Chapter 9 - Above Cursed Winds

The sickening sound of flesh meeting flesh echoed in Zia’s ears, every molecule of her being revolted by the disturbing scene in front of her. Not only had Key revealed she’d known about Gideon’s attempted execution for centuries, but she’d done absolutely nothing to stop it.

By rights, Jeremiah had grounds to be angry.

But it gave him no excuse to attack Key, and Zia couldn’t decide if she was more upset about Nero taking the punch for Key or at Jeremiah for letting his anger get the best of him. Regardless, she stepped in.

A fraction of a second after Jeremiah’s wayward punch, she held a dagger to his throat. Her teeth were bared at the Elemental who’d attacked her sovereign.

“Step away, Jeremiah.” Low and deadly, her voice gave no quarter, the intensity of her own anger fueling the fire.

By some miracle, he did.

One step, then two.

Then he turned that malicious glare at Nero, hatred glazing over his features. “Did you know that she’d foreseen it and didn’t tell me?”

Zia schooled away the shock of his statement, the raw emotion in Jeremiah’s voice making her chest tighten in inexplicable empathy. Without warning, the entire scene unfolded in her mind, his memory so potent and disturbing her gifts couldn’t help but relive it.

Jeremiah roared as the first bullet entered Gideon’s abdomen. He shifted as if to go to protect the man he’d known for centuries, the man who had been his best friend for just as long, but his body protested.

Hundreds of feet away, the dam groaned with an ominous sound, but it didn’t collapse—Gideon’s work was holding, and Jeremiah needed to continue ensuring that their work remained invisible to the human eye. If he moved, it’d compromise everything.

“Did you think I could forgive Victor’s murder, Gideon?” Torrin’s harsh tones lashed out of him, the anger rising behind his sneer. “Or did you think I’d simply forgotten? No, friend, when I promise vengeance, I deliver.”

Gideon’s hand had clamped around the gunshot wound in his abdomen, his breath sawing in and out of him as he braced his other hand on the rock before him. The Citizens’ leader walked in an ominously slow circle around him.

“Don’t you think pain humanizes us, Gideon? That the suffering you experience now brings you closer to the mortals who rule the planet you so clearly love?”

When Gideon made no effort to respond, Torrin’s knee connected savagely with his jaw, the momentum of it throwing him backward and splaying the Elemental on his back.

Terror bled through Jeremiah as he caught sight of the garish hole that’d swiftly bled crimson over the fabric of his tuxedo. Even as Gideon’s hand braced once again around the injury, he continued to drag air into his lungs.

He sluggishly swiveled his head toward the plant life that grew liberally over the walls of the canyon. Reacting instantly, the greenery surged toward him with the promise of healing.

But Torrin didn’t miss it. Instead, the human merely arched an eyebrow and headed toward Gideon’s outstretched hand. In a flash, he’d placed a booted heel over the Elemental’s wrist and fired a single bullet into his hand.

A cry of anguish escaped from Gideon as the greenery stopped its sprawl over the ground. Jeremiah heard Rukia’s agonized cry in tandem with his own. He could do nothing to help the leader of his nation and his best friend.

Dread pitted in Jeremiah’s gut as Torrin rounded Gideon once more. The Elemental writhed weakly on the ground below him. With a look of disgust, Torrin kicked his hand away from the original wound that marred his gut, the blood now freely flowing into the gathering pool around him.

Hatred seated deep behind his gaze, Torrin dropped a knee into Gideon’s core as the weight of him came to rest on the stricken man. The earth Elemental jolted at the shock but made no sound—or perhaps he couldn’t.

“A life for a life, Gideon.”

The butt of Torrin’s gun rested on Gideon’s chest a second before it fired point blank.

Gideon stopped moving.

Everything in Zia revolted at the scene, her stomach twisting in knots as she fought the urge to retch. On instinct, the dagger she’d held to Jeremiah’s throat immediately vanished, her hand coming up to cover her mouth while she stared at him, wide-eyed.

It was no wonder why Jeremiah held a grudge. If Key and Nero had known about Gideon’s attempted assassination and never spoke of it, they were both guilty by association.

But now wasn’t the time, and Jeremiah’s anger was still a malevolent force that pressed upon her abilities like an anvil.

“You’re just like Gideon.” Words, spit like the venom they were, were directed solely at Nero. “Passive. A pushover. We should’ve run the Citizens into the ground years ago. With our power, no one could’ve stopped us.”

A sneer punctuated his final scathing remark, and then Jeremiah did the only honorable thing he’d done all day: he left.

Tension held them in their places while he made his retreat, and when he was finally a safe distance away, Zia slumped. A chuckle sounded behind her, the sound so foreign in this context.

“Any particular reason you wanted me to let myself get a face full of Jeremiah’s fist, Key?”

Pivoting, Zia scrutinized her sovereign, who was pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Blood steadily dripped to the floor, but the irksome man was smiling, his dark brown eyes full of affection for the Foreseer who’d ordained his pain.

“It needed to happen,” was Key’s only justification.

Nero only chuckled. “You’ll be the death of me, Key.”

“One can only hope, sovereign.”

His belly laugh resounded around his office as she approached him. Though either of them could’ve called the clan’s senior healer, Luna, there was no need. Zia’s mouth was set in a disapproving frown as she swatted his hand away to tend his injury.

“That man has a heck of a right hook,” came Nero’s conclusion. “He might even give you a run for your money, Zia.”

“Violence is almost never the answer, and he seems to court it like a well-propositioned lady of the night.”

“While that may be true, Jeremiah has reason behind his rage; you know it as well as I.”

“Yes, I saw it,” she admitted. “Did you know?”

Nero’s shoulders slumped, and Zia felt the remorse run through him as though it were her own. “I did not, but from what Key explained to me after the fact, it’s complicated. Regardless of what you might’ve seen, nothing could’ve been done to save Gideon that night.”

“But he’s alive and well.” Zia shook her head, bewildered. “Gideon survived that attack, even if its unexplainable. I don’t know why Jeremiah isn’t able to realize that. Sometimes, he speaks like Gideon is still dead. He’s always calling it ‘his death’ or ‘his assassination.’ I don’t think he even knows he’s doing it.”

“He’s alive, yes, but no one can deny that he should’ve been dead,” Nero explained. “Regardless of his miraculous recovery, Jeremiah still had to witness his attack and was unable to save him. Gideon went into the ground, everyone thought he was gone. They all expected Jeremiah to accept it, move on, and pick up the slack.

“That changes a man, and it certainly affected Jeremiah. His psychic signature changed that night, and you know as well as I what that means. He went into that hall as one person and emerged another.”