Page 217 of Scarlet Wars
“I’m not accusing,” he replied gently. “I’m only checking blind spots.”
I stepped in before the sparks caught fire. “Caden’s right to question it, but I’m with Rachel. Even with her sister running the show, nothing about this fits their methods. The Radicals want magi to be in power, not paralyzed. A bubble this size? It’s a prison, not a revolution.”
Rachel gave a single nod. Caden leaned back, conceding the point without a word.
“Anyway.” I hesitated, a new thread tugging at my mind. “Has anyone spoken to Cara Sinclair since she tried to rope you all into that alliance?”
“I tried to nex her a while back,” James said, then rubbed the back of his neck. “But she was…” He trailed off, gaze flicking toward me like he was gauging how much honesty the room could handle.
I arched a brow. “She was what?”
He cleared his throat. “Let’s just say she made a few—ah—crude remarks about my physical appearance and then disconnected.”
Rachel snorted. “Utterly useless, as usual.”
“Unhelpfulandunfiltered,” James muttered. “Her two most consistent traits.”
I couldn’t help it, the corner of my mouth twitched. “Guess she took an interest in you.”
James narrowed his eyes. “Thrilled for me, are you?”
“Absolutely,” Caden said, stone-faced, entirely unhelpful.
“All right, let’s see what I can coax out of my sister,” Rachel said dryly, as she reached for her Nexus.
Caden raised a brow. “I thought you said she’d do no more than lie to you?”
Rachel gave a half-smile, equal parts resigned and ruthless. “At this point, even a lie has value. A lie tells me what she wants me to believe. That’s still a thread. And a thread’s a start.”
I smiled at her optimism, a flicker of amusement tugging at my lips, but the feeling didn’t quite settle.
Beneath it lingered the uneasy sense that we were missing something. Something big, something obvious, something that refused to be seen no matter how hard we looked.
And it was getting on my nerves.
CADEN
It was the middle of the night when something dragged me out of my sleep.
Instinct kicked in before thought did, and I had my Chela in hand before my eyes were even open.
But all I saw was Emma next to me, tangled in my sheets, her body twisting violently beneath them, her face contorted in pain, her chest heaving like she was drowning in something I couldn’t see.
My whole body locked as I understood what it was.
Nightmares.
And violent ones if her thrashing was any indication.
Seeing her like that—so vulnerable, so visibly in agony, tearing at the sheets like they were binding her, tears tracking down her temples—it punched the air right out of my lungs.
And then I heard it. Barely audible. Cracked in half.
“Caden.”
It wasn’t a scream. It wasn’t even a plea. It was something worse: areach. As if somewhere in the dark, some part of her believed I could save her.
And it fuckingwreckedme.
