Page 19 of Laundering Down the Legions
"The barrier holds for roughly seventy-two hours. Possibly less. This creature understands wards and magick better than anything alive. It's already calculating the best place to break through."
"We evacuate the compound," Grayson announced, eyes snapping into focus.
"No." Fast, sharp, and final. "The barrier is your protection. Evacuating strips it. To get Parker out, it makes everyone a target the second she crosses the perimeter. You reinforce the wards and get the ring on Parker so she stops broadcasting. Once they aren't able to track her, they will lie in wait for their next chance. Those are your options."
I felt Kearan's attention on my face and didn't look at him. The ring pressed against my sternum under my shirt. Someone else's life, traded for demon-power protection. Someone I'd barely met and had never agreed to sacrifice.
"And if she doesn't put it on?" Grayson asked, quiet, already knowing.
"The signal keeps broadcasting. More creatures try the barrier. It fails faster. Everyone in the compound dies when it comes down. Well, except for Parker." Zandia delivered it so flat that it took a second to register as a catastrophe. "One soul in a ring, or everyone here. The arithmetic isn't complicated."
The arithmetic. She made it sound clean. But it wasn't an equation, it was a person. A consciousness sealed in jewelry because someone, Ro or the demon possessing him, had the power and the missing conscience to do it.
I grabbed it through my shirt and closed my fingers around the ring before I could talk myself out of it. The metal was warm,warmer than it should've been, like whatever lived inside it was still trying to burn through whatever it took to stay aware in there.
I pulled it out and looked at it. The gold caught the light wrong. Any other ring would've been normal jewelry. This one wasn't.
"Now," Zandia said. "Put it on. Close the signal before the ancient one finds its breach point."
I looked at Kearan. His face hadn't changed, but I caught the tension in his jaw and the set of his shoulders. He'd already accepted it. Already made his peace with the math.
"No." It came out of me without permission. "Not yet."
Zandia's eyes narrowed. "Explain the hesitation."
"I haven't decided I'm willing to do this without understanding the cost." I turned the ring in my palm. "There's a human soul in here. Someone's life. I don't know really who, don't know if they understood what was happening when it was done to them. And I don't know if I'm willing to wear someone's soul as armor."
"Parker," Grayson started, and it wasn't disapproval. It was recognition.
"I know the math," I cut in. "Compound dies if I don't put it on. The ancient thing breaches in seventy-two hours. I get it. But I'm not accepting that the only options are wear a stranger's soul or let everyone die. There's a third one we haven't found yet."
Sudden realization of my decision made me understand Kearan's earlier. It seemed simple, and yet it wasn't.
"There isn't." Zandia's voice went colder. "You're stalling, and the creature is moving faster than you think. Every minute you argue is a minute it spends finding the wards' weak point."
"Then help me understand it." I closed my hand around the ring. "Is there a way to return it to its body? If I wear it too much, will I extinguish the soul?"
Zandia turned back to the monitors, and when she answered her voice had gone resigned, the tone she used right before she handed me a truth that would cost me. "The soul is bound indefinitely. Return it to its vessel, and the ring loses its protection completely. The binding requires the consciousness to stay sealed. Separate them and you lose both the soul's power and the ring's function. Every second you wear it, use its protection, you're slowly snuffing out the life."
The math got worse. Return the soul and damn the compound. Keep it bound and save everyone while enslaving a human soul. No third door. Just two versions of the same unacceptable thing.
I wrapped my fingers around the ring and held it against my chest, and I made myself a promise. Quiet and entirely my own. I would find a way to give this soul back. I would not let the binding stand. Not permanently, not while I still had air in my lungs.
"I'm keeping it on my necklace," I said. "For now. I'll put it on when the breach is imminent. But I'm not accepting this as permanent. I'm not accepting that binding a person to an object until their soul is extinguished is the only answer."
Zandia studied me, and something moved in those old eyes that might've been approval, contempt, or something I had no word for. "You're delaying the inevitable with sentiment. The creature doesn't care about your morals. It cares about the signal. That signal draws more, and the barrier won't hold forever. You have seventy-two hours before this stops being a debate. Or less."
"Then we'll spend them finding another way."
"There isn't one." She crossed to the door, movement made effortless. "But you're welcome to exhaust your options. When the barrier fails, and it will, you'll understand that some choices were never choices. Only delays." She pushed through and wasgone, no farewell, leaving us with the monitors pulsing red and the ring heavy against my sternum.
Grayson spoke up. "She's not wrong about the timeline."
"I know." I opened my hand. The gold had cooled on the surface, but underneath it was still warm. Still trapped.
"We should warn everyone in the compound," Kearan said from just behind my shoulder. He'd moved closer while Zandia talked and I hadn't noticed. "Prepare contingencies and evacuate anyone we can."
Kearan didn't answer. He stood beside me in the cold, close enough that his shoulder nearly touched mine. Just there, the way he had of standing alongside someone else's impossible choice without trying to solve it for them.
