Chapter 19
Bo, you don’t have to ask. You know I’d walk into hell itself beside you.
—Heenali Roy to Bowen Knight (2079)
MALACHAI HAD NEVER specifically stated that it was the vanishings that had driven the change in BlackSea’s isolationist policy, but the connection hadn’t been difficult to make once Bo learned of the people BlackSea had lost.
It was a dagger in the back to think he might’ve been manipulated and lied to, nasty things going on behind an illusion of fidelity, but that didn’t mean he was about to close his eyes to the possibility. But neither was he ready to write off Heenali. Small and fierce and marked by psychic scars that caused her to wake screaming in the night, she’d walked beside him into danger year after year.
Her loyalty to the Alliance was a force of nature.
He’d speak to Malachai, then contact Lily and Cassius. Lily was incapable of hiding anything from him, and the bond that tied him and Cassius together was too primal to be fractured by anything less than death. He couldn’t go to the surface, but they would be his hands and his eyes. However, the ultimate responsibility was and would always be his: Bo had never believed in false truths, in saying he had clean hands simply because he hadn’t had advance knowledge of an action.
If it was committed under the Alliance banner, he owned it.
And should Kaia’s allegations prove true?
Bowen’s hands tightened over the ends of the chair arms. If Heenali had helped commit the atrocities of abduction, torture, and murder, then there was only one suitable punishment—and Bowen would mete it out himself. It’d break his fucking heart, but he’d do it.
Heenali would die in a prison cell anyway.
In front of him, Kaia closed black straps over his forearms and wrists. Bo didn’t protest. Of a soft fabric, they’d be effortless to break.
“These are to keep your hands from moving out of alignment,” she said, her head bent as she nudged his fingertips back into position. “Try to remain as still as you can.”
The cinnamon and exotic bloom of her scent swirled around Bo as she reached over and behind him to pull down a part of the machine that fit over his head, with a particular rectangular piece sliding in front of his eyes.
It was cold, metallic, a harsh contrast to the soft warmth of this woman who wasn’t certain whether he was a monster. And yeah, the blow landed exactly as hard the second time around. “Eyes open or closed?” he asked from behind the metal that turned his world black.
“Open.” Kaia seemed to brush her fingers over his hair, but that was probably wishful thinking on his part. “But it doesn’t matter if you blink. This is going to be an intensive scan; if you try to keep from blinking that long, you’ll probably burst an eyeball.”
Bo had heard that some changelings bit their mates during sex, or just for fun, or when they were mad. He’d never been a biter, but he was starting to reconsider his stand on the matter where Kaia was concerned. They could call it foreplay. Of course, he’d probably have a kitchen knife embedded in his gut before he ever got close enough.
His lips tugged up.
“And in three,” Atalina began, “two . . . one.”
A soft hum entered his ears while multicolored lasers danced across his eyes—or that was what it felt like. “I’m in the middle of a kaleidoscope.”
“Is it disorienting?”
“No, it’s incredible.” As if he were at a desert rave, the beat of his pulse the bass beat of the dance.
Except that Bo had never attended a rave. Never kissed a pretty woman while music boomed and lights crashed over their heads. Now, when he imagined it, he saw only one face in front of his: Kaia’s.
Laughing and contrary and softhearted Kaia who thought he was the enemy and whose turbulent confusion over their kiss was an intruder between them.
Despite his decision to live in the moment, in the now, he felt the sharp spear of regret after all.
“Your brain is very active.” Dr. Kahananui’s no-nonsense tone. “Can you stop thinking for a minute?”
Bo took a deep breath and banished the images of a life he’d never have. “How?”
“Have you ever meditated, done yoga?”
“No.”
“Mal says he goes into a meditative state when he moves through a martial arts kata.” Kaia’s voice, like dark water swirling around him. “Do that in your mind using your preferred form of physical combat.”
The regret stabbed again. Kaia, water changeling and scientist-turned-cook, already understood him better than any lover he’d ever had. Someone up above had a hellish sense of humor to bring her into his path at this time and in this place—and with such horror in the world.
“Bowen.”
“Working on it, Doc.” Gripping the regret in a granite fist, he began to run through a mixed martial arts sequence in his head, concentrating on creating perfect angles with his body and nothing else.