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Adam looked up at Icarus, who stood behind Abigail, stitching a cut she’d taken to the shoulder in the earlier skirmish. Something to steady him, he’d insisted. “I thought you said she was older.”
“In every way that counts, and now technically too.” He tied off the stitch and snipped it with a claw. “She’s like you. She ages still, but more slowly because of the thing inside her.”
“She wasn’t always Mother Nature?”
“You weren’t always whatever you are.” He patted Abigail’s shoulder. “You’re good. Thank you.” He quickly washed and dried his hands, then blinked as he returned to the table, and Adam sensed he was more fully in the room with them again. He slid into the chair beside Adam. “Carry on, raven.”
Cormac claimed the chair at the head of the table. “Michael and Mary became inseparable. Fostered together by Brenda Rollins.” He withdrew two document copies from the file and passed them to Robin’s side of the table first. “Brenda filled a missing persons report for Michael and a death certificate for Mary.”
“After the Rift?” Robin asked as Abigail glimpsed the docs, then slid them across the table to Adam. “I thought missing persons reports were all shoved in a corner somewhere.”
“We work our way through them slowly.”
“But his”—Abigail flicked a glance at Icarus—“was filed five daysbeforethe Rift.”
“What the—” Robin started.
Adam cut him off with a raised hand. He shifted in his chair toward Icarus, toward their best avenue for answers, toward the person Adam sensed needed to give them now that he’d finally started. “Tell me about her.”
Icarus smiled as he drew the photo of Mary closer. “Sharp-tongued, sass for days, and smarter than anyone I’ve ever met. I was at the shelter first, she sauntered in, I sauntered over, and that was that. She’s the balance I need, the one who keeps me from flying too high most of the time, and who cleans up after me when I accidentally do.”
“And she named you Icarus?”
“No, he did.”
“He who?” Cormac asked.
Icarus shifted, withdrew his phone, and slid it in his direction. On it was the picture he’d shown Adam earlier. “Our brother, Canton. He joined us at Brenda’s about eight months after we were fostered there. He fit right in and fell head over heels for her.”
“Your sister?” Robin said, and at Icarus’s nod, followed up with, “You didn’t?”
“She’s always been just a sister to me.”
“I don’t have any record of Canton,” Cormac said as he rifled through the file again.
“Because she erased him.”
“Why?”
“So no one would arrest me for almost murdering him.”
Robin growled. “You sure you weren’t interested?”
Icarus rolled his eyes. “He was never just a human who fell for my sister. Hell, I’m not sure if he ever really fell forherat all.” He took the phone back and pocketed it. “Canton was in love with Nature, who was losing the war and needed to take drastic action, then hide afterward.”
“Canton identified your sister,” Adam said, putting it together, “as a host.”
“He was a fucking spy,” Icarus spat. Anger and hurt laced his words, thirty years of it that had lingered and stewed. That had kept Icarus at arm’s length from everyone but her, who no doubt shared his pain. “A warlock who inserted himself into our lives, buried into our hearts, and stayed there for years. Then, ten days before the Rift, he gave me a choice.”
The rest of the awful pieces slotted together, and Adam’s heart ached for the selfless man beside him. “You traded your soul for hers. To protect her.”
He shrugged, the most helpless gesture Adam had ever seen from the apex predator. “She’s my sister. The only person who’s ever given a damn about me.” He glanced across the table at Robin. “Deborah was your twin?”
A begrudging nod.
“We’re not blood related,” Icarus carried on, “but how I feel about her is how I imagine it must feel between twins. Like she’s the other half of me. I’ll do anything to protect her.”
Guilt and self-recrimination clouded Robin’s expression, a mirror reflection of Icarus earlier. He shoved back from the table and staggered into a shadowed corner, his back to the table, a shaking hand skirting over the back of his neck as his torso heaved up and down.
