress of what had just happened.

When it intensified, I let him feel how badly it hurt.

His light flinched against mine. He seemed startled at first, maybe at my openness...then his light slid around me once more, trying to reach me in rising flushes of heat. It crossed my mind to be nervous that he could feel me so clearly. Given where I was, in the stronghold of the Lao Hu, he shouldn’t be able to get near me at all. 

His light grew cautious, and I realized he’d felt that, too.

“You’re coming, aren’t you?” I murmured.

Soon, I felt him murmur.

Where are you?

Silence. His light remained warm though, close.

Please don’t kill my friends. Please, Revik. I know you’re angry...

I felt more whispers off him...images of Jon, of Cass. I saw Jon’s face, angry, yelling at Balidor, and realized Revik was showing me how he knew that neither of my childhood friends had been privy to the Adhipan’s plan. He knew Jon and Cass had been in the dark, thinking I was dead, too. I nodded to myself, but still felt nervous.

He’d left a lot of names off that list.

Even so, I wanted him there. I couldn’t even pretend anymore that I didn’t.

Emotion curled around me as I felt him react to that, too. 

Laying my head back on the pillow, I closed my eyes. As my body started to unclench, I was caught off guard by a stronger wave of longing, so dense it caught in my throat, tightening my hands, then my jaw. I realized that it had come from me, my own light. 

I felt him react again...another near flinch. 

Then a flood of liquid heat swam over me.

The tug carried so much it left me panting on my back, my skin flushed hot. His emotion swam through me, love that clenched my chest, nearly made me forget where I was. I pulled on him for real, and felt the want on him worsen, until he was fighting to get past the collar when it kicked in, bringing a different kind of pain into my light. 

Eventually, we both gave up. 

I felt him withdraw, frustration pulsing at me briefly before he slid around me affectionately and drew away. 

Lying there, I felt another flicker of nerves wash over me at how close he’d felt, even with the collar...much less the military-grade construct I had to be in, given where Balidor had brought us. Something about being shot and both of us nearly dying had torn down all the walls between us. It didn’t seem to matter anymore, where I was. Or even who I was with. 

The realization was daunting when I thought about what it might mean.

At the same time, something else had changed in me, too. Being with him again no longer felt like a hypothetical, or a pipe dream. I don’t think I’d ever wanted him so badly. Maybe it was knowing finally that we really couldn’t be separated. Or it could have been something more biologically driven...some kind of base, biological need after having him absent so long from my light.

In any case, guilt lived around the admission, a near shame.

It didn’t change anything. He was still Syrimne. But more and more, my light didn’t care. I wasn’t altogether sure the rest of me did, either.

I couldn’t really think clearly about why that was...at least not yet.

Either way, I could admit to myself now that Balidor had been right about me, when he said I couldn’t be trusted around him. 

I definitely wasn’t going to be thinking clearly when I saw him next.