Page 47 of Ashes of Honor

“Before he attacked Monterey,” I said slowly and cautiously, “before we were forced to surrender, I was gathering troops. Troops that now belong to me with others waiting for me to say the word. There’s power and then there’spower. We have both. I’m somewhat intrigued in exploring that with the forces you claim to have.”

“I only have the power to speak for us at the moment. That can be revoked at any time. Don’t want you getting the wrong idea.”

“Wrong idea?” Reina asked her brother. His gaze settled over her. A look of longing passed over before the reserved version of the man she once knew took back over.

“The values we held out in Transient still apply. Our territory being temporarily inhabited doesn’t mean our beliefs have changed. Our community is built on the foundations of rebellion against a centralized government. I can’t make any promises that the others will be on their best behavior.”

“Radicals,” Alexiares muttered, his hand falling to the small of my back. “Fantastic.”

I glanced at Caleb. His shifty demeanor held my interest. My curiosity. He’d been tested at Monterey Compound as everyone else had. He wasn’t powerful. If he was, we’d have known. You couldn’t bypass our systems.

Caleb read the questions right off my face. “Don’t look at me. I found them by accident. Not everyone’s supercharged, just most of them.”

“Yet you advocated for me?” I refused to break his gaze.

He shrugged me off, “Hunter was going to come for Reina once I let it slip she was alive, anyway. I only offered him another reason to stick around longer than to retrieve her.”

“No one’s retrieving anyone,” I said then sent a challenging glare Hunter’s way. “Are you in charge, or not?”

“He is,” Serenity answered for him, but she was not the person I asked, the one I needed to read answers from.

She had been trained and lived with Ronan, and for that, it would take more than words of confidence to buy her bullshit. Hunter and Caleb on the other hand, they were easier to read. Hunter had his sister here and, tentatively, that meant he had shit at stake, someone to fight for on our side. Caleb did too. His family still lived within our walls and apparently me vouching for him meant something.

“They’re not bad people by any means,” Hunter said, measuring but firm, “Most of ‘em will follow my lead. Overplay your hand though, and they’ll scatter.”

“Well then, I trust we’ll all get along just fine.” I grinned wide.

Perfect. Everything was coming together better than I could have hoped. Maybe I wouldn’t have to do this all alone after all.

Alexiares froze at my back. He couldn’t see my face, the smugness mixed with mischief in my grin, but he knew me, “What?”

“Oh nothing,” I said. “I love when all the pieces fall into place.”

Hunter met my grin. Silent words passed between us. We were on the same page. Ronan Moore would die before the year was up.

I whistled, moving around Hunter and brushing past Serenity. Snatching my pistol and knives out the air, I paid her no mind as I strode further along the cliffside. “You aren’t welcome in our gates and I’m not dumb enough to stay the night in your camp. We have twenty-four hours to chat before they expect us back,” I called over my shoulder and I felt Abel and Alexiares at my back. Exactly where I knew they’d be no matter what. “I say we keep walking and set up camp out the way. See what kind of arrangement we can settle on.”

Reina

What the heck was freaking happening? I knew Moe was lying about that mushroom tea. That’s right, yeah, you’re hallucinating.

I walked with ‘my brother’less than two feet away from me. If I stuck a finger out to poke him and touched his flesh, I was pretty sure I’d vomit. Nothing that had happened in my life in the last few years made an ounce of sense.

Apparently, I was freaking blind.

At first I thought my daddy died. Then Hunter. God knows I never saw Seth’s betrayal coming—though Amaia and Riley apparently had from a mile away. All that panic for nothing.

My heart beat out of my chest, sweat dribbled at the tip of my nose and at my temples. Our group was quiet as we strode along the overgrown coast, but my thoughts were migraine loud.

It had all been for no reason at all.

If I had listened to Seth and waited … better yet, had I gone north like he told us to, then maybe a bunch of people wouldn’t be about to lose their lives. All Seth had wanted was his brother and his father; and I—silly girl he’d always claimed me to be—had made sure he never kept hope. Had it been selfish intentions? Maybe.

To be frank, I couldn’t understand any of my decisions these days. Deep down, I knew this could be a fresh start for me. But at the same time, Seth had come first when I’d made the call to keep secrets from him. Even if my choice was wrong, even if he couldn’t see the innocence in the choice I’d made, it had all been for him. At first, at least. Then I’d seen Monterey Compound and it had become about me.

Shame on me.

Side-eyeing Hunter, I took him in. His mouth was set in a permanent, tight-lipped smile. The same one he put on for me as a kid after scolding Seth for being mean, or when one of dad’s passive aggressive comments silenced me at the dinner table. His gaze was set forward but his fingers spread outward as though he wanted to reach for me too and he was telling himself not to. There was no reading on him. For the first time since I figured this gift out, I couldn’t sense what someone else was feeling.

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