Page 27 of The World Undone

And, as a twisted and cruel fate would have it, it would be.

6

DECLAN

The cabin was dim as Max paced back and forth through the small living room. It seemed even more cramped than it usually did, with all of us huddled together.

I could feel her anger, her fear lap against my skin, rough like a cat’s tongue.

She hadn’t spoken a word since emerging from the pseudo conference room with Evelyn.

It had been a quiet, uncomfortable trek back, all of us lost in our thoughts as we processed what we’d learned.

Eli had the foresight at least to let us know about his talk with her—that she knew about him channeling her fire and that she was pissed that we’d kept it from her. He leaned against the wall now, his gaze hard and focused on a worn patch of carpet with a small stain on it, like that small stain might somehow have the answers to the universe baked into it, waiting to take shape.

Atlas, as he’d been since his return from captivity, was quiet. He sat on the ground, long limbs folded in sharp angles, his eyes tracking her every movement, back leaning against the wall, face otherwise unreadable.

Wade and Darius kept glancing in my direction, the three of us silently trying to figure out what to say. What to do.

I took a deep breath and decided to take one for the team. I rose from the couch and took a step towards her. “Max. Can we talk about this?”

“Have the rest of you channeled my powers too?” There was no anger in her voice, but somehow that made it worse.

Just hurt.

Just fear.

She wasn’t mad at us, she was mad at herself. I just didn’t understand why. Something had been off the last week, and I’d chalked it up to left over adrenaline from the jailbreak at Headquarters, but now I wondered if there wasn’t something else underlying it all.

I shook my head fast, catching the others doing the same from the corner of my eye. “No. None of us. Just Eli, and just the one time.” I turned to him, second guessing myself. “Right?”

He nodded.

It was such a strange, new thing for me, for us all—trying to maintain and manage the feelings and experiences of everyone. All five of us were tied to Max now, and it would take work and practice, and probably a few fucking missteps to boot, to keep things as smooth and peaceful as possible.

She paused mid pace, folding her bottom lip against her teeth as she sniffed, then nodded, and resumed her pacing again. “Good, that’s good. We need to find a way to control that.”

“That would require that we understand why—” Darius turned his angry stare on Eli, “and how—it happened in the first place.”

He hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen what Eli had done. And when Wade and I filled him and Atlas in this morning, he’d been livid. His anger spilling out of him like a leaky faucet, until I was certain the only thing keeping him from tearing Eli’s head from his spine was Max—and the small problem that killing Eli would effectively end his life too.

Atlas hadn’t really reacted, though I could see something shift behind his eyes, processing, thinking. Usually, I could read him like a book, understand every twitch, every unspoken thought—but since his return, it was like that familiar book had been translated into another language. He was here, the Atlas I’d always known, I just didn’t have the same access to him that I used to. His thoughts were closed to me now.

I wished like hell it didn’t bother me as much as it did. But he’d been my lifeline when I moved in with my aunt, my family. When my entire life had imploded and I’d moved to a new country, his solid presence, unwavering support, had kept me steady.

My stomach had been tied in knots over the fact that I didn’t seem to have the ability to do the same for him now.

We were all finally in the same place—for the first time in what felt like forever—but we’d been through so much, we’d been so transformed by the trauma of it all, that I wasn’t sure how to hold us together. It was like, if I breathed too hard in the wrong direction, we’d all fall apart, the history holding us together dissolving until there were no threads left to tie.

Max.

She had become the thing that held us together. I just had to hope her grip was stronger than mine.

“I’m not holding you together,” she said, her brows furrowed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Dec.”

“Oh, I—” I hadn’t realized I’d spoken that last part out loud.

“What?” Wade asked.

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