Page 120 of The Stone Secret
It wasn’t a request. “Fine. But not until you’re fully healed. Deal?”
“Deal.”
I left him as he was drifting back to sleep and found Yarrow in his small kitchenette sipping a cup of something.
“I just spoke to Derek, and he said something that I need to ask you about.”
Yarrow lowered his cup. “Go on.”
“He said that I was his tether. That self-preservation meant keeping me alive.”
Yarrow’s jaw ticked. “It would seem so.”
“I thought he was his own entity. His own person.”
“He is, or at least he will be once he believes in himself. Right now, if you die, he might cease to exist simply because he believes his existence is dependent on yours.”
“So he needs to believe it?”
“Belief is a powerful force. Derek was born of belief. Crafted out of need using imagination, and now he must exercise his own if he wishes to be free.”
“We have to help him. Can you work with him? Make him see that I’m not his tether?”
“If I do that, then he’d no longer be obligated to protect you.”
“I don’t care about obligation. I care about his life.”
He set his cup down and tucked in his chin. “It seems I’ve misjudged you, Miss Basque. I’ll do my best to find a solution.”
“Thank you.”
We were at the main door when a thought occurred to me. “Can you keep him here until after the exam?”
Yarrow looked down his nose at me, his golden eyes bright in his face. “You’re worried he’ll come to your aid and injure himself further.”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll do what it takes to keep him safe.”
That’s all I could hope for.
CHAPTER49
The elite and I took an orb to Asteria, but unlike the last time when I’d visited with Evelyn and the Omegas, we didn’t arrive in an alley. We materialized in a room neatly piled with boxes. Orix led us up a flight of stairs and into a dimly lit hallway.
“This is our Asteria residence,” Selas said. “This is where we sometimes stay when we have time off.”
“If we don’t want to go all the way back to Arcadia,” Orix added.
“Serath should be here,” Prasan said, slipping past us and through a door to my left.
“He’ll find us,” Orix said.
He was coming? I took a breath to calm my racing pulse.
“You all right?” Selas studied the air around me.
“I’m fine. Eager to get out there and explore.”
