Jonah comes home alone.
"Goddess, Lee," he says, taking me in.
"I'm fine."
"Lee."
I think of my most recent nightmare. I think they're starving him, now. He feels so empty.
"I'm fine."
Jonah shifts on his feet.
"Lucy is doing really well," he tells me, "No infections or anything."
Lucy didn't sound so good when I talked to her on the phone. I'm grateful that Jonah is lying to me.
"When can she come home?"
He sighs. "Soon, we think."
"You should have stayed."
"She told me to come. You need someone here with you. Goddess, Lee, when did you last sleep?"
I sway on my feet. "Thanks for being here," I finally rasp out, leaning on him for support.
For a moment, we stand in silence. The ringing that is nearly constant in my ears swells in and out of my awareness. I'm thinking about the practice range, and all of the work I have to do, still. So much to do. So much to plan for, in this pretend hope that there will ever be someone to fight. We can't even find the right target.
It's hopeless.
"What can I do to help?"
"How's Mom?" I ask, tired, "Is Lucy going to be alright with her?"
Jonah tells me that Mom has been better than he's ever seen her. She's taking perfect care of Lucy - not leaving her side, just like she promised. Things seem to be warmer between the two of them. I hope, for her own sake, Lucy will be able to forgive Mom. It feels so heavy, that anger in your chest.
All at once, the mark on my neck burns and I have to stifle a cry of pain.
"Lee?"
"I just need a second," I say through the tears, "It will pass in just a second."
I don't know if this is true. Sometimes it lasts for hours. I'm so relieved I'm not asleep - if I were, I would see it, too.
There's this burning in his wrists that doesn't go away. Nokomis and Alaric say it's from the chains I saw on his hands. They put something on the chains, poisonous and biting. I don't really acknowledge the feeling of that, any more
Today, it's a sharp and stabbing pain next to my heart.
It means he's alive, I tell myself. He's alive. This is good. The pain means he's alive. You have to be hurting to know this.
"What's happening?" Jonah asks the guards.
After 20 more seconds, the pain begins to dull. It's no longer blinding. I'm able to put a hand on Jonah's shoulder.
"I'm okay," I tell him. I'm always so much more exhausted, after an episode. "You should go unpack. I'll see you later."
I wish I was with Orion. At first, I just wanted him to be with me, no longer being hurt. But as time went on, I just - would rather be with him. I'd rather be there, hurting with him, than have him hurting alone.
I miss him. It wittles down to this statement. I miss him so much that it hurts along with the pain; a double dose.
"That's the thing - I already have," Jonah says, his hand going into his pocket, "I had something I wanted to give to you."
Oh, yay. More things.
"I honestly forgot about it," he says, "I brought it when we moved here, but it's been so long - I haven't thought about it at all. I just saw it for the first time when I was unpacking. It was under my bed. I feel stupid for not thinking about it before."
Then Jonah pulls out a ring with a dark, square stone set in the center.
I jolt, surprised. I recognize this ring. It's the ring Dad had given me when I was 5 years old, the one I thought I had lost. Hesitantly, I reach out and take it from him, examining it closer. It's definitely the same ring, with the strange purple undercurrent that catches the light.
"Dad gave it to me years ago," Jonah confesses. His tone turns guilty. "He told me to hide it from you. I was going to throw it away, after we got here, but I couldn't - bring myself to, for some reason." He shakes his head. "I guess it was hard to let go."
Dad - took the ring from me? And gave it to Jonah?
The ring feels heavier in my hand. I look at it closer, trying to wrap my mind around it. Dad had been raising me to be the future beta. To step into his shoes, eventually to be a part of the Order. He must have taken the ring back when he gave up on me.
Hesitantly, I twist it around. There -
There, on the inside of the band, three stars are graven into the silver.
I pull away from it, feeling almost like it's going to reach out and sting me. This is a relic from the Order. Dad really was going to indoctrinate Jonah into it. It's the first real, tangible proof I've ever had that Dad really was in the Order, and it sends a shiver down my spine.
The ring rests in the center of my palm. It sparkles in the light, all purple shadows.
Something catches my eye from inside of the gemstone. I shift it around in the light, but I don't see it again. A trick of my mind.
But I don't believe that. I know I saw something. I press my finger to the gem, washing at it like I could make it transparent. Again, I see it.
A set of numbers printed on the backing of the ring. They're there, clear as day. For a moment, I just stare at them, my hands shaking.
"Oh, my Goddess," I cry, "Goddess Goddess Goddess."
And I feel like, for the first time, she's actually listening.
-
They're coordinates.
It's the first lead that we've had on the Order in weeks.
The numbers lead to a plot of land that is empty of everything but trees and sparse grass. It's miles away from any civilization. As we - me, Alaric, and Nokomis - look at it, for a moment, we can't speak.
Within ten seconds Nokomis is on the phone with one of the deltas.
" - covertly, for Goddess's sake," she says into the phone, "We don't want to scare them away if they really are there."
I don't understand. Obviously, this is another dead end. The ring is decades old - what if the place had been torn down? Who can say if the coordinates ever had meaning to begin with?
"Lee," she says to me, still on the phone, and I look up at her. "No windows, at all?" she asks. I shake my head. No windows in any of the nightmares - even in the few that took me outside of the small concrete cell where Orion spends most of his time, chained like a wild animal.
After another moment, Nokomis hangs up on her phone call, looking to me and Alaric with frantic excitement in her eyes. "They're going to investigate the area," she says breathlessly, "to see if there's an underground structure, or evidence of tampering."
Alaric and I are both silent.
Nokomis looks between us. Her mouth is open, but empty, still shaped in hopeful wish.
"We don't even know," I say quietly, "if it's the Order that has him."
Nokomis closes her mouth.
"We'll follow the lead," Alaric tells her, his voice as soft as mine.
And, goddess, tears are starting in my eyes. I'm so tired of being tired. I'm so tired of this pain that is so consistent I can't remember what it felt like before. I know that I was with Orion, and that we were happy, once, but I can't comprehend that, any more. It's like that is the dream, and this has always been the reality.
I remember those missing kids pictures posted in big stores and newspapers. I used to read through them all when I was younger. I recall one, in particular, a little boy missing two teeth and with a big smile. The description gave his name and the date he went missing. It had been 23 years. If he was still alive, he wouldn't be recognizable, any more.
I remember thinking about how much it must cost, to hold on to someone for that long. Why would they still post the picture?
They were just holding on to a ghost.
-
I had been so sure when I had seen those numbers. It makes the pain more certain.
The team we had sent to the coordinates came back empty handed. Not a trace. Not a relic. Not another clue to follow. It was a dead end. I'm so stupid, so stupid for thinking it would be so simple.
It's hard for me to keep track of any thought for too long. My head pounds. I've been so cold, for so long, that I'm used to not feeling my fingertips. The more I try to focus on finding Orion, on piecing fragments together, the more muddled and confused my brain becomes, like a head cold.
It means that when I arrive in Nokomis's office a few hours later, I can barely remember what I'm doing there. Alaric and Nokomis look up when I come in, so I know they were waiting for me. But it's only when Dr. Harold, the doctor that had treated me when I had first arrived, comes in that I remember. We're here for a debrief for him. He thinks he has information. Another dead end, I think.
It reminds me of the trial, with Nokomis and Alaric standing in the seat of judge. It hits me that I'm standing in where Orion would have been.
Harold is hunched into himself, all anxiety and jitteriness. It used to make me feel better, seeing how worried he was. But now it seems strangely disjointed and shifty.
"Dr. Harold?"
This is from Nokomis. The three of us look at him, expectant but pessimistic.
He wrings his hands, guilty. Something in his eyes makes my stomach squirm uncomfortably.
"I told them." Dr. Harold swallows. He eyes the guards looming in the corners of the room.
"What?" I ask sharply.
I'm surprised to hear myself speak. When Harold hears my voice, his unwilling eyes finally dash to me, then away.
"I told the Order that you were gone," he confesses, in that shaky voice he always seems to use, "I told them. I'm the - the reason they took Prince Orion."
My legs begin swaying. I grip the edge of the table standing on my side. I will not fall over. I will not fall over.
Dr. Harold begins speaking in a rush of jumbled words.
"I told them you were leaving and that's when they set their plan in motion. I only heard about it after he was taken." Harold looks like he might throw up. His shaking hands are pulling at everything - his shirt, his doctor's coat, his hair. "They're more common than you think. It's not hard to find someone, slip them information to report to the higher-ups."
I'm dreaming. This is a dream. I've finally broken, mentally, and this is a hallucination.
"But why? Why?" Why why why why why -
Dr. Harold's face deepens to an almost purplish shade of red. "I meant," he says, not looking at me, "for them to come after you."
My body floods numb with shock. I blink stupidly, trying to process the words. He meant for me to - ?
"You are stunted," he says stiffly, "you shouldn't have a mate. Obviously, you are - doing something to the Prince. Deceiving him. I thought it would be best to - to take care of you while you were away. My duty as a servant of the state."
The room falls eerily still as his words sink into the air. Calmly, Alaric steps towards him, the same neutral expression on his face. Then, he pulls his fist back and slams it into Dr. Harold's nose.
My jaw drops.
Alaric begins rapid-fire swearing at Harold, pressing forward like he's going to hang him by the neck of his lab coat. Dr. Harold, for his part, looks as much surprised as pained, choking out a protest as his body curls away in defense.
"Alaric!" Nokomis exclaims in alarm, pulling her mate back.
As Nokomis takes Alaric out of the way, I step forward.
"Where is he?" I ask, and I don't really care that his skin is already bruising, "Where are they keeping him? Why do they want him?"
"I don't know," Harold groans, wiping at the blood gushing down his face.
The Order does have Orion. The same people that killed Elia have my mate. The same people that - we don't know how to find. I had suspected it, all along, but I didn't realize until just now how much I was hoping it was someone else.
"Why are you telling us this now?" Nokomis asks over my shoulder.
"I heard you were on the verge of a breakthrough," he says, his voice strangely nasally due to the almost definitely broken nose, "I thought we could work out a deal - forgiveness for information."
What he means is, I was worried I would be exposed, so I'm turning myself in in the hope you don't kill me.
I wonder if he thought there would be forgiveness - that the King and Queen would understand what he did because of what I am. That they would be relieved that the attack was originally intended for me.
I have to leave the room. I can't be here with him for another second - it makes my skin feel dirty. I step back, shaking, relieved when I feel Nokomis's hand on my back.
"How about," she says acidly, "you tell us what the hell you know, and we consider sparing your life?"