Lead Heart (Seraph Black Book 3) (5 page)

“Are you sure you didn’t see the guy’s face?” he asked me.

“I’m sure. Only a hood—he was wearing jeans, I think. What does this mean?”

I clicked on the message folder again and glanced down the list of names, pausing at one that I hadn’t noticed before, as it was further down in the list, indicating that it wasn’t a recent contact.

Hunter
.

My stomach lurched and I quickly clicked on the thread belonging to Kingsling so that I wouldn’t click on Hunter’s name. There were mostly messages coming in, rarely any going out, and they all stated locations, dates or times.

“What’s up with this?” I asked Quillan, flashing the screen of the phone at him.

“It’s how we receive our assignments,” he explained, glancing at the phone briefly before turning his eyes back to the road. “Our handler will send us as few details as possible—mostly because of hackers like Silas—and we meet up in person to discuss whatever they need us to do.”

“What if it’s an emergency?”

“There will just be a location—no date or time. There won’t be a person at the location, but all emergency locations are situated near hotspots. It’s any place marked with a K: chalk on the pavement, graffiti on a subway platform, that kind of thing. There will be a disposable phone in the hotspot location, with directions on what to do.”

“Wouldn’t that be a little hard to find? A random K written into the environment?”

“For less experienced agents… yes, I suppose it would be.”

“So what kind of stuff do they get you to do?” I fiddled with the phone as I asked the question, watching a drop of morning condensation track its way down the cold glass window. I wasn’t really expecting a response.

“That depends on what kind of agent you are,” Quillan surprised me by replying. “Me and the others aren’t a very good standard because we aren’t undercover in a human job—we live as full-time Zevghéri. Even though I have a normal-
seeming
job, it’s still at a Zev school, as a Zev teacher. For the rest of them, they do what the Klovoda asks them to do. That’s their job. Sometimes they just want their agents to follow a person. Sometimes they specifically want to get close to a target. Sometimes they want an item retrieved or planted, or a message delivered. The US government has their specialized operations groups… the Klovoda has
us
.”

I frowned, knowing that Quillan was leaving out the bulk of their ‘duties’.

“All that secrecy for… following people and delivering messages?”

Quillan’s lips twitched, but the amusement didn’t properly break through, and the spark quickly faded away. He still looked as devastatingly perfect as ever, but beneath it all, he seemed tired. Worn thin. Just like me.

“We do other things as well,” he said.

“Of course. Any chance you’re feeling particularly informative?”

He cut his eyes to me, catching the nervous way that I was twisting the phone in my lap, and then he looked back to the road.

“Our messages aren’t always the traditional kind. There are many ways to send a person a message… but I shouldn’t need to tell
you
that.” He paused, waiting for me to swallow his words.

I did, and I didn’t like the taste that they left behind. I didn’t like that my pairs were in any way similar to the messenger; that they could be doing to someone else what the messenger was doing to me.

“I see,” I said.

“It’s not like that.” Quillan’s fists clenched around the steering wheel, his mouth tightening into a hard line, like he had been disappointed at my response.
Had he been testing me
? “The Klovoda are only trying to protect our people. That’s what our missions are about, mostly. We have a tentative relationship with the country’s top security agencies, and an even more tentative relationship with the government funding those agencies. Sometimes they need us and sometimes we’re willing to help out. Just as often, though, they’re trying to test their limits with us. They would love to get their hands on an Atmá—despite the fact that they’ve already taken so many from us over the years. They’re angry because they can’t figure out how to harness the power of our people. It doesn’t stop them from trying, though. Whatever we do, whatever messages we send, whichever people we follow, whatever fires we start… it’s all in self-defence. It’s all to protect our people, our bloodlines, our power, our Atmás.

“Sometimes the government gets wind of an Atmá, and that individual is immediately targeted. They send their own agents to follow us, to harass us, and sometimes they paint the target over our heads that other people act on. That’s when one of us gets called in. We have to stalk the stalkers, making sure that they don’t make a move on one of our people. We step in if they do, but we can’t just outright interfere without provocation.”

I let the phone slip from my nervous fingers to rest between my legs. I held it between my knees as I flattened my palms on my thighs, rubbing them back and forth. I listened to every word that Quillan spoke, drinking the information up like a rare and precious wine. His hands were relaxed on the steering wheel, his dark hair slightly damp from the rain that morning. He had discarded his suit jacket and now wore a pale blue button-down that seemed to be attempting to convince everyone that he was a normal and regular human being. He was acting as though he told me about the Klovoda all the time. As though it wasn’t a big deal. 

“Those are only the combative agents, mind you.” He glanced at me again. “
Most
Klovoda agents are undercover humans, working normal jobs, living normal lives, protecting our assets from the humans. Tabby shifts from human schools to Zev schools, depending on where she is needed. If there was a Zev child in one of the human schools, she could be sent there to keep an eye on them. To keep them safe. That’s our main preoccupation, Seph: keeping each other safe.”

I deflated into my seat, my head tipping back as I allowed my attention to drift back to the condensation on the window. I felt guilty for jumping to the wrong conclusion, but I was also very confused. They kept sending me mixed signals when they spoke about the Klovoda. I had no idea whether the Klovoda was supposed to be good or bad.

Maybe it wasn’t as simple as that. It rarely was.

“Well then
why
did Silas sacrifice so much to keep me away from the Klovoda?” I asked. “I understand why he would want to keep me away from Kingsling, but the rest of them?”

“He knew the danger.” Quillan sounded as though his patience was running out, and that made me nervous, because he rarely lost control.
Until today
. “While Weston and the Klovoda might be separate, it remains that the Klovoda
is
that one step closer to Weston. Silas knew that Weston would find out about who you are to us, and then it would be the end of you, and the end of everyone connected to you. Because he wouldn’t just kill you… he’d kill Poison, Clarin and Tariq for hiding you from him, and he’d kill me and Silas, too. He wouldn’t need us anymore. Paired, we’re more than useless to him. We’re a
threat
to him. That’s why he has two backup heirs, after all. Noah and Cabe would die as a result of the bond, but he wouldn’t discover that until after the fact.”

I climbed over my own shock, pushing it into the back of my mind and forging ahead with my questions. Quillan was finally saying things. I wasn’t going to pause to dwell on just how outlandish those things sounded.

“Would he really do that?” I asked. “He acts like you’re important to him, and I think even I’m important to him, somehow. Would he really kill us, just because we’re bonded?”

“Yes,” Quillan gritted out, sounding like he was finished with the conversation.

“Why?”

He pulled to the side of the road again, yanking on the handbrake and throwing off his seatbelt. He escaped the car and began to walk away. I was left sitting there with my mouth hanging open, blinking at his retreating form.

“Um,” I managed, before pushing open my own door and running after him. “Quil—Miro?”

“Don’t, Seph. Just don’t. You don’t know what you’re asking for. If you open your mouth again, you’re going to regret it.” His voice was hard, heavy, and it held no trace of the kind friend that I had always felt I could turn to.

“What kind of a threat is—”

He growled low in his throat, spun around, and cupped the base of my skull, pulling my mouth to his. Something inside my chest exploded, fissuring out to my arms, forcing them up and around Quillan’s neck. My own reaction was more confusing than his sudden kiss. I
didn’t
have those feelings for him, I
didn’t
want his lips pressing into mine, his body backing me into the tree, his hands tugging my head back…

He tore himself away from me, swearing colorfully. “That backfired,” he groaned out.

I slumped against the tree, my hand hovering over my mouth. “
You did that deliberately
!” Even to me, the accusation sounded utterly ridiculous.

He shook his head, backing further away, turning to face the road. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.” He spoke to the road. “You weren’t supposed to like it. It was supposed to be a lesson.”

“Since when was
that
the best way to shut a person up?” I asked, unable to do more than slump against the tree, completely torn apart with emotion.
What the hell was going on
? “And I
didn’t
like it!”

He laughed, the sound carrying over the asphalt, mocking me with the dry undertone. “This is so messed up. This is so wrong. I need to figure out what’s happening to us.”

“Why aren’t you looking at me?”

“Seriously? You’re asking more questions?”

“What?” I swallowed. “I’m banned from
all
questions now?”

He turned and walked back to me, his eyes narrowed. I would have been afraid, except that Silas had turned me into an exceptional beast-tamer, and… well, Quillan didn’t scare me. I ran at him, colliding with his chest. I had meant to knock him over, but he had easily twice my body mass, and I was sure that it was only the shock that had upset his balance. Either way, he wasn’t going down alone. He grabbed me at the last second and I toppled forwards as he fell backwards, both of us landing with a painful
thud
in the grass. I recovered first, rolling over and sitting on his stomach while he continued to lie there, stunned. I grabbed his hands and held them against the ground, either side of his face.

“You’re being a bully,” I ground out. “Knock it off.”

His torso vibrated with a laugh, and I blinked at him as it spilled from his lips, turning his face into something warm and familiar. Before I knew it, I was laughing too, and I had released his hands to slump against his chest, the tense and ugly emotion that had been building inside me bursting like a too-full bubble, simmering down to nothing.

“I’m going crazy, Bossman.” My tone came out soft, but there was something underlying my words. It was unmoving, demanding, pleading, exhausted: it was my heart, bleeding into a plea. “I need you to tell me. Trust that I can protect this information from Weston, because I will. I promise. I’ll take what you tell me right to my grave because I’d rather die than let that man sift through my brain. I’d rather die than give him the ammunition to hurt anyone else.”

“I’ll tell you,” he answered, quicker than I would have expected, his voice so soft that I might not have even heard it had my head not been leaning against his chest.

I didn’t move an inch. I
couldn’t
, and I knew, inherently, that I shouldn’t. We had been tugging back and forth over an invisible line since the day we met, and it was time for one of us to release the rope. I knew it was going to be me, and maybe that made him stronger than me… or maybe it didn’t. Maybe the real strength is in letting go; in succumbing to a fragile hope that everything will be
okay
, even when all of the evidence suggests the opposite.

Maybe I was the strong one after all.

I couldn’t pull away from him anymore, so I let go. I allowed our bodies to subtly strain closer; to press together in an elimination of unwanted space; to share the kind of bond-given comfort that strikes a match against your bones and digs its silky fingers into your sore muscles. It felt as if we were melting into each other, our separate bodies dissolving into smoke to share air on common ground, and I knew that he couldn’t deceive me in that moment any more than he could deceive himself. Somehow, I had given in to the bond more with Quillan than I ever had with the other three. That surprised me, because Quillan was the one who I had fought against bonding to the most.

“Seph,” he croaked out, his hands finding my face and lifting until I was meeting his eyes. “I’m not the Voda Heir. You are.”

I stared at him, my brain pulling up and short-circuiting. Of all the theories I had entertained about what they could possibly be hiding from me, that had
not
been one of them.

“I-I’m w-what now?” I spluttered.

“I can’t be the Heir. It’s a secret my father’s family has managed to keep for centuries; that’s why Zevghéri society still believes me to be the next Voda, but the truth is… that became impossible as soon as Silas was born with a mark matching mine. The Voda has always been either an Atmá or—on very rare occasion—a normal Zev. Never a member of a pair. Can you guess how that was achieved?”

My brain was still struggling with the shock that tripped it up, trying to prevent me from moving forward in the conversation, but I scrambled to think of a response anyway. “Because… because the Voda… doesn’t stop. He keeps having children until he has the right heir. Like Weston.” I furrowed my brow even though Quillan was nodding. “But Weston has had plenty of normal kids. Why can’t one of them be the heir? Like Clarin, or Poison?”

“Because of the Voda power. It goes to the first born male by default, and will only transfer to another offspring under
one
single condition: an Atmá is born.”

“Weston hasn’t fathered an Atmá.”