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A slight nod. She’s worried Erlik or the military will grab you next.
She wasn’t wrong. The thought had coiled in my mind since Jude was taken. What else did Erlik have left to take from him? How many echoes of resonance could possibly be left in a body trapped in a jar? Or was it the soul they were after?
And if I was the only thing left anchoring him to this world, maybe the answer was me. How long would it take to drain me dry through Jude? Or was the goal to get me to cut him off completely? I’d already killed him once, and wasn’t willing to do it again.
I swallowed hard, trying to focus. Time was bleeding out, and every silent moment felt like a theft. I’d never been a praying man, but lately, I’d started bargaining with the universe in the quiet dark. Just a little longer. Just enough to get him back.
“She’s in pediatric neurology. Fourth floor,” Bobby stated.
We moved through automatic doors into the antiseptic brightness. Victor stayed a half step behind me. Remi and Ezra fell in on either side. Wade lingered at my other side, a rock and a barrier. His easy smile and light banter got us a nurse escort.
The elevator ride was silent. I watched our warped reflections in the polished metal. We looked less like a supernatural enforcement team and more like survivors of the same disaster. Oddly, in the brushed metal, shadows danced and wriggled around me.
Only me.
What the fuck?
The doors opened onto the fourth floor. Lights, bright and a little eerie. A cartoon mural stretched along the wall with forced cheer, brittle and mocking.
A nurse led us to a room at the end. Inside, a small girl lay propped in bed. Dark hair, pale face, eyes too large for her age. Eight or nine, but her stillness felt more like the precursor of a horror movie than the average pediatric patient.
Her gaze landed on me. For a second, I felt like she was looking through me.
“I’m Agent Mao with the SED. You can call me Angel. You’re Cadence, right?”
She tilted her head, the movement almost avian.
“Bastion,” she said, voice thin but clear. Her eyelids fluttered as if she was seeing something no one else could.
Victor went statue-still beside me.
“Protector of the Arbiter,” she whispered. “He frays. The shadow feasts. We all lose.”
My heart stuttered. I needed to ask her a million questions, but the nurse lingered in the doorway.
Cadence’s gaze fixed on the space over my left shoulder, where Jude usually hovered. A faint, knowing smile touched her lips. “Strength alone won’t save you. His will stretches. But only the rarest of Weavers can spin the edges of the tapestry to life or destruction.”
The nurse flinched, rushed to the girl’s side. “She’s been muttering like this for weeks.”
“The choice is yours,” Cadence added.
“Mine?” I clarified. Or Jude’s? I didn’t say the latter for fear of anyone hearing.
“Yes.”
“How?” How could it possibly be my choice? I’d have already brought him back if I had the power.
“Shatter the resonance. Only then can it find its way home.”
Didn’t that mean destruction?
The nurse cleared her throat. “I think that’s enough. Cadence needs to rest.”
The girl gripped her blanket. “They eat us from the inside out.”
Heat ignited behind my eyes. The Bastion’s sight activating as if it were going to burn itself through me.
The room bled away into layers of resonance. She was still the kid. Cadence. I could see the bright blaze of her soul as intense resonant energy. But a piece of the changeling’s hunger, left behind like a worm in an apple, still gnawed on the girl’s life force. I saw it as a dark current twisting through the lines of energy, choking the natural rhythm.
