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I’m sending you this message so it’ll be waiting when you wake up. Because you have to wake up. You’re my sister, the one who always knows what to do. I need you. Please wake up.

Bram, why aren’t you responding to your messages? We’ve almost finished handling the situation with Shiloh, but the two of us…we’re not…doing okay with both you and Eleri MIA. You told me to always talk, always share my feelings. Please respond.

Adam thrust both hands through his hair as he stood against the wall beside Eleri’s hospital bed. One of the nurses had started up a huge comm screen on the other side of the room that displayed a peaceful forest scene accompanied by the sounds of nature: birdcalls, leaves rustling, a soft wind.

“The empaths recommend gentle stimulation to help keep wounded brains active,” Dr. Czajka had said. “We may as well try it, though I think Eleri’s down too deep to perceive it even with her subconscious.”

Ironically, the sights and sounds were helping Adam maintain his composure. Naia had been keeping him updated on Saoirse’s experiments with Bram—the man had managed to hold on to this point, but he’d started bleeding from the nose with the last batch of tests.

“He’s in pain,” Naia had told Adam. “Dahlia’s already yelled at him twice for wanting to continue, but man’s stubborn. There’s a point at which this will become torture, but he’s told Saoirse to keep going until she has nothing left to test. She’s desperate—even tried lead.”

She’d also told him of Dahlia’s promise to drive Bram out into the peace of the desert, so he could die without the pressure of hundreds of voices in his head.

“If that’s going to happen,” the healer had said, “it’ll have to be within the next two hours.

He’s admitted that the voices are getting louder by the minute. ”

“Saoirse even tried the stone of the Canyon,” Adam told Eleri, his shoulders in knots and his spine rigid. “Bayani managed to slice it out and the two of them put it on some kind of frame that they could place around Bram’s head to see if the minerals within would stop telepathic noise.”

It hadn’t worked.

Adam hadn’t expected it to—because while it blocked teleporters from getting into the Canyon, he knew Sascha and Hanz had used telepathy to communicate during Hanz’s attempt to help Jacques. They’d been inside the Canyon at the time, the stone of it all around them.

“I wanted it to work even knowing it wouldn’t.

” He walked over to stand beside Eleri’s bed, take her hand in his.

It was cold, and even thinner than usual.

Rubbing it between his hands to warm her up, he was piercingly aware of the fragility of the blood bond, the way it had lost cohesion even compared to yesterday.

“Fight a little longer,” he said, lifting her hand to his lips.

“Give Saoirse and Bayani and their team a bit more time. Help the jet and rock nerds make history.” It was a rough attempt at a joke that fell flat, because Dr. Czajka had been clear: Eleri’s readings had been on a steady downgrade since she’d woken for that precious minute.

As if she’d used herself up to kiss him one last time.

Chest burning, he said, “I love you, my wild bird.”

That was when his phone buzzed. It was Saoirse.

“We’re out of options, Adam.” Tears in his sister’s normally warm and confident voice.

“We just tried and failed with our last idea. And Bram’s done, will be leaving the Canyon as soon as he regains consciousness.

He lost it two minutes ago, but Naia says he’s not down deep, should wake on his own. ”

Adam swallowed hard. “You did everything you could. And tell Bram…” What did he say to a man who had spent his last hours on the planet fighting for the life of Adam’s mate? It was a debt he could never repay. “Get Dahlia to call me when Bram wakes,” he said. “I’ll talk to him as they drive out.”

Eleri’s chosen brother deserved to say good-bye to Eleri if he wished, even if only through a comm. “Hey, Chirp?” he said quietly to his crying sister. “I love you. Go hug your fledglings and your mate. And thank you for trying so hard.”

After they ended the call, he stroked nonexistent strands of Eleri’s hair off her face just to touch her.

“We don’t say good-bye in Diné Bizaad,” he told her, his voice grit and stone.

“We say hágoónee , and inherent in it is the promise of another meeting.” Bending down, he touched his lips gently to hers.

“So I will say hágoónee , Eleri. Only that. Never good-bye.”

Ripples of white and blue light across her blanket.

When he looked up, he saw that the comm had switched over to an image of another part of the forest, this one centered around a tumbling stream, complete with the sound of water falling over rock.

It’s so quiet here, Adam.

He exhaled at the kiss of memory connected to their one magical day together. The stories they’d shared, the love they’d—

It’s so quiet here, Adam.

He frowned, because it hadn’t been quiet in that cave. The sound of rushing water had been a deep thunder. Not a constant thunder, either, one that became white noise. No, it had altered in pitch and tone as the water made its way along its ancient channels and carved new ones.

He hadn’t even noticed that day—not after the bats decided to swarm.

My father’s father used to say that our clan lands were blessed with the quietest places, that we were renowned for it until many came here to bathe in the silence…

His heart raced at the echo of his grandmother’s words, his mouth dry.

There were endless peaceful places on the planet, from the ice fields of Alaska to the beaches of isolated Pacific islands, to the jungles of the Amazon. Why would people travel specially to a striking but not in any way exotic location like Arizona to experience that?

But his grandmother hadn’t said the most peaceful. She’d specifically said the quietest .

Eleri had used the same word.

Quiet.

Aria’s grandfather had lived in a time before Silence, a time when the Psy had mingled with humans and changelings on an everyday basis. A time where a quiet location could mean two very different things.

Eleri’s body jerked at that same instant, her eyes flying open. Blood bloomed across the whites of her eyes almost at once, her breath shallow and rapid and her pulse a race car under his grip.

“Go under!” he ordered. “Go under, Eleri, so you don’t give yourself a stroke!”

But it was too late. Her body spasmed in an unstoppable seizure, the readings on the monitors going haywire before she went limp. And he knew. He’d felt the wrench on the blood bond, had barely managed to hold on to it.

There were no more weapons left in her arsenal—or his.

Dr. Czajka rushed in, deep bluish shadows under her eyes and her scrubs wrinkled.

He stepped back to let her and her staff work, but the doctor dismissed everyone else after two minutes, then faced him.

“If she wakes again, she’ll die in excruciating pain.

Her official next of kin is Bram Priest—he’ll—”

“He’s in the same state as Eleri,” Adam said, his mind set. “He made it clear he didn’t wish to die in our infirmary. I don’t think Eleri would want to die in a hospital, either. Is she stable enough for me to take her home to the Canyon?”

“Yes,” the doctor said, and began to unhook Eleri from the monitoring systems. “You’ll need sign-off from Sophia Russo—she’s the secondary next of kin for all Js. And you have to make sure Eleri doesn’t wake again.” A hard look. “Allow her to go in peace.”

“Is there a risk she could wake on the way?” If there was, Adam couldn’t do what he’d planned—because he would never, ever permit Eleri to die screaming in agony, her mind crushed under a million voices.

“No, that last waking knocked her out. You have at least two hours.”

Adam made a call.

···

Sophia didn’t argue with him. “Yes, take her to your Canyon,” she said, her eyes hollow. “To the place where she found happiness.”

Max offered to fly him, having become a fully qualified pilot after joining Nikita’s team, but Adam saw the worry in his gaze.

“No,” he said quietly to the other man when Sophia went to say good-bye to Eleri.

“The commercial pilot I used last time should be landing at the hospital within the next ten minutes. You don’t want to leave Sophia and you shouldn’t.

She’s too pregnant and under too much stress. ”

If the Js had an alpha, it was Sophia Russo, and she was bleeding inwardly at the pain of her people. “You’ll need to tell her about Bram, too.” He laid out the facts in a quick summary.

Max muttered a harsh expletive. “I wish I could protect her from this.”

Understanding the other man far too well, Adam said, “Saffron and Yúzé, they’re the other part of their quartet.” The other part of Eleri’s family.

“We’ll locate them,” Max promised before Adam could ask. “Make sure they get warning of Eleri and Bram’s status.”

Having done what he could for the two Js he’d never met but who were important to Eleri, Adam walked into the room after Sophia drew back, then just picked Eleri up in his arms. “Faster than a gurney,” he told Sophia. “And she’s so light…too light.”

Face pinched, Sophia nodded and came over to tuck the blanket neatly around Eleri so it wouldn’t trail on the floor as Adam carried her cradled against his chest.

I love how your chest feels against my chest. The heat and weight of you on me.

Words she’d spoken to him after they’d shared intimate skin privileges the night she’d spent in his bed, her fingers tracing the lines of his tattoo with tender grace.

He’d told her about the meaning behind the tattoo, felt her breath on his skin.

“That’s so beautiful, Adam. You wear memory in your skin. ”

Later, she’d said, “All I feel with you…it’s more than I could’ve ever dreamed.”

Just wait, he wanted to tell her today. Just wait until the next time we’re together, now that your numbness is gone.