I didn't so much run to Jaden as crash into him and then find his arms around me, holding me so tight it hurt.
Tears stung and fell so fast I couldn't keep from sobbing out loud. He didn't say anything, just squeezed me against his chest and rocked slowly from side to side, murmuring softly into my hair.
This wasn't the Jaden I remembered. Even with his firm hold he felt fragile, thinner than he had been, too slender in my arms. The faint scent of mint and city smoke that always clung to him had been soured and corrupted by the must and rot of the cell. I could feel a beard he had never let grow before scraping against my hair.
But it was his same soft, amused voice that finally said, "I think you managed to grow since I last saw you." Gently, he pulled away from me, hands on my shoulders to keep me still as he examined me. The way he used to when I fell or jumped from too high, checking for injuries I might be ignoring or hiding.
I'd missed him. I'd missed him so much. And he was right here. Light eyes that flickered between gray and green, black hair overgrown and streaked with more gray than it had been, exhaustion weighing the lines of his face. I knew he was cataloguing every change in me at the same time that I saw the changes in him, and that old, familiar hope that he was proud of what he saw choked my throat with its very calmness. My eyes were wet and hot again.
His gaze turned sharp. "Is that blood on your sleeve?"
I looked down at my cuff, sniffing back tears and snot. "Oh, that's Iso's."
"Dead?"
"Very."
"Good job," he said warmly. "You aren't hurt?"
"No." Not from tonight's encounter, at least. And I couldn't tell him about my Mark now. I felt sick thinking about telling him at all. "Are you?"
"I..."
I saw his hesitation, and he saw the way I tensed just at that pause.
"No, I am not hurt," he said hastily. "I only need some time and rest to recover from this. Captain Joshua?" He looked over my shoulder with a raised eyebrow, not even looking really surprised, in way that was particularly Jaden-like.
"Just Joshua. Me and the captaincy have parted ways." Joshua shifted uncomfortably. "We're running out of time. We can't stay here."
"He's right," I admitted, though I hated to say it. Not just because it was almost physically painful when Joshua was right, but also because Jaden was clearly weak. I didn't want to make him walk far, and I desperately didn't want to leave him, as I was going to have to. "We have to get you out of here, and find some place you can stay. It's an incredibly long story, but we're staying with the Protector right now, and we have to return before anyone finds out we left."
"What trouble have you gotten yourself into now?" Jaden asked with a sigh.
"Hey. No comments from the man who got himself kidnapped."
That brought a ghost of a smile to his face. "One might say that the attention of powerful enemies is just a very particular kind of compliment."
In that case, I had more compliments than I knew what to do with.
"One might also say," I replied, "that a kidnapping is one trouble you have gotten yourself into that I have not."
Joshua snorted. "That's not remotely true. You were literally kidnapped by the same guy who kidnapped him."
I shot him a withering look, but it was too late.
Jaden raised his voice for the first time that I could remember in years, a sound that instantly startled me more than anything Iso ever could have said. "You were kidnapped?"
"Only for a few days—"
He took an unsteady step back, hitting the wall. "No. Oh, no."
I grabbed his arm. "It's alright. Jaden, I'm alright."
"Tell me," he said, voice quiet, cracking, "you weren't the person I heard screaming."
My stomach plummeted.
Jaden had heard that night. When they carved out my Mark and I screamed and screamed and finally cried myself to sleep. He'd been just a few cells away, both of us unaware of how close we were, slumped in the darkness and listening to whatever poor girl was trapped here with him.
He pressed his hand over his mouth, shoulders trembling. It took a moment for me to realize that he was crying.
This time I wrapped my arms around him for his comfort, and I felt him shaking against me. His hands slid into my hair and held my head against his shoulder as if I was the one crying and clinging on for support.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Nemia. Wake up." I hated to shake her awake when she looked so serene, face buried in a pillow and her glossy black hair tangled around her face. I nudged a few strands back, grazing her cheek, and kissed her nose quickly, making her wrinkle it as she cracked one eye open.
"Mmmph?"
"Good morning." I couldn't help smiling at her expression.
She groaned, pressing her eyes into the crook of her elbow. "No. No light."
"That's sunlight, and I can't put it out." But I did step sideways so that the shadow of my head fell over her face, and leaned against the bedpost.
One side of her mouth quirked up. "I knew there was a point to having a tall girlfriend."
"Yes, well, I am a delight in all ways, as usual."
She scrambled with the twisted sheets until she was sitting up on her knees, almost level with me, and rested her arms over my shoulders. As usual, she'd read me perfectly. "You're in a good mood. What happened? Is it good?"
"Iso's dead. Jaden's alive."
She drew a sharp breath. "You mean—?"
"I killed the first one and found the second one. I'm..." I blew out and closed my eyes, unable to find the words but feeling a smile on my face. Sunlight was warm on my back and her hands were cool resting against the back of my neck, and for the first time since Iso got me everything felt truly okay.
"That's amazing, Morie." She let out a breathless laugh. "All in one night?"
"I'll tell you everything. First I need a few minutes of sleep so I don't fall over, and then I need to get dressed, and then I need to tell Wes, and then—" I ticked things off on my fingers, mind spiraling out into the day to come. When I could see Jaden again, make sure he was all right.
"Focus on sleeping. Everything else can wait."
"That's the easy part," I told her, and fell forward into the bed, almost on top of her.
"Morie!"
"I'm tired!" I wailed.
"Huh," she said, feigning confusion. "I wonder if maybe you stopped doing everything in the middle of the night, that wouldn't happen? Just a thought."
"Your sarcastic advice has been noted and ignored."
"Oh, so a change of pace then," she said dryly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Medea woke up late, which was why she was surprised that her father was not around. Lord Iso was usually working or meeting with someone in the room that functioned as his office by this time of day. But the office was empty and his desk undisturbed.
She waited for him a while, then, impatient, went looking for him.
The few Englians who had accompanied her father to the Protectorate were quietly but industriously occupied in the main room downstairs. They nodded respectfully to her, but she didn't see her father among them. She went back upstairs, steps becoming more like stomps now.
It was unlike him not to leave her word that he would be out. Iso loved his daughters dearly and trusted them implicitly — more than that, he respected them as highly capable agents trained by Iso himself, and gave them more access to his plans than almost anyone else. She wasn't used to being left in the dark.
She rapped on his bedroom door, but there was no answer. When she cracked the door open, it appeared at a glance that his bed had not even been slept in.
Medea had always had good instincts. Galatea, the eldest, with the head for politics, may have been their father's first choice to accompany him on diplomatic missions, but it was Medea's gut understanding of danger and secrets that made her Iso's spy in the Protectorate and virtually his personal bodyguard.
Iso's room could have already been straightened up by the maid. He could have stayed up all night working. But Medea's instincts told her something was wrong.
She ran back down the stairs. Her immobile face told the Englians who looked up at her nothing, but that alone made them wary. It was always wise to be wary of this girl with blood-red hair and her father's cold eyes, but especially so when she was stone-faced and blank as she was now.
"Where is my father?" she asked.
They glanced among themselves, no one wanting to be the person without an answer. But before anyone had to step up, Medea's eyes latched on something across the room. They scattered back from her as she cut across the room, fists in her skirts. She stopped facing the door to the basement, staring at it.
"Who went down here?" Her voice was quiet and cold.
"No one, milady, Lord Iso forbids it, except to bring the prisoner food—"
"Then why is it not barred?"
The steel bar that usually crossed the door was missing. Everyone with sense froze.
Medea sneered. "Whoever removed it will be found out and punished later. Someone get a lamp and follow me." She didn't wait, descending into the dungeon with her back stiff and straight. Some poor man scuttled after her.
The hall downstairs was cold and damp as ever. Her footsteps rang against stone walls and ceiling as she pulled the cord with its heavy key over her head and approached the last cell — whose door was open.
The cord dangled from her fingers for a moment, then the key clattered to the floor.
The cell's state was the work of a whirlwind. Or of a frenzied, furious man. Bedroll and food utensils were tossed all over the dirty floor, the cup dented nearly flat on one side. The chamber pot was upended in the middle, the stench bringing a hand over her nose and mouth. And the walls — streaked not with random dirt, she realized, but with words in Solangian, the letters large and rough and black in the lantern light.
ISO I AM COMING FOR YOU
The man who had followed her tried to step up next to her in the doorway, but she planted one hand on his chest and pushed him back without looking away from the threat splayed across the wall.
"The prisoner has escaped," she said hoarsely. "Find my father."