Page 2 of Echoes of War

“If you try to stop me,” she said, “you’ll be wasting precious seconds those people don’t have.”

A groan escaped my throat, my locs dancing as I shook my head, “Keep up.”

Elie ran at my side, ready to defend what was ours.

Amaia

Three weeks had passed since Seth left us, abandoning the family we thought he’d grown to love. To be betrayed and then abandoned … there was no instruction manual on how to grieve a loss of that magnitude.

It was different from death. He had chosen this path. Deliberately set out to hurt us and left our hearts in tiny pieces. Left us to grieve the loss of a person who was very much still alive. At first, it was a shock. Reina refused to accept it, her denial unyielding.

She was convinced he would come back, that he wasn’t truly on their father’s side and instead would return having talked him down.Seth will save us all. Just you watch, she had said. The pain in Tomoe’s eyes had let me know that wasn’t even a remote possibility in our future. At least not at the moment.

That was a visage Tomoe displayed most days. Each word she uttered was laced with venom. Like it was painful for even her to say. Not because she cared if it hurt me, but because it hurt her to look at me. To talk to me. We interacted with each other when we had to, spoke when it was required to get the job done. Besides that, I was dead to my sisters.

Our days were busy. The first morning after Seth’s departure we’d set straight to work. The message of the impending war had spread throughout the major networks in Salem Territory and The Expanse. Things had been kept quiet, for now there was no news of the fate bestowed upon my family and I.

The silence of the grapevine meant nothing to me. I knew Seth had already made it to their father, felt it in my gut. Ronan Moore knew damn well we were still alive. And now he would plot his next move while we remained here like sitting ducks, something I’d worked hard to keep us from being. I’d be damned to sit here twiddling our thumbs, waiting to see how Covert Province would retaliate. Now was the time to research, to gather evidence, to build up our own forces. Most importantly, figure out how I could put an end to that man and anyone who followed him.

Sloan had put together a small team to accompany us outside the walls to conduct field research and gather what we could from attacks nearby and passing herds. Things had changed quickly. At the forefront of this mess, it had been either the OG Pansies or the upgraded versions, not a mix of the two. Maybe a few would stumble into another herd here and there, but now, they moved as one.

It had become a common occurrence to see an even mix. The made Pansies guided the originals.

“Riddle me, how herd mentality makes any sense? It’s a piss poor theory at best,” Reina said, glaring at the three Duluth Tinkerers Sloan had assigned to our mission. “These are the bestscientistsyou have?” Her voice was cold, detached.

“Reina …” I warned, begging her to stop before things escalated again. Berating them wouldn’t make them any smarter.

Her icy eyes glared back at me. “What, Amaia?”

“She’s right,” Sloan said, staring down her nose distastefully at her cousin. “Herd mentality is psychological. It relies solely on influence and behavior, not communication.”

She had majored in psychology in college, and though those years were far behind us, I trusted her judgment.

“Then we’re back to nothing?” I asked.

A chair scraped across the floor, falling forward at my feet. “Yes, Amaia, I’d imagine being back to nothing is precisely whatanotherdisproved hypothesis indicates.” Tomoe’s thin lips pulled into a snarl.

They were still furious with me over Seth. Not that it wasn’t justified, but I found that his betrayal heightened the severity of their emotions. I’d grown used to it from her and Reina both. My sisters hated me for my betrayal. So I turned the other cheek. If their survival in this war rallied around resenting me, then sucking it the fuck up would become my full-time job.

The two of them spent what little free time we did have these days away from me and with each other. Oddly enough, Alexiares had become my only companion in the wake of Seth’s departure. Reina and Tomoe only interacted with me when our jobs required us to. Where everyone else looked at me with distaste or hatred, his eyes had been kind. Soft. Proud. If the damn, warm, fuzzy feeling I got when his eyes landed on mine was a sin, then call me a sinner.

Most days we just talked, often late into the night, finding ourselves accustomed to falling asleep in my room. Nothing had happened between us. The idea of sleeping at each other’s side had become comfortable. Routine. Yet, I couldn’t help but get the sense that we were treading dangerous territory.

Waking up nestled into him every morning had quickly become the highlight of my day. There was something so serene aboutthose moments, the gentleness to which he stroked the curls of my hair as he slowly came to. But with Seth lighting our entire lives on fire, now hardly seemed the time to explorewhat ifs.

I watched him, tracing the outlines of the ink that curved around the nape of his neck, reaching toward his ears. The way his hazelnut eyes shifted, processing the information we’d spent weeks digesting. He sat staring at some generic-ass dolphin painting that belonged inside a dentist’s office. The room we’d grown accustomed to meeting in was full of odd paintings that didn’t appear to belong. It was unnerving.

My brows scrunched. The thought of the clicking noises the Pansies made triggered something in me. Sounds that only nightmares could construct. They all made them, but the cadence of clicks and grunts from the created ones differed from those we’d spent the last five years fighting.

“I don’t suppose echolocation is a plausible theory,” I said, half-joking.

The room went quiet; I glanced up at Reina, eyes questioning. She said nothing as I took in the other Tinkerers. Their chatting stopped, now staring at each other, mouths agape.

“No … no, it’s not. But you may be on to something else.” Reina took a seat, her grief flowing throughout the room.

I bit down on a yelp of pain. Everyone around the room grasped tightly onto whatever their hands could find. Not a single soul spoke, growing accustomed to her newfound lack of control over her gifts under pressure.

Sloan’s fierce blue eyes found mine, the tension from our previous conversations on how to handle Reina filling the space between us. To Sloan, grief was weakness. A pointless emotion that got in the way of getting the job done.

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