Lucian and Balthazar stopped walking, both of them turning to study him closely.
Sethios’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s a pair of ominous looks.”
“Eli’s dead,” Lucian replied flatly. “Jonathan killed him.”
The world fell silent with that announcement, Sethios’s heart skipping a beat in his chest. “Jonathan killed Eli? How the fuck did that imbecile take down a Hydraian Elder?”
“By taking advantage of our trust.”
“Why would you trust him?” Then it dawned on him, the reason it’d been so simple for him to infiltrate their world and cause all this havoc. “Right. Aidan took him in as a stray immortal.” And as Issac’s maker, and Luc’s father, anyone else who affiliated with him would be perceived with some level of familial trust. “Fuck. I’m sorry to hear that.”
Eli had been a formidable adversary, and Sethios respected that.
Balthazar dipped his chin in gratitude, while Lucian just turned to continue walking.
“What else have I missed?” Sethios wondered out loud.
“No other deaths, if that’s what you mean,” Balthazar replied. “None that you would know, anyway.”
“Jonathan took Amelia and experimented on her for several years,” Lucian said. “Another of his experiments is being kept in the utility hut. She and Tom are determined to rehabilitate him.”
“And Tom is Jonathan’s son,” Sethios said, not a question but a statement. “You trust him after everything his father has done?”
“We do,” Balthazar confirmed as they turned off the cobblestone path onto a narrow concrete walkway that would take them down to the beach. “He and Amelia killed Jonathan together.”
“He was also instrumental in taking down the CRF,” Lucian murmured.
“And he’s Amelia’s chosen lover,” Gabriel interjected. “She’s the reason they trust him.”
Amelia’s dating the son of Eli’s killer? Sethios thought, whistling to himself. That’s sort of fucked up. Although, he wasn’t all that fit to judge. His relationship with Caro hadn’t exactly started with sunshine and roses. He’d negotiated her into his bed, then reneged on the deal and tried to keep her. She hadn’t been thrilled with him.
Do you miss your knives, Caro? he asked her, amused by the memory. If you talk to me, maybe I’ll let you play with them after I find you.
The resounding silence only made him sigh.
I’m going to find you, angel, he promised. Then I’m going to fuck you for months, just to hear you scream. Because I can’t stand not hearing you.
Was this how she felt when he didn’t know her? Had she tried to reach out to him, only to be ignored?
He considered what he remembered, his lips curling downward with each revisited memory. Sethios couldn’t recall a time she’d tried to reach out. Only mental visions of her drowning and the searing pain of experiencing it with her. But even those felt less and less painful over the years, like he’d somehow numbed himself to it.
Or perhaps it was because the visual cycle’s effects on him had declined with each repeated experience.
If it’d all been a sequence, as Gabriel suggested, then it was falsely contrived, and the bond would more or less overpower it. Was that why he couldn’t sense her? Because she’d been truly cut off from him, and the feed the Seraphim had created to keep him temporarily occupied no longer applied?
“We need to finish comparing the dreams,” he said, interrupting whatever Balthazar and Lucian were discussing. “We only reviewed yours.”
“Yes, but if my theory about the council having my mother is accurate, then reviewing the dreams is null and void.”
“Not if she’s been trying to communicate through the visions,” Sethios said. “I heard her briefly before that messenger arrived. She warned me.”
“You’re sure it was her and not a forced vision?”
“I could sense her, Gabriel. It was her voice in my head, not a fuzzy image.” And now she’d gone silent again. Stubborn angel.
Gabriel considered him, then nodded. “We’ll see what level my empathy is operating at, then we’ll talk to Stas about her dreams. After that, we’ll evaluate a plan and proceed accordingly.”
Gabriel checked his phone as he entered the bunker. Ezekiel had messaged to say that he’d arrived at an undisclosed location with Skye and Owen. Since the latter was considered an exiled Hydraian, he wasn’t exactly welcome back in Hydria yet.
