Tragic Bonds (The Bonds That Tie #5)(35)

I want to duck my head and hide, to pretend I’m focused on what we're actually down here for to save face, but I can’t. If there’s anything I can do to help North and Gryphon, then I’ll do it.

They both deserve a strong and capable Bonded.

So instead, I look in every single glass pane at the horrors that wait for me there.

I know a lot of the people here.

I look into the faces of soldiers and grunt-work Resistance members mostly, but there are also some higher-ups that I recognize. A shiver runs down my spine as I spot one of Davies’ advisors staring back at me.

Ray Branston, an Elemental nightmare.

“You recognize him?” Atlas says, and I nod my head with a sigh.

“Branston. He was one of the decision makers in the camp that I was held in.”

He also used his Gift to torture the prisoners, forcing water into their lungs and dry-drowning them. I’d also seen him suck all of the water out of a victim’s body with the flick of his wrist, killing them excruciatingly in an instant. He got off on it too, enjoyed the acts of killing innocent men and women.

He deserves to die down here.

I want Azrael and August to eat him.

Atlas nods and scratches the back of his head a little, looking sheepish as he says, “He’s my godfather, one of my dad's closest friends. Gryphon warned me that he would be down here, but I didn't know how much of him you saw in your time there. I should’ve said something.”

I shrug and step forward, leaving the man behind. Atlas struggles to tear his eyes away from the man he had known all of his childhood, the guilt of it all eating away at him until Gabe claps him on the shoulder and leads him away with a few snarky comments.

I don't listen in on any of it, mostly because I already know that it's not my job to police my Bonded and their interactions with each other, but also because Gabe and Atlas have found their own sort of friendship. It’s been built on ribbing each other and making rude remarks over the stupidest things.

Guys are weird.

“We're at the end,” Gryphon says to me, and I nod, carefully steeling myself as we pass Aurelia, still sitting in her cell.

She's even thinner than the last time we saw her, something I didn't quite think was possible, but there's a light in her eyes now as she stares at the thick concrete that separates her from her Bonded.

She can feel him here.

Even with all the shields and precautions that have been put into place, she can feel her Bonded’s presence. She’s my enemy, but there’s a small part of me that feels sorry for my Bonded’s sister and the indoctrination she had as a child.

She never stood a chance.

But maybe she did, because Atlas got out of there. He found out about me and he ran, never looking back, except to use everything that he knows about those evil people to keep me and our Bonded Group safe.

I can’t keep thinking about her, or I’ll drive myself insane.

As we get to the last cell, I stop and look in at her Bonded. Jericho looks exactly as I imagined he would from Atlas’ description of a man who enjoyed camping and the simpler things in life compared to that of his Bonded Group.

He's tall, at least as tall as Gryphon and North, and there’s a carefully rustic beard that covers the bottom half of his face. His eyes are a warm honeycomb color that make him look approachable and not at all like the enemy that we’re fighting so hard to dispose of.

He's covered in dust and there are holes at the bottom of his shirt, a warm jacket thrown over the top of his outfit, as though he has been traveling for quite some time. The only thing on him that looks well maintained is the ring on his finger. I would wager it is a symbol of his bonding with Aurelia, a treasured symbol of what they share.

He stares at me through the glass with the same assessing keenness that I am showing him, but he is the first one to speak.

“The little girl who broke the Resistance camp in half and destroyed the great dynasty of the Bassingers. I wasn't expecting you to be so… small.”

I raise an eyebrow and glance back at Atlas who is hanging back towards the table, standing closer to Gabe and Gryphon. I’m glad he's nowhere near Nox because I can feel the pent-up anger in him that is just looking for an outlet, and I don't want my Bonded fighting right now.

“I’m sorry that I don't meet your expectations, but it's not my fault you pledged your loyalty to a cause that’s so fragile it can be taken out by a single girl and her Bonded.”

Jericho shrugs and takes a seat on the single chair in the cell. “I didn't pledge my allegiance to anything but my Bonded. Why the fuck do you think I'm here?”

I shrug and glance over my shoulder at where Aurelia is pressed against that concrete, her eyes shut as her palms lie flat on the ground beside her. It’s a power position if I ever saw one, and a trickle of dread runs through my mind.

The cell can hold her, Gryphon says directly into our mind link, and I take a steadying breath.

The cell can hold her, and even if it can’t, there's nothing any of them can do to us. We already know what they're capable of, Atlas chips in as well, and I remind myself that he knows absolutely what his sister and her Bonded can do.

A small, dark part of my mind that has nothing to do with my bond pops in with the small, helpful detail that Atlas has been gone from his childhood home for a while.