Page 15 of Atlas and the Traitor

A final manipulation, and yet, nothing compared to Atlas’s over the past decade, moving pieces around the board to fit his agenda, but today he wasn’t the one in the wrong.

“No.” Wetness pricked the corners of his eyes, as he pressed more firmly with his hand. “You stole it from me.”

“You don’t have to keep going like this,” she urged him once more.

If only that were true, if only his destiny hadn’t been set the day he and Evan were born and cemented for good when the man behind Daphne and his twin sister had come into this world. “I do,” Atlas said, voice wavering, his vision wobbly with unshed tears. “It’s the name she gave me.” He lifted his other hand and cupped her cheek, wiping away the tear that streaked down her own pale cheek, a match to the one racing down his. “I love you,” he told her.

“I love you too.” She closed her eyes, her final words a whisper. “And I forgive you.”

“Thank you,” he said, even if he didn’t believe there was enough forgiveness in the world to save him. From any of this. He closed his fist around her throat and added another loved one lost to the war.

Ten

Daphne’s body had barely dropped between him and Robin when Adam and Icarus came rushing back through the door—sans pretender. “Where’s Dyami?” Robin barked.

“Gone,” Icarus replied. “Getaway car.”

“Fuck!” Atlas cursed, then because he needed to do something with the anger and resentment, the hopelessness, spiraling through him, he shoved Robin in the chest, two-handed. “Why didn’t you go after him?”

He gestured at the lifeless witch between them. “Because I was holding her fucking fingers apart. Like you asked me to.”

“Dyami knows what she looks like now. I have to?—”

“The pack has her.” The coyote’s calm confidence was the only thing keeping Atlas from flying into a million magical pieces, from giving in to the awful energy raging inside him. Robin glanced past him to the other pair. “Was the hunter ever here?”

Adam flashed a keycard. “Bribed the front desk clerk for it. Let’s go find out.”

“Did you also tell them to stay out of here?” Atlas asked with a sweep of his hand at the death and destruction surrounding them.

“I have been doing this for a while,” the ex-cop deadpanned, before following his partner down the hallway toward the internal staircase leading to the rooms upstairs.

Atlas moved to follow but was stopped by Robin’s big hand splayed against his chest. “Channel it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your magic. It’s bordering on chartreuse right now. It’s supposed to be moss. Fix it.”

“Fix it?” The magic he tried to channel to the hand in the center of his chest hit a brick wall, rebounding on Atlas and causing him to stumble back a step, gasping. “How?”

“You tell me. Later.” He moved to block the hallway, arms crossed. “Channel it for now.”

It was on the tip of Atlas’s tongue to argue, the defensive instinct so ingrained at this point when it came to Robin, but they didn’t have time for that today. Not with Dyami and the hunter on the loose, Evan too. He closed his eyes and inhaled deep, smothering the darkness with his mission, his purpose, his vow. When he was steady, his magic no longer pinging around like a reckless pinball, he opened his eyes. Whatever Robin saw there must have been enough, the shifter dropping his arms and turning for the stairs.

Atlas followed him up to the second floor, then to the open door at the end of the hallway. A half step over the threshold and Atlas had to clasp the doorframe to keep the magic he’d just channeled grounded.

“Doesn’t look like he was ever here,” Icarus said, Atlas hearing him as if in a tunnel.

“But the clerk’s description matched,” Adam said. “He was here, at least briefly.”

“Or someone was magically pretending to be him,” Robin said.

Someone like Evan, who’d definitely been here, his magic lingering.

And if Daphne had sent him a quick mental word about Mary’s best protectors all being in LP instead of at the safe house, a property Daphne knew about from Cole’s final days, then Atlas knew exactly where Evan would be headed.

Fuck. “We need to get out of here.”

“We’ll search the surrounding area and deal with the body,” Adam said, as the ringing in Atlas’s ears grew louder.

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