Breaker (Ondine Quartet Book 4) (7 page)

“Hey!” I called out. “I resent that!”
 

The door shut behind them.

“Guess Julian’s having a hard time,” Chloe said softly.

I exhaled. Weren’t we all?

“They’re having a difficult time trusting him.”

“What about you?”

“I trust him.”

She raised her brow. “But?”

“But he’s compromised that trust before and there’s nothing that says he won’t do it again.”

He’d placed Tristan in danger in an attempt to find the Shadow. Now that we knew who the Shadow was, what would he do to get to him? How far would he go?

“Is he the right person to be Head Chevalier?”

No hesitation. “Yes."

“Then give the others time. Once they get to know him better, I’m sure they’ll see what you see in him.”

The distrust in Cam’s face earlier flashed before me. I wasn’t so sure about that.

“I should get ready.” She headed for the door. “Oh, and your outfit for the ceremony is all set.”

Of course, I’d completely forgotten about that.

She glanced back, a small smile graced her mouth. “It’s hanging in the antechamber. I’ll meet you there before the ceremony.”

My heart lightened. Chlo made everything bearable. “Thanks.”

Once she left, I unpacked my meager belongings in the upstairs bedroom. Plush, comfortable furnishings in sage and white accented the room. Gauzy drapes drifted over a set of tall French doors.

I opened them and stepped out onto a private balcony facing the western section of the garden. In the distance, the azure ocean sparkled, shafts of light skittering across the surface.
 

The garden’s floral perfume and the crisp, salty tang of ocean and rain flooded my senses. My anxiety faded.
 

I’d made the right decision. This was home.

Familiar voices drifted up and I hurried back downstairs.

Aubrey unceremoniously dumped a laptop on to the table. “I can’t believe it crashed on me.”

Ian rubbed her shoulders. “You can replace it after the ceremony.”

“I should just get the new model.“

“It’s buggy. You’re going to be irritated —“

“Todd got his hands on a prototype and I had the chance to try it out.” A stubborn tilt of her chin. “It’s good.”

Ian pushed a lock of dark hair out of his eyes and settled onto the sofa with a soft smile. “Aub, the system is fundamentally flawed. Hardware needs time to catch up to the theoretical. Function trumps all. Design is not everything.”

She shot him a look of mock horror. “Sacrilege. Take that back.”

“I can’t decide if you guys are adorable or if too much computing has fried your brains,” I said.

She flopped down next to Ian. “This coming from someone who walks around with knives on their body —“

“One dagger!”

“More than enough.” Brilliant emerald eyes danced. “Besides, you’re not the only badass ondine walking around Haverleau.”

Huh. “Spill.”

She extended her sleeveless prosthetic hand. Slim, metal fingers glinted in the light. “Shake my hand.”

I tilted my head. “Isn’t that joke from second grade?”

“You’re thinking of pull my finger,” Ian said dryly.

“Yeah, but it’s pretty much the same thing —“

“Just shake the hand,” Aub said, exasperated.

I glanced at Ian. He shrugged.

I placed my palm in hers, the steel cool and hard against my skin. She slightly lifted her elbow.

A soft whirring sound vibrated through the metal followed by a soft click. I yelped and yanked my hand back.

Three lethal blades emerged from her wrist. They’d cleverly been concealed within the forearm bars of the prosthesis.
 

“Ian and I came up with the design,” she said gleefully.

Rotating her elbow in a certain way sprung a latch that activated the mechanism releasing the blades. The angles changed depending on the way she moved.
 

It didn’t matter which direction the opponent came from. With a simple gesture, she’d have access to a deadly weapon.

It was clever. Intricate. Brilliant.
 

It was exactly the idea I’d been waiting for.
 

“Can you make more?”

“More what?”

“Weapons.” I leaned forward. “Can you come up with other designs?”

“I guess,” Ian said slowly. “But don’t you already have kouper —“

Aub caught on. “You want to build weapons for the ondine training program. An arsenal.”

“The Armicant agreed to infuse them with Essence. But we’ll need to provide them.”

Ondines didn’t have the speed and training to get up close to an Aquidae with a blade. But there were other lethal weapons they could employ: guns, crossbows, throwing knives.
 

The memory of the Shadow’s blood tentacles, the crushing power of his magic flashed before me.

We needed everything we could get.

“Lot of weapons,” Ian said stiffly.

They made him nervous. The instruments of human cruelty were something he’d long been uncomfortable with especially since he’d worked with abused animals. He’d had a difficult time just being in the Selkie Kingdom’s armory.

This might be asking for too much. I shot him a questioning look. He just had to give the word and I’d arrange for someone else to do it.

His dark eyes flickered over Aub’s excited expression, the way she held her prosthetic arm with pride, not frustration.
 

His face softened and he gave me a slight nod. “So what are we talking about?”

“Bullets. Anything else you can come up with.”

“There are a lot of considerations.” Ian pushed back his hair. Watery light reflected off the diamond in his ear. “We’d need to make them light —”

“Portability is key.” Aub looked at him. “Something they could easily carry —“

“Or run with —“

“Conceal, if necessary.”
 

They continue tossing around ideas and as I listened to their easy flow, I realized how important this was.

Nexa was in Fontesceau, pursuing one possible path through the last Clairvoyant. A prophecy could be an important asset in our end-the-war toolkit.

Maybe this was another path, another tool, I need to explore.

My
kouperet
had absolutely no effect on the Shadow. Remembering how ineffective my magic and blade were against him sent a chill down my spine.

A weapon that worked on an immortal like the Shadow had to exist.

The sooner Aub and Ian immersed themselves in the technique and production of weapons design, the better our chances were of finding it.

“Speaking of the war,” Ian glanced at me, “I think I might have made some headway on the Shadow’s words.”
 

I leaned in. “What do you have?”

“I thought we might be looking at it wrong.” Ian grabbed a notebook and pen from his messenger bag and quickly scrawled across the page. “So I played around with it and broke them down this way.”

The numbers hang high
 
/

where red towers over sea. /

Can you find me now?

“It fits the five-seven-five syllable pattern for a haiku. Does that mean anything to you?”

I shook my head. Why in the world would the Shadow recite a Japanese poem?

“I’ll do some research tonight,” Aub said. “See if there might be any connection to the Japanese ondine community.”

“Do you think he’s in Japan?”

Ian considered. “Doesn’t make sense. The Shadow has always made this personal. Do you have any ties there?”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t mean he won’t attack, though.”

“Yeah, but that’s not his established pattern of behavior. He went after Chloe’s mom and then Ryder. He targeted Marcella and then —“

“Tristan.” Remembering made my blood run cold.

Ian nodded. “And he directly gave you these words and this message asking you to find him. Which means the way to him is likely through something personal to you.”

It was as if I sat at a board while a chess clock ticked down. I needed to make the next move but had no clue what to do. My opponent advanced silently through the dark and I couldn’t see where he was coming from or what strategy he employed.

All I knew was that time marched forward. When that clock stopped, something terrible would happen.

“He’s toying with us.” Frustrated, I rubbed my face. “And I don’t know how this war will end.”

“Oh, come on.” Ian gave a soft smile. “It’s a piece of cake. You’ll kill the Shadow and he and Jourdain will have their happily ever after.”

Aubrey wrinkled her nose. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s a silly, old nix fairy tale.” Ian leaned back and stretched. “When the war finally ends, Jourdain and the Shadow are supposed to be bound together.”

“Yeah, I’m sure she’d love that.”

Particularly ironic since the entire war started because Jourdain had fled the Shadow and fallen in love with a human.

I gestured toward Aubrey’s arm. “Maybe if we had more of those we’d have a better chance at him. That’s some serious badassness, Aub.”

She beamed.
 

“She worked out all the design details,” Ian bragged. “It has possible medical applications, too.”

“I showed it to Noelle over video chat and she couldn’t believe it. Wants to see it for herself.”
 

Aubrey’s sister was a highly accomplished Healer in Merbais, the community in Maine. Respectable and admired, she was the pride of the Rossay family.

“She’s busy with patients right now but said she’d come soon, probably for graduation.” Her voice was overly bright.

Noelle was always busy with work. Even when Aub was in the hospital, she hadn’t come out to visit, relying instead on a brief, phone conversation with Daniel.
 

Ian’s thumb stroked her wrist. “She’ll be here.”

She smiled. “And you guys will finally meet —“

A beep came from Ian’s pocket. He removed his phone and scrolled through it. His body tensed.

Aub peered over his shoulder. “Something wrong?”

“Holden,” he murmured.

Her expression sharpened, gaze turning expectant.

Curiosity prickled. “Who’s Holden?”

“A friend.” Ian carefully put away his phone. “Head of my group.”

Ostracized and despised by elementals for having the same dark blood from which Aquidae came from, nixes were shoved to the very fringes of elemental society and were often forced into working for the Shadow.

Prior to his arrival to Haverleau, Ian lived with a group of nixes actively working against the Aquidae in the hopes of joining elementals in the future.

The back of my neck prickled. “What happened?”

“Now that the Shadow has revealed himself and you’re about to be Governor, they’re seeking Haverleau’s protection.”

The group had already helped us out on a number of occasions by providing additional intel.
 

More importantly, Holden and his people had taken Ian in after the brutal turning and slaying of his family. Ian trusted them and I trusted him.

I nodded. “Of course. Let me run it by Jeeves and we can figure out how and when to meet —“
 

“That’s the thing.” Discomfort tightened his face. “They’re already here.”

“What do you mean? Like in Lyondale?”

My phone suddenly pinged. A high level security alert from Tristan.
 

“I mean here. At Haverleau’s gates.” Ian sighed. “The gardinels aren’t happy.”

FOUR

Four nixes stood before me. Three males, one female. All wore clothes too big for their bodies and lean, hungry expressions that appeared sharply out of place among the office’s padded leather furnishings, cold marble floors, and smooth mahogany.
 

On our way over, Ian had filled me in on the basics. Holden, Grady, Will, and Tara lived an intensely nomadic life off the grid, traveling from one city or town to the next, searching for places they could hole up for a few months without attracting too much attention.
 

The three gardinels who’d brought the group in loomed behind them. Tristan nodded at his men. Wordlessly, they left, shutting the door quietly behind them.

The nixes’ tension eased slightly. The two shapeshifting races had a long history of animosity.

Tristan stood near the fireplace, his body relaxed, eyes alert. Jeeves stood to my right, Ian and Aubrey to my left. Julian leaned against the wall near the door, his face a mask of utter boredom.
 

I shifted, subtly attempting to find a comfortable position at the desk. Rhian’s chair felt too big.

A skinny boy with shorn brown hair stared at Aubrey.

“You Redgrrl?” His voice cracked slightly. A terrible scar stretched from his right ear, across his neck, to his left shoulder.
 

Maybe twelve, thirteen years old. The youngest in the group.

“Grady,” the nix in front warned.

The one in charge. Holden was much younger than I expected, a few years older than me. Gauntness shadowed his frame and a cunning intelligence shone in his dark, wary eyes.
 

Hardness and a trace of cruelty were etched into the flat planes and sharp angles of his face. This was someone who had lived through nightmares and survived.
 

Aubrey tilted her head. “You guys took down that child trafficking ring in Southeast Asia.”

“I helped,” Grady said, excited. “Will did all the heavy work, though.”

The lanky, tall nix on the left with long, unkempt black hair shifted, his movements awkward.

Aub glanced at him. “Oh yeah?”

He shook his head slightly, hair parting to reveal a teenager a few years younger than us. His height made him look older.

“Yeah,” he muttered.

“Nice work.”

Grady beamed. Will flushed. Holden scowled.
 

And Tara glared at Julian.
 

The only female nix stood at the back, her shoulders tensed, hands clenched into fists. Tall and athletic, she looked like she could handle herself in a fight. A tawny mass of curls framed delicate features now arranged into an impressively mutinous expression.