Page 287 of Scarlet Wars
Maurice nodded once. “I convinced the president of the US to let me bubble it in. Told him he had a lethal, unstable magus on his hands. Told him I could neutralize all magic in his countryuntil his people calmed down about the exposure.” He shook his head in mock-disappointment. “He fuckingjumpedat the opportunity.”
Maurice’s gaze snapped back to Stephen. “And then I hunted down the rat who thought he could sell you out and live.”
Stephen lifted his chin as much as his restraints allowed. “I didn’t want to ‘sell out’ anyone. You knowexactlywhy I did what I did,” he shot back. “And thanks to your actions, I’m pretty sure your daughter will side with me when she finds out.”
What? The hell did that mean?
“What. Did he. Do?” Caden’s tone was clipped and every syllable laced with venom.
Maurice smiled now. “Let me show you.” He tilted his head toward Stephen. “Let me show you the memory I pulled out of this piece of shit.”
“How the hell can youshowus?” James snarled, clearly having lost every shred of his patience.
My father’s attention stayed fixed on me. “You know how to leak a person?”
I nodded once.
“This is the inverse,” he said calmly. “Instead of you pulling it from me, I’ll give it to you. I’ll share what I saw, but since it’s my memory of watching Stephen’s, it will play more like a projection.”
“It’s still subjective, though, right?” James asked. “Not like jumping through a blue portal. What we’ll see is Stephen’s memory filtered through your interpretation.”
Maurice gave a curt nod, confirming the deduction.
Just like when I’d only managed to pull a partial warrant from that human I leaked, because that was all he had been focused on.
“You’ll share it with all of us?” I asked.
Maurice’s tilted his head. “If that is what you wish.”
My gaze caught Caden’s, who gave me an almost imperceivable nod. “Fine. Show us what you saw.”
Without another word, the master-manipulator inhaled slowly.
And then his haze unfurled.
It didn’t explode outward the way mine did when I translated. It spread, thin, deliberate, a cold pressure sliding across my skin like fog creeping over water. The atmosphere thickened instantly, every instinct in my body screaming that this wasn’t natural.
“Don’t fight it,” Maurice said softly. “It would only make things…unpleasant.”
The haze reached us—not entering, not forcing—simply touching. Brushing against my consciousness like fingertips testing glass.
Then it opened.
Itprojected.
The room dissolved at the edges, the stone walls bleeding into shadow as something else bled through, sound first, then light. A second reality layered itself over the first, like being dropped into the middle of someone else’s nightmare.
SIXTY-THREE
CADEN
The moment Maurice’s memory slammed into me, it felt like being dropped into a new reality.
One blink and Cyclos was gone.
Instead, I stood in a cavernous marble hall, Stephen in front of me, not seen through his eyes, but reconstructed, positioned exactly where Maurice remembered him standing.
“Because the future is subjective,” Stephen was saying, his voice measured but taut. “Every choice opens a path. And every path carries its own consequences.”
