JUST A BAND
United States — Autumn 1984
It took three days for Samantha Wallace to become indispensable.
By the end of her first show, eighteen thousand Atlanta seats sold out, she had Jace's kit dialed in so precisely that he stopped mid-warm-up and stared at the snare like it had spoken to him. The tuning was perfect. Not just correct. Perfect. The heads had been replaced with a weight and resonance that matched the venue's acoustics, something Tony used to spend an hour calibrating and Samantha had done in twenty minutes by ear.
"Tony told you my preferences," Jace said.
"Tony told me your preferences. I listened to your last three live recordings and adjusted for your attack style." She handed him his regular sticks, not the Macalla, without being asked. "The floor tom was a quarter turn flat. I fixed it."
Jace looked at the floor tom. He hadn't noticed it was flat. He'd been compensating for it unconsciously for two shows.
"You're scary good," he said.
"That's what they pay me for." She grinned and disappeared into the wings to check the backup kit.
Connor found Jace still staring at the snare five minutes later.
"Don't," Connor said.
"Don't what?"
"Whatever you're doing right now. That face. Stop it."
Jace resumed his warm-up and said nothing.
The shows rolled on. Atlanta. Charlotte. Nashville. Memphis. Samantha folded into the crew with the ease of someone who'd been doing this her whole adult life. She was professional without being cold, friendly without being familiar, and she worked harder than anyone on the team except possibly Mongo, who treated the comparison as a personal challenge.
She earned the crew's respect within a week. The other techs, guitar, bass, keys, monitors, watched her work and stopped asking if she needed help. Mongo, who trusted no one with anything, let her borrow his tools without supervision, which was the roadie equivalent of a knighthood.
What Samantha noticed, because Samantha noticed everything, was that Battle Cry was strange.
Not bad strange or dangerous strange. Just... strange in ways that accumulated like snow.
It started with Erik.
They were loading in at the Nashville venue, and a road case, one of the big ones, three hundred pounds of steel-reinforced plywood loaded with monitor equipment, got stuck on the dock ramp. Two crew members were struggling with it, boots slipping on the wet concrete. Erik walked over, said "I got it," gripped the handle with one hand, and slid it up the ramp like it was a carry-on bag.
Samantha watched from twenty feet away. She'd worked with strong men before. Arena roadies were built like refrigerators. But nobody moved three hundred pounds with one hand and a casual expression. Nobody.
She filed it away and said nothing.
Then there was the cat.
It appeared backstage in Charlotte: a sleek little black cat with vivid blue eyes that seemed far too intelligent for a stray. It sat on a road case near Samantha's workstation and watched her tune the snare with an expression that could only be described as judgmental.
"Hey there," she said, scratching behind its ears. "Where'd you come from?"
The cat purred and headbutted her hand.
It showed up again in Nashville. And again in Memphis. Always backstage. Always near her. In Memphis, Mongo stacked her clipboard on top of a tower of crates that she couldn't possibly reach, a prank he'd pulled on every new tech since 1979. Samantha stood on her toes, stretched, and couldn't get within two feet of it.
The black cat appeared from nowhere, leaped up the crates with impossible agility, and batted the clipboard cleanly off the top. It hit the floor with a flat crack. The cat dropped down after it in one fluid motion, landed beside her feet, and sat. It looked up at her and waited.
"Thanks," she said slowly.
The cat meowed once, short, satisfied, and sauntered away.
From across the stage, she could have sworn she heard Ricky laugh.
Connor was the worst at hiding it.
He finished her sentences. Not as chatty people do, stepping on the ends of thoughts out of enthusiasm. Connor finished her sentences before she'd said enough words to establish where the sentence was going. She'd open her mouth to mention a concern about the hi-hat positioning, and Connor would walk past and say, "The hi-hat's fine, Sam. You didn't miss anything."
The first time, she thought it was coincidence. The second time, she figured he was observant. The third time, when she was silently worrying about whether she'd seated the kick drum pedal correctly and Connor appeared behind her and said, "Stop worrying about the pedal. It's perfect. You checked it twice," without her having said a single word, she stopped and stared at his retreating back.
"How the hell did you know I was thinking that?" she called after him.
Connor glanced over his shoulder and grinned. "I am the all-seeing, all-knowing..."
"AND ALWAYS A PAIN IN THE ASS!" Nathan yelled from across the stage. "GET OVER HERE!"
Connor laughed and jogged toward Nathan. Then he stopped.
It was sudden. A full-body freeze, mid-stride, as if someone had hit pause. The grin vanished. His head snapped up toward the lighting grid, eyes wide with something that wasn't surprise. It was fear. Pure, electric, prophetic fear.
He looked at Nathan. "LAMP!"
Samantha heard the sound before she understood it: a metallic groan, a snap of cable, and then the whistle of something heavy falling directly above her head. She looked up and saw it: a stage lamp, thirty pounds of steel and glass, plummeting straight toward her.
She did the only thing her body knew how to do. She dropped into a crouch, arms over her head, making herself as small as possible. If it hit her back instead of her skull, maybe she'd survive. Maybe.
She waited for the impact.
It didn't come.
One second. Two seconds. Silence. No crash. No pain. Nothing.
Samantha opened her eyes.
The lamp was suspended six inches above her head. Just hovering there, motionless, wrapped in a faint red glow that shimmered like heat rising off summer asphalt. It didn't swing. It didn't drift. It hung in the air as if gravity had simply been told to wait.
She looked up at it. Then she looked across the stage.
Nathan was standing thirty feet away behind his keyboard rig, his right hand extended, palm up, fingers splayed. His arm was trembling. The veins in his forearm stood out like cables. And his amulet, that deep red stone he always wore, was blazing with a light so bright it cast garnet shadows across the entire stage.
He was holding the lamp. With his hand. From thirty feet away.
The stage had gone completely silent. Every crew member who could see what was happening had stopped moving. Mongo stood frozen near the wings, a cable coiled in his hands, his mouth open.
Samantha reached up slowly, almost involuntarily, and touched the lamp with her fingertips. She pushed it. It didn't move. She pushed harder. It didn't budge. Whatever was holding it in place was immovable, as solid as if the lamp had been welded to an invisible beam.
"What are you guys?" she whispered, still crouched beneath it, staring up at the impossibility hanging six inches from her skull.
Then hands gripped her shoulders from behind, firm, warm, urgent, and pulled her backward out from underneath the lamp. She stumbled, caught her balance, and found herself being moved steadily away from the danger zone by Jace, who didn't let go until they were a good ten feet clear.
Connor's voice cut across the stage. "Jace has her, Nathan. Let it go."
Nathan released.
The lamp fell. It hit the stage floor with a deafening BOOM that sent glass and steel fragments scattering across the boards. The crash was enormous: a thirty-pound fixture detonating on impact, pieces skittering in every direction. The sound echoed through the empty venue like a gunshot.
Behind his keyboard rig, Nathan crumpled. His knees gave out and he collapsed against the back of the keyboards, sliding down to the floor, his hand still trembling, the garnet amulet dimming as his strength gave way. He'd held that lamp motionless for nearly a minute through pure will and the effort had drained him completely.
Ricky was at his side in an instant, teleporting the distance without thinking. "Nate! Nate, you good?" He grabbed Nathan's shoulders and steadied him against the keyboard stand.
Nathan nodded weakly, breathing hard. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm good. Just... give me a second."
Samantha didn't see any of that. The moment the lamp hit the stage, that tremendous crash of metal and glass, she wheeled around in pure terror and slammed into Jace's chest. Her hands fisted in his shirt. She was shaking. Not small tremors. Full-body shaking, the kind that comes from the sudden understanding that you were almost killed and the only reason you're alive is something you can't explain.
Jace's arms came around her immediately. He held her, not carefully or tentatively but completely, one arm across her back, his other hand cradling the back of her head, pulling her against him as if he could absorb her fear through contact. He was shaking too, and she could feel it, the fine tremor running through his chest and arms. But his shaking wasn't from the lamp. It was from the certainty that this moment, the moment she saw what they really were, would be the moment she ran.
He held her for a long time. Long enough for her breathing to slow. Long enough for the shaking to ease from violent to manageable. Long enough for her to become aware of his heartbeat against her cheek, fast and hard, and the warmth of the opal pulsing faintly at his chest.
Eventually she pulled back. Just enough to look up at him. His amber-gold eyes were bright, and she saw something crack in his composure, not fear or anger but a grief she couldn't place. A single tear escaped down his cheek before he could stop it.
"No, really," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "What are you guys?"
Jace looked at her. He leaned forward and pressed his forehead gently against hers. She didn't pull away. His breath was warm and unsteady against her face.
"Like I said, Sam," he murmured. "We're just a band."
The opal pulsed once, warm, gentle, and Samantha's eyes fluttered closed. Her weight sagged against him as consciousness slipped away. Jace caught her fully, lowering her carefully, cradling her head.
"Dammit," he breathed. "Not again."
She woke up on the couch in the dressing room.
The first thing she saw was a ceiling she didn't recognize. The second thing was Sidney Greene, sitting in a chair beside her with his legs crossed and a glass of water in his hand, looking at her with the patient expression of a man who had done this before.
"Easy," he said. "You're safe. Drink this."
She took the water and sat up slowly. Her head felt foggy but not painful. She looked around the room: familiar backstage furniture, show notes pinned to a board, Jace's backup sticks on the counter. Then the memory hit her like a truck.
The lamp. Nathan's hand. The red light. The crash. Jace holding her. His forehead against hers.
She looked at Sidney.
"I'd be dead right now if it wasn't for Nathan," she said.
Sidney's eyebrows rose slightly. He'd expected confusion. Denial. Perhaps tears. Not a calm, factual assessment delivered thirty seconds after regaining consciousness.
"Yes," he said. "You would."
"Where is everyone? The show..." She sat up straighter, suddenly alert. "The kit. Who's teching the kit?"
"Avery is covering your duties tonight," Sidney said calmly. "He's more than capable. The band is on stage right now. The show started on time."
Samantha blinked. "They're performing? After all of that?"
"They always play. It is who they are."
She could hear it now: the faint, muffled thunder of drums and bass vibrating through the concrete walls. The crowd roaring between songs. They were out there. Doing their job. While she sat here trying to understand how a man had held a thirty-pound lamp in midair with his mind.
"What are they?" She searched Sidney's face. "What is this band?"
Sidney set down his own glass. "It is not for me to tell you their full story. That is theirs to share. But they will share it with you tonight, once the show is finished."
"But I need to know something. Anything. You can't just... I watched a lamp float in the air, Sidney. I watched Nathan hold it there with his hand. I watched Connor know it was going to fall before it did. And Jace..." She stopped. The memory of his forehead against hers, the tear on his cheek, the way his arms had wrapped around her. She pushed it aside. "I need you to tell me something."
Sidney regarded her. Then he nodded once.
"They are the Brotherhood of Aelin," he said. "That is their name. They all possess extraordinary abilities, powers that are bonded to the amulets they wear."
"The stones. The jewelry they never take off."
"Yes. Each amulet grants a different set of powers. Nathan's gives him command of the elements, fire, water, earth, and air. The air element gives him command over physical forces. That is how he held the lamp."
"And Connor? How did he know?"
"Connor's amulet grants him precognition, among other abilities. He can see things before they happen. He saw the lamp fall before it did."
Samantha was quiet, processing. "And Jace?"
"The Guardian Amulet is the most powerful of the five. His abilities are... extensive."
"Is that why I keep fainting around him?"
Sidney allowed the faintest smile. "That is a conversation you should have with him."
Samantha leaned back against the couch. "You said 'Aelin.' What is Aelin?"
"Aelin is a nation," Sidney said. "A cloaked island. Hidden from the world. It is their home, a place they rule and protect. That is all I can tell you before they finish. The rest must come from them."
"A cloaked island," Samantha repeated. "These five guys from Reno are rulers of a cloaked island."
"Yes."
She stared at the ceiling. Then she exhaled slowly.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. I can wait for the rest. But Sidney?"
"Yes?"
"When they come back, and I can hear them, so I know where they're at in the set. I want the whole story. Not pieces or the edited version. Everything."
"That," Sidney said, "will be up to them."
The show was two hours. Samantha sat in the dressing room and listened to it through the walls: the thunder of drums, the roar of the crowd, the vibrations that rolled through the concrete floor like a heartbeat. Avery had the kit handled; she could tell from the consistency of the kick pattern that he knew what he was doing, even if his touch wasn't quite as precise as hers. Professional pride noted it. Everything else in her brain was occupied with the impossible.
She heard them before the set ended, the way you could always hear Battle Cry coming before you saw them: guitars still ringing, voices overlapping, the high-energy chaos of five men coming offstage still burning with adrenaline.
The dressing room door burst open. Ricky came through first, towel around his neck, hair soaked with sweat, grinning like a man who'd just outrun a train. Erik followed, bass still strapped on, peeling off his stage shirt one-handed. Nathan entered next, quieter, his eyes finding Samantha immediately, checking, assessing, relieved to see her upright.
Connor came through last, and his gaze went to her face with an openness that surprised her. "Hey, Sam. How's the head?"
"Still attached," she said. "Barely."
He smiled. "Good. Because we've got a lot to tell you."
Jace appeared in the doorway last. No shirt. He never wore one by the end of a show, not with the intensity at which he played. His hair was plastered to his face with sweat, chest and shoulders still glistening under the dressing room lights. At six foot four and built like a wedge, broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, every muscle carved from years of drumming and the kind of obsessive gym work he and Erik shared, Jace Elias walking into a room shirtless and damp was not something you failed to notice.
Samantha noticed.
She didn't blush, Samantha Wallace didn't blush easily, but a flush crept up her neck that she couldn't quite control, and she suddenly became very interested in the water glass Sidney had given her.
Connor, leaning against the wall, felt the tiny spike of heat through his empathy and bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. He'd been paying attention to this frequency since Aelin, since the night he'd told Jace there was someone out there for him and Jace had ribbed him about playing matchmaker with his love life. Connor hadn't been matchmaking. He'd been watching. That was who he was: the Visionary, the artist, the one who saw connections forming before the people involved were ready to admit they existed. And what he was sensing between Jace and Samantha right now was not subtle.
The opal rested against Jace's bare chest, dark now. He normally would have gone straight for the shower, drummers who didn't shower immediately after a show offended everyone within a ten-foot radius, but the moment he saw Samantha sitting upright on the couch, the shower ceased to exist. He looked at her, and she looked back, and neither of them said anything.
"You owe me an explanation," she said.
"I know," Jace replied. "Get on the bus."
They told her everything.
Not backstage or in the dressing room. On the tour bus, rolling down the interstate toward the next city, the highway dark outside the windows. Dave drove, headphones on, country music leaking faintly from his ears. He'd been in the room when Kavanaugh had told the crew who Battle Cry really were, had taken the Aelinian Oath the same night and never said a word about it since. That was Dave. He kept his eyes on the road and his mouth shut, and the band trusted him for it completely. Sidney sat at the back, listening, occasionally correcting details.
Jace told her about Aelin. The island. The Veil. The Brotherhood. The amulets and what they did. Connor explained the empathic bond, the threefold connection between himself, Jace, and Nathan, and why he could hear her thoughts.
Nathan explained the elemental powers, then held a small flame in his palm to demonstrate. Samantha's mouth fell open. She leaned forward, her face lit orange by the dancing fire, watching it curl and shift between his fingers like a living thing.
"That's real," she breathed. "That's actual fire. In your hand. And it's not burning you."
"It's mine," Nathan said simply. "It does what I tell it to."
"Can you do other elements?"
Nathan extinguished the flame, then lifted his other hand. A thin stream of water pulled itself from the glass on the table beside him, spiraled once in the air, and settled back into the glass without spilling a drop.
"Oh my God," Samantha whispered. Then, louder: "Oh my GOD."
Erik told her about Aldus. The Wrought. Tony's leg. The thing they were training to fight.
Ricky turned into a black cat, sat on her lap, purred once, then shifted back to human form on the seat beside her.
Samantha stared at him for a long three seconds. Then her eyes narrowed.
"That was you..." she said. "The whole time. Every venue. The cat that got my clipboard."
"You're welcome," Ricky said, grinning.
"You let me scratch behind your ears."
"And it was lovely!"
"I almost took you to a shelter in Nashville..."
Ricky made a face and replied, "Yeah, that would have been awkward."
"I TALKED to you... I told you about my day. I told you about the hi-hat problem and how Mongo hides my stuff." Her voice was climbing. "I told you that Jace had nice eyes and I was confused about it!"
The bus went dead silent.
Ricky's grin became nuclear.
"Yeah, I remember that part really well, actually."
Jace buried his face in his hands for a moment.
Connor bit his lip, shoulders shaking.
Samantha pointed at Ricky with the energy of a woman who had just realized her diary had been read aloud. "You are a menace. You are an absolute four-legged menace. And if you ever repeat what I said to you as a cat, I will shave you in your sleep."
"Which form?" Ricky asked innocently.
"BOTH!!" Samantha cried.
Erik, who had been trying not to laugh, lost the battle entirely.
They told her about the deaths. Jace's five deaths, the opal's resurrection, the price it extracted. They told her about the coronation, the training, the weapons: Durandach, Soilséir, the Filleadh, the Macalla. They told her about Ireland, the recording, the Benowen attack, the lore experiment hiding truth inside music.
The telling took hours. The bus ate miles. Samantha asked questions, sharp, precise, never hysterical. When Jace described Aldus, she didn't flinch. When Nathan explained the Veil, she asked how it was maintained. When Connor told her about his precognition, she said, "Is that why you always know when I'm worried about the kit?"
"Yeah," Connor admitted. "Sorry about that."
"Don't be. It's useful."
When they finished, the bus was quiet. The highway hummed beneath them. Samantha sat with her hands wrapped around a cup of tea that had gone cold an hour ago.
"So," Jace said. "Now you know."
"Now I know."
"You have a choice," Sidney said from the back. His voice carried the weight of ritual. "Every person who enters the Brotherhood's circle is given the same choice. You may stay, take the Aelinian Oath, and become part of this. Or you may leave. What you've heard tonight will remain protected, and you leave with our respect and our gratitude. But there is no staying without the oath."
Samantha looked at him. Then at Jace. Then at each of them in turn: Connor, Nathan, Erik, Ricky. Five men who had just handed her the most dangerous secret in the world and waited for her answer.
She set down the tea.
"Let me make sure I understand," she said. "You're telling me that you're kings of a hidden island nation, you have magical powers bonded to ancient amulets, you've been training to fight an immortal warlord who sends metal monsters to test your defenses, your drummer has died five times and come back every time, and the cat that's been following me around backstage is actually your guitarist."
"That about covers it," Erik said.
Samantha nodded. Then she laughed. Not nervous or disbelieving laughter. The laugh of a woman who had just been told the world was bigger than she'd imagined and found herself thrilled by it.
"You're going to have a hard time getting rid of me," she said.
Ricky punched the air. Connor exhaled with visible relief. Nathan smiled. Erik nodded, satisfied.
Jace stared at her.
"You're not afraid?"
"I watched Nathan catch a falling lamp with his mind to save my life," Samantha said. "I'm not afraid of people who do that. I'm afraid of the things that make it necessary." She met his eyes. "And I'm not going anywhere."
Sidney stood. "Then there is one more thing."
He looked at Jace, who had already gone still as he did when something carried real weight. Jace set down his water bottle and rose from his seat. The bus felt smaller suddenly: the highway noise outside, the low hum of the engine, and the six of them gathered in the narrow aisle like something ancient was about to happen in a very modern place.
"The Aelinian Oath," Sidney said, his voice dropping into the register he used for things that mattered. "Every person who enters the Brotherhood's circle takes it. Your crew. Your management. Dave." He glanced toward the front of the bus, where Dave's shoulders were visible over the seat back, rigid with respectful attention. "The parents who were in the room the night the Brotherhood was revealed. Everyone who knows what you now know has stood where you're standing and made this promise."
Samantha looked at Jace. "What does it involve?"
"You place your hands over mine," Jace said. "And you mean what you say."
"And if I break it?"
Sidney answered that one. "If you reveal Aelin's location, the Brotherhood's powers, or their true identities to anyone outside this circle. The oath enforces itself. Within seven days you will be in more pain than you have ever known. It moves through the body. It does not stop." He paused. "On the seventh day, it ends. And so does every memory you have of Aelin, of the Brotherhood, of everything you heard tonight."
The bus was very quiet.
"The oath doesn't punish curiosity," Jace said. "It punishes betrayal. There's a difference."
Samantha was quiet. Then she nodded once, the nod of someone who had already made up her mind and was simply confirming it to herself.
"Okay," she said. "Let's do it."
Jace held out his hands, palms up. Samantha placed hers on top of his, her hands smaller, steady, warm. At his chest, the opal had already begun to pulse.
Sidney opened the worn leather book to the marked page and read the words of the oath aloud, phrase by phrase, and Samantha repeated each one clearly, her voice unhesitating over the Aelinian cadences she had never heard before. The highway hummed beneath them. The bus swayed gently on a curve. Nobody moved.
When the last words left her mouth, the light came.
It bloomed up through Jace's hands first, opaline, shifting, white at its core but threaded through with colors that had no business existing on a tour bus: green and gold and deep blue and the faintest pulse of violet, moving the way light moves inside a real opal, alive and restless. It spread through his fingers and hers where they were joined. The amulet at his chest blazed with the same shifting light. His eyes, when she looked up at him, had gone white, pure and luminous, the amber-gold swallowed entirely, those same colors swirling through them like something ancient looking out from behind his face. And then the warmth rolled through her, not painful or startling but suffusing, like stepping from a cold room into sunlight, like something settling into place that had always been meant to be there.
It lasted only a moment. Then it eased, and the colors faded, and Jace's eyes returned to their normal amber-gold, and his hands under hers were warm and still.
He exhaled slowly. "Welcome to Aelin, Sam."
Ricky pumped his fist.
"FINALLY! Welcome to the madhouse, Sam!"
"Thanks," Samantha said, still feeling the warmth in her hands.
"Where's my clipboard?"
The weeks that followed changed everything and nothing.
Samantha was still Samantha: professional, capable, sharp-tongued, relentlessly competent. But now she was Samantha who knew. And knowing changed the texture of every interaction. She understood why Jace sometimes paused mid-conversation, eyes going distant. The amulet was talking to him. She understood why Connor flinched at certain crowd energies. His empathy was overloading. She understood why Erik positioned himself between the band and every doorway. The Warrior couldn't help it.
She learned to read the circlets. When all five were wearing them, the band moved differently: sharper, more coordinated, conversations happening in silence. She learned to stay out of the way during those moments and to step in the instant they needed something physical: a bottle of water, a towel, a tuning adjustment, a presence that said I'm here, I see you, you're not alone in this.
And she learned what the drinking games were really for.
It happened on the bus between shows, a long overnight haul. Samantha was sitting at the dinette going over the next day's setup when Ricky announced, with the gravity of a man declaring war, "Balance on the Bus."
Samantha looked up. "The what?"
Connor grinned. "You're about to find out."
The rules were simple: stand on one foot in the aisle, hands out T-pose style, no touching walls, furniture, or bandmates. Dave drives normally. Last one standing wins. Losers drink.
"This is training?" Samantha asked, skeptical.
Sidney sighed from the couch. "They insist it is."
"It IS," Ricky declared. "It trains focus under chaotic conditions."
"It trains your liver, is what it trains," Nathan muttered.
Samantha watched the first round with bemused fascination. Erik balanced instantly, immovable, because of course he did. The Warrior Amulet gave him preternatural equilibrium. Jace held steady with his drummer's core strength. Ricky struck a dramatic pose that lasted about eight seconds before the bus swayed and he windmilled both arms. Connor fell over almost immediately.
"You're terrible at this," Samantha told him.
"The game is rigged!" Connor protested from the floor.
"Your balance is rigged," Jace replied.
Samantha couldn't help herself. "Can I try?"
Ricky's face lit up. "Oh, absolutely."
She stood, found her center, years of gymnastics and fencing making the adjustment automatic, planted on one foot, and held.
The bus swayed. She compensated. It lurched. She adjusted. Her core was iron, her balance calibrated by a decade of competitive athletics. Eight seconds passed. Twelve. Twenty.
Ricky fell. Samantha didn't.
"No way," Ricky breathed from the floor.
"How is she still up?" Nathan demanded.
"Gymnastics," Samantha said calmly, still balanced. "And fencing. You learn to hold position or you eat mat."
"She's beating Ricky," Connor said from the floor, delighted. "This is the best day of my life."
"SHE'S NOT POWERED!" Ricky sputtered.
"And yet," Erik observed, still perfectly balanced, "she's still standing."
Ricky's indignation was legendary. He spent the next three rounds trying to outlast her and failing. The bus swayed, the road hummed, and Samantha held her ground with a quiet, athletic precision that made Ricky look like a man fighting a tornado.
Then Dave hit the bump.
This was no normal bump but the kind of road imperfection Dave had memorized: a long, sloping rise followed by a sharp dip that, at the right speed, could get the bus briefly airborne. Dave, who had been listening to the chaos through the intercom, goosed the gas pedal with the practiced malice of a man who'd been enduring teleporting cats and floating lamps for too long.
The bus caught air.
Every person in the aisle went weightless for a fraction of a second. Erik landed in a perfect crouch, still on one foot. Jace caught the ceiling rail and swung back into position. Ricky collided face-first with a pile of pillows.
Samantha and Nathan, who had been standing closest to the dinette, went sideways. Nathan's hip caught the table edge and he disappeared under the dinette with a yelp. Samantha tumbled after him, the two of them ending up in a tangled heap on the floor between the bench seats, Samantha's elbow in Nathan's ribs and Nathan's knee somewhere near her shoulder.
"DRINK!" the rest of the bus yelled in unison.
Dave's voice, smug and triumphant, filled the bus: "AND THAT, BOYS AND GIRL, IS WHY WE DON'T PISS OFF THE DRIVER!"
Sidney reached down and extracted Samantha from under the table like a man pulling a kitten out of a storm drain. She came up laughing, hair in her face, clutching the table edge.
"That," she gasped, "was the most ridiculous thing I've ever been a part of."
"Welcome to the Brotherhood," Nathan groaned from under the table. "We're idiots."
Two nights later, Samantha witnessed the Sentinel Shuffle.
It started, as most of Ricky's worst ideas did, with a dare. Connor dared Ricky to slam a shot and then teleport anywhere on the bus. A test to see how many shots it would take before the guitarist was too inebriated to teleport at all.
Samantha sat beside Sidney, watching with the fascinated horror of a woman who had just learned that supernatural powers and whiskey were not a safe combination.
The first shot went down easy. Ricky teleported a foot to the left and pretended he'd won a race. The second shot sent him into the bathroom, where his own reflection apparently scared him so badly he teleported back out looking rattled. The third shot went down smooth, but the first two were kicking in, and Ricky vanished completely.
Seconds passed. A minute. Five.
Connor checked the bathroom. Nathan looked under the table. Erik opened a utility closet. Samantha looked at Sidney, who sighed and said, "I swear, if he is outside this bus again..."
Ricky reappeared in a shimmer of displaced air, munching on a piece of fried chicken from the cooler.
Jace scowled at him. "That better not be the last drumstick, dude."
"The fridge?" Nathan asked incredulously, then grinned. "Genius, Strat Cat. Genius!"
Ricky took a wobbly bow. "Round four!"
"No..." Sidney started, but the shot was already poured and down Ricky's throat before Sidney finished the word.
"I got this!" Ricky declared, swaying slightly. "Da purrfect place!"
With a shimmer and a soft pop, Ricky vanished.
The bus went quiet.
Then the intercom crackled. Static. A throat clear. Then Dave's voice, clearly unhappy.
"UH... SOMEBODY BETTER COME GIT KITTY BEFORE I STRING MY FIDDLE WITH 'IM!!"
Samantha's eyes went wide. "He didn't."
"He did," Sidney confirmed.
Connor lost it first, folding forward, choking on hysterical laughter, sliding right out of his seat onto the floor. Jace shot to his feet. "Cab!"
They scrambled down the aisle like panicked toddlers in a house fire, Samantha right behind them, slamming into walls as the bus swayed under Dave's rigid steering.
They reached the front just in time to see it.
Ricky, in glossy black cat form, curled in Dave Gipsen's lap, kneading biscuits on Dave's jeans, purring like a chainsaw made of black velvet.
And Dave, poor, poor Dave, was sitting ramrod straight behind the wheel, arms locked, hands clamped on the wheel, eyes fixed forward with the thousand-yard stare of a man who had seen too much.
"DON'T... MOVE... A DAMN... HAIR," Dave growled through clenched teeth.
Samantha clamped both hands over her mouth. She was laughing so hard tears were streaming down her face, but she couldn't make a sound because if she did she was going to scream.
Jace managed, barely, "Dave... buddy... it's just Ricky."
"'JUST RICKY?!" Dave snapped without moving a muscle. "GUARDIAN! THIS SNEAKY LITTLE SUMBITCH DONE APPEARED OUTTA THIN AIR ON MY LAP. I NEARLY SWERVED US INTO THE SIERRAS!"
Sidney crouched near the driver's seat, voice calm but urgent. "Ricky. Ricky, listen. Don't shift back. If you shift back right now, you will break Dave's legs and possibly his spine."
Ricky the cat meowed sweetly, then headbutted Dave's stomach affectionately.
Dave flinched. "OH, SWEET JESUS, DON'T DO THAT..."
Samantha was crying. Actual tears, running down her face, her entire body shaking with silent laughter. She had one hand braced against the wall and the other pressed to her stomach.
Jace reached forward carefully. "C'mere, Rick."
Ricky looked up with vibrant blue cat eyes bright with mischief, and teleported. Not far. Just enough to reappear on Nathan's shoulder like a demonic parrot.
Nathan screamed. Connor exploded into a new round of laughter. Samantha slid down the wall and sat on the floor, completely undone.
"CLAWS, dude!!" Nathan wailed.
Dave sagged in his seat. "I swear... I swear on every tire on this damn bus... if that boy teleports onto me again, I'm tyin' him to the roof."
Ricky shifted back to human form, still on Nathan's shoulder, and promptly fell to the floor with Nathan's assistance.
He sat upright, rubbing his head, slurring, "What I mish?"
Jace clapped him on the shoulder. "Congratulations, Sentinel. You nearly made Dave meet Jesus."
Dave shouted from the driver's seat: "Y'ALL NEED SUPERVISION! AND A DAMN EXORCISM!"
Samantha, still on the floor, wiped her eyes and looked up at Sidney, who was pinching the bridge of his nose.
"This is what I signed up for?" she asked.
"This is the mild version," Sidney replied.
Three nights later, Connor introduced Guardian's Echo.
Samantha had no idea what she was watching at first. Connor stood in the center aisle, said one thing out loud, and Jace repeated something completely different, something Connor was apparently thinking but hadn't said.
"Connor lost his left shoe," Jace announced with a crooked grin.
Connor looked down at his single sock. "DAMNIT, JACE! You weren't supposed to say it like that!"
Samantha leaned toward Erik. "What's happening?"
"Jace can read Connor's thoughts," Erik said casually. "Connor's just terrible at hiding them."
She watched three more rounds. Connor said, "I really like this bus." Jace grinned and told the room, "Connor thinks I'm pretty." Nathan calmly confirmed, "It's okay, we all think it." Jace blushed hard enough to light the aisle.
Samantha was laughing so hard her ribs ached by the time Connor's donut grievance came out: the stolen pastry, the threatened drumstick assault, Ricky's scandalized denial. But she was also watching with the analytical eye of a woman who understood what she was really seeing.
These weren't party games. They were drills.
Ricky's teleportation under intoxication. Jace's Guardian Echo, reading Connor's thoughts through noise and distraction. Connor's mental discipline, or comical lack thereof, under chemical impairment. Erik's unshakeable balance regardless of conditions. Even Nathan's stoic endurance was being tested.
They were training themselves to use their powers drunk. Not because they planned to fight drunk, but because alcohol was chaos, and chaos was the closest simulation to battlefield stress they could create on a tour bus at seventy miles an hour.
She caught Sidney's eye across the bus. The old trainer gave her a look that said, very clearly, You're the first person besides me to figure that out.
There was a break in the tour: four days between the Memphis run and the Southwest leg. Enough time.
"Come with us," Jace said. It was no order, barely even a request. More like a man extending an invitation he desperately wanted accepted.
"Where?" Samantha asked.
"Home."
Aelin hit her like a dream she'd forgotten having. The portal was built against a wall in the storage room of the Memphis venue: a framed archway that shouldn't have existed, runes glowing white along its edges. Sidney showed her how the runes worked: different sequences for different counties, each pattern opening a path to its own destination across the island. He had her memorize the key sequences, Harmonytis, Léirstinach, Ainmhithe, Neart, and Draíocht, and made her repeat them until the patterns were automatic.
"You may need this knowledge urgently someday," Sidney told her. "Do not treat it casually."
The air folded when she stepped through, a sensation like the world turning inside out for a fraction of a second, and then she was standing on stone.
Not grass or a hillside. Stone paths within the Castle of Elders in Harmonytis, the seat of the kingdom, the Brotherhood's home. The castle's corridors opened around her, white stone walls catching the light from tall windows, the architecture a blend of Celtic elegance and something older, something that didn't have a name in any language she knew.
She walked to the nearest window and stopped breathing.
The sky over Aelin was not blue. It was lavender: a deep, shifting violet that swirled with threads of blue, as if the atmosphere itself were a living watercolor. Clouds drifted across it in gentle formations, white but with a faint violet tint at their edges, not quite like any clouds she'd ever seen. Below the impossible sky, green hills cascaded toward a harbor where ships with sails like moth wings rocked gently in a breeze that smelled of salt and wildflowers. The North Atlantic stretched to the horizon, vast and dark, but the island itself seemed to glow, the green so vivid, so impossibly lush, that it looked like the land had been painted rather than grown.
"Oh, wow," Samantha said softly. "Oh, it's beautiful!"
"Yeah," Jace said beside her, watching her face. "It is."
They gave her three days. Three days to walk the streets of Léirstinach, to see the Conservatory where Nathan lectured, to visit the stables in Ainmhithe where Jessica introduced her to Shadow, to stand on the training plateau where the Brotherhood had learned to fight.
She met Indira on the second day: Connor's Indira, the woman whose warmth radiated from her like a second heartbeat. She was of Indian descent, her family rooted in Punjabi tradition, and she carried herself with a grace that was equal parts cultural heritage and personal strength. Samantha saw them together and understood something instantly: Connor was different with Indira. Not performing or guarding. Open in a way he never was on stage or on the bus. He looked at her like she was the answer to a question he'd been afraid to ask. But there was a careful distance between them too, a deliberate, respectful space. Connor was newly crowned governor of Léirstinach, deeply drawn to Indira, but unwilling to push against her family's customs or traditions. And Indira, who clearly found Connor's dark Persian features and gentle intensity delightful, held the same line with a quiet dignity that made the restraint feel sacred rather than painful. What existed between them wasn't a relationship yet. It was a promise, held in trust, waiting for the right time.
She met Galena that evening at dinner: Nathan's counterpart, the Prime Minister, a woman whose intelligence was matched only by her directness. Samantha watched them across the table, the way Nathan leaned toward Galena when she spoke, the way Galena's hand rested briefly on Nathan's arm during a quiet exchange, and thought, They're going to be married before the year is out.
She met Rebekah the third day: Erik's Rebekah, warm and steady and fierce in the way that women who love warriors learn to be. Erik, the most controlled man Samantha had ever met, softened around Rebekah in ways that made his brothers grin and elbow each other.
On the afternoon of the third day, Sidney called them to the training plateau.
He hadn't said what for. He simply appeared at the Castle of Elders in training leathers and told them to follow. The Brothers exchanged glances, they'd expected the Aelin visit to be downtime, not instruction, but Sidney's expression left no room for negotiation.
Samantha came too. She was Brotherhood now.
The plateau was quiet, the wind steady off the Atlantic, the weapons rack casting long shadows in the afternoon light. Ricky meandered toward Erik, eyeing Durandach where it was propped against a post.
"That thing is still the prettiest piece of steel I've ever seen," he said. "Let me see it again."
Erik shook his head. "No."
"Come on. I just want to hold it for a second."
"You don't respect sharp things. You treat everything like a stage toy."
"I do not..."
He grabbed for the hilt just as Erik moved it aside. The tip flashed. Ricky jerked his hand back.
"OW!"
He stared at the end of his finger in outrage. A small, bright line of red welled up and started to bead.
"Well done," Nathan said. "The sword got you before you got it."
"It cut me!" Ricky held his hand up. "That thing is vicious. That is my good finger."
"It's barely a nick," Connor said. "You'll live."
"That is not the point," Ricky protested. "I liked that finger the way it was."
Sidney turned his head toward Jace, eyes thoughtful. "Guardian," he said. "Now would be a good time."
Jace, halfway through recapping his water bottle, frowned. "For what? A Band-Aid?"
"For the part of your gift we've left alone," Sidney said. "Every Guardian has it. We simply haven't trained yours yet."
Jace stared. "What part?"
Sidney walked closer, his tone dipping into something older. "Healing," he said. "Guardians heal."
Jace blinked. "No, they don't. I don't. I shield, I throw things around, I drag storms where they don't belong. If I heal, that's news to me."
"You never asked," Sidney said calmly. "In my father's day, his mentors brought it in much earlier. With you, we've spent the first years making sure you didn't level buildings by accident. Priorities."
Samantha squinted at him. "You're telling me he can fix people and you just saved that for later?"
"Not saved," Sidney said. "Delayed. When a boy can break stone with his hands, you teach him not to crack the world before you ask him to re-stitch it."
The words landed differently now than they would have a month ago. Everyone on the plateau was thinking the same thing. Nobody said it yet.
Ricky thrust his bleeding fingertip toward Jace. "As the one currently leaking, I vote we bump this up the list. Here, heal me."
Jace looked from Ricky's face to the finger and back again.
"I'm supposed to heal the injured and the sick," he said with a grin. "Not the stupid."
Ricky stared at him, offended.
"Wow. That's the bedside manner of a chainsaw."
"Consider this motivation not to grab live steel," Jace said.
Sidney's mouth twitched.
"Small cut, minimal risk. And if you faint, we're standing on soft ground."
"That is not real comforting, Sid," Ricky muttered. "But I still volunteer."
Jace sighed.
"Fine. Come here."
Ricky stuck his hand out with theatrical seriousness.
Jace took it, turning it so the cut lay across his palm, fingernail down. The slice was shallow but clean, a small bead of blood bending around the curve.
"This feels ridiculous," Jace said under his breath.
"Think of it as another way of doing what you already do," Sidney told him. "You carry other people's pain without meaning to. You pull their fear into yourself. This time, you don't hold it. You tell his body what it's supposed to be and lend it enough strength to remember."
"That's not how skin works," Jace muttered.
"With you, it is," Sidney said. "Your power isn't just pressure. It's pattern."
Something in Jace's expression changed at that.
He closed his other hand gently over Ricky's, cupping the fingertip between his palms. His amulet warmed against his chest. The noise of the plateau seemed to ease down a notch.
Samantha watched his aura draw inward, concentrating down his arms. An opaline glow seeped out between his fingers, white at its heart, colors shifting faintly through it like light through a prism.
Ricky flinched.
"That tingles."
"Hold still," Jace said tightly.
"It stings a little," Ricky added. "Thought you should know."
"You jabbed yourself with a live blade," Jace said. "That's the least of your problems."
The glow flared slightly, then faded. Jace exhaled slowly and opened his hands.
The cut was gone. Smooth skin. No blood. No mark.
Ricky stared. "Well, will you look at that." He flexed his hand. "It's fixed. Not even a line. That's better than a bandage." He turned, holding his finger up like a trophy. "Gentlemen, I present to you: genuine Guardian handiwork."
"Keep that for yourself," Connor said.
"Do not start charging people to shake your hand," Nathan added.
Jace stared at his own hands, brow furrowed. "I did that," he said quietly.
"Yes," Sidney said. Pride warmed his voice. "You did."
"It didn't feel like blasting," Jace went on. "It felt like something was out of tune, and I nudged it back."
Sidney smiled faintly. "Your shield protects. Your power destroys when it must. Your healing restores. Same river, different turn."
The plateau went quiet. Samantha saw the moment it hit him: the realization rolling across Jace's face like a shadow crossing the sun. His hands lowered slowly. His jaw tightened.
"Tony," he said.
Nobody spoke.
"If I'd known about this in Dallas..."
"No," Sidney said firmly. "Don't."
"His leg, Sidney. If I'd been able to..."
"A Wrought bite is not a nick on a fingertip," Sidney said, stepping closer. "The corruption in those wounds burns through tissue at a rate that healing cannot outpace. Tony's leg was destroyed in seconds. Even a fully trained Guardian healer, which you are not yet, could not have reversed that damage. The bone was shattered. The vessels were severed. Acidic corruption was already spreading. Amputation was the only option that saved his life."
"You don't know that I couldn't have..."
"I do know," Sidney said. "Because your predecessor tried. My father once attempted to heal a Wrought wound on a soldier in the field. The healing energy followed the corruption inward and nearly killed them both. Wrought bites are designed to resist Guardian intervention. Aldus built them that way deliberately."
Jace's hands were shaking. He stared at them, the same hands that had just erased a cut from Ricky's finger, and Samantha could see the war in his face. The guilt that lived in him like a second heartbeat, always ready, always searching for something to attach itself to.
She stepped forward and put her hand on his arm.
"You had no way of knowing," she said. "You hadn't been told. You hadn't been trained. And even if you had, it wouldn't have changed what happened to Tony." Her grip tightened. "This is not on you, Jace."
"She's right," Connor said quietly. "And you know she is."
"You're a chronic apologesiatic, dude," Ricky said, flexing his healed finger. "You find guilt the way I find trouble. Naturally and with zero effort."
Despite everything, the corner of Jace's mouth twitched.
"That's not a word."
"It is now. I just invented it. You're the first diagnosed case."
Nathan stepped in, his voice steady. "What matters is that you can do this now. You know you can heal. And next time someone gets hurt, and there will be a next time, you'll be ready."
Jace drew a long breath. He looked at Samantha's hand on his arm, then at her face, steady, certain, refusing to let him spiral. He nodded once.
"Okay," he said. "Okay."
Sidney let the moment settle, then called out, "That's enough for today. No more levitation. No more bleeding. Stretch, then inside."
As they walked back toward the castle, Samantha fell into step beside Jace. Neither of them spoke at first. Then Jace said, very quietly, "Thank you."
"For what?"
"For not letting me disappear into that."
Samantha looked at him. "That's what I'm here for."
It wasn't everything. But it was enough.
And through all of it, there was Jace.
He didn't push. He didn't hover. He was simply present: walking beside her on the cliffs, sitting across from her at meals, answering her questions about Aelin with a quiet thoroughness that she was beginning to recognize as how he showed care. He didn't say much about the vision. She didn't know about it yet. But she felt the gravity of his attention, how his eyes tracked to her in any room, how his hand occasionally reached toward hers before he caught himself and pulled it back.
She felt it too. The pull. The warmth. The dangerous, unprofessional, deeply inconvenient reality that this man, her boss, her drummer, her king of a hidden nation, was becoming something more than any of those categories could contain.
But Samantha Wallace had strong ethics. She would not sleep with a drummer. She would not sleep with her boss. She would not cross a line that could compromise her work, her integrity, or her self-respect. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Maybe not until the universe made it unavoidable.
So, what grew between them was guarded. Affectionate. A hand on a shoulder that lingered. A look held a beat too long. A friendship that both of them knew was a door neither had opened yet.
When the four days ended and they returned to the mainland for the Southwest leg of the tour, Samantha carried Aelin with her like a second heartbeat. And the Brotherhood carried Samantha like something they hadn't known they'd been missing.
The tour resumed. The shows got bigger. The crowds got louder. And somewhere in the back of Jace's mind, the shadow that Connor had been sensing for weeks grew darker, heavier, more patient.
They were heading for Houston.