Page 145
When Zeke came inside, he gave Cyn a wary look. “Something wrong?” He took a seat between Ash and me.
“Everything.”
Ash propped his arm on the counter. “What happened? Is Rae okay?”
“She’s not home yet?”
“No,” Ash said, his brows furrowing. “Weren’t you supposed to follow her?”
I’d asked Cyn to follow Raelynn to work today to make sure nothing happened like in the parking garage. We couldn’t afford to lose her when we still needed her.
Raelynn? When had I started naming her? Personalizing a threat was dangerous, yet here I was crossing that line—again.
“I did. But I had to take care of something before I left the mall.”
I pushed my bowl aside and leveled him with a look. “That would be?”
His gaze slid away.
“Cyntrix.”
“Her boss, okay?”
I waited for him to continue. He knew better than to provide me with vague answers. I needed all the facts to assess the situation.
“He may have broken his arm.”
The corner of Ash’s mouth twitched. “You mean you might have broken it?”
Cyn glared at him. “Piece of shit deserved it and a lot more.”
“What happened?”
“The slimy fucker put his hands on her.”
Ash stood. “What?”
“He’s got a hard-on for her or something, and she isn’t interested. When she tried to get away from him, he grabbed her. Figured after that, he didn’t need that arm for a while.” Cyn shrugged. “You’re lucky that’s all I did.”
I folded my arms across my chest, studying Cyn.
He never inserted himself into others’ affairs, yet now he’d gone out of his way for someone beyond the three of us. For a human that he claimed to despise, his actions betrayed the truth.
“We can’t harm humans,” Zeke said, looking at Cyn with worry tightening his features. “What if Cornaith finds out?”
“Fuck him. We’re stuck here, and he hasn’t made contact yet. I doubt he knows what we’re doing.”
Ash sat again, his shoulders relaxing—no longer poised to go seek justice himself. “I suspect he doesn’t know where we are. He wouldn’t let us be gone this long without his approval.”
“Likely not,” I said.
Father wouldn’t leave us to our own devices for this long. He craved control more than I did, molding us—the heirs apparent—into his perfect puppets before he ever relinquished his throne. He’d never release his chokehold on Elyrdin.
“So where is she?” Zeke asked, bringing us back on topic, much to my surprise.
He often sidetracked us with his many tangents—not that any of us minded.
From a special child to an extraordinary adult, Zeke entertained me with his perspective on the world and the facts he absorbed from books and the computer. He immersed himself in more human knowledge than even I possessed, combing through their endless archives.
