Xavier gasped. “And if they do go down this route, it’ll be up to the rogue Faulties, the Draenir, and the handful of Perfects they’ve got on their side to save the day.”
“Dammit. We should’ve just gone to Hawaii for a holiday,” Kailyn mumbled, rolling her eyes. “This isn’t the way I wanted to spend my ‘founders’ break,’ you know.”
The shadow of a smile flickered across Yuri’s face.
“What’s up, Yuri?” I asked.
“I’m thinking about Lenny and Varga. They’ve got a serious bone to pick with Ta’Zan. They’d rather die than let him win. I know I shouldn’t be smiling about it, but I’ve got to give Ruby and Ash credit where it’s due. They’ve raised two phenomenal warriors.”
Aiden groaned, pressing his index fingers against his throbbing temples. “You know what the worst part is? I know Sofia. She wouldn’t want them to surrender. She’d also rather die than let Ta’Zan beat us.”
My breath was cut short for a moment. Aiden was right. Sofia would gladly die, if it meant that the rest of us got to live and fight another day.
“One thing is for sure right now, and I think Sofia would agree, too, if she were here with us,” I said, exhaling deeply. “We cannot lose hope. We can’t let this bastard dictate any more terms. We’ve crippled his space fleet. We’ve taken down his comms blockers. We’ve turned some of his own people against him. We can do more, even if we’re stuck in here.”
“Derek is right,” Marion replied, gently squeezing Lucas’s hand. “Even with these stupid collars on, we can do something. After all, we started a Faulty riot not that long ago, right?”
“As long as we’re breathing, Ta’Zan won’t win,” Jax interjected, joining our group. “Let’s not forget that we’ve got GASP on the line, with Calliope, Nevertide, Neraka, and the entire Supernatural Dimension ready to back us up. We’re not alone in this. We will prevail, somehow.”
Hansa, Jovi, and Anjani stood next to him, equally determined to see this through to the end. There were over six hundred of us in here. Ta’Zan’s Perfects could be manipulated—Amal and Amane were together again, and they could maybe build the device they needed to do a mass memory wipe.
“Word is that Douma turned against Ta’Zan, even after she was… reconditioned,” Jovi chimed in.
“No, Amal swooped in on this one. Ta’Zan ordered her to wipe Douma’s memory, but Amal left her with both sets, old and new, and gave her a choice,” Jax replied. “Spoke to Heron via Telluris. He gave me the details.”
“Wow, so even knowing exactly what she’d done and thought while loyal to Ta’Zan, Douma chose us,” I murmured, then found myself grinning. “And let’s not forget Raphael, who didn’t even need his memory wiped to choose to help us.”
Corrine huffed, then shot to her feet and cursed under her breath. I knew exactly what ailed her. She loved Kailani more than anything, and she dreaded the thought of seeing her in here, with a collar around her neck, like the rest of us.
“Corrine,” I said gently. She looked at me, resting her hands on her hips. “You know Rose as well as I do. You know that when she says she’s got this, she does, right?”
She thought about it for a moment, then nodded slowly.
“Good. Glad we got that settled,” I answered, trying to keep a serene expression, though every fiber in my body wanted me to roar and smash everything within my reach. But that would’ve meant giving Ta’Zan the satisfaction of seeing how badly his actions were hurting me. “Now, let’s wait for Isda to come around. She will, soon enough. She’ll most likely have a message for us from Sofia.”
Something told me that Sofia was going to insist that Rose and Ben keep doing what they were doing, and that they’d better not even consider surrendering. Aiden was right. My wife was ready to die, if it helped us beat Ta’Zan. Part of me completely understood that. I would’ve done the same.
But, at the same time, my very soul cried.
Harper
From where we stood, it didn’t look good for any of us.
Ta’Zan had put us all in a tight hold: surrender, or lose our matriarch, the woman who had helped transform The Shade and develop GASP. Great-Grandma Sofia’s contributions were obvious wherever we looked; even across three different dimensions. Her choices, her determination, and her wisdom had helped the Novak family grow into what it was today. And I was damn proud to be a part of it.
So, no. None of us were ready to accept either outcome.
“Ben and Rose can’t just give up, and Sofia can’t die,” I said firmly.
I stood at the end of the council table. The meeting room suddenly felt too small. Aida and Field had called an emergency meeting shortly after Rose told us about Ta’Zan’s actions. Scarlett and Patrik, Blaze and Caia, Arwen and Brock, Mona and Kiev, Shayla and Eli, Phoenix and Viola, Bastien, the Daughters, and the four Perfects were present, seated around the table.
At the other end, Sherus and Nuriya, Caleb and River, and Ash and Ruby had joined us. Amelia Novalik, Erik and Abby’s daughter, was also present. During the Eritopian time-lapse, while Serena, Aida, Jovi and the others were battling Azazel, Hazel and Tejus, Victoria and Bastien, and Grace and Lawrence had not been the only ones to have kids. Erik and Abby had a child of their own, though they kept her in The Shade most of the time. We didn’t see her much until she turned twenty and applied to be in GASP’s intelligence department. However, Sofia and Derek stayed close to the Novaliks during Amelia’s development, since Abby had asked them to be her godparents.
I’d asked for Amelia to attend this meeting, since she’d become a key figure in GASP’s intelligence work over the past couple of years. Amelia was exceptionally intelligent and able to process everything on a level and at a speed most of us only dreamed of. I trusted her to see anything that we might’ve missed. Plus, she was close to Sofia—after all, the Hudsons had been a big part of Sofia’s life while growing up, and Sofia was her godmother.
The atmosphere was gloomy, to say the least. My heart was constantly racing toward a finish line that never came, as I thought of Serena and Draven stuck there, on Strava, looking at a potential surrender. I just couldn’t have that.
“We need to look at the problem from every possible angle,” Caspian replied, softly squeezing my hand. I caved in and sat back down next to him, while Field took the lead on the meeting. We had a lot to talk about.
“Caspian is right,” Field said, then pressed a button on a remote. Behind him, the massive screen lit up with a live feed of Strava, on two different windows—one overlooking the planet, and the other giving us a bird’s eye view of the mountain where Rose’s crew had taken refuge. “We’ve made incredible progress, despite Ta’Zan’s bloody request.”
Aida nodded. “We’ve got Amal and Amane ready to work on the mass memory wiper, and we didn’t even know that Amal was playing the long con on Ta’Zan to begin with,” she said. “The Hermessi reached out to us, they told us they can help, and they gave us their terms, which, by the way, I think are manageable.”
“Yeah, seven hundred and forty-two fae,” Bastien muttered. “Easy peasy.”
“We’ll provide the number,” Sherus declared. “If that’s what it takes to activate these entities and help put Ta’Zan back in his place, we’ll give you what you need.”
“We’ll do whatever it takes to get our son back unharmed,” Nuriya added, her lower lip trembling.
Mom and Dad were helping Jeremiah, Pippa, Grace, and Lawrence handle Shade issues back on Earth. Victoria was busy with little Voss and Vita, who was dangerously close to her due date and temporarily without a husband. I dreaded having to tell her about Ta’Zan’s ultimatum, since either outcome would kill someone she loved dearly.
Between the people we had here, there had to be enough brilliant minds to figure a way out of this hot mess. We’d been through enough already. We’d jumped over so many hurdles. We’d lost enough. This couldn’t be the end of it all.
Caspian and I were just getting started. We deserved a life together, and I hadn’t nearly died on Neraka to end up a Perfect’s slave. Screw that!
“Okay, so, we’ve got the fae, then,” Aida said, nodding slowly. “We need to get them to Strava without the Perfects intervening. We’ll use the smallest shuttle we have that can fit them all, but it won’t guarantee a safe entry.”
Mona sighed. “We need a diversion,” she answered. “Specifically, our ground crew there needs to organize a diversion.”
