Page 148 of Eclipse Sector

Tadhg kidnapped and sold Grey’s sister into the slave trade,Cael thought at me, his turquoise irises swirling with barely restrained fury.And he’s been trying to prove it for over a hundred years. I only recently joined the fight in the last few decades.

Why didn’t you tell us?I asked, astounded by his reveal.

For the same reason you didn’t tell us about Bariloche Sector,he fired back.For the same reason you didn’t inform us of the Sanctuary until recently. Trust takes time, Cillian. I think you know that lesson better than anyone.

Hmm,I hummed, neither confirming nor denying that point. Because we both knew I understood it on a multitude of levels.

There is more we can share,he went on.More we’ve discovered in our pursuit of Tadhg, specifically about this shadow organization known for their Omega auctions. But there’s no point in continuing this conversation if you think we’re lying.

“Cillian?” Kieran prompted, causing me to glance at him. “Do we need Dixon?”

I returned my attention to Cael. This was the moment of no return. We either worked with Grey and Cael, or we chose to go against them.

Right now, I didn’t see any obvious reason for the latter.

Because in Cael’s mind, all I found was the desire for a new alliance. A respect for Kieran. Acknowledgment of our mutual powers.

And an acceptance that Ivana chose me.

That last realization hung between Cael and me, the genuine thought lingering on the cusp of his mind, ensuring I heard it.

You’d just better prove yourself worthy of her, he added.Because she deserves the best. Not subpar. Not mediocre. Not even good. Thebest.

I know, I telepathically replied. Then I looked at Kieran and answered his question. “No, we don’t need Dixon. But we do need to give the journals to Grey. Because I think they’re telling the truth. And as they’ve already mentioned, time isn’t on our side.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

IVANA

Stacks of journalslittered the floor as Grey organized them by date.

Or that was what he’d said when Kyra had asked what the piles represented.

“These are from the last three years,” he’d told us, gesturing to a tower of a dozen or so notebooks. I had one in my lap now, the insides filled with incoherent musings and bizarre illustrations.

I scanned the pages, searching for anything familiar.

She described various scenes, wrote cryptic phrases, and drew random bubbles all over her pages. Sometimes those bubbles had arrows. Other times they were just circles upon circles, reminding me a bit of a delirious black hole.

“Do these mean anything to you?” I asked Grey, showing him all the doodles.

He glanced at the page I held up for him and shook his head. “No, not yet.” Then he returned his attention to the item in his hand. His jaw ticked at whatever he read there.

I put up a block before I could hear it in his mind, my head already overwhelmed from all the thoughts whirling around in the room.

Hell, it wasn’t even the room.

It was the entire sector.

I had no idea how Cillian lived with this every day.

Well, that wasn’t true. I had some idea because I’d adopted this mental blocking trick from his mind. But it was taking serious focus to hold it up against the various musings floating around Blood Sector.

Closing my eyes, I stole a deep breath and calmed my own thoughts. Silencing everything and everyone around me.

Then I slowly returned to the task of trying to find hints within Ashlyn’s chaotic writing.

There had to be at least three hundred passages in this journal, some of them sharing the same page, others scrawled across two papers.