Page 12

Amaia

“ Y a know, I can practically feel the lust rolling off you two,” Reina said the second we sat down at the long wooden table our group had claimed years ago.

I couldn’t lie—being here was one of the last normal things in my life. An old reliable. Covert hadn’t touched The Kitchens’s interior. They hadn’t had the chance. The low lanterns hanging from the herb and greenery-covered ceiling embraced us with a scent of home. Thankfully, Reina’s commentary couldn’t be heard by any PG-13 rated ears.

Elie sat off the side with her brother Rex, back home from his forty-eight hour deployment. They ate together whenever he was docked for the night. With everything going on, our navy spent more time out monitoring the water and coast line than ever before. She laughed at some joke he presumably told and his green eyes danced with joy. They shared the same caramel skin and pointed nose, but the similarities ended there. Where Elie’s hair was thick with golden curls, his dark, wavy hair had been buzzed short when he enlisted.

His jaw ticked as he took me in and tossed me a nod. Tense words had been exchanged over the weeks regarding Elie’s behavior. At the end of the day, he wasn’t here to watch over her himself, and I had an obligation to more than one person’s safety.

Harley and Suckerpunch bounded over, tongues dripping from water at the bowl at Emma’s feet. She released them from the round table behind Elie’s. Her father, Hal, pointed toward their scattered approach with a laugh. Emma’s little brother, Luke, clapped his hands with a slobbered grin. Their sister Olivia ruffled his fine blond hair.

It was nice to see a smile on their faces. Tomoe had mentioned they were struggling when Emma asked for the dogs to come home with her a couple of days a week. It was odd sharing our babies with Elie and Emma, but it all served a larger purpose. If the girls were going to ignore the adults of The Compound and sneak around, then they might as well have some bodyguards. That was Harley and Suckerpunch’s job during the day, to protect the girls at all costs, and they loved every second of it. More times than not, they came home exhausted, ready to sprawl out for hours in front of the fireplace. We knew they were sneaking outside the walls doing who knows what—they were going to do that whether we tried to stop them or not.

I kicked Reina under the table with a smile and her steaming liquid fell out of her bowl like a tidal wave. Bone broth and bread for dinner. Again. How joyous.

“Where’s your girlfriend, Reina?” Alexiares tossed back at her in jest. “Shouldn’t you be keeping an eye on her?”

Reina’s smile faded, and she blushed. “Sorry, I’m too busy minding your business to worry about my own right now. Hope you at least washed your hands.”

“Want to smell them to make sure?” Alexiares teased.

Tomoe choked on her bread, her scoff of a laugh music to my ears. She didn’t do it often these days, but if she did, Alexiares tended to be the one to bring it out of her.

“Gross,” Abel grumbled, his hand falling over his face.

“So,” I said, my spoon clinking against the bowl of flavorless, murky water. “Everyone looks like they shat a brick. What morbid topic must I make my priority tomorrow?”

“Prisoners of war,” Moe said, downing her broth as if it were tea from a cup.

The weight of the room shifted, no longer resembling a safe space. I hadn’t given them much thought. It wasn’t top of mind with everything else going on. I knew we had them and they were being taken care of within the Geneva Conventions. That wasn’t an official rule or anything, but it seemed necessary to have some guiding principle for how to engage with them. A decision had to be made, eventually. God forbid I eat my dinner before doing so.

Riley draped his arm over the empty chair on his left. By the stacked dishes in front of him, he’d had dinner with Yasmin before the rest of us had arrived. “Any thoughts regarding how to move forward?”

I pursed my lips to the side and considered my options. We hadn’t taken prisoners from Covert during the battle, but there were a few injured that had refused to die over the three days we left their bodies out to rot. Their suffering was scaring the citizens. We had to do something. Shooting them after the fact crossed a moral line I wasn’t quite ready to hop over, so into the ‘dungeon’ they went.

“Well, don’t give them to Alexi.” Tomoe laughed darkly, her inked arms folding across her chest.

Abel exhaled sharply. “Is it too late to say thank you for not including me in that endeavor?”

Something about his tone made me glance up. His usual juvenile smirk wasn’t there—just an edge of unease, the ghost of something heavier in his expression.

“You didn’t want a personal Covert plaything?” Tomoe’s words were playful, but her eyes held an edge. This wasn’t mere jest.

Abel reached for his mug of hot lemon water, fingers flexing around the handle, before he sighed and leaned back instead. “Nah.” His voice was lighter than it should’ve been, like he wanted to brush past it. “Spent long enough pretending to sympathize with them when they came to Duluth’s gates. I don’t need the reminder.”

I frowned, curious to hear more about his time there. He hadn’t spoken of it much … at least not with me.

He rolled his shoulders, shaking off an old memory. “People don’t turn on you because they hate you. They turn because it’s easy. Because it’s practical. And once they do … I don’t see torture as the end all be all method, is what I’m saying.”

Silence fell over the table, the quiet more suffocating than any argument could’ve been.

I stared at him, trying to imagine it. Abel—loud, carefree Abel—living in enemy territory, smiling at people he knew would sell him out the second it benefited them.

Rex and Elie stood up in my peripheral before she slid into her usual seat next to Riley. She waved bye to her brother. Riley shifted his chair, scooting a bit to give her some space, but she had already leaned away into Tomoe’s shoulder. The table grew some more as Emma followed in Elie’s steps like clockwork.

Long, sandy hair hung down her back, her posture a mirror image of the woman she sat by. Emma had quickly become part of the family, glued to Tomoe’s side if not Elie’s. Tomoe had even had her a small katana made and trained her at dawn with Hal’s permission. Emma was a little … rough around the edges for the other kids, even in the middle of an apocalypse. She needed more intensity. The life she had led before she got here required so.

Elie lifted her head toward Tomoe, admiration softening her features—until Alexiares’s scowl pulled her attention away. I rolled my eyes. We’d become used to speaking freely in front of the two troublemakers ever since we realized if we didn’t incorporate them into the plan, they’d find a way, anyway. Except without us being aware, their plans were significantly more dangerous. Reckless wasn’t a strong enough word.

“Well.” Alexiares’s scowl fell into a self-satisfied smile, breaking the awkward tension among the group. “They don’t call me Bloodhound for nothing.”

“We see that now, lap dog.” Reina chuckled, reaching across the table to grab his bowl of soup. They fought over it briefly until Alexiares burst into an uncharacteristic bout of laughter. A sound I’d never heard, let alone expected from him. The table stared at him with lost eyes until realization struck. Reina finished the portion she intended to steal, then slid it back to him, releasing him from her power. He snatched his spoon from her with a glare.

“You were worried about resources and what we have left,” Alexiares continued in a more serious tone. “Is this really what we want to waste them on?”

I glanced at Elie. She had insisted on helping in some capacity and, with her refusal to quit at The Kitchens, I’d tasked her with working with the head of The Kitchens and Gardens. Instead of manning the coffee counter most days, she was part consultant.

Elie’s shoulders raised to her ears, then dropped. “I mean, it’s not like we have no food. We can give them scraps.”

“Or you can just let the earth elementals restock,” Abel countered. Oh Abel, and his opinions lately.

“No,” I said firmly. “They have to pace themselves. Anyone running too low on magic right now is a bad thing.”

The table remained quiet. They couldn’t argue with that. Everyone had been on pins and needles, waiting for the other shoe to drop or another attack to happen. It wasn’t as though Ronan posed a direct threat to us anymore, but one could never trust his true intentions.

Abel’s eyes trailed around the table, his mouth parting to share more of his thoughts. “Since no one else is going to ask. Bad thing for what? Aren’t we living life, going back to normal?”

“Oh, Abel.” Reina rested her head against his exposed brown shoulders. The sleeves of his shirt cut off and showed off his lean muscle. “Haven’t you learned a thing since we re-adopted you?”

“We’re biding our time,” Riley answered, having my back and making me grin smugly. After a second, I processed what he said. Everyone nodded in agreement, all but Abel and Emma.

“For what?” Abel’s questions continued.

Tomoe’s eyes widened in annoyance. As if it were obvious, but I was as confused as him. “Amaia’s plan.”

“Plan for …” Emma said, peering through narrowed eyes of admiration at Tomoe.

“My father’s, uh.” Reina shifted uncomfortably in her seat, tugging at the fold of her pleated black trousers. “Request.”

“There is no plan.”

The scrape of chairs and shifting bodies made it painfully clear the entire table had turned my way—even over the hum of the dining room. The glow of the lanterns on their faces perfectly highlighted their complete disbelief. I couldn’t lie to them if I tried my damnedest. Not over something this important.

I always had a plan. Not having a plan even in the best of times was to set yourself up for failure. I’d said it before and I’d say it again—a good soldier possessed a plan A, B, and C. But a soldier that survived —they possessed an artillery of blueprints, knowledge and a solid team at their back. I lived and would die by those words, and they knew it.

Still, if shit hit the fan, I didn’t want to be responsible for them dying. They needed plausible deniability with Ronan. And if he was looking into their futures, I didn’t want one of them to accidentally give anything away.

I stared them down. “Whatever.”

“The plan to find whoever the fuck Ronan wants her to kill,” Alexiares explained to Abel and Emma, not paying me any mind.

Reina damn near leaped out of her seat in excitement. “Ooo! Don’t forget the other one. Ya know, about taking all this back. No more Bietoletti and his mean little friends disrupting council meetings.” She tossed her pale, sunburned arms in the air.

“So many outcomes.” Tomoe’s all-knowing smirk made me want to pounce. “An abundance of possibilities.”

I groaned, taking a calming inhale of herbs hanging from the ceiling and broth scented air. Dragging my hands down my face, I relented, telling them everything I’d been thinking since the day I left Ronan’s war tent. This, they could know, this Ronan would assume was working in his best interest. “All right, here’s what I got.”

We needed to lure this mystery figure out. Bait them in a way that didn’t come across as an obvious trap or a betrayal to Ronan. A waltz of war. Graceful and balanced in our every move if we wanted to pull any plan off.

After much thought, I realized contacting the person Ronan wanted dead shouldn’t be a hard endeavor at all. They were already watching us. We just had to give them the opportunity to reach out.

“How do you know … about lingering eyes?” Elie whispered the latter. If she leaned any farther down the table, her neck might snap.

Abel’s eyes became shifty, watching the only entrance to the room, scanning the people seated around us. “And why is no one else freaked out by it?”

This was a private dining area. It was reserved for any high-ranking officials in my troops, members of The Council, and any of our families. The decision to cut off access to the public hadn’t been a slight or a way to distinguish power levels. Instead, it was to be a place of comfort. Where we could relax from our days with our comrades and loved ones and not worry about what was overheard. Business and family mixed more times than not at The Compound. The people around me evidence of it all. If anyone in this room were to betray us, it would be yet another blow to Monterey Compound, and I wasn’t sure we could withstand it.

“Ronan hates them,” I continued on, knowing I held their attention in the palm of my hands. “So much so, that he’d rather work with me than them . Which, if I was the dumbass his little misogynistic brain believed me to be, I’d think it was that simple.”

“It’s never that simple,” Alexiares agreed, his grip firm on my thigh. His eyes locked on mine, steady and warm.

“He could get anyone to kill them?—”

“But he didn’t. He asked Amaia,” Reina interrupted Abel and tapped the side of his skull as though she was disappointed he hadn’t seen any further. Her smile slipped into something more sinister. “Daddy ain’t as wise as he pretends to be. So easy to see through him once you figure out who he is.”

“If I kill them, I make them a martyr. Covert thinks I’m a symbol. Peace, love, all that bullshit.”

“St. Cloud thinks that too, by the way.” My Bloodhound’s laugh was silenced by my glare. The mockery in his eyes made me want to promise to punish him later. He used to have the same sentiments. I wanted to have my own laugh. If only the people of St. Cloud saw who he fell to his knees for now.

“Duluth too,” Abel added.

“Actually.” Riley’s arm fell behind Elie and rested along the back of her chair. He quickly removed it as he caught her inching away once again. It wasn’t a movement of fear, but rather disgust. The way her small lips curled when she spoke to him. The daggers in her eyes. “Every place outside of Salem thinks that. Some more disdainfully than others.”

I considered that for a moment. The impact my involvement would have on the others. Everyone had bowed to Ronan. Some because they trusted my judgment, others because they considered themselves cornered and without options, either way, I’d owe them answers by the end of this. “Whatever. If I take them out, it turns their entire cause against Monterey and Salem. More specifically, me as a leader.”

“Still not seeing how that relates to them watching you,” Elie said, her voice tinged with teenage defiance.

I clenched my jaw, weighing the best way to explain this. “Their cause is our cause.” For a moment, I doubted myself. Doubted this was the right decision, to include them all. Alexiares caught my eye, tilting his head in encouragement to keep going. “They’re already on our side. They’re a threat because once our forces unite, that’s a wrap. Covert’s fucked. But if I take them out—he won’t have to worry about killing me, the rebels will do it for him.”

The room fell to a tense silence as people filtered out. Dinner time now moving into the time night shift filtered in to fuel up before their day began.

“So what’s taking them thirty days and thirty nights to show themselves?” Reina whispered as low as she was capable of going, combing through the short ends of her hair.

“I’m not sure, but that’s what we need to find out,” I replied, doing my best to sound confident in what needed to be done. “Whatever the case, it’s why we can’t afford to do anything about any prisoners yet.”

Alexiares squeezed my thigh, his hand stopping the constant bouncing of my leg. “If we torture them, and they’re part of some secret militia then we become the fucked. And frankly, I prefer to do the fucking.”

I jabbed him in the stomach as he sipped from his water. He spit it out and grimaced in pain. Elie’s nose scrunched as Emma scanned the table in confusion. The others fought off their humored reactions for the sake of the youngest around. Emma’s mouth was already filthy, no need to make things worse with Alexiares’s vocabulary.

“Scraps it is, Els,” I surmised as I maneuvered to peer past Riley and hold her gaze. “Can I trust you to take care of that?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Elie smirked, a mischievous glint in her eyes.

Abel cleared his throat, his voice steady. “I’ll help.”

“We’ve got this,” I muttered low and resolute. The weight of their stares didn’t crush me—it fueled me. “Hell won’t know what hit them.”