“Conquest was dying. As Cole said, she isn’t viscarre or emocarre. She’s not made for what I did to her. After I shoved her essence into that dead vessel, Conquest began dying too.” His eyes lifted, locked with Cole’s. “There is no greater connection than a mate bond.” His gaze slid back to me. “Your mate wasn’t there. You had no anchor in this world, so I became one.”
“You mated a ten-year-old dead girl?” I blinked at him. “How the hell is that even possible?”
“We can’t mate humans.” His bitter laughter scraped my ears. “They don’t have enough soul, enough life, to bind what scraps they have to the vastness of our existence.”
Thinking on the enclave, I laughed bitterly. “Speaking from personal experience?”
“Yes, damn you.” The muscles in his jaw flexed. “I am.”
“You once talked to me about resonance. You were hitting on me.”
“You’re my mate, even if it’s only a technicality.” He lifted his arm, like he might touch me, but he let it fall without making contact. Probably worried I might twist it off and beat him to death with it. “Any male would be tempted.”
“That’s what you meant that night.” The night we raided the Drosera nests. The night I failed Thom. “I thought you were being cocky, acting like you had the right to award me to Cole like a prize, but you were conceding your rights as my mate.”
“I never intended to … ” He shook his head. “You were a child when this started. The temptation didn’t come until later, until I dared believe in you. Even then, I’m not sure I could … ” He cut the thought short. “You’ve given me hope these last few years, and that’s been in short supply, but thinking of you in that light feels like betrayal.” His gaze lifted to mine. “That doesn’t mean I can stop.”
Not gonna touch that comment with a ten-foot pole. I didn’t want to catch whatever madness had infected him if he thought for one hot second I would choose him over Cole.
“That doesn’t explain how you did it.” This scheme was more in Death’s wheelhouse than his. Maybe she would have better answers for me. “Why did it work?”
“I didn’t mate the girl.” Wu sounded tired. “I mated Conquest. That link between us rooted her in that body. Otillians are the most adaptable of any charun species. I gambled that she would make it work, and she did. She survived. Or so I thought.”
“Oh, she survived.”
Eighteen dead patients.
Twenty-five deceased staff.
Sixteen injuries.
One dead chicken.
“What I mean is, I wasn’t sure for a long time that you weren’t her. She’s a gifted actress, they all are. They’re skilled at adaptation, at blending in, at letting others see what they want to see. But after a while, when your coterie made no attempt to contact you — or you them — I began to wonder. And I watched until I was almost certain you were the genuine article.”
“How do the phone calls fit in?” With me under surveillance, he wouldn’t have needed to make personal contact. “The pain — did you cause that? Or did you cure it?”
“The pain was caused by Conquest rattling the bars of her cage,” he explained. “She was aware, more in the early years, and she wanted out. She wanted to claim her own body, her own identity, and not be trapped in a shell she had little control over.”
“The girl was dead.” I rubbed my forehead. “Why wasn’t Conquest in total control of the body?”
“I believe a combination of my healing power and the infusion of soul woke part of the girl’s mind. I believe Conquest fused with her on every level, making you some combination of the two, and wiping you blank.” He raised his eyes. “I also believe the longer your amnesia smothered her beneath this new identity, the weaker she became until you — Luce — became the dominant personality.”
“I needed you every year like clockwork. If I have her leashed, why is that?”
“She’s diminished, but she’s not vanquished. You’re able to pull on her power, but you can’t access her knowledge. That’s why I’m convinced part of the girl’s brain survived. Had Conquest simply filled a vessel, she would have woken trapped in a human body, but that’s all. She would have still been herself, not this. Not you.” He shook his head. “The phone calls were easiest. They kept our paths from crossing. They kept you in the dark, where I wanted you to stay for as long as possible.”
The dragon had stopped fighting me to get closer to Wu, so I began petting him to comfort us both.
“Conquest never stops trying to regain the upper hand, to crush that kernel of humanity lodged in her brain. She’s always pushing. You’re a splinter she wants removed at all costs. You can feel it, can’t you? I can. Through our mate bond, I sense her.” His eyes dimmed. “I’m the only thing keeping her contained, Luce. Remember that before you or your dragon attempt to digest me. You have to have regular contact with me, or she will punch through that final barrier given time, and your human mind will be crushed as she floods it with her presence. You’ll revert, and Conquest will be unleashed.”
That shocked the man right out of the dragon, and Cole paled until his complexion almost matched his silvery-white scales.
The silent horror contorting his expression gave me all the proof I needed without asking if Cole had known Wu was my mate, if that was why they had called a truce when remembering Phoebe had almost broken me. Their reasons must have been more practical, more tactical.
Clearly, that truce had just gone bye-bye.
“You waited until War breached.” I leaned against Cole, both for comfort and so I could restrain him again if necessary. “That’s when you decided to set yourself in my path, using Kapoor as a conduit.”
“Yes.” He ducked his head. “At that point, I couldn’t afford to let you interact with your siblings without supervision. I had to be sure they didn’t have means of drawing Conquest to the surface. After nurturing you for so long, I feel … proprietary … toward you. Part of that is what I did, and part of that is the natural course of the mate bond.”
“How can I be bonded to two charun?” Accepting I had one mate still gave me heart palpitations.
“Otillian biology,” Cole answered for him. “They’re adaptable to any terrene, and that includes ones where females keep multiple mates.”
“Conquest was pure potential when I molded her into the shape I required. That included allowing her to be responsive to a dual bond. She didn’t accept it, of course, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am her mate, even if she refused to acknowledge me as hers.” He exhaled. “My kind isn’t so different from yours in one respect. We can mate without reciprocation. It grants us a hold on the other person, with or without their consent.”
“That’s a handy fail-safe you built for yourself,” I said at last. “I can’t kill you, and I can’t let you die.” Bile soured the back of my throat. “What about Cole? War told me he must remain in close proximity to me, or he’ll die. She claimed the same was true for the others. Does that mean it’s not the mate bond but the coterie bond that binds them to me?”
“Luce,” Cole rumbled in warning, but I had to know.
“What was true for Conquest might not be true for you. What War thought she knew about the bond you shared with your coterie, with your mate, might not be accurate either. You’re one of a kind. The truth is, we have no idea if Cole or the others will survive you. Previous coteries have outlived their masters by being set free or through a weak bond. Yours is ironclad, your people are loyal to you.”
“You set us up like dominoes.” I exhaled through my teeth. “One falls, we all fall.”
“Unless the pattern is disrupted,” he said quietly, “yes.”
Pattern. Yes. The weft and warp of life was a pattern, and how dare he pluck the strings with such careless fingers? “You’d try this again, with the next cadre, wouldn’t you?”
“I can’t.” Wu’s eyes darkened. “I can only mate once, and I have, with you. You’re my last chance to get t
his right, to end it once and for all.” He spread his hands. “You die, I die, remember?”
All Cole’s warnings rang in my ears when I looked at Wu. He had gambled it all, both our lives, to see this through. We might not have a clear picture of his endgame yet, but he was busy painting it.
“How do we know you’re the better bet? Why should we support this coup of yours? You’re quick to tell us that life goes on between ascensions. You’ve trained the NSB to wipe out the cadre as it surfaces, and all the while you’re quietly adding hand-selected coterie members to the population. How are you any different than your father?”
“I cherish mortals.” Wings burst from either side of his spine when he lost control of his temper. “I cherished one above all others. I was married. I had a wife. A mortal wife. A human wife. She was my entire world, she was all worlds to me. Father learned of her shortly before our third child was born. He walked into our home, spotted her in the birthing bed, killed the midwife, and snapped her neck. She died by his hand, our unborn child died by his hand, and so did the midwife’s young daughters. He thought they were mine, you see, and I didn’t tell him otherwise.”
“There was no point.” Cole tightened his hands on my arms. “Keeping your silence let their deaths mean something.”
Aware the absolution came one father to another, I covered his hand with mine. “He’s right.”
“I raised my girls alone, and they went on to found the enclave to give their families a safe place to live.” He softened his voice. “I gave them money, supplies, protection. When that wasn’t enough, when technology advanced beyond what I understood, I joined the NSB and learned all I could about how they tracked charun, how they located them, what they did to undocumented charun. Eventually, I rerouted satellite surveillance, I tampered with official documents, I made them disappear.” He exhaled. “But the attack on the bunker proved Father knew all along. He might not have discovered them for generations, but he did in the end, and he hit Knox hardest. He’s my direct descendant. He’s … important to me. So is Kimora. So is Lira. They all are.”
“He knew where to strike to hurt you the most.” As much as I hated asking, someone had to push the issue. “What are the odds you have a mole in the enclave? That our leak sprung from there?”
“They’re my family.” Wu stiffened his spine. “My blood.”
“Family can commit atrocities just as easily as anyone else. Maybe more so.” Look at mine. War. Famine. Death. My sisters were bloodthirsty nightmares come to life, and so was I. “They know us well enough to anticipate how to twist the blade to make it hurt the most.”
Aunt Nancy and Uncle Harold had been selected for just that reason. Because I loved them. Because they were important to me. Because the cadre thought they could shatter my foundation by smashing my support pillars one by one.
“Eliminate the enclave,” I tried again, “and the only people with access to that information would be Kapoor, or someone else within the NSB who got curious enough to do some digging, right?”
“Kapoor would never betray me.” Wu sounded grieved about that, about what his loyalty had cost him. “No one else within the NSB, to my knowledge, is aware of my family ties.”
“Your father has NSB resources at his fingertips. He had you watched. I guarantee it. You’ve been careful, and so has the enclave, but all it takes is one misstep for all their supposition to fall into place.”
“Your father might be vain,” Cole agreed, “but he would understand he had made an enemy of you that night.”
The possibility intel was being passed from the inside voided all the enclave’s carefully stocked resources.
“Knox knows his people best.” Wu looked rumpled in his expensive suit. “He won’t want to do it, but he can interview them, see if anyone’s story doesn’t check out.”
“Get the ball rolling,” I said, and it felt good to have that much control in this situation, even if it was an illusion.
Wu watched me for a moment, some mixture of envy and misery clashing on his face. The face I had dreamed of seeing for so many years. Ezra. He might not be the Ezra, but he was my Ezra. I ought to be pissed. I was pissed. But I ought to be more … I don’t know. I wasn’t sure how I should feel given what I had learned.
The girl Edward Boudreau fished out of the swamp wasn’t a skin suit. She was a real girl, or she had been. Upon reflection, there was comfort in that. I might be an echo of Conquest, but I was rooted in this world, in this life, deeper than I imagined possible.
I really was a Real Girl.
“I had no right to use you the way I did,” Wu all but whispered. “But if I hadn’t, then Luce wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t exist. You would be Conquest, and only Conquest. Just another monster unleashed on an unsuspecting world, the same as my father.” He shrugged. “The same as any of us.”
“Oh yeah, your idea of shoving charun into human corpses is much better.”
“You’re the answer to the question I’ve been asking myself for centuries — What if Conquest had a human conscience?”
Sliding a finger around the collar of my shirt, I couldn’t find relief. “I need air.”
Not waiting to see if they followed, I exited the office and the mansion until I stood on the cliff’s edge.
“We should go,” Wu said from behind me. “We put Haven at risk every moment we linger.”
Haven. The name fit, and it was already living up to it by sheltering my dad.
Wu shook out his wings and leapt over the edge.
“Phoebe would be safe here.” I touched Cole’s shoulder. “Something to consider.”
“He gave us the perfect leverage,” he said bitterly, “didn’t he?”
Our lives were tied together. All of us. And while Wu might have been the only thing keeping me alive, I was an Achilles heel of his own making. Cole was on point when he said that gave us leverage. Perhaps more than Wu realized.
Placing my hand over his heart, I felt its steady beat. “Think it over.”
Cole shifted without another word, and I climbed on.
It’s not like dragons are big on talking, but he didn’t dip, dive, or roll. Not once. He flew in a straight line, his thoughts kept to himself.
Aware his breaths were being counted, Wu also kept his own counsel. He followed at a safe distance, well out of range of Cole’s whiplike tail.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Rixton and Maggie were playing chess when we got back to the hotel. Wu made his excuses then slipped off to check on Kapoor. The coterie, scattered around the room, looked to me for an update as Cole walked in.
“I visited Dad.” Hardly earth-shattering news for them. “He’s doing well, and he’s in a secure location.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Miller said with genuine warmth.
“He will recover fully,” Thom promised me. “It’s best he rest until the lingering effects of the toxins pass.”
Santiago offered no comment. He was lost, as usual, in a tablet’s screen.
“He’s really okay?” Rixton searched my face. “Are you?”
“Yeah and yeah.” I dropped on the couch next to Mags. “The staff briefed him on my situation, so I’m just … processing. I expected a showdown, I guess. I didn’t get one, so I can’t shake this feeling of having unfinished business on that front.”
“Your dad loves you.” Maggie leaned back, the game forgotten. “He was always going to accept who you are.” She shared a smile with Rixton. “You’re the only one surprised here.”
“Your dad has a sharp mind, Bou-Bou. An analytical mind. I was working my way toward a revelation when I saw Thom. He expanded my horizons ahead of schedule, that’s all.”
“You’re saying you always, on some level, thought I was different.” And didn’t that sting? “So learning I was just clicked right in place for you.”
“It didn’t change the fact we were friends. We are friends. What you are doesn’t matter to me, but it does help me understand you bett
er. You can’t blame me for wanting answers. Not when the stakes are this high.”
“I guess not,” I groused. “As your friend, I have a proposition to make.”
“I’m a married man.” He held up his hands, palms out. “The threesome comment earlier was out of line. The only three-ways I’m into involve hugs. Unless you and Sherry have something planned, in which case, I’ll just remind you my birthday is coming up in three months.”
Maggie kicked him in the shin. “Pig.”
“I’m a man.”
“Pig.”
“Man.”
“Pig.”
“You two are worse than Portia and Santiago.” That earned me a glare from eyes that were no longer fully Maggie’s. “Sorry, that was out of line.” When Portia slipped under, I mumbled under my breath, “But true.”
The way Maggie kept staring at me told me I hadn’t gotten away with a thing. Damn charun hearing.
Knowing my luck, I had just kicked off a competition between Portia and Santiago to prove which duo was more annoying.
One day I would learn to keep my mouth shut.
“Rixton,” I began before the bickering resumed. “Wu has offered your family a spot at Haven. Talk it over with Sherry, figure out if that’s what’s best for your family.”
“She won’t like it.” His amusement vanished. “She won’t want to leave home.”
“I understand, but I had to make the offer. The enclave was meant to host our safehouse. But that’s where the Malakhim struck. They zeroed in on the bunker, and that tells me there’s a leak. Wu has his reasons for not inviting his people to Haven, but that’s mine. I don’t want to put Dad at risk. And that goes double if Sherry and Nettie decide to ride this out there.”
“I’ll make the call.” He stood. “I’ll be in my room. Knock if anything interesting happens.”
“I’ll do that.” I waited until he left to look over Maggie. “How does it feel to return from the dead?”
“Ask me in a few days, after I’ve had time to process.” She put on a smile. “It’s good to see Rixton. I missed the jerk.”
Rise Against: A Foundling novel (The Foundling Series) Page 21
