Page 67 of Bound By Blood and Lies

Which means every loose end in this story has to disappear.

“We finish this.”

CHAPTER 20

FAE

The lounge is a hive of noise. Voices overlap. Footsteps pound across the wooden floors. Doors slam somewhere down the corridor before opening again seconds later. Atlas’s keyboard clacks from the dining table where cables snake across the surface. Riggs paces with a phone pressed to his ear at the same time that Victor stands by the window speaking quietly into another line. Every few seconds someone calls out a name, asks for information, or swears under their breath when something doesn’t work.

The moment I finished explaining Longstaff’s routine at the London house the room exploded into motion. We only have a few hours before he returns for breakfast, and everyone can feel the clock ticking.

After weeks of silence and concrete walls the chaos should feel comforting. Instead, it makes my stomach turn. A sharp wave of nausea hits and I swallow hard, pressing my hand flat against my stomach as I breathe through it. It’s not new. The sickness has been creeping up on me all evening in small flashes that leave my mouth dry and my head spinning.

The boys have slipped back into soldier mode. It happens so quickly it’s unsettling. It’s as though someone has turned aswitch on inside the people I know, and they have been folded away out of reach. The warmth that usually lives in this house, the laughter, and the easy teasing that bounces between them have vanished completely. In its place is something colder and sharper.

Felix though…he looks awful.

There’s a distance in his eyes that wasn’t there before I went missing. I can tell there is a part of him that has already stepped somewhere darker than this room and left the rest of his body behind to catch up. A glass Victor set down beside him earlier sits untouched on the table. The food Fiona tried to push into his hands has gone cold where it was abandoned. The only thing he’s done since the chaos started is plan.

Plan how to kill his best friend’s father.

I search his face for something human beneath the anger. Felix catches the movement and our eyes meet across the room before his gaze drops to the floor like the contact burned him. It’s the third time it’s happened since I came downstairs. Every time my eyes find him, he turns his head, pretending to focus on something else, on the map spread across the table, on the phone vibrating near his elbow… on anything except me.

In the moments our eyes do meet, his shine with tears he is refusing to let fall before he turns away again. Guilt twists through my chest. What was he thinking when we were gone? Did he blame himself? Does he still? Do I repulse him now?

Robyn shifts beside me on the sofa and I lean my head gently against her shoulder. Her warmth presses into my cheek as her fingers reach over to squeeze my hand. She smells faintly of Felix’s soap. It’s clean and familiar and settles over me like a blanket. It still feels strange seeing her here instead of chained to cold concrete. Strange seeing either of us here at all.

“Are you okay?” she whispers.

I nod against her shoulder. “Just tired.”

It isn’t entirely a lie.

My body feels like it belongs to someone else. My ribs ache when I breathe too deeply. The cuts along my back sting whenever I move and the sickness keeps flashing through me without warning. Being surrounded by this much noise and movement after so long in silence makes my head swim.

Across the room Fiona appears in the doorway carrying another tray of food. She’s done it three times already. Every time someone sets the plates aside untouched, she disappears into the kitchen and comes back with something else. It is almost as if she believes that when she finds the right meal, everyone will start eating again. She sets the tray down beside Atlas and fusses with the plates, pushing one toward him before smoothing an invisible crease from the tablecloth.

“Eat something,” she tells him gently.

“I will in a minute.” Atlas doesn’t even look up.

“You said that twenty minutes ago.”

He gives a distracted hum that clearly means he hasn’t heard a word she said. There’s something fragile about the way she keeps moving. The way she keeps tidying things that aren’t messy and bringing food nobody wants.

“Fiona,” I say softly and she looks up immediately.

“Yes sweetheart?”

“Come sit down.”

Fiona hesitates. “I just need to?—”

“Please.”

Something in my voice must reach her because she stops moving. The tension in her shoulders softens as she sets the cloth down. She walks over and crouches in front of me instead of sitting, and her hands find mine instantly.

“You should be resting,” she says gently.