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“The next time a basic security check is run on the access card database these will come up as anomalies, but that won’t be for another three days. If we haven’t finished by then, we’re all probably dead.”
“You could have sugar-coated that,” Aaron muttered as he tucked his access card into his sweats pocket.
“I don’t hide things,” Deacon answered, crossing his arms and standing straight. “We’re all in this together, and that means we’re relying on each other. You deserve to know the risk. While the shades know it—we’ve lived it—we’ve got two humans here who haven’t faced this before. You both need to understand how this could go, because if you’re not willing to take that risk, you need to leave before you take us down with you.”
Aaron narrowed his eyes, a sure sign that while he’d been on his best behavior, he was far from some quiet doormat. It seemed he was willing to acquiesce to Hera, but not so willing to play second-fiddle with us.
Still, Moa was the one to actually respond, and the strength in her voice made the room go silent. “I know the risks.”
“You say that, but I doubt someone like you understands it at all,” Brax snapped, ever the charmer that he was.
Moa turned a hard look on Brax, not flinching from him or his words. “I left letters behind for my parents in case I don’t come back. I updated my will and my advanced directives. Trust me—I know exactly how dangerous this is. In fact, I’m not a shade. I don’t heal like you all do. I’m not as strong or as fast. I don’t have any special skills to keep me safe. If this goes wrong, I’m well aware that my odds of making it out are worse than any of yours. So if you’re trying to scare, if you’re trying to prove some point, don’t waste your breath. If I wasn’t willing to see this through to the end, I wouldn’t have come this far.” She held her hand out toward Deacon and waited.
And again, I found myself impressed.
She’d ignored Brax’s glare and faced down Deacon, as well, all while being a human girl who was barely an adult.
Deacon stared back for a long, tense moment before letting out what might have been a chuckle and setting a card in her palm. “Be careful,” he said before releasing it. “It’d be a shame if you got killed.”
Moa tucked her card in the pocket of her sweats, then nodded.
I laughed at the exchange, drawing all the eyes in the room. I shrugged and crossed my arms. “It’d be a bigger shame for us, because Hera probably wouldn’t be too happy about it.” I nodded toward Kit. “I suggest you keep her safe, because I’m not above throwing you under the bus if anything happens to her.”
Kit shook his head as if he refused to rise to my barb. “Come on, Moa, we should get going. There is no point in wasting time here.”
Moa nodded and followed Kit as if she had no worries about it at all. Again, she reminded him that she was tough. Not many shades, let alone humans, would willingly follow a wendigo.
With them gone, the room felt slightly less cramped.
Bowen glanced around, a frown on his features. “I expected something different,” he said. At Deacon’s look, he went on. “I’ve heard about Larkwood for a long time. I’ve dealt with shades who came from here, and I honestly never thought I’d see this place in person.”
“It doesn’t live up to your expectations?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Honestly? No. The way people talked, I expected to find some old dungeon with stone walls and a moat. A place with this much ugly history shouldn’t look like a something between a low-end hotel and a boarding school. It’s like Kit looking like a stuffy professor but being able to turn living things to ash.”
I thought back to when I’d first arrived and found myself stuck here that first night. “Trust me, come here as a kid, when you’re locked up alone, it feels like a dungeon.” I recalled how tall the towers had seemed back then, how far each floor spanned, how the guards had looked like monsters.
“Does it still feel that way?”
I pressed my lips together as I considered it, then shook my head. “It’s just a place.” It took saying that for me to really accept it, for me to understand what had changed.
When I’d arrived, I’d felt frightened and alone. I’d had Brax—that made me luckier than most shades—but they’d ripped everything away from me. Larkwood had been a monster who had eaten my old life.
When had that changed?
Hera.
The answer was as obvious as it was embarrassing. Before her, I hadn’t thought I had anything else. It had felt as if I’d been swallowed by a giant beast and was busy just trying to not die yet. Hera had made me realize that I could have a life, that Larkwood wasn’t the insurmountable enemy I’d pegged it as.
Bowen lifted his eyebrow as if he could almost read my thoughts before he shook his head. “You put too much faith in one person. No matter how skilled or impressive they are, they aren’t infallible.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe you just haven’t found someone worth putting that much faith into.”
Bowen nodded, though I got the sense he didn’t really believe me. “Maybe,” he said softly, then turned toward Brax. “We’d better get ourselves set up as well.”
“Is everyone else in place?” Brax asked.
“They should be. The other levels will be easy to take control of, so I have little doubt that the shades who volunteered can handle it. We need to keep our focus here, on Level 1.”
