“Padma believes that we are going to Korea.”
Adam leaned against the closed door, his posture deceptively casual.“Where’d she get that idea?”
Ellie came closer to him.“She already knew about your father.”
There were a hundred questions Adam might have asked her.Ellie sensed the significance of the one that rose to his lips first.
“What’s he looking for?”
“Penglai Shan,” Ellie replied.“The land of the immortals.”
The myth of Penglai was Taoist, most well-known through Chinese folklore.It spoke of a mountainous island said to be home to sages whose wisdom had raised them beyond the confines of ordinary flesh to a state of spiritual and physical perfection that granted them immortal life.The method of that transformation varied depending on what version of the story one heard, from a godly elixir to the fruits of a holy tree or more abstract concepts of spiritual energy.
The location of Mount Penglai—if such a place existed—had long been a mystery.George Bates apparently believed it lay to the north in the kingdom of Korea.
Korea had its own myths of immortality and of mountains that hid powerful secrets.They were less well known in the West, but that knowledge could be learned—and might conceal a powerful truth.
Ellie had never met George Bates.She knew him only by his reputation… and by the shape of the scars he had left on the heart of his son.
“We don’t have to go.”
Adam moved to the window and stared out into the darkness.“It wouldn’t be any different than what we’ve done before.He’s just another bastard in a suit.”
The forcefully casual words cut at Ellie like a knife.
She crossed to him and put her hand on his arm.It was stiff with resistance.
“No, he’s not,” she countered gently.
His facade broke at her words.A shudder moved through him, and his face fell into lines of rage and fear.The words tore out of him roughly.
“You don’t know what he’s like, Ellie.”
She thought of Adam’s strange reaction to Borthwick’s threats back at the Brahmastra temple.“You begged Borthwick not to send me to him.Why?What did you think your father would do to me?”
Adam’s eyes were haunted.“He would carve you full of holes.”
Ellie stilled with shock.
“Not like Jacobs,” Adam elaborated, his face drawn.“He doesn’t have to use knives.He can do it all with words.”
The enormous room shrank as Ellie felt herself draw closer to something old, dark, and rotten.
“Tell me what that means,” she demanded.
His voice was raw as he answered her.“He would take you down, one little piece at a time.Make you doubt everything you thought you knew about yourself.Everything you thought was good.He’d turn it around until all you could feel about any of it was shame, and that still wouldn’t be enough.Because even if you tried to be the person he said he wanted you to be, he’d keep showing you all the ways you’d failed.Hebreakspeople like that.He breaks you until you’re nothing but a kicked dog, cringing from the next blow.”
Ellie’s mind spun with horror at what Adam had just revealed.
She had known some part of it—glimpses she had intuited through all his careful defenses and unexpected vulnerabilities.But she hadn’t understood, not really.
Not until now.
She raised her hand to his face.It was as familiar to her as her own, still shadowed by the bruises he’d won fighting for the people he cared about.Grief and love formed an ache inside her chest.“That’s how he hurt you, isn’t it?”
Adam looked back out into the darkness.She could see the struggle inside of him.
The pain.The shame.
