“Guilty as charged, Councilor.” She rubbed the tip of her nose against his cotton-covered collarbone and breathed in his soothing scent. “What tipped you off?”
“You appear to be experiencing rigor mortis even though you’re still alive.” His fingers trailed down her now-stiff spine, then hesitated. “Do you want me to leave? I can—”
Her arm across his ribs tightened, keeping him in place. “It’s not you. You’re perfect. I’m just…worried.” Somehow, the darkness made dismissing her fears harder and confessing them easier. “About the world. About my neighbors. About you. About me too, I guess.”
He didn’t offer facile comfort. Didn’t try to tell her she shouldn’t worry and had no cause for fear. Instead, he took in what she’d said and kept stroking her back.
“I’m worried about you as well,” he eventually said. “For more reasons than you realize.”
She raised her head from his shoulder to meet his eyes in silent question.
“I’m surveilling insurrectionist fae splinter groups, yes, but I’m also coordinating other investigations.” He hesitated, then continued with seeming reluctance. “One of those investigations involves the recent disappearance of many powerful oracles.”
She gaped at him, shocked.
“Holy shit. I had no idea.” She hadn’t heard even the faintest rumor about possible kidnappings. “Are they…”
She didn’t want to say it.
“We have no evidence that they’ve been killed but also no evidence of their current location or continued survival.” Tension had pulled his own muscles taut. “We also have no idea how their abductors located so many of them. Their whereabouts are restricted information, as you know. And you haven’t heard about their disappearance because of the customary secrecy surrounding their lives with their employers, along with the sensitive nature of our investigation. That said, we’ve individually warned all other prominent oracles to increase their level of personal protection.”
His eyes were dark and solemn with worry, his face creased with fatigue.
“I imagine their employers are frantic to safeguard their remaining cash cows.” She bit her lip, setting aside her reflexive cynicism when it came to prophetic workplaces. “And I imagine the missing oracles’ loved ones are terrified.”
“Most aren’t especially close to their families, for all the reasons you might suspect,” Hugh said, and Gwen nodded in understanding. “And very few oracles marry or even date, given their limited access to potential partners. But yes. Our office still receives countless frantic calls from loved ones desperate for updates.”
Gwen sucked in a harsh breath as a new thought occurred to her. “Could our conspirators have caused the oracles’ disappearance too? Because they’re trying to ensure their plans aren’t accidentally foretold?”
“This morning, after you first told me about the breach…” He spoke slowly. “Yes. I considered that possibility. Frankly, it’s themost plausible theory yet for what’s been happening. We’d been speculating about a possible serial killer targeting seers, but that explanation never quite convinced me. We certainly never found any real evidence to support it.”
She’d been wondering earlier why he’d taken her wild-eyed claims so seriously despite their history together. Now she knew. “So that’s why you were willing to hear me out. Not to mention throw on a Prince costume and climb through a giant hole in Wall Four, all before sunrise.”
“That wasoneof my reasons,” he corrected, but didn’t elaborate. “Gwen, I think you may have overlooked why I’m sharing this particular bit of confidential information with you.”
“I don’t…” Her brow furrowed. “Oh.Oh.”
In her first years after leaving Delphi, when her guilt over her family’s continued poverty had threatened to drag her into despair, she’d sometimes found comfort in her ability—almost unheard-of for an oracle—to live in the open. And even Gwen tried to protect herself as best she could. Not everyone understood the extremely limited utility of her visions, and there was no point in tempting the Fates.
The Zone’s security measures had kept her safe from would-be abductors living outside Wall Four. That still left everyone living inside, so she didn’t advertise her address or see clients in her own apartment. She suspected that her neighbors also discouraged any untoward interest in her location, although no one had admitted as much.
But those casual safety arrangements would only suffice for a prophetic weakling. Shit, she hadn’t even considered—
“For reasons yet to be determined, it appears you too are nowa very powerful oracle.” His lips formed a thin, tight line. “And while that shift in your abilities isn’t widely known, you’re still a prophet publicly associated with the failure of the conspirators’ plot to blame the zombie breach on demons.”
She understood his point. Unfortunately. “They’ll be paying close attention to me, at least for a while, to confirm that I ended up at the breach site by chance, not because of a vision.”
His bearded jaw twitched. “And if they suspect one of your prophecies helped stymie their scheme…”
“I might disappear as well,” she finished for him.
Fucking fantastic. Yetanotherreason to regret her belated acquisition of the power she’d always longed to possess.
A shudder of dread racked her body, and his strong hands tightened on her. Pulled her deeper into his embrace as she laid her spinning head back on his shoulder.
“No wonder you insisted that I stay with you.” Another mysterious decision of his, hereby explained. “With so many strangers crawling around the Containment Zone and so many residents already missing and dead, I could vanish very, very easily there. The conspirators could simply say I’d been attacked by a stray zombie they’d discovered too late, and my body got misplaced or added to a mass grave.”
The heat of his body ratcheted higher with every word she spoke into his neck. “That’s not happening, Gwen.”
