D E L P H I N I U M

I didn't know what to do with myself. I felt like I should be doing something to fight Imperium, not simply waiting here for our leaders to come to a conclusion. To me, it seemed as if we were sitting here idly as Imperium grew stronger without opposition.

In the two days since we'd spoken to Hunt at the ONNT headquarters, I'd done nothing but practice in the training room. I'd used every weapon there on dummies and targets until my body was sore and my mind thought of nothing but the day I'd finally get to spill the blood of my old associates. My knives screamed for the blood of Benny, Orion, the Tribunal. And Tsolvskein, if he was still alive.

My power pumped through my veins and flowed under my skin, ready to be expelled. I was uncharacteristically antsy, seemingly unable to sit still. So I put my energy into bettering myself, preparing for the inevitable fight. It was just days away now. Maybe less.

The others had been doing the same. No one had spoken much to each other, though the tension in the room when we were all together was considerably lower. That tension now was more out of fear for what was to come than of anger at each other. It seemed that no one wanted to admit that we could all be thrust into the middle of a war in just mere days.

Jaxon had been permitted to return home earlier today. Everyone had been especially welcoming to him and catering to his every need. Of course, he'd been his usual charming self about it, but I saw the hollow look in his eyes when he turned away to go to his room, claiming to be tired. Part of his body had been forcefully cut away and I feared that some part of himself had disappeared with it.

I punctuated that last thought by throwing a knife into a circular target across the room. Releasing it when my arm snapped outward, it flew across the room and sunk into the innermost ring of the target. Not quite a bullseye.

There was another reason I was so tense, something else besides the obvious. I hadn't wanted to admit it to myself, but I'd been avoiding it for the past two days.

Before we'd left the ONNT headquarters, Hunt had advised us to get in contact with our family or friends, anyone that we'd want to have one last conversation with in case we didn't come back from the fortress raid. Finn had sent a message to his foster parents and Kane had called his mother. No one else had any sort of parent or parental figure.

But I used to. My grandmother. I had kept her from my mind for a while now. It had been a long time since I'd thought of her and I knew the feeling was mutual. She was probably happier without me in her home.

Once, we'd been a happy family. She was a bit proud and businesslike then too, but at least I knew that she'd cared for all of us. We all loved each other like a normal family. But when our four family members were murdered and she arrived home from a business trip to their dead bodies in our home, something inside her broke. It had never been fixed since. They'd been dead a year before I escaped and saw her again, but she wasn't the same person I once knew. She'd thrown herself into her massive empire as a way to cope with her loss and never mentioned their names again, acting almost as if they'd never existed.

Our family's deaths had changed us both: she'd become cold and unloving and I had turned into a paranoid shell of my former self.

Something inside me told me to get the compound landline phone and call her up. She might not hear from me again, if not for this. I had much that I wanted to say to her, things that I couldn't say when I was in that broken state after my escape.

I flung my last throwing knife toward the target, my eye on the red dot in the center. I imagined it to be Orion's face. My aim was true and the knife cut a straight line through the air. There was a thud. A perfect bullseye.

A few moments later, I held the phone in my hand on the upstairs balcony. Was I really going to do this? Maybe things were better without closure; after all, I clearly belonged here and not back in her home. Keeping that fact in mind, I dialed her number against my better judgement.

When it rang a few times and she didn't pick up, I feared she might not answer. There was no way she could know it was me and even if she did, she most likely wouldn't answer. Then, "Hello?"

I hadn't heard her sharp voice in so long. "Grandmother, it's me."

"Vnuchka." Granddaughter. "Why are you calling?" A slight Russian accent marred her words. Being born there had caused her to always speak English with occasional slight flaws.

"I'm calling..." I paused. Why had I not gathered my words together before calling her? "You were told about where I am now, weren't you?"

"A man contacted me ages ago when you didn't return home. You are at a place for people like you, are you not?" I frowned at her usage of the words, 'people like you', like I was inhuman.

"I am. Things here have gotten...intense. A war might break out soon." I debated whether to tell her or not. "I might not come back."

"You're not making any sense, Delphinium."

"I know it's hard to grasp, but there is a lot that you don't know. I'd tell you, but there's not much time now."

"I don't want to know about that," she snapped, probably thinking that I was mocking her. "I want to know the reason you're calling."

"I'm calling to say goodbye." I closed my eyes against the cool night air before saying, "I wish things between us were different."

She gave a loud huff. "That was before our family was murdered by the people you got involved with."

"I know."

"Well," she said, not seeming to soften at all, "I am sure I will see you again. But if not, goodbye." My she wasn't taking me seriously, probably thinking I was rambling nonsense. I could hardly blame her; it was hard for me to wrap my mind around too.

But my face pulled into a scowl. She was being curt with me. I'd probably called her when she was still in her office, but you'd think she could show a bit more compassion when this could be our last conversation.

"Is that all you have to say, Grandmother? I could die. Things don't have to be like this. I know that they're different after...what happened, but we can get better."

"You don't have to skirt around the issue." She switched to Russian. It reminded me of when she was teaching me to speak the language as a child. Now, she only spoke it when she was angry with me. "You can say it: our entire family was shot and killed. And because of it, things can't change."

"You're acting like it's my fault," I told her in a low voice.

"You weren't their cause of death. But the second you went with those people, they were already as good as dead."

I struggled to keep the anger from seeping into my tone. "As horrible, as scarring as it was, maybe we can move past what happened. We could do it together, if you didn't act like you despise me so much."

"I don't despise you." She was practically shouting now. "But it's also painful to see your face—your mother's face. You're a living reminder of what we lost. And how we lost it."

"I'm more than an issue to be swept under the rug!" She began to say, "Delphinium Olesya-" but I cut her off. "I'm more than just a reminder, Grandmother! You are all I have left of our family. You'd realize that if you didn't love your business empire more than you do me!"

"Goodbye, Vnuchka." Her tone was as chilly as ever. There was a beep as she hung up the phone. I clenched my empty fist. Though I hadn't expected a warm, kind exchange, I hadn't thought I'd end it screaming at her. I hadn't thought she'd act like her normal self when I told her I might be dead in a few days.

Deep down, I knew her anger was semi-justified. In her eyes, I left and only came back as our family was murdered. She hadn't been there to see the actual event, so she was forced to piece together what she knew. Because of that, she held some sort of grudge against me as a way of coping with the pain—pain she'd never admit she had. But I knew because I felt the same.

"Who were you yelling at?" I turned to see Jake leaning one shoulder against the doorway of the balcony. "That wasn't English."

"No one."

"It didn't sound like no one." He was trying to manipulate me again, gain information from me. I didn't want to talk about it anymore. I didn't want him to see how much she'd hurt me, and I knew the second I began talking to him I'd be spilling out everything.

"It was." I swiftly changed the subject. "Did my screaming match interrupt your precious scheming time?"

"As a matter of fact, yes."

"What a shame."

He kept watching me expectantly, glassy green eyes made almost black by the night. I looked away, hoping that he'd do the same. But I felt his stare on me still. I couldn't take it anymore.

"Fine," I said, but some of the fire I'd intended was lost. "It was someone that I've known for a very long time. Someone I used to rely on. A long time ago, we went through something bad together and came out very different than we once were. She hates me now because I remind her of everything she's lost." I couldn't bring myself to say who she was, especially not after what she'd just said to me.

After I said it, I felt slightly bad for my angry tone. But better anger than acting on those other feelings I had for him. A small voice in my head said, Better? You lie to yourself too often. I shoved it down deep. Now was not the time. If I did...

"Cut her out of your life," he advised. "Those that are not for you are against you."

I nearly laughed. "You're very different from me."

"I seem to recall you trying to convince me of the exact opposite."

I thought of that day, that time that I first suspected my feelings for him went farther than I'd wanted to admit. It seemed so long ago. "You know what I mean. You make yourself into the person you want to be and force others to see you that way. You can let go of things."

He seemed to debate whether to speak for a moment, whether he should leave me alone now or stay. "What do you want to let go of?"

"Everything. I want to forget everything they did to me. I want to let go of...of that person I told you about. But I also don't. I can't let things go. Too many things have been taken from me already."

I wished I could be as emotionless and stoic as he was. Sometimes, I felt so much that it hurt. Especially whenever he was near me. Or even when he wasn't.

"Some things may be here to stay." His voice was a fraction quieter, less cold than it usually was. But then it went back to normal. "Orion, for example."

I gave him a flat look, unsure if he was making a joke or not. "Very funny."

"I do have a wonderful sense of humor."

Pointing a finger his way, I said, "Now you're really being funny. You should quit trying to destroy Hundsen and start stand-up comedy."

"Somehow, I think that would bring me less power and riches. And an undesirable good reputation."

I laughed a little then and after wondered how the hell he'd gotten me to laugh after what had just happened. With a jolt, I came to the realization that he'd done more for me than my grandmother ever had.

Eyes now black as his hair, he asked suddenly, "What did Orion do to you?"

My face pulled into a frown. "You already know the answer to that."

"No, I know about the torture and the missions he sent you on. But there's something else."

"Well," I said, mouth twisting into a wry smile, "There were also all the murders he forced me to commit."

"It's always entertaining when you try to lie to me, Tesla."

"I don't know what you mean."

"I know you heard something when Riley was inside the fortress. You did give a half-assed answer when she asked you about it, but you were lying. It was something that he did to you—something that you haven't said yet. It was worse than the other things, wasn't it?"

Yes. Yes, it was. I didn't even want to say it out loud for fear of reliving it in my mind. But as I looked up at him, drank in the sight of his striking, sharp features, I knew deep down that he wouldn't think less of me. After all the things he had done and boasted about, there would be no judgement from him. If there was one good characteristic about Jake Evans, it was that in his eyes, nothing you did could ever be worse than what he'd proudly done. Even so, I couldn't bring myself to say it, to tell him what the worst part really was.

"He-he did something...Orion made me into something worse than a simple killer," I stuttered, struggling with finding the right words to cover my half-lie. "Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if he hadn't taken me as a child. I think about all the things that would have been different if I was just another normal person. But instead...now, I have to live with the guilt of what I've done every day."

As he watched me for a moment, not saying anything, I felt rooted in my spot. Would he know that I was avoiding his question? The second that thought had gone through my brain, I knew he would. Somehow, he knew everything.

"This is who you are. You have to be a monster to make it in this business. You get to survive, but you don't get to survive unscathed," he told me in that chilly manner of his and I still wasn't sure if he was onto me or not. Whichever way it was, he was right. I'd learned the things he said the second I escaped from Imperium's clutches a year ago.

My eyes dropped to his lips. We were somewhat far apart—he still leaned against the doorway and I rested an elbow on the railing of the balcony, forcing myself to stay still. I'd done that on purpose to put space between the two of us. Though now that I thought about it, I wondered if that would be such a good thing.

He'd listened. Granted, he hadn't been kind or caring about it and had spewed several snide comments, but he'd listened to my problems. That alone made me feel like I trusted him more than anyone else.

Then he broke our eye contact and pushed off the wall to leave. "Better rest up if you don't want to die in battle. We're most likely being shipped off to the fortress again tomorrow."

Tomorrow was the day that we'd get the news on what we were doing about Imperium. There was going to be a large emergency meeting between us, the ONNT and several other world superpowers. If they'd come up with a plan of attack, we'd probably set it into motion tomorrow.

"The only way I'll die is if you weigh me down in combat," I told him, lips quirking upwards.

"You always say that and it never happens." He turned. Then over his shoulder, he said to me, "And just to clarify, I knew it was your grandmother all along."