Atlas is too slow. Bane is too heavy on both sides. Zero isloud.
I go downstairs.
They're in the front hall. Atlas has his back to me, hanging his jacket on the hook by the door. The motion is mechanical—left arm out, jacket off, hook, done—like he's running a program. Bane is beside the side table with his hand flat on the surface, not leaning on it exactly, just touching it. Anchoring. Zero is at the foot of the stairs with his hands in his pockets and his jaw set in the way it sets when he's burning something down inside his own head.
"Hey," I say from the landing.
Three faces turn to me.
I read them the way I've learned to read them—not with my eyes, with the bond. Three threads going taut in my chest at once. Atlas's is tight and flat, the bass note gone dull, the vibration wrong. Bane's is heavy—weighted, like someone hung something on it that it wasn't built to carry. Zero's is hot. Not the good hot. The dangerous hot. The hot that comes before the thing he does that scares people.
"What happened?" I ask, panic lacing through my veins.
"Nothing," Atlas says. He doesn't turn all the way around. He's adjusting his jacket on the hook.Stilladjusting it. It's been on the hook for ten seconds and he's still adjusting it.
"Atlas."
"Long day. It's handled."
"It doesn'tfeelhandled." I swallow against the lump forming in my throat.
"Max." Bane. His voice is too gentle. The voice he uses when he's trying to steer me away from something. "Come here."
I come down the rest of the stairs. Bare feet on the wood. I stop at the bottom and look at them—really look—and I know all three of them are carrying something heavy. Something dark.
"I can feel it," I say. "In the bond. All three of you. Something happened and you're not going to tell me, are you?"
Zero's eyes are on me. Dark. The pupils slightly too wide. His hands are still in his pockets but his shoulders are high and tight and I can see the vein at his temple.
"No," he says. Flat. "We're not."
"Zero—"
"Not tonight, baby."
The way he says it stops me. Not the words—the weight underneath them. Thebabythat isn't a tease or a claim. It's aplease. Zero doesn't say please with his mouth. He makes me feel it.
I look at Bane. He's watching me closely, his pupils blown wide in his warm eyes.
I look at Atlas. He's finally turned from the jacket. His face is composed. His tie is loosened. His eyes are the wrong color—not literally, but the thing behind them has shifted, the blue-grey gone flat and distant, and the bond between us is doing something I haven't felt from him before. A kind of low continuous ache. Like a bruise being pressed.
"Okay," I say, my voice lowering to a whisper. "You don't have to tell me."
I cross the foyer. I go to Atlas first because Atlas is the one whose bond is aching, and I put my hands on his chest—both palms, flat, over his heart—and I stand there. I don't say anything. I don't ask anything. I just press my hands into him until I feel the thread between us ease a fraction. His breathingchanges. His hand comes up and covers both of mine. Holds them there.
"Hi, sweetheart," he says. Quiet. Wrecked.
"Hi."
I turn to Bane. He's watching. I hold out my hand. He takes it. His fingers are cold—Bane's fingers are never cold—and I pull him closer and press his hand against the bond mark at my throat, his mark, and the thread between us flares warm. He exhales through his nose. Slow.
I look at Zero. He hasn't moved. Still at the foot of the stairs. Still burning.
"Come here," I say.
"Max—"
"Come here. You’re too far."
