Page 204 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series
Twenty-Eight
Griffin
W hile they were conditioning my emotions out of me, the guardians put me through torture I can’t even describe. But even the worst of that agony doesn’t hold a candle to pain that splinters through my chest as I watch Riva shuffle from the table where we’ve just had lunch.
I can feel her trying to hold herself together—the tangled stands of hope and doubt, conviction and uncertainty, that drag her down as she grapples with them.
Every time a clearer emotion shines through, a glimpse of the woman I know, something in her shies away from it as if afraid to lean too far in any one direction.
I might be able to sense all that from the inside out, but her struggle shows on the outside too. All of my friends take in her deflated energy and tentative movements with worry hazing their eyes.
It’s worse than when her anger consumed her. At least then she was focused, determined, even if there was an unnervingly brutal quality to it.
Balthazar’s news has torn a hole in her spirits like nothing else our captors have done before.
I know how hard she’s found it to accept her vicious talent. Her humanity was a shield against seeing herself as totally monstrous.
But now that side of her is tainted too. There’s nothing in herself that she can use as a compass to decide what’s right, no part of her that’s uncorrupted.
At least, that’s how she sees it. To my eyes, there’s nothing of Balthazar in her, nothing potent enough to dull the shine of the woman she’s made herself into.
I don’t get any sense that the other guys believe the association means all that much either.
But we aren’t the ones having to process the revelation. I can pick up on her emotions, but I can’t really understand the full extent of what she’s going through.
I sure as hell can’t judge her for faltering. The guardians reshaped my mind from the outside to the point that I became a willing participant in their plans. She’s just found out that the enemy has been inside her, woven into the most basic essence of her existence, from before she was born.
We don’t really know for sure how her heritage might have affected her all along, who she might have been if Engel had used whatever genetic material our creator originally meant to.
The thing is, I have no doubt that who Riva has been is exactly the woman we’ve needed regardless.
How can we get her to recognize that? Each of us has tried talking to her here and there since she confessed to us yesterday, but nothing we’ve said has budged the horror all knotted up inside her.
It doesn’t matter how much we trust her if she can’t trust what’s going on in her own mind.
With that thought passing through my head, a glimmer of inspiration sparks. I mull it over as Dominic and I move to take care of the dishes.
Yes, the approach that just occurred to me could give her the perspective she needs to boost her out of the pit she’s fallen into. At the very least, I can’t see any way it would hurt her.
I’ve got to try something. She dragged me out of my own dark cave, which I’d been lost in far longer than she has.
If I can’t help her regain her balance, what the hell am I even here for?
When the dishes are clean, I slip out into the hall. Jacob’s gaze follows me when I pass him, but I don’t say anything to my brother or the other guys.
This is something only I can do. They love Riva, so much the feeling thrums around me from their rising in the morning to the moment they fall asleep—maybe more than I’ll ever be capable of with my battered nerves. But I don’t want any other factors distracting from what I’m hoping to offer her.
I follow my sense of Riva’s emotional presence to the room with the cards table and the bookshelves. She’s standing by the shelves, looking at the books’ spines as if she’s not really seeing them. Her fingers are curled into the sleeves of her hoodie.
“Hey,” I say, keeping my voice soft, but she still startles before she turns to face me.
With any of the others, she’d have already known they were coming in. She’s connected to them way beyond anything she shares with Balthazar.
She pushes her mouth into a smile, but I can tell it’s forced. “Looking for more reading material?”
“Looking for you.” I go over to her and wrap my arms around her slim frame.
I can’t help noticing that she doesn’t let herself lean into me the way she used to. As if she’s worried she’ll somehow contaminate me if we’re in too close contact.
My throat constricts. That’s not how I want her to be feeling at all. If she can’t even let us support her?—
I open my mouth to tell her what I want to do, and it occurs to me that there’s another, much more uncomfortable distraction we have to worry about. The silver manacles grip both our wrists, probably projecting every word we say to Balthazar’s ears or those of his employees.
He doesn’t deserve a part in this conversation. And the last thing I need is Riva wondering what he’s thinking about it rather than focusing on what I’m trying to convey.
Well, we found a simple enough if slightly odd solution to that problem before.
I nuzzle her hair. “I know it’s chilly outside, but would you join me for a swim?”
Riva glances up at me with a question in her eyes. I’d imagine she can guess I’m not asking just so we can get a little exercise. She’ll remember why we headed to the pool the last time.
For a few anxious thumps of my heart, I’m afraid she’ll refuse. I have to admit I’m not sure what I’ll do then.
Instead she nods, if not with all that much enthusiasm. “Sure. It might be nice to change things up a bit.”
We stop at one of the bathrooms to grab a couple of towels and walk straight out to the patio that holds the pool. Balthazar didn’t supply us with bathing suits along with the other clothes we’ve found in our bedrooms, but we made do with what we do have just fine before.
It is chilly, the breeze nipping at my face with hints of the coming winter. I restrain a shiver and strip down to my boxers as fast as humanly possible.
Riva moves even faster, jumping into the heated water in her bra and panties while I’m still yanking at my socks. I scramble in after her with a sigh of relief as the warmth washes away the chill.
Riva keeps her head above the water. Her braid trails behind her as she glides from one end of the pool to the other and then lingers by the wall.
As I drift over to join her, she cocks her head at me. “You wanted to talk about something.”
Our manacles are well under the water, but she pitches her voice low all the same. I match her volume. “It’s more that I wanted to show you something. But I have to explain first.”
She lifts one eyebrow as if to say, Go on .
I can’t resist tucking one arm around her bare waist. My intended goal remains at the front of my mind, but when I’m this close to her—and this close to being naked—it’s impossible to totally ignore the desire clamoring inside me.
Those heady sensations are the only feelings the guardians couldn’t condition out of me. The ones that helped me start to recover every other emotion I’ve lost.
Just by being here, by believing in me enough to let me get this close, Riva has grounded me. Brought me back at least partway to the guy I should have been.
Please, let me guide her back too.
“You’re all mixed up inside,” I say quietly.
“Which totally makes sense. You don’t know how to think about anything you’ve experienced.
But before Balthazar told you anything, before he put those doubts in your head—that person is who you are at your core.
Whether the genetic ties affected you or not, whether he had some kind of influence over you even before, it’d be wrapped into your reactions without you knowing. ”
Riva studies me, her damp eyelashes darkly black around her bright eyes. “Where are you going with this?”
The corner of my mouth crooks upward. “First, I just want you to confirm that you agree with what I’m saying. You couldn’t have been hiding or suppressing Balthazar’s influence before you had any idea it was there, right?”
She gives a slight shrug. “I guess that makes sense. But it’s not like I can tell by looking back. At the time, any decisions I made seemed totally mine, totally… true. Because I had no idea I should question myself.”
“Okay. And we can tell you how it looked like to us, Andreas can even let you see from the outside… but I can remind you how you actually felt inside yourself, in the moment.”
Riva blinks at me, confusion giving way to a dawning understanding. “You want to project emotions into my mind—how you sensed I was feeling before.”
I bow my head closer to hers. “Yeah. I—I’ve been incredibly aware of your inner state from the moment we were in the same building together again.
And a lot of that time, I wasn’t feeling anything myself to cloud my perception.
I can show you what motivated you to stand up to Clancy, how you reacted to us and to the younger shadowbloods…
All those innate reactions that weren’t really under your control. Nothing could be truer than that.”
Riva stays silent for a moment. She swallows audibly. “All right.”
A flicker of fear reaches me alongside her acceptance. I stroke my thumb over her skin through the water. “Are you worried you’ll notice something that means you were influenced by your connection to Balthazar somehow?”
“I mean, it’s possible. Maybe there were feelings I wasn’t even aware of nudging me in one direction or another.” She raises her hand briefly to rub her forehead before dunking it back beneath the surface of the pool. “But I need to know either way.”
That’s the woman I know. The woman who’ll defy even her own deepest fears to make sure she’s on the right path.
The urge grips me to draw her even nearer and capture her mouth with mine, but I shouldn’t be distracting her from our main purpose here either.
Inhaling slowly, I let my mind slip back to all the times Riva’s feelings struck me most forcefully. All the pangs of emotion that I locked away in my memories like little treasures, proof that she was back with me even if I didn’t know how to really reach her.
“When you were going through the facility to break out the younger shadowbloods there,” I murmur, and dredge up the intrepid determination that spurred her onward. With a nudge of my mind, it flows out of me into her.
But I don’t edit it to try to placate her. I leave in the tremors of anxiety and uncertainty, the resistance before she let loose her shriek.
She should have the chance to evaluate the full picture and make of it what she will. In my mind, the hesitations only make her commitment shine brighter.
Riva stands perfectly still in the water in front of me, taking it in. Her chest gives a slight hitch, but that’s her only external response.
I can’t pay attention to her current internal state while I’m concentrating on the past, but she’s the only one who can grapple with whatever she’s feeling now.
I shift to another moment, a little later. “When Clancy first explained his supposed goals to you, and you found out I was alive.”
Anger and frustration, shock and confusion, and woven through it all a tiny thread of hope that gleamed brighter with her early glimpses of the island.
Moment after moment, I lead her through her inner journey.
The fury and betrayal when she confronted Clancy after realizing his ulterior motives for their first mission.
Her fierce protectiveness of Zian when our captor triggered his trauma.
The mix of concern and pride she felt around the younger shadowbloods.
The rush of resolve when she launched into our first escape from the island. The compassion she offered me after we were recaptured. Her bittersweet farewell to the dreams Clancy claimed he was offering us and the hardening of her emotions when she killed him.
So many fragments of the past that add up to the woman I’ve always seen her as: strong and resilient, capable of both kindness and ferocity when they’re earned, full of so much love she’ll put her own life on the line again and again if it means the people she cares about get a chance to live theirs more freely.
And there are so many of us she cares about. Not just me and the other guys who grew up with her, but every one of the kids who came after us, the shadowkind who were willing to help us, the strangers she’s afraid Balthazar will hurt.
Her dreams have never been anything like his.
As I run out of fragments to share, I realize that Riva has finally relaxed into my embrace. Her temple rests against my jaw, her chin against my chest near the scar from the gunshot wound that nearly killed me.
The impression I get of her now is more settled than before, like a pensive contemplation. I can’t tell whether that contemplation is taking her in a good direction or a bad one—maybe she’s not sure herself yet.
“You know,” I add, my thoughts coming together as I put them into words, “the other thing I can say is that how you feel, how you’ve always felt, is so different from any of the people who’ve held us prisoner.
And they all—the first guardians, Clancy, Balthazar…
Even if they wanted somewhat different things or had different ways of getting at it, in the end they’re all the same.
Arrogant and resentful and rejecting any hint that they could be wrong…
Even if he’s your father, Balthazar is way more like Clancy or our other jailers inside than he’s like you. ”
Riva lets out a long, shaky sigh. “I don’t know how—I almost forgot what it was like, going through all that.”
I stroke my hand over her back beneath the water. “We’ve been jerked around a lot. It’s hard to hold on to a clear sense of yourself when you’re constantly being treated like you’re nothing but an object for other people to use.”
“Yeah. But you always know.”
A rough laugh escapes me. “I know who the rest of you are. Me—that’s been trickier.”
Riva lifts her head to catch my gaze. The gleam in her eyes makes my heart skip a beat. “Thank you. There’s—there’s been something I’ve been feeling like I need, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was. I think I’ve figured it out.”
An easier smile tugs at my lips. “What’s that?”
She doesn’t answer with words. She just bobs up on her toes to kiss me.