Page 257 of Scarlet Wars
He stepped into the room, posture coiled like he was barely containing the violence simmering under his skin. “I got in touch with someone at Cyclos again,” he said. “Matthew Conners, Nino’s boyfriend. He contacted me a few minutes ago and told me the Chiefs are holed up at the Bastille.”
I frowned deeply. “That pathetic excuse for a prison? Why the hell are they in there?”
James rolled his eyes with all the patience of a saint who’d run out months ago. “Do I look omniscient to you?”
“No,” I shot back. “You definitely don’t.”
His lips curled, something caught between a smirk and a snarl.
“They killed one of yours,” he said quietly. “Threatened one of mine. I say it’s time they got what they deserve.”
I met his stare head on. And in that split second, cold, brutal understanding passed between us like a promise signed in blood.
“How do we get there?” I asked.
James didn’t answer right away.
Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring: silver, etched with black markings so precise they looked like they might bleed ink if you stared at them too long.
He held it between two fingers, letting the dim light catch on the curves.
I knew that ring. Stephen’s ring.
Memories of Emma and I using it together at Hunza slammed into me so fast, I nearly choked on them. Emma and I standing side by side, the cold biting our skin, the ring warm in her hand. Her snapping at me when I joked how proposing marriage wouldn’t get us through the Layers any faster. The feel of her fingers brushing mine right before we crossed.
Hunza.
Where she nearly died of hypothermia.
Where I realized, somewhere between the panic and the warmth of her coming back to life, I’d already fallen in love with her.
If James noticed the shift in my face—the way every muscle went tight, the way I stared at that damn ring like it might crack open the ground beneath my feet—he didn’t say a word. He simply held it there between us.
“We can’t translate underneath the bubble,” he said, matter of fact, as if he weren’t suggesting treason and bloodshed. “We’llhave to fly out there the human way. But this…” He lifted the ring slightly. “This’ll get us through the Layers.”
Distance from Emma.
And payback for the bastards who made her choke on impossible choices.
Who made her choose between all the people she loved and…me
“Count me in.”
James gave a single, curt nod—one soldier acknowledging another—then turned toward the door. “We leave tonight,” he said loudly as he walked out.
The door had barely clicked shut when Emma spoke up. “We don’t need to fly out there,” she said quietly, but there was steel under the words. “I have magic beneath the bubble.”
She took a step forward, chin lifting with that impossible determination of hers. “I can portal us to Nevada.”
I clenched my jaw so hard it ached, then forced out the word I never thought I’d say to her.
“No.”
Her entire body jerked as if I’d struck her. “What? What do you mean, no?”
“I mean,” I said, each word dragging itself up my throat like broken glass, “I need a clear head for this mission, and your presence is?—”
“What?” she snapped at me, anger and fear rising together. “My presence is what, Caden?”
