Chapter 104 It Comes Back
LUCA
My eyes widened before I could control my reaction. I hadn’t expected it.
“What did he say?” I tried to keep my voice cool.
“That he’d talk to Arya first.” Caspian’s expression remained neutral. “Which I think means no, but he wanted to handle it carefully.”
“Good man.” I meant it. Whatever complicated history existed between Ryker and my mate, he’d proven himself. The void rescue had settled something between us that I hadn’t known needed settling. There was a difference between a man who loved someone and couldn’t let go, and a man who loved someone and wanted what was best for them even when that thing wasn’t him.
Ryker was the second kind.
It didn’t make me like him exactly. But it made me respect him.
“The immediate problem isn’t the election,” I said. “It’s what happens in the six weeks leading up to it.”
“The saboteur.”
“Cyrus Ashford is still out there. We have his two accomplices but not him. And someone who was smart enough to orchestrate a false flag operation that nearly started a war isn’t going to sit quietly while we hold elections.” I moved toward the corridor. “He’ll try again. Bigger this time. Something that can’t be explained away.”
“We’ve increased surveillance on all known coalition contacts—”
“He’s already cut those ties. He’s not stupid.” I pushed open the corridor door. “Start fresh. Think about who benefits most from unity failing right now, in this specific six-week window. Not ideologically. Practically. Who profits?”
Caspian was quiet for a moment. I could see him working through it.
“Anyone who wants to negotiate separately with individual territories rather than through the council,” he finally said. “If unity fails, the old system reasserts. Pack-to-pack deals. Species-to-species treaties. Lots of room for powerful intermediaries.”
“Exactly. So we’re not just looking for Theron’s leftovers. We’re looking for opportunists.” I stopped walking. “Pull financial records on every major broker, every neutral trading house, every diplomat who’s made money off inter-species conflict in the last decade.”
“That’s a significant list.”
“Then start with the ones who lost the most business when the unity movement succeeded.” I felt Arya through the bond. Still quiet. But the dimming had eased slightly. Sage was with her. Good. “And Caspian?”
“Yes?”
“Whatever you find, bring it to me before you bring it to the council. I want to know what we’re walking into before we walk into it.”
He nodded and was gone, already typing on his tablet.
I followed the bond to Arya.
\-----
ARYA
I heard him before I saw him. Not his footsteps, exactly. More like a shift in the air, the particular way the atmosphere arranged itself around eight centuries of presence.
Luca appeared in the courtyard doorway, looked at Sage, and looked at me.
Sage stood immediately. “I was just leaving.”
“You don’t have to—” I started.
“I absolutely do. Ryker is probably doing something I need to supervise.” She squeezed my shoulder as she passed. “Eat the rest of the fruit.”
Then she was gone, and it was just us and the pale sky and the smell of lavender.
Luca sat down where Sage had been. Not touching me yet. Just close enough that his warmth reached me across the small space between us.
“You lasted longer than I expected,” I said.
“I’m improving.”
“You are.” I looked at him sideways. “The old you would have followed me out immediately.”
“The old me also hired assassins to protect you at diplomatic events, so perhaps the bar wasn’t set very high.” He picked up a piece of fruit from the tray without looking at it. “Calder is going to be a problem.”
“I know.”
“He’s smart. Ambitious without being obviously corrupt. He’ll frame everything around legitimate concerns and let people draw their own conclusions.”
“Also what I do.”
His mouth curved slightly. “Yes. Which is why I find him annoying.” He finally turned to look at me fully. The gold in his eyes had settled from the bright hot flare it went to when he was angry or afraid into something deeper and quieter. “How are you?”
“Sage already asked.”
“And now I’m asking.”
I thought about giving him the same answer I’d given her. I’m not okay but I’m going to be. It was true and it was enough.
But this was Luca. He felt everything I felt through the bond. He already knew the nightmares and the flinching and the 3 AM certainty checks. Telling him anything less than the full truth felt like an insult to what we’d survived together.
“I feel like the void took something.” I said. “Like going through a room and knowing something’s missing but not being able to figure out what. And it’s bothering me more than it probably should because I can’t name it.”
He was quiet for a long moment.
“I know what it is,” he said.
I looked at him.
“It took your certainty that the world is real.” His voice was careful. Like he’d been thinking about how to say this for a while and wanted to get it right. “Not your memory or your power or your mind. Just that baseline assumption that solid things are solid and real things are real.” He looked at his own hands. “I felt it too. When I was mortal. Before I got the immortality back. The void made mortality feel, not just fragile. Uncertain. Like the ground under your feet was a suggestion rather than a fact.”
“Yes,” I said. The word came out with more relief than I expected. “That’s exactly it.”
“It comes back. Slowly.” He reached over and took my hand, his fingers warm against mine. “The certainty. You start to trust the floor under your feet again. Trust that the walls will stay solid. Trust that when you reach for the bond—” he squeezed my hand once, “—it’ll be there.”
I turned my hand over and held his properly. “How long will it take?”
“I don’t know exactly. Long enough to be annoying.” His thumb traced a slow circle on my palm. “But Aeliana. It comes back.”