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I was still baffled by his earlier outburst, but at least he’d set it aside for the meeting. I’d been half worried he would ban us from the room.
“Me too,” Aria agreed quietly as we walked, making me smile. “But aside from his issues lately, I think he’d make a good king.”
“I don’t think he really wants to be one. It looks like he just wants people to leave each other alone.”
She laughed at my observation, swinging our arms between us. “No kidding! But that’s what makes him a good leader, too. He doesn’t take any of it personally and genuinely just wants people to get along.”
Shrugging, I led her up the hill to the training fields, where the hybrid kids were all getting ready for their class. “I think he’ll probably throw his vote behind someone else, and people will agree just because it’s him.”
An eerie thought, with all my trust issues, but she nodded in agreement.
Her eyes darted to some of the fallen-blood wolves who had decided to join the beginner class when she responded. “He’ll choose someone good for the job, though.”
I could only hope.
16
IF THIS WERE A MOVIE
ARIA
“It’s done,” Reese said so softly, I almost missed it. The distant look in her eye made me wilt.
She hadn’t been very enthusiastic about the project, to begin with, and now she seemed even less so, but it made sense. It was one thing to theorize a weapon, and another thing entirely to create it and have to use it.
“Perfect timing,” Kiran said amicably, looking almost giddy. “The Upper Council bombed one of our camps.Bombedit. Can you believe that shit?”
Reese seemed confused about why that was insulting to the old hybrid, while I understood it. Supernaturals traditionally didn’t fight with human weapons; we rarely used guns or knives, even though things had been changing a lot in recent years. Why would we when our bodies and minds were weapons all on their own?
Auren sighed. “I’ll need you to test it. Some of our spies have reported that there's a few Paras en route to one of our smaller encampments, and it provides us an opportunity we really can’t afford to pass up.—Zuzanna, remove the geas.”
Apparently, they’d dealt enough damage to warrant whatever weapon Auren and Reese had cooked up.
Our resident human visibly relaxed when the witch placed a hand on either temple and closed her eyes. I didn’t know how she could stand it; I shuddered at the thought of someone tinkering with me like that, but when Zuzanna stepped away, Reese was practically beaming at us.
“It’s a grenade!” she all but blurted out.
Auren chuckled at her enthusiastic rambling, trying and failing to help us all understand how exactly it worked. Apparently, she hadn’t been the only person working on it as I’d assumed, but there was an entire team of mixed heritage. She’d just been added in to give human pointers since humans were so much more adept at creating weaponry.
“It releases a smog that should be poisonous to angels and demons, and if it works, we should be able to mass produce them—which is really cool, but I’d rather the recipe didn’t get out to anyone else,” she added, looking distressed by the thought as Auren nodded in agreement.
“Of course not.” He almost sounded offended before smoothing his voice over. “It’s why everyone involved is under a geas. They can't talk about it or replicate it outside of the room where we all work on it together.”
“Good call,” I said, remembering how the fallen-blood wolves had been so obsessed with the cure. They’d wanted to know every ingredient, and some had even gotten aggressive when Dr. Vasille refused to discuss it.
To my knowledge, nobody had put her under a geas, but she’d later explained to us that the danger to mated pairs, if word got out, would be astronomical. The powers that be would try to recreate it just to win back public favor, regardless of who it hurt, or desperate wolves who hadn’t been allowed into the compound would when their worried families reached out to give them the good news.
Auren shrugged. “It keeps things simple. Luckily, Zuzanna is talented enough to do them.”
I pretended not to see the way she preened at the praise.
“I’ll portal her in,” Atlan murmured, yet was immediately shot down by everyone around him, starting a lengthy debate on who was needed where.
Apparently, there had been more sightings of enemy troops circling some of the other camps as well, and Kiran was expected to help portal out civilians from some of them. It was something that would take a lot of time and effort, considering how their portals worked.
Finally, it was decided that Atlan would portal six of us close to where the Paras were expected to be—after he confirmed that there was, in fact, an angel among them since it had become an increasingly rare occurrence—and then we would circle back to a rendezvous point a few miles away, where Kiran would be waiting to portal us back home. It sounded simple enough, which definitely meant that it would probably be one of the most insane experiences we’d ever had.
In the movies, it always seemed like these things took days to plot out. I’d expected to have time to go home, relax a bit, and maybe get in some last-minute training… but no. After Neo made a stink about getting to tag along instead of Zuzanna—and Reese looked torn between completely destroyed and flattered—Auren had managed to pinpoint a roundabout location in a few hours.
