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Aelin — November 1984
The rest of the Southwest leg passed in a kind of held breath.
Connor performed every night. He hit every note, stalked every stage, whipped the crowds into the same frenzy they'd come to expect from Battle Cry's frontman. From the outside, nothing had changed. The reviews were glowing. The venues sold out. The fans screamed his name and reached for him the way people reach for things they need to survive.
But on the bus, in the dark hours between cities, the mask came off.
The first nightmare hit outside San Antonio. Samantha woke to a sound she'd never heard before: a choked, strangled cry from the bunk across from hers, low enough that it might have been missed under the engine noise. But she was a light sleeper, always had been, and something about the sound bypassed sleep entirely and went straight to her spine.
She was out of her bunk before she was fully conscious. Connor's curtain was half-open, his body twisted in the sheets, his hands clawing at nothing. His face was slick with sweat, his dark ringlets plastered to his forehead, and his mouth was open in a silent scream that was somehow worse than the sound that had woken her.
"Connor." She kept her voice low. Firm. The way you'd talk to someone balanced on a ledge. "Connor, it's Sam. You're on the bus. You're safe."
His eyes snapped open.
The whole of them glowed. Not the irises alone. The entire eye, white and all, flooded green, burning in the dark like something feral and electric. Both eyes. Staring straight at her.
Samantha's body went cold. She held perfectly still, weight shifted back on the balls of her feet, ready to throw herself out of reach if his hands moved, if the air changed the way it did around people about to unleash something. She'd seen what Connor's power looked like when it went loose. She knew exactly what those eyes meant. She stayed anyway.
For a terrible second, he didn't see her. He saw Sorienne. The shape of a woman leaning over him in the dark. His mind did the rest.
He flinched so hard he cracked his elbow against the bunk wall. The green flared, and Samantha rocked back, braced, and then it stuttered, dimmed, the glow pulling back as recognition fought its way through the nightmare.
"It's me," she said, her voice steady by sheer will. "It's Samantha. You're on the bus. We left Houston. You're with your brothers."
Recognition came back in stages: the focus returning, the green fading, the breathing still ragged and the hands still shaking. The wild terror in his eyes resolved slowly, painfully, into exhaustion and shame.
"Sam?" His voice was raw.
"Yeah. Bad one?"
He didn't answer. He didn't need to. She could see the phantom sensations still crawling across his skin: how he rubbed his arms, how his jaw clenched as if trying to scrub something invisible from his body.
"Want me to get Jace?"
Connor shook his head. "Don't wake him. He feels it when I..." He stopped. Swallowed. "Through the link. He feels it. He's barely sleeping as it is."
Samantha settled onto the floor beside his bunk, her back against the cabinet. She didn't touch him. She'd learned that much already: you didn't touch Connor uninvited anymore. Not since Houston. "Then I'll just sit here. You don't have to talk."
He was quiet for a long time. The bus hummed. The highway scrolled past in the dark.
"She's still in me," he whispered finally. "The shard. It's quieter than it was, but sometimes at night, when I'm not guarding against it..." He pressed his fist against his chest. "She smiles. I can feel her smiling, Sam."
Samantha's throat tightened. She didn't have powers. She couldn't reach into his chest and pull the dark thing out. She couldn't burn it away or conjure a counterspell or see the future where it was gone. All she had was herself, sitting on the floor of a tour bus at three in the morning, being present.
"Then she can smile at the back of my head," Samantha said quietly, "because I'm not going anywhere."
Connor huffed a breath that was almost a laugh. Almost. "You're good at this."
"At sitting on floors?"
"At making things feel survivable."
She stayed until his breathing evened out. Until the tension drained from his hands and the rigid line of his shoulders softened. When she was sure he was asleep, real sleep, not the shallow, guarded half-rest he'd been managing, she crept back to her own bunk.
From the bunk above Connor's, she heard Nathan's voice, barely a whisper: "Thank you, Samantha."
He'd been awake the whole time.
The nightmares didn't stop. They came in cycles: two or three good nights, then a bad one that left Connor wrung out and hollow-eyed at soundcheck. The Brotherhood closed ranks around him with the practiced coordination of men who knew each other down to the bone. Erik made sure the dressing rooms were swept and secured before Connor entered. Ricky kept the energy light, pulling faces, cracking jokes, giving Connor reasons to laugh even when laughing felt impossible. Nathan monitored the empathic bond for spikes, adjusting his own energy to send calm through the threefold link when he felt Connor spiraling.
And Jace... Jace carried the heaviest weight of all. The Guardian bond meant he felt echoes of every nightmare, every spike of panic, every moment the dark shard in Connor's chest pulsed with cold amusement. He couldn't block it without severing something vital between them. So he bore it. Night after night, he lay in his bunk with his jaw clenched, riding out waves of terror that weren't his, feeling phantom hands on skin that wasn't his, and never once complaining.
She noticed everything. The way Jace's eyes were hollowed by morning, the way he gripped his drumsticks a fraction tighter during shows, the way he'd sometimes pause mid-conversation and go very still, his amber-gold eyes distant, tracking something only he could sense.
"You can't keep absorbing it all," she told him one evening in the narrow galley of the bus, both of them reaching for the coffee at the same time. "You're going to burn out."
Jace's hand brushed hers on the coffee pot. Neither of them pulled away. "That's the job," he said.
"Being the Guardian doesn't mean being a sponge."
"It kind of does." He poured her coffee first, always first, she'd noticed, then his own. "The amulet connects me to all of them. Connor and Nathan most of all, through the threefold bond. I can't just turn it off."
"Can you turn it down?"
He looked at her. Really looked at her, with those amber-gold eyes that saw too much and carried too much and never asked for help. "If I turn it down, I might miss something. A spike. A crisis. Something I could have caught."
"And if you don't turn it down, you'll be too exhausted to catch anything at all."
He held her gaze. Then the corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile but close. "You sound like Sidney."
"Good. Someone should."
They stood in the galley drinking coffee in comfortable silence while the bus carried them through the New Mexico desert toward the next city, the next stage, the next performance where Connor would pour everything he had into proving that Sorienne hadn't broken him.
The tour ended in Phoenix on a Thursday night in late October. The final show was electric: two encores, a twenty-minute standing ovation, Connor's voice climbing to heights that made the hair stand up on the back of Samantha's neck. From the wings, she watched him hold that last note, the one that seemed to vibrate in her sternum, and she thought: He's not pretending anymore. He's actually okay up there.
The stage was the one place the shard couldn't reach him. Under the lights, wrapped in music and the roar of the crowd and the unbreakable presence of his brothers behind him, Connor was untouchable. It was everywhere else that was hard.
After the final bow, after the house lights came up and the roadies began the teardown, the five of them gathered in the dressing room. Sweaty, exhausted, still buzzing with adrenaline. Erik cracked open beers. Ricky sprawled across a couch with his feet on Nathan's lap. Jace sat behind his road case, spinning a drumstick absently, the post-show energy still vibrating through him.
Connor stood by the window, looking out at the Phoenix skyline. He was quiet in a way that wasn't concerning but contemplative. Peaceful, even. A kind of quiet that had been absent for weeks.
"I want to go home," he said.
Nobody asked him where he meant. They all knew.
"Aelin," Jace said. Not a question.
Connor turned from the window. His emerald eyes were tired but clear. "I need the sky. The real sky. The lavender. I need to see Indira. I need to..." He stopped, his voice catching. "I need to feel safe somewhere that doesn't have a stage door."
The room went quiet. Not awkward silence. The other kind, the kind where brothers don't need to speak because the answer is already understood.
"We'll open a portal tonight," Sidney said from the doorway. He'd been listening. He always was. "I'll coordinate with the road crew for equipment shipment. We can be in the Royal Castle of Elders by morning."
Nathan nodded. "I'll send word to Galena. She'll want to prepare."
"Rebekah too," Erik said quietly. "She worries."
Ricky was already halfway to the door. "I need to check on the foxes. And Shimmer. Has anyone checked on Shimmer lately?"
Samantha stood in the corner, watching them shift from tour mode to homecoming mode with the ease of men who'd done this a hundred times. The efficiency of it still amazed her: five men who could reshape the physical world with a thought, bickering about whether anyone had checked on Shimmer lately.
"Sam." Jace's voice cut through her thoughts. "You coming?"
She blinked. "To Aelin?"
"Where else?"
"I..." She hesitated. Aelin was their home. Their world. She was the drum tech who'd stumbled into something extraordinary, and some part of her still felt like a guest who'd overstayed. "I should probably visit my family first. I haven't seen my mom in months."
Jace nodded. "Go to Salem. Take a few days. Then come to Aelin." He paused, and something changed in his expression, subtle, like sunlight shifting behind clouds. "We'll leave the portal open for you."
The way he said it. We'll leave the portal open. Not an invitation. A standing door. A place that would be there whenever she was ready.
"Okay," she said. "I'll come."
Samantha's mother lived in a little two story home in Salem, Oregon, with a porch that creaked and a garden that bloomed year-round despite the rain. Diana Wallace had raised three kids on a teacher's salary, buried a husband too young, and developed the kind of maternal radar that could detect a lie from three states away.
Which made the visit excruciating.
"You look different," her mother said within the first five minutes, settling a cup of tea in front of Samantha at the kitchen table. "Not bad different. Just... different."
"I've been on tour, Mom. It's tiring."
"It's more than tired." Diana studied her daughter with the calm, thorough attention of someone who'd spent thirty years reading teenagers. "Something happened."
Samantha's hands tightened around the mug. Something happened. The understatement of the century. She'd watched a man she cared about get abducted by a supernatural predator, helped rescue him from a trap on the other side of the city, discovered she could heal with her hands, learned to operate an ancient portal system, sworn an oath to an ancient brotherhood, and spent six weeks on a tour bus helping a traumatized psychic survive his nightmares.
"The tour was intense," she said. "We had some rough shows."
"Samantha Tené."
The full name. The nuclear option.
"Mom, I can't..." She stopped. Breathed. "There are things about this job that I can't tell you. Not because I don't want to, but because I literally can't. I made a promise."
Diana's eyebrows rose. "To the band?"
"To... yes. To the band. And to some other people who trust me. Mom, I know this sounds crazy, but I need you to trust me when I say that I'm okay, I'm safe, and the people I'm working with are good people who take care of each other."
Her mother was quiet for a long time. The kitchen clock ticked. A car passed on the street outside.
"Is this about a man?" Diana asked.
Samantha's cheeks flushed before she could stop it. "Mom..."
"It's about a man." Diana's expression softened into something that was half amusement, half concern. "The drummer. The tall one. The one with the beautiful hair?"
"How did you..."
"You mentioned him four times in your last phone call. You mentioned the others once each. Math isn't hard, sweetheart."
Samantha pressed her hands to her burning face. "It's not... we're not... it's complicated."
"It always is with the good ones." Diana reached across the table and squeezed her daughter's hand. "I don't need to know the secrets, baby. I just need to know you're okay. Are you okay?"
Samantha thought about the bus. The bunks. Connor's nightmares and Nathan's quiet gratitude and Ricky's chaos and Erik's steady warmth and Jace's amber-gold eyes and the coffee he always poured for her first.
"Yeah," she said. "I'm okay."
She stayed three days. She slept in her childhood bedroom and helped her mother in the garden and ate meals that didn't come from a truck stop or a venue catering table. She called her sister in Portland and her brother in Seattle and said nothing about portals or amulets or the lavender sky of a place that existed on the same Earth they'd always known, just hidden behind a Veil no one else could see.
On the fourth morning, she packed her bag, hugged her mother at the door, and drove to the address Sidney had given her: a storage unit on the outskirts of Salem with a portal frame hidden behind a false wall. She keyed in the rune sequence for Harmonytis, the opaline light blooming around the stone arch, and stepped through into the light.
Aelin in autumn was something out of a painting that shouldn't exist.
The lavender sky had deepened toward twilight purple, swirled with currents of blue that moved like slow rivers overhead. The clouds were white with their faint violet tint, drifting in formations that didn't quite follow any wind pattern Samantha understood. The air smelled of green things: impossibly lush, impossibly alive, the kind of air that made your lungs feel like they'd been breathing wrong your entire life.
She emerged from the portal into the Royal Castle of Elders: white shimmer stone corridors catching the light with that shimmer she had never fully gotten used to, baked into the stone itself, not painted on. Familiar now from her first visit, but still quietly extraordinary. Torchlight flickered. Somewhere distant, she could hear voices and the faint clatter of the castle's daily rhythms.
Indira found her first.
She came around a corner carrying an armful of soft-lantern vines, the bioluminescent plants she cultivated in the gardens of Léirstinach, and nearly collided with Samantha in the corridor.
"Samantha!" Indira's face broke into a warm smile. She was beautiful in a way that was entirely different from the stage-polished beauty Samantha was used to: dark curls spilling over her shoulders, brown skin luminous in the torchlight, a directness in her dark eyes that matched the strength Samantha had witnessed the night she'd come to Léirstinach and asked Indira to save Connor. "You've come back."
"Jace said the portal would be open."
"It's always open for you." Indira shifted the vines to one arm and took Samantha's hand with the other, squeezing it. "Come. Connor's been asking about you. He won't say so, but he has. And Jace..." Her smile turned knowing. "Jace has been very carefully not asking about you, which is how you know he's been thinking about it."
Samantha laughed despite herself. "Is that how it works here?"
"With Jace? Always. The more he doesn't mention something, the more it occupies his mind. Connor is the opposite: everything he feels pours out of him like water. But Jace holds things close. You'll learn the difference."
They walked together through the castle, and Samantha felt something settle in her chest, not the tension of the tour or the ache of keeping secrets from her mother, but something quieter. Belonging, maybe. The first fragile edges of it.
The Brotherhood had been back on Aelin for four days by the time Samantha arrived, and the change in them was visible. Erik had color in his face again, his electric blue eyes bright instead of shadowed with road exhaustion. Nathan was buried in his workshop, which meant he was happy. Ricky had already visited the zoo twice.
And Connor... Connor was not healed or whole. But something had eased in him.
Indira had barely left his side since they'd returned. She didn't hover or smother. She was too wise for that, too attuned to what Connor needed. Instead, she was simply present. She sat with him in the gardens while he stared at the sky. She walked with him through the corridors when the walls felt too close. She slept beside him, and when the nightmares came, because they still came, she was there before the first scream left his throat, her warmth pushing back the cold shard's whisper.
The dark spot in Connor's soul hadn't gone away. Nathan had examined it with every tool at his disposal, alchemical, elemental, arcane, and concluded that Sorienne had embedded a fragment of her own essence inside Connor during the assault. A psychic splinter. A piece of herself that survived her death, lodged in the Visionary like a barb that couldn't be pulled without risking the tissue around it.
"It's not growing," Nathan had told them. "It's not spreading. But it's there, and it responds to fear and vulnerability. When Connor is strong, it's dormant. When he's weak, tired, scared, dreaming, it stirs."
"Can you remove it?" Jace had asked.
Nathan's silence was answer enough.
So they managed it. The way you manage a wound that won't fully close: carefully, constantly, together.
On a warm afternoon during the second week, Indira appeared in Samantha's doorway with a woven basket over one arm and a purposeful look on her face.
"Come with me," she said. "I need bread and vegetables from Neart, and you need to stop sitting in this room pretending you're not wondering where Jace is."
Samantha opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. Indira's directness was one of the things she was learning to love about her: the woman had no patience for polite evasion. "Fine. Where's Neart?"
"Erik's county. The northern one. Colder, but beautiful. And there is a bakery there you need to experience." Indira's dark eyes warmed. "Rebekah's bakery. You haven't met Rebekah yet, have you?"
"Erik's Rebekah?"
"The same. She makes the best challah bread on the island, possibly anywhere on Earth. And she will feed you whether you're hungry or not. It's not optional." Indira smiled. "She and I are in the same position, you know. Loving a man of the Brotherhood, waiting for the right time. She understands things most people can't."
They took the portal from the Royal Castle to Neart, the northern county, where the air hit cooler and sharper, the landscape trading the lush green of Harmonytis for rolling hills of silver-grey grass and dark stone villages that reminded Samantha of photographs she'd seen of Iceland. The sky was the same impossible lavender, but here the violet clouds hanging low and heavy, closer to the ground than they ever did in Harmonytis.
The village center of Neart was compact and bustling. Indira navigated the white shimmer-stone streets, the black directional lines set into them catching the low Neart light, with the ease of someone who made this trip often, pausing at a vegetable stand to fill her basket with root vegetables and dark leafy greens that Samantha didn't recognize before steering them toward a stone-fronted shop with a wooden sign that read Rebekah's in both Aelinian script and English.
The smell hit Samantha before they crossed the threshold. Warm bread, cinnamon, something yeasty and golden that made her stomach growl despite having eaten an hour ago.
"Indira!" A woman emerged from behind the counter, dusting flour from her hands. She was striking, not tall, maybe five-five, with dark curly hair pinned loosely off her face, warm olive skin, and sharp brown eyes that took in everything. She moved with the compact efficiency of someone who'd spent years working on her feet, her forearms dusted with flour up to the elbows. "You're early today. The challah just came out. Still warm."
"Rebekah, this is Samantha," Indira said. "Samantha Wallace. The band's drum technician."
Rebekah's eyes sharpened with immediate interest. "Ah, the famous Samantha. Erik talks about you, you know. He says you keep Jace's kit in perfect condition and that you are, how did he put it, 'tougher than she looks.'" Her accent was subtle but present, the vowels carrying the warm cadence of Hebrew beneath her English. "Come, sit. Eat. You're too thin for someone who works with musicians."
"I'm really not..."
"She said it's not optional," Indira reminded her, already settling onto a stool at the counter.
Rebekah slid a cutting board onto the counter: a golden-brown challah loaf, still steaming, its braided surface glistening. She tore off a piece and handed it to Samantha without ceremony. "Eat. Then we talk."
Samantha bit into the bread and nearly groaned. It was extraordinary: soft and rich and faintly sweet, the crust giving way to a pillowy interior that tasted like someone had figured out how to bake comfort itself.
"Oh my God," she said.
Rebekah smiled, a quick, satisfied flash. "Good. Now, tell me about this tour. Indira tells me it was difficult."
"Indira tells you a lot, apparently."
"Indira and I talk," Rebekah said simply, pulling out more bread and a small pot of honey. "When your men are out saving the world or playing stadiums or whatever it is they do, you find the women who understand. We have a small club, the three of us: Indira, Galena, and me. Galena is harder to pin down because she runs the government, but she joins when she can." She gave Samantha a meaningful look. "You are welcome in this club. If you want."
Samantha looked between them, Indira with her quiet warmth, Rebekah with her blunt generosity, and felt something loosen in her chest. These women were more than the Brotherhood's partners. They were their own people, with their own lives and bonds and ways of holding the world together while the men they loved carried the weight of Aelin on their shoulders.
"I'd like that," she said.
"Good." Rebekah tore off another piece of challah and pushed the honey closer. "Now eat more. And tell me... is it true that Ricky turned into a pigeon on the tour bus? Because Erik told me this story and I need confirmation."
While Samantha and Indira were settling onto stools in Rebekah's bakery in Neart, the Brotherhood was gathering around a massive oak table in the Great Hall of the Royal Castle of Elders.
The Great Hall of the Castle of Elders gleamed with afternoon light streaming through tall windows. The Brotherhood had gathered at the King's invitation: Nathan, Connor, Ricky, Erik, and their host, King Jace of Aelin. The massive oak table before them held goblets and a single crystalline vial that threw small prisms across the table when the light hit it.
Nathan stood at the head of the table, Matthew at his elbow, both wearing expressions of quiet pride. Sidney, Galena, Leo, and Colin had positioned themselves along the walls, close to their charges but respectful of the moment.
“Brothers,” Nathan said, holding up the crystalline vial, “this will strengthen resolve and gird you against fear itself.” He nodded to Matthew, who poured a measure into each goblet. The liquid shimmered, almost opalescent, as it caught the light.
"To the Brotherhood," Jace said, raising his goblet. The others followed suit.
Connor drank deeply, his usual enthusiasm for anything that promised an edge in combat. Ricky took a hearty gulp, grinning at Erik across the table. Jace sipped thoughtfully, while Nathan sampled his own creation with the critical eye of a perfectionist.
Erik brought the goblet to his lips just as Matthew's face went deathly pale.
"Nathan," Matthew's voice cracked. "The vials. I didn't... I grabbed the wrong one."
Time seemed to crystallize. Nathan's eyes went wide with horror as understanding crashed over him. Erik lowered his goblet, having taken only the smallest sip.
"Stop!" Nathan's shout echoed through the Great Hall. "It's the wrong elixir! Matthew, which one did you..."
But it was already too late.
The Great Hall erupted into chaos within moments.
Connor rose from his chair, and the chair flew backward on its own, hurled by invisible force, to shatter against the stone wall twenty feet away. His eyes had gone wide and wild: the full green flood, whites and all, blazing with the uncontrolled surge of his powers. The ornamental suits of armor lining the walls rattled in their stands. The tapestries rippled as if blown by an unseen wind.
"Who did this?" The words came out as a roar. The air in the hall went dead quiet. Goblets rose off the table on their own, trembling in midair.
Nathan's face had gone slack with a different kind of horror. He stared at his hands, and tiny sparks of flame danced across his fingertips without his conscious intent. His breathing came in short, panicked gasps. "The formula... it's wrong... I got it wrong..."
Every guard in the hall tensed, hands moving to weapons, not out of aggression but terror. They knew the stories. They knew what the Visionary could do when his powers ran wild.
Ricky made a sound, not a scream but a choked, desperate keen of pure fear. The stone statues of ancient kings seemed to turn their hollow eyes upon him. The carved serpents on the pillars writhed. The tapestries depicted his failures, his humiliations, the figures moving and whispering his name in accusation.
"Get away," he breathed, stumbling backward from the table. "Get away from me!"
And then he was gone. A portal tore open in the middle of the Great Hall, a shimmering rent in reality itself, and Ricky dove through it without looking back. The portal snapped shut behind him.
"Ricky!" Colin was already moving, sprinting across the hall and diving through the closing portal just as it collapsed to nothing.
Erik felt the world tilt. The vaulted ceiling stretched impossibly high. The chandeliers flickered, casting serpentine shadows. But worse than the visual distortions was the crushing weight of awareness. He could see everything: Nathan's spiraling despair, Connor's building rage, the courtiers' fear. He was acutely, painfully conscious of every stare, every whispered thought he imagined he could hear. And beneath it all, emotions he normally kept carefully controlled began to surge to the surface.
Look at him. Barely affected. Is he weak? Not a true brother?
Sidney moved through the chaos with the calm of a general on a battlefield. "Separate them!" His voice cut through the din. "To their chambers! Now!" He crossed immediately to Erik, his hand firm on the massive Warrior's arm. "Don't look at them. Look at me. Just me."
Jace had gone very still at the table, but his stillness was the stillness of a coiled spring. His breathing had quickened. His empathy, that constant, carefully controlled awareness of others' emotions, was more than heightened. It was overwhelming, flooding him with everyone's fear, everyone's panic, and beneath it all, something else. Something primal and demanding that he'd spent years learning to master.
The elixir twisted it. Made him see it as the enemy. Made him think:
If this is the fear, then I conquer it. I master it. I take what tries to take me.
"Your Majesty," Yara's voice, steady despite the chaos, cut through his thoughts. She was at his elbow, Galena having sent her there with a single sharp look. "We need to get you to your residence. Now."
Leo was already at Connor's side, his voice firm but careful. "Connor. We need to get you out of here. Your chambers. Let's go."
Connor's head whipped toward him, and Leo saw something flicker across his friend's face, a vision, perhaps, of Leo as threat rather than ally. The goblets still hovering in the air hurled themselves in different directions, smashing against walls.
Galena moved to Nathan, but kept a cautious distance as she saw the flames still dancing across his hands. "Nathan, I'm here. Come with me. We're going to your chambers where it's safe."
The Great Hall, moments ago a place of celebration, had become a scene of barely controlled disaster. As the Brotherhood was ushered toward different exits, each to their own sanctuary, the courtiers pressed themselves against the walls, watching in stunned silence as their heroes fell apart.
In Neart, the women knew nothing of this.
They talked for over an hour. Rebekah moved between conversation and work with practiced ease, pulling trays from the oven, kneading dough, slicing bread for customers who came and went, all while keeping up a steady stream of questions and observations that managed to be both probing and warm. She asked about the tour, about the shows, about life on the bus. She didn't ask about Houston, Indira must have told her that was off limits, but she asked about the music, about what it was like to watch the Brotherhood perform from the wings.
"It's like watching five people become one thing," Samantha said, trying to find words for something that resisted them. "They're already connected, you know, through the bond. But on stage, it's visible. You can see it. The way Jace drives the tempo and Connor rides it, the way Nathan and Ricky play off each other, the way Erik holds the bottom so solid that everyone else can take risks."
"You watch Jace very closely," Rebekah observed, not unkindly.
Samantha's cheeks heated. "He's the drummer. I'm the drum tech. It's literally my job."
"Mmm." Rebekah exchanged a look with Indira that communicated entire paragraphs. "Of course."
"Don't start."
"I'm not starting anything. I'm making bread." But she was smiling.
Nathan's chambers felt wrong. The familiar space, his workshop, his sanctuary, had become a gallery of imperfections and threats. Every bookshelf was slightly askew. Every vial on his worktable was a potential catastrophe waiting to happen.
And the air around him had begun to move.
"Galena, you need to leave," he said, his voice tight. Small objects on his workbench trembled. "It's not safe. I can't... I can't control..."
"I'm not going anywhere," she said firmly, though she noted that papers were starting to lift and swirl in an unfelt breeze.
The hallucinations came in waves, but they were more than visions. They were tangible, visceral. One moment he was standing in his workshop; the next, he was on a battlefield. Not imagining it. Seeing it. Living it.
Connor stood before him with a blade through his chest, blood pouring down his front. But it was no simple wound. The blood was burning, caustic, eating through Connor's flesh because Nathan's protective elixir had reacted wrong, had turned into acid in his brother's veins.
"You did this," Connor's shade said, his emerald eyes accusing. "Your formula. Your failure."
Nathan staggered backward, and a vial on his workbench shattered, not from impact, from heat. His elemental power responding to his panic.
"Nathan." Galena's voice, firm but cautious. "Look at me. Focus on..."
But the battlefield shifted. Now it was Ricky, surrounded by enemies, screaming as he tried to portal away but couldn't, because Nathan's enhancement elixir had backfired, had locked Ricky's powers, left him helpless. The enemies descended on him with blades.
"No!" Nathan's hands shot out, and flame erupted from his palms, real flame, not imagined. It scorched the air between him and the hallucination, and Galena had to leap aside as the fire nearly caught her sleeve.
"Nathan, stop!" She moved around the flames carefully. "They're not real! Your brothers are alive!"
But he couldn't hear her. Erik appeared next, his massive frame broken and bleeding, the Warrior brought down by poison that Nathan should have detected, should have neutralized. Jace materialized, his bronze skin gray with death, his empathy having been turned into a weapon against him by one of Nathan's failed formulas.
The wind in the room picked up. Papers flew. Vials rattled. The flames on Nathan's hands grew hotter, brighter. Water seeped up through the floorboards, impossible, but happening anyway, his elemental powers manifesting without conscious control.
"I have to fix this," he muttered, turning toward his workbench. His hands reached for vials, but everything he touched either froze solid or burst into flame. "I can fix this. I can save them. I just need the right formula..."
Galena grabbed his wrist, hissing as the heat of his skin burned her palm. But she held on. "Nathan! Stop! You're going to hurt yourself... you're going to hurt me!"
That broke through. His eyes focused on her for just a moment, saw the burn mark forming on her hand where she gripped him. Horror flooded his face.
"Galena, let go..."
"No." Her voice was steel. "I'm not letting go. You're not going to hurt me, Nathan. You never would. This is the elixir. Not you."
But the worst vision was yet to come. All four of his brothers materialized around him simultaneously, wounded, dying, accusing. And behind them, the throne of Aelin, empty and abandoned because Jace was dead. Aelin itself burning because Nathan's defensive formulas had failed.
"Choose," they said in unison, their voices overlapping into a horrible chorus. "You can only save one of us. Choose, Nathan."
"No," Nathan whispered. The elements around him went wild: fire, water, earth, air, all responding to his spiraling emotions. The stone floor beneath his feet cracked. "No, I can't... I won't..."
"Choose!" they all shouted.
He collapsed, sliding down the wall, and the elemental chaos collapsed with him. Flames guttered out. Water stopped flowing. The wind died. Galena was there immediately, kneeling in front of him, both hands on his face despite the heat still radiating from his skin.
"Nathan, listen to me. Listen. You haven't failed. They're alive. All of them. Every single one." Her voice was unwavering, even as tears streamed down her face from the pain in her burned hand. "You need to remember what you've accomplished. Every formula that's worked. Every brother you've protected. Every battle you've helped us win."
Her voice was an anchor. Real. Concrete. The phantoms flickered, losing coherence.
"You've never failed them when it mattered," she continued. "And you're not failing them now. You're fighting. Keep fighting."
The hallucinations began to fade. The accusations grew quieter. Nathan's breathing, though still ragged, slowed. The temperature in the room started to normalize. Galena kept talking, kept grounding him, even as she cradled her burned hand against her chest.
When the elixir finally released its grip, Nathan found himself on the floor of his workshop, Galena's arms around him, the room a disaster of elemental damage. Scorch marks on the walls. Water pooling in corners. Cracks in the stone floor.
"Your hand," he said hoarsely, seeing the burn. Fresh guilt crashed over him. "Galena, I hurt you..."
"You didn't," she said firmly. "The elixir did. And it's just a burn. I've had worse. You're here. You're back. That's all I care about."
She held him tighter, and he let himself be held, trying not to think about how close he'd come to losing complete control of his powers, how close he'd come to truly hurting her.
Getting Connor from the Great Hall to his chambers had been like escorting a walking cataclysm.
A courtier had gasped and stepped into his path. Without Connor even moving, the man was shoved backward by invisible force, slamming into the wall hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. Leo threw himself between Connor and the terrified courtier, hands up. "He's with me! Everyone, clear the hall!"
Connor's eyes fixed on Leo, still that full blazing green, unblinking, and for a horrible moment, Leo saw Connor's expression twist with suspicion. Then they were moving again, Leo staying just ahead, guiding him down corridors that were mercifully emptying as word spread.
They passed a suit of armor, and Connor's hand jerked out. The armor flew apart, breastplate, gauntlets, helmet, all hurling in different directions with devastating force. One piece embedded itself in the stone wall. Another shattered a window.
"Almost there," Leo said, his voice steady despite his racing heart. "Just a little further, Connor."
Connor grabbed him by the tunic, but not with his hands. With his mind. Leo felt himself lifted off his feet and slammed against the wall, held there by telekinetic force. He stared into Connor's unblinking, glowing eyes and saw nothing of his friend there.
And then the visions came.
The vision hit Leo without warning: himself, but wrong. Distorted. In Connor's projected vision, Leo's face twisted into something monstrous, his eyes black, his smile predatory. The hallucination was so vivid, so real, that Leo briefly doubted his own identity.
"You're not Leo," Connor hissed. "You're one of them. One of Aldus's creatures. I know what you are."
The telekinetic grip tightened, crushing the air from Leo's lungs. But Leo forced words out anyway. "Connor... it's me... the elixir... lying to you..."
For just a second, the grip loosened. Connor's face flickered with confusion. Leo dropped to the ground, gasping, and before Connor could grab him again, physically or mentally, he scrambled forward. "Your chambers. Now. Come on."
They made it inside and Leo barred the door. That's when the real nightmare began.
Connor's chambers became a maelstrom of psychic and telekinetic chaos. The furniture did more than overturn. It flew. The heavy oak table lifted into the air and smashed into the ceiling before crashing down in splinters. Chairs hurled themselves at walls. Books tore themselves from shelves and pages ripped free, swirling in a paper storm.
And worse than the physical destruction were the visions.
Connor projected his hallucinations outward, making Leo see them too. The room filled with enemies: Aldus's disciples, phantoms of Sorienne who had abducted and violated Connor in Houston. Leo knew they weren't real, but they looked real. Moved real. His brain couldn't fully reject them.
"Connor!" Leo shouted, dodging a chair that flew at his head. "I'm not your enemy! They're not real! The elixir is making you see..."
Connor roared, and the windows exploded outward. Glass shattered in a perfect circle, blown out by telekinetic force. The temperature dropped. Was that Connor's clairvoyance glimpsing some frozen future? Or just another manifestation of his powers going wild?
Leo found himself lifted again, this time hurled across the room. He hit the wall hard, stars exploding across his vision. Before he could recover, Connor was on him, not telekinetically this time but physically. His fist connected with Leo's jaw. Then his ribs.
Leo tried to defend himself without striking back. He caught Connor's wrists, but Connor's strength, amplified by adrenaline and terror, was incredible. They grappled, and Leo saw more visions bleeding through: himself as a traitor, as a torturer, as everything Connor feared most.
"You're stronger than this," Leo gasped, tasting blood. "This isn't you. You survived Sorienne. You survived Houston. You can survive this."
For a breath, Connor's eyes cleared. The telekinetic assault paused. The visions flickered. Then they came roaring back, worse than before.
The minutes stretched into an eternity of chaos. Objects flew. Visions assaulted Leo's mind. Connor's powers lashed out in every direction, telekinesis and clairvoyance and projection all tangled together into a storm of psychic violence.
Leo stayed on his feet through sheer determination, dodging what he could, enduring what he couldn't. His clothes were torn. Blood ran from a cut above his eye. His arms were bruised from deflecting both physical blows and telekinetically-hurled objects.
But he didn't run. He didn't leave. He kept calling Connor's name, kept talking, kept reminding him of who he really was.
And then the storm began to wane.
The objects suspended in the air dropped. The visions faded like smoke. Connor's emerald eyes stopped glowing, the light dying like embers going cold. He dropped to his knees among the wreckage, trembling, weak, utterly spent.
Leo stayed where he was, watching warily. Making sure. When Connor didn't move, didn't lash out again, Leo finally approached.
Connor lifted his head slowly. His vision cleared, and he saw what his powers had done. The room was destroyed. Windows blown out. Furniture in splinters. Scorch marks on the walls where his telekinesis had created such friction it had burned the stone.
And then he saw Leo. Battered. Bleeding. Watching him with exhaustion and relief and something else: forgiveness.
"What..." Connor's voice was a hoarse whisper. "What did I do?"
Leo moved closer, wincing. "The elixir. You fought it. And you won."
Connor looked down at his hands. They were shaking. He could feel the residual energy of his powers, still crackling just beneath his skin. And the memories, fragmented flashes of telekinetic violence, of projected nightmares, of seeing Leo as a monster and trying to kill him.
"I could have killed you," Connor said, his voice breaking. "Leo, I... I made you see things. I threw you. I..." He couldn't finish.
The abduction by Sorienne had taught him what it was like to be powerless, to be at someone else's mercy. This taught him something worse: what it was like to be powerful and completely out of control. To become the threat. To hurt the people trying to help him.
Leo sat down beside him carefully. "You came back. That's what matters."
They sat together in the ruins of Connor's chambers, surrounded by the physical evidence of a Visionary's powers unleashed. They'd survived something that should have killed at least one of them. Their bond was stronger for it. Impossibly, undeniably stronger.
The portal spat Ricky out halfway up the grand staircase in the West Wing. He didn't even pause to orient himself. The things chasing him, things only he could see, were right behind. Always right behind.
He scrambled up the stairs on all fours, his light auburn curls falling across his face, his deep blue eyes wide with terror. Shapes pursued him: shadows with teeth, phantoms that whispered his failures, monsters that wore the faces of people he loved twisted into accusation.
"Get away from me!" he sobbed. "Leave me alone!"
Colin burst through his own portal just in time to see Ricky reach the top of the stairs. "Ricky! Wait!"
But Ricky was already tearing another hole in reality. Colin sprinted up the stairs, his lungs already burning, and dove through the closing portal.
The royal library. Books flew off shelves as Ricky crashed through them, trying desperately to put barriers between himself and his phantoms. He grabbed a heavy tome and hurled it blindly over his shoulder.
Colin barely dodged. "Ricky, it's me! There's nothing there! You're safe!"
"Stay back!" Ricky's voice was raw with terror. "Don't let it get me!"
The barracks.
Soldiers in various states of rest or training looked up in shock as their Sentinel, one of the five most powerful beings in Aelin, suddenly appeared through a portal in the middle of their quarters. Not walking or purposeful. Running. Terrified. His eyes wild, his face pale, fleeing from something they couldn't see.
"Sentinel!" one of the officers called out, moving toward him. "Sir, what's..."
Ricky didn't even seem to hear him. He crashed into a weapons rack, sending swords clattering, then tore open another portal and vanished.
Colin appeared seconds later, shouting Ricky's name, and dove through the closing portal without stopping.
The barracks erupted into activity. Soldiers scrambled to their feet, grabbing weapons, looking around for the threat. Their Sentinel didn't run. Their Sentinel didn't flee in terror. Something was wrong. Deeply wrong.
"Commander!" A lieutenant ran up to the senior officer present. "The Sentinel just... he looked terrified. Should we..."
The Commander's face was grim. He'd been in the military long enough to know that when the Brotherhood showed fear, Aelin was in danger. "Sound the trumpets," he ordered. "Full mobilization. Now!"
The Sentry trumpets sounded.
Deep and resonant, it carried across the island with unmistakable urgency. From the barracks, the call went out. Other stations picked it up, trumpets answering trumpets, the alarm spreading across every county of Aelin like wildfire.
Civilians heard the call and began moving to designated shelter areas. Military forces across the island mobilized. Borders were secured. The entire nation went on high alert.
And Ricky, wherever he was in his panic-fueled flight, didn't hear any of it.