Hopefully the arbiters have started on their own tasks, back in the Higher Plane. We need an afterlife, whatever it is.
“I’ll make more introductions later,” Bravi told us. Her gaze lifted over my shoulder. “Although, we have a few more people waiting to see you.”
A shadow fell over me. I tensed, but it was merely a redbill swooping down to the ground. Violet eyes, glassy with tears, met mine.
Laini leapt from the redbill’s back and barreled toward our group. She charged into Dorian, embracing his towering body with surprising strength, and then pulled me in. Her arms squeezed us into the tightest group hug I’d ever been a part of. The smell of salty tears burned my nostrils.
“You’re back,” she whispered in a quivering voice of disbelief. “You’re alive!”
8
Lyra
Laini’s joy was short-lived. She pulled back and glared at us. “You absolute jerks! How could you leave us for months without sending word that you were alive?”
I struggled to keep up with her whiplash-inducing emotions. She was furious, rightfully so, but she couldn’t seem to stop smiling. Her violet eyes went glassy, and she blinked away tears, shaking out her dark hair. She had cut it into a short bob that ended at her chin. War has made everyone simplify their look.
Dorian let out a bellowing laugh as Laini released her vise-like grip on us. As Laini scanned us for injuries, her eyes softened.
“You two look… better than you did when you left, actually.”
Bravi grumbled in surprise, joining Laini in scrutinizing us. Under both pairs of critical eyes, my skin flushed. The arbiters had completely healed us, but nobody had noticed during the heat of battle. Laini clapped her hands together.
“Good,” she muttered. “I’m glad. Wherever you were, I’m just glad you came back. We were so confused when you left… We kept trying to cheer each other up, but eventually we lost hope. I was expecting to hear that you’d been captured or killed, or that we’d never find out what happened to you. I’m so relieved that you’re alive.”
An arrow of guilt landed square in my chest. The underlying assumption was, what else would keep you guys away? The lies we had to fork over to our friends were inevitable. Dorian and I had worried everyone, but I could scarcely believe months had passed. I hated that our friends were left waiting without knowing, and I couldn’t help second-guessing everything we’d done in the interim, searching for anything we could have done to get back sooner.
“I’m so happy to see you,” I breathed. She hadn’t been the only one who worried. I tried hard not to think of the awful vision I’d seen in the Higher Plane, the one which showed Laini bleeding to death from multiple wounds. I would sooner fight endless troops of invisible hunters than see it again.
“We promise to explain everything,” Dorian said. Laini opened her mouth to speak but caught sight of Ruk behind us.
“This is the Gate Maker,” I said, introducing Ruk to the group. My words left her speechless. She ran a hand through her hair, nothing short of complete awe in her eyes as she reevaluated him. She had been the first to learn of his existence, from the journals we’d found in Juneau’s storage room.
She dropped into something like a small bow. “It’s a wonderful thing to meet you.”
Ruk cracked a smile for the first time. “I see that my reputation precedes me.” He gestured to Sen and made a light introduction, referring to her as his colleague.
“Greetings, vampire,” Sen said. “You have a pleasant fragrance even after battle.” Laini blinked awkwardly. I shrugged. Laini would soon pick up on the strangeness of the arbiters.
Laini coaxed the redbill to take off toward a roost. “I saw you and Dorian on the battlefield. Good to see that you’re working together better than ever. I can’t wait to show you everything we’ve done. Juneau and I have been leading a spying task force. Turns out, I’m a good fighter, but I’m excellent at espionage.”
Bravi bit back a smirk. “A little too good. Juneau makes the finest camouflage for her.” No surprise there. Anyone can see the way he looks at her.
Laini blushed faintly but squared her shoulders with confidence. “I’m just falling into a new line of work well. There’s so much we have to catch up on. Juneau and I recruited Oz, Kono’s scout from the Hive. He’s been excellent on our spying missions. He has an uncanny ability to memorize our surroundings, and he works with Juneau to create fabric that mimics the nearby landscapes. It’s incredible, really, and we—” She stopped, realizing she was babbling. “Well, we’ll have time to chat later.” I hadn’t realized Laini and Juneau had positions in this new hierarchy, but it was clear from the way she spoke that she had a lot of responsibilities.
“She is being modest. She’s not a general, but she holds a high rank in our system,” Bravi added. “Laini, we were just doing a tour for them.” Her eyes darkened a shade. Laini glanced behind me, at our last location. It was a sturdy building constructed of black wood. It seemed familiar to me, even though it appeared to have been recently constructed.
The shack. Myndra. My jaw dropped, but luckily, Bravi and Laini were looking at the prison now.
“Our last stop…” Bravi frowned. Deep grief brimmed just beneath the surface of her stern face. “The prison. It was necessary to construct, unfortunately. We keep Myndra there, for now.”
“You found her?” Dorian asked. We already knew that, but of course we couldn’t explain how. This was just the first of many necessary steps to cover up our lies, and I couldn’t help feeling guilty about it.
The prison held a gloomier aura than any other building, naturally. A metal door required a key to open, the lock shaped like a hotel card reader. Bravi pulled a card out of her pocket but hesitated at the entrance.
“Another of Reshi’s inventions. She listened to the Bureau engineer and combined everything she’d heard about the security measures of the sanitarium. It requires a certain maker’s ward—her mark—to unlock. We gave Sabal a key to visit her sister, but things are fairly bleak inside,” Bravi explained. “There are five other ex-revenants. We removed their stones, but…”
My stomach clenched uneasily. “They’re mentally broken?” It was an easy enough guess, after what we’d seen Kreya go through. Taking the gem out of the vampire unfortunately couldn’t undo the damage that the Immortal Council worked on them. It made me sick. My hands curled into fists at my sides.
“Prepare yourself,” Laini warned softly. “We had to safeguard ourselves, but we took care of them as best as we could.”
Bravi inserted the keycard. The lock disengaged, and she pushed the door open with a forceful movement. I tested the weight of it against my arm as we walked into the building. It was impressively heavy. Without a card, there would likely be no escape unless one blew the building to pieces.
Cold air hit me as we walked down a long corridor. It looked bigger than it did from the outside, but perhaps it was the dark building materials which gave the illusion. Ruk glared at the sight of cell bars but said nothing.