Word and Breath (15 page)

“I was supposed to be more subtle than the other Breather you met.”

She looked at him curiously, realizing he was annoyed with himself for the failure of his skill. “If you would have told me the truth, I might have let you help me sleep voluntarily. You didn’t have to go sneaking around—”

She broke off abruptly, as something occurred to her for the first time.

The weight in her stomach surged upward into a painful knot in her chest. All the instinctive acceptance she’d felt transformed into a sharp betrayal. “You didn’t run into me by accident. Did you?”

His eyes closed briefly at the hoarse accusation in her voice, but then he met her eyes evenly as he admitted, “No.”

She jumped to her feet, feeling exposed and vulnerable in her torn clothing and loose hair. “All of this was part of a plan? You were using me, lying to me—” She broke off again, the knot in her chest now lodging in her throat. More of the pieces started falling into place, forming an appalling whole.

Mikel took a step closer and reached out a pacifying hand. “Let me explain—”

“Explain what?” she choked. “That you’re working for the Union? That this was all some sort of scheme to get information from me? That everything you’ve said has been a lie?”

Fury and betrayal threatened to swallow her up, and her vision blurred as she tried to process the storm of emotion. There was no reason for her to feel this betrayed and hurt. She’d only known the man for a little more than a week. She should have suspected he wasn’t what he seemed.

But she’d been so sure of him. She’d trusted him.

And never in her life had her trust been so violated.

“It hasn’t all been a lie,” Mikel began, his expression anxious and sincere.

More lies. She couldn’t hear them. “How often were you using your…your powers on me? Stealing thoughts and feelings from me against my will?” She wasn’t screaming. It hurt too much for that. “Did you take what you wanted from me?”

“No!” Mikel had been relatively calm in the face of her outrage, but at this his control evidently snapped. “It wasn’t like that.” He stepped forward, moving to take her by the arms in his urgency.

Riana jerked away from him violently. “Don’t touch me! I’m not going to let you take anything else from me.”

Mikel dropped his hands, his face going momentarily blank. “I wasn’t going to—” Then he shook his head curtly. “I know you don’t believe me, but if you’ll just let me explain… Yes, you were part of my assignment. But it wasn’t what it seems—”

At his words, another recognition hit her, making her momentarily dizzy. “You were waiting for me on the street earlier. Weren’t you? Did you know about the shooting? Were you part of Jenson’s death—”

“No! I knew nothing about it until it happened.” He was holding his arms tightly against his side, as if he had to will himself not to touch her. “Riana—”

And then the final piece of the puzzle slammed into her. She swayed on her feet, trying to process what it all meant.

A rage she’d never experienced before overwhelmed her. And she felt herself lunging at Mikel, hitting at him with her fists. “Where’s my sister?” she demanded, her voice like nothing she’d heard before. “Where’s Jannie? Where is she?”

Mikel grabbed her shoulders and held her away from him. Even in her rage she realized he’d avoided touching her bare skin or her injury. “Riana, stop! I don’t know where your sister is. That’s the truth. I have no idea who took her or why.”

She fought against his hold for a minute, but then all of her furious intensity drained out of her in an instant. As the energy left her, she went limp and—to her horror—started to cry.

They were choked, painful, ugly sobs, but there was no way she could hold them back.

Mikel made a distressed noise in his throat and started to take her in his arms. “Riana, don’t. Don’t.”

At the feel of his arms around her, however, she found enough energy to raise her defenses. She shrunk away from him, terrified at the idea of his touching her in any way.

He dropped his arms immediately, mumbling an apology.

He didn’t touch her again, not even when she almost stumbled as she went to sit on the couch, not able to rely on her legs to support her weight anymore.

She stifled as many of the sobs as she could. She was mortified at her breakdown—especially in front of Mikel, who had violated her more than anyone she could remember—but there was no way she could help it.

When she smelled something strange, she asked hoarsely, “Is something burning?”

Mikel cursed under his breath and went to the kitchen to take something off the stove.

When he returned, he knelt in front of her. He reached out toward her as he began to speak, but jerked his hand back abruptly before it reached her knee. “Yes, I work for the Union. I was assigned to you. The job was to get to know you and retrieve certain information from you that the Union wants to know. You must know by now that you have some sort of knowledge that is valuable to more than one party.”

She was still shaking and shuddering, but she was listening to him. Against her will, she was listening to him.

“This is what I do. It’s my job. It wasn’t personal, although I certainly understand how it feels that way to you. I didn’t know you. I was just doing my job.”

Of course, he was. Why would she have meant anything to him at all?

“But it changed. Riana, I swear to you it changed—almost immediately. I deceived you, yes. And manipulated you. And I was following you all day today so I witnessed the shooting and then arranged it so you’d run into me in front of the coffee shop. But it wasn’t all a lie. I do want to help you.” His face twisted strangely as he admitted, “And I didn’t turn you in to my employer when he called about you this afternoon. I’m not going to betray you. Please let me help you.”

She believed him.

The worst thing about the whole situation was that she still believed him. Every instinct in her body was insisting that he was honest in this, that he was telling her the truth.

But her instincts had led her wrong about Mikel from the very beginning. And she’d never been a fool.

At least, not until last week.

“How am I supposed to believe you?” she whispered, too exhausted to rage anymore.

Mikel looked torn and pained, but at her question, his expression shifted again—as if he were genuinely considering an answer to it. “There’s no reason why you should,” he admitted. “I guess we’re in a hopeless—” He broke off suddenly. “Unless…”

She recognized hope in his last word, and stupidly, her own heart responded with hope of its own. “Unless what?”

“Do you trust that other Breather you met?”

Riana nodded, trying to follow his train of thought.

“If you trust her, you could ask her to open a connection with me. Soul-Breathers can’t lie to each other in an open connection. She could verify that I’m telling the truth now.” He glanced away and sounded suddenly uncertain. “Assuming you want to bother…”

Riana closed her eyes and thought hard. Part of her didn’t want to bother. She’d been hurt and lied to, and she wanted to raise her defenses and burrow into a tight little ball and never come out. But she was still in significant danger. And Mikel could either help her or hurt her.

And Jannie was still gone. She wouldn’t be able to find her alone.

It was worth the emotional effort it took to give Mikel one more chance. She needed to know where he stood one way or the other.

Tava would let her know if he was serious about having changed his mind or whether this was all part of some scheme.

Riana hadn’t made a decision about whether she was going to contact the Front again. But this made the decision for her.

She couldn’t do this alone. An aching truth she had to accept.

She needed help to stay alive and to find her sister.

So she swallowed hard and avoided Mikel’s intense gaze as she pulled her phone from her bag and dialed Tava.

“You didn’t sleep again last night.”

The words were more of an accusation than a question, and Tava’s gaze was more annoyed than sympathetic.

Connor brushed away the issue. “I’m fine. Stop nagging.”

He
hadn’t
slept the night before, any more than he had the previous night. He was too worried and wound up, and he couldn’t relax or let down his guard enough to go to sleep.

“You’re not fine. You’re exhausted. And you’re going to break down if you don’t take care of yourself.” She flopped down onto the sofa in his office and scowled at him. “If you weren’t so stubborn, you’d admit it.”

Connor had known the beautiful Soul-Breather for years, and they were more like brother and sister than colleagues. Which is why he didn’t hide his grumpy tone from her as he replied, “You’re pushing it, Tava. We’ve talked about this before.”

“I don’t care what we’ve talked about before. You can give me all the lectures on boundaries you want. I’m telling you that you need to let go a little bit. You’ve been riding on nerve and will for three days, but they’re not going to take you much farther.” She reached out to him with one slender hand. “Why don’t you let me help you let go of the reins just a little? I can just—”

“No!” He was just as surprised by the bite of the one word as she was. “I don’t need you to poking around in my psyche and artificially trying to fix things.”

As soon as he said the words, he regretted them. Even more when he saw her face crumple slightly before she looked away.

He’d hurt her. And all because she was right. He was barely holding on here, but he just couldn’t stop pushing himself. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, heaving himself up from his desk chair and trudging over to slump beside her on the couch. “That was uncalled for.” He nudged her slightly with his elbow to get her to look at him again. “I didn’t mean to imply that your gifts were unnatural or less than a blessing.”

Her features had smoothed out, the deep eyes wide and earnest again. “I just want to help, Connor. It’s not weakness to use what I can offer you. Any more than it would be to let a friend give you a back rub. I can’t stand to see you hurting this way.”

For some reason, the fact that she’d said “hurting” instead of stressed, anxious, and overwrought—which were the words Connor himself would have used to describe himself—caused his throat to close up with a sudden pressure of feeling.

He ignored it. “I know. And maybe later I’ll let you help. There’s too much I need to do right now, though.” Checking her expression, he added, “And I’m serious about valuing your gifts. Just because I’m wound too tightly to let you use them on me at the moment doesn’t mean I think they’re dangerous or that only the weak would want to use them.”

“I know. People can grow dependent on a Breather’s gifts, but only if the Breather lets them.” Tava leaned her head back against the sofa cushion as if it were too heavy to hold up. “I know you didn’t mean it, although I appreciate the apology. That’s why you’re such a good leader.”

Connor was surprised by her last sentence and shifted uncomfortably. “What do you mean?”

“You care more for other people than you do your own needs and pride.”

Experiencing a hot flash of awkwardness, Connor stared at the floor and mumbled something incoherent.

Tava chuckled warmly. “Plus, you’re adorably shy about anything personal. Why some woman hasn’t snatched you up long before now is beyond me.”

To his relief, a phone rang in the office—diverting that uncomfortable issue—and Connor jumped up to grab his phone from his desk.

But it wasn’t his phone that was ringing. Realizing this, he sat back down on the couch while Tava dug her phone out of her handbag.

It took less than five seconds for Connor to straighten up, leaning forward toward Tava as his heart lurched painfully.

“Where are you?” Tava had asked, responding to the greeting of the person on the other end of the line. “Are you all right? We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

It had to be Riana. His fatigue, grief, and stress settled into a dark corner at the back of his mind, and the rest of his consciousness centered on Riana. On getting her back and figuring out what to do from there.

Noticing the urgent question on his face, Tava nodded to him as she listened to Riana’s response.

“I’m sorry I missed your call last night. I wish you’d left a message. I would have called back right away. And, of course, we want to help you,” Tava said, after Riana had evidently stopped speaking. “That’s all we’ve ever wanted to do. We’ve been combing the streets for you. Were you hurt? People are looking for you—are you somewhere safe?”

Connor realized Tava must have been genuinely scared for Riana. There was real anxiety in her voice, and she wasn’t even giving Riana a chance to answer her questions.

When she stopped speaking again, Connor leaned even closer—straining to hear Riana’s response. He couldn’t hear any more than a vague murmur, and he had to stop himself from snatching the phone away and talking to Riana himself.

“That’s one of the things we had to tell you,” Tava said after a few seconds. “We found out the Union sent a Soul-Breather out to—”

Connor had to rub his damp palms against his trousers to keep himself from acting on his impatience as Riana must have interrupted Tava.

“Riana!” Tava gasped, in a voice that propelled Connor to his feet. “Riana, he could be dangerous. You have to—”

Connor started to pace, making himself walk in controlled steps from the couch to the desk and back again. Riana must be with that Soul-Breather—the one who’d gone after her, the one she was interested in, the one she should have known never to trust.

“Oh. Are you sure?” Tava’s voice had calmed down when she spoke, and it allowed Connor to take a full breath. “Yes, he’s right about that. I’d be able to tell if he’s telling the truth or not.” After another question for Riana, she answered, “No. There’d be no way for him to lie. But, Riana, it’s still a dangerous situation. We would have to make sure it—”

She broke off again, as Riana once more must have interrupted her.

Connor walked another circuit of the office, concentrating on the way his leather shoes sounded against the wood floors, forcing himself to be patient.

“Hold on,” Tava said after another minute, “I need to check with—I need to get permission to set up the meeting.”

Connor practically sprinted back to the couch, desperately needing more information.

Holding her hand over the speaker of her phone, Tava whispered to Connor, “She wants me to meet with the Breather. He’s told her that he wants to help her and that he’s not going to betray her to the Union. She wants me to verify that he’s telling the truth.”

“No,” Connor replied in a harsh whisper. “Of course, he’s not telling the truth. It’s probably a trap. Tell her to get herself down here where we can keep her safe and to not be a fool!”

Tava gave him a cool look that was almost disapproving. “Do you really think that would be an effective strategy?”

Of course, it wouldn’t be effective. It would be the stupidest thing they could possibly say to Riana at the moment. But Connor wanted to shake her. And he wanted to strangle somebody else.

“These are her terms, Con—” She cut off his name at the sound he made before she finished saying it. “These are her terms. It’s the only way she’s willing to meet with us.”

Connor didn’t like that sound of that at all. It sounded like the Breather had already gotten his grips into Riana, far more than he’d feared.

Thinking quickly and forcing back the jealous possessiveness he couldn’t seem to shake, he said, “We’ll have to have assurances though. Tell her you’ll come to her, and you’ll be bringing back up, just in case.”

Tava repeated the words and she visibly relaxed as Riana must have agreed. They set up the meeting for four hours from now—giving them enough time to make plans and round up some people to help—and Tava finally disconnected the call.

“I don’t like this,” Connor muttered.

“I never expected you would.”

The dry bite to her words was startling, and Connor gave her a questioning look.

She just shrugged. “Are you coming to the meeting?”

“No.”

Rolling her eyes, Tava said, “You might as well reveal yourself to her. I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish by—”

“I’m trying to keep a Soul-Breather we have no reason to trust from knowing who I am.” His words were mostly true, but they weren’t the only truth behind his insistence on keeping himself from Riana.

Tava didn’t bother to argue. “We should think optimistically. If this Breather volunteered to be tested this way, there’s a good chance he’s telling the truth. Which means for the first time we might actually have an advantage.”

Connor made himself reflect on that and admit it might be a good thing instead of dwelling on the fact that Riana cared enough about this Breather to form all of her plans around him.

***

Mikel wasn’t sure how he’d gotten into this situation.

He was sitting next to Riana at the dining table of his borrowed apartment, with three armed men in different corners of the room—all of whom would shoot him without question if he made the slightest threatening move. And he was about to open himself up willingly to another Breather, to reveal his most intimate thoughts and feelings to her without hope of hiding or prevarication.

He had no idea how or why it had happened.

When Riana had confronted him, he’d had no intentions of doing anything of the kind. But he’d experienced an inexplicable panic at the way he’d hurt her, at her obvious fear and betrayal, and he’d offered the only thing he could think of to make it better.

To make her trust him again.

When he’d lied to Largan the day before, he hadn’t realized it was a turn that would shape the rest of his life.

He hadn’t really thought about it at all.

But he wasn’t going to lie here. He wouldn’t be able to lie, even if he wanted to—not with another Breather in open connection with him.

Which meant he was going to have to make some decisions in the very near future. Ones he’d never considered making before.

Riana hadn’t said much since she’d called the other Breather, but at least she hadn’t left. She must trust him a little, if she hadn’t thought she was in danger from him.

Or maybe she just didn’t care.

It was hard to read her, since he wasn’t allowed to touch her. Her gray eyes were huge and haunted, and sometimes they stared at him with an exhausted kind of pain.

That was the only expression he could read in them now, as she waited for the Breather to touch him.

The other Soul-Breather was a woman—a beautiful redhead who’d clearly recognized him by sight, if her startled jerk as she walked into the apartment was any sign.

She probably knew of his reputation. Another disadvantage Mikel had against him.

“Are you ready?” she asked, her expression sober and business-like. At least she wasn’t shrinking from him or openly hostile.

“Any time you are.” Mikel purposefully rested his hand on the middle of the table.

Tava turned to Riana and explained, “The connection can open when I touch his skin—you know how that works, right? It’s a little different when it’s Breather to Breather. We can only open the connection if both of us are willing, and there’s no way to fake it or use it for deception.”

Riana didn’t say anything. She just sat silently and waited, her eyes moving from Tava to Mikel.

Then Tava reached over and put her hand on Mikel’s.

The connection was always more intense with another Breather, but Tava clearly wasn’t an amateur, and the opening was clean and sure.

She was sad. Very sad. It was the first thing Mikel could sense from her. She’d lost someone she loved.

Talon. The noble fool he’d seen die the day before. She’d loved him. Had never had him. And had lost him just the same.

Mikel couldn’t read specifics from her unless she shared them with him. But she’d offered him this—as a catalyst to strengthen the connection, as a way to establish trust. As a gift.

Her grief and love were so pure and sharp they sliced through the inner defenses Mikel always used when he touched someone.

And he hurt for her. For just a moment, it hurt so much he could barely handle it, and he almost jerked his hand away to protect himself.

But he felt Riana move beside him and glanced over to see her staring at him anxiously.

If he pulled away now, he’d lose any chance of ever being close to her again, of ever feeling the kind of attachment he hadn’t realized he was capable of feeling.

So he breathed into the pain until it mostly dissipated. It was a borrowed pain and didn’t last long. Then he looked back at Tava and realized she was waiting for him.

He had to offer her something now, in return for what she’d offered him.