“It’s James,” I say, my voice coming out thin. Wrong. “Anderson took him. Anderson took James and Adam. He’s holding them hostage.”

Seven

We’re back in the war room.

I’m standing at the door with J by my side—Warner needed a minute to pick out a cute outfit and braid his hair—and in the fifteen minutes I was gone, the atmosphere in this room changed dramatically. Everyone keeps glancing between me and J. Glaring, more like. Brendan looks tired. Winston looks irritated. Ian looks pissed. Lily looks pissed. Sam looks pissed. Nouria looks pissed.

Castle looks super pissed.

He’s staring at me through narrowed eyes, and our years together have taught me enough about Castle’s body language to know exactly what he’s thinking right now.

Right now, he’s thinking that he’s more than a little disappointed in me, that he feels betrayed by my reneging on a promise to stop using the f-word, that I deliberately disrespected him, and that I should be grounded for two weeks for shouting at his daughter and her wife. Also, he’s embarrassed. He expected more from me.

“I’m sorry I lost my temper, sir.”

Castle’s jaw tenses as he appraises me. “Are you feeling better?”

No. “Yes.”

“Then we’ll discuss this later.”

I look away, too tired to drum up the necessary remorse. I’m too spent. Depleted. Wrung out. I feel like my insides have been scraped out with blunt, rusted tools, but somehow I’m still here. Still standing. Somehow, having J by my side is making this whole thing more tolerable. It feels good to know that there’s someone here who’s on my team.

After a full minute of awkward silence, J speaks.

“So,” she says, letting the word hang in the air for a moment. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about this meeting?”

“We didn’t want to disturb you,” Nouria says too sweetly. “You’ve had such a rough couple of weeks—we figured it best not to wake you unless we had a firm plan of action.”

J frowns. I can tell she’s considering—and doubting—what Nouria just said to her. It sounds like bullshit to me, too. We pretty much never make special arrangements to let people rest or sleep after a battle—not unless they’re injured. Sometimes, not even then. J, in particular, has never been given special treatment like this before. We don’t treat her like a child, handling her like she’s made of porcelain. Like she might still shatter.

But Jello decides to let it go.

“I realize you were trying to be kind,” she says to Nouria, “and I’m grateful for the space and generosity—especially last night, for Aaron—but you should’ve told us right away. In fact, you should’ve told us the minute we landed. It doesn’t matter how much we’ve been through,” she says. “Our heads are here, in the reality of what we’re dealing with right now, and Aaron is going to be fighting alongside us. It’s time for all of you to stop underestimating him.”

“Wait— What?” Ian frowns. “What does underestimating Warner have to do with James?”

J shakes her head. “Aaron has everything to do with James. In fact,” she says, “I can’t understand why he wasn’t the first person you talked to about this. Your biases are hurting you. Holding you back.”

It’s my turn to frown. “What’s the point of this speech, princess? I don’t see how Warner is relevant to the conversation. And why do you keep calling him Aaron? It’s weird.”

“I— Oh,” she says, and frowns. “I’m sorry. My mind— My memories are still . . . I’m having a hard time. He’s been Aaron to me much longer than he was ever Warner.”

I raise an eyebrow. “I think I’ll stick to calling him Warner.”

“I think he’d prefer that from you.”

“Good. Anyway. So you think we underestimate him.”

“I do,” she says.

This time, Nouria speaks up. “And why is that?”

J exhales. Her eyes are both sad and serious when she says:

“Anderson is the kind of monster who’d take hostage a ten-year-old boy and throw him in prison alongside trained soldiers. As far as we know, he’s treating James the same way he’s treating Valentina. Or Lena. Or Adam. It’s inhumane on a level so disturbing I can hardly allow myself to think about it. It’s hard for me to fathom. But it’s not hard for Aaron to imagine. He knows Anderson—and the inner workings of his mind—better than any of us. His knowledge of The Reestablishment and Anderson, in particular, is priceless.

“More important: James is Aaron’s little brother. And if anyone knows what it’s like to be ten years old and tortured by Anderson, it’s Aaron.” She looks up, looks Castle directly in the eye. “How could you think leaving him out of this conversation was a good idea? How could you imagine he wouldn’t be the first to care? He’s devastated.”

And then, as if she conjured him out of thin air, Warner appears at the door. I blink, and Nazeera is following him into the room. I blink again, and Haider and Stephan come into view.

It’s weird, seeing them together like this, all of them little science experiments. Super soldiers. They all walk the same, tall and proud, perfect posture, looking like they own the world.

Which, I guess they kind of do. At least, their parents do.

Bizarre.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to be raised by parents who teach you that the world is yours to do with what you will. Maybe Nazeera was right. Maybe we are too different. Maybe it never would’ve worked out between us, no matter how much I would’ve wanted to give it a shot.

Nazeera, Stephan, and Haider give us a wide berth, standing off to the side and saying nothing—not even waving hello—but Warner keeps walking. Jello meets him in the middle of the room, and he pulls her into his arms like they haven’t seen each other in days. Somehow, I manage not to vomit. But then I hear her whisper something about his birthday, and a massive wave of guilt washes over me.

I can’t believe I forgot.

We were celebrating Warner’s birthday a little prematurely last night. Today is his proper birthday. Today. Right now. This morning.

Shit.

I dragged J out of bed on the morning of his birthday.

Wow, I really am an asshole.

When they break apart, Warner makes a sudden, almost imperceptible motion with his head and Nazeera, Stephan, and Haider make their way over to the table, taking their seats alongside Ian and Lily and Brendan and Winston. A little battalion ready for war. Sometimes it’s hard to believe we’re all just a bunch of kids. It definitely doesn’t feel like it. But these four, in particular—they look pretty damn striking.

Warner is wearing a leather jacket. I’ve never seen him wear a leather jacket before, and I don’t know why. It suits him. It has an interesting, complicated collar, and the black of the leather is stark against his gold hair. But the more I think about it, the more I doubt the jacket belongs to him. We had no possessions when we landed here, so I’m guessing Warner borrowed it from Haider. Haider, who’s wearing one of his signature chain-mail shirts under a heavy wool coat. But all of that is nothing compared to Stephan, who’s wearing a gold field jacket that looks like snakeskin.