Page 84 of The World Undone

Dec was my saving grace. I took a step closer to her, wrapping my hand around her arm as Evelyn and Levi moved in to do the same.

With a final squeeze, Max pulled back, her jaw tight as she did everything she could to swallow back the anxiety so evident in her eyes.

My eyes locked onto her, burning every sharp line and soft curve into my brain.

She’d be fine. We were all going to be fine.

The four of us in my group were up first.

According to Evelyn and Levi’s intel, the council members were never all together—except for their bi-annual meetings. Safety measures apparently.

But with shit as chaotic as it was, there would be no bi-annual meeting this year. Instead, they were strictly keeping to the no-more-than-two-members-in-the-same-place rule, convening full meetings with each other via proxy and phone only.

And while they usually kept to their own homes and lives when they weren’t in session, they’d spent the last year dividing their time between various Guild stations around the world.

We were heading to a small contingency satellite a few hours outside of London.

Evelyn was certain European Headquarters would be vacant, that they’d have pulled out most of their protectors after Max’s pyrotechnics, fearing a repeat. Instead, they’d become even more scattered, small pockets of teams and researchers spread throughout their complex network of safehouses.

According to Evelyn, this particular campus was one of the council member’s personal favorites—being only an hour’s drive from their lavish home.

“Ready?” Dec’s eyes met mine, sharp and clear. It would take us quite a few jumps to get all the way there, and we’d be taking turns shouldering the brunt of the work.

I wasn’t too worried about it though. Outside of Max, Dec had the strongest handle on teleportation. So if she couldn’t get us there, then the mission was cracked before it could even get started. Once we were there, we’d open our mental link long enough to confirm we’d made it, then shut it down and go to work.

Get in, get out, we’d be back at The Lodge in no time. Clean, efficient, planned.

As well as something like this could be planned anyway.

After three days of arguing, we’d all decided it was best to only communicate via the link when we arrived, when the mission was done, if we’d found the source of shadow magic, or if one of us was an inch away from death and in desperate need of backup. Otherwise, it would be too much of a distraction, all of us worrying about each other. It wouldn’t be good to spread our focus out across the world when we were diving into something so dangerous, so important.

We had one shot at this and if it didn’t work—well, we were out of ideas.

“Ready.” My focus latched onto Max again, her dark eyes the last thing my vision held onto as the world around us warped and dissolved. A swirling abyss of golden brown that I’d happily drown in.

Six jumps later, and we were lingering somewhere on the east coast. My chest tightened, but it wasn’t altogether unpleasant. I’d grown so used to teleporting, our strength growing exponentially the more we worked together, pushing and pulling together, that it hardly affected me anymore.

Mostly, I was just keenly aware of the fact that this was the farthest away from the group we’d ever been, in all of our training.

I closed my eyes, feeling the warm hum of the bond, focused on the feel of it until my body was almost convinced that Max and the others were here with us now.

Dec ran her hand unconsciously over her arm, where I knew her bond mark was etched beneath the fabric, her tight expression softening slightly, like she was making sure she could feel them all too.

Evelyn looked considerably more worse off. Her face was pinched, her hands clutching her knees as she fought to suck down a fresh breath of air.

A bolt of sympathy struck me before I could reign it in. I remembered that feeling well—the unpleasant and uncanny strangeness of your body emerging into existence from nothing. It went away, eventually. Or maybe we just built up a callus to it over time.

Levi looked mostly unphased, which annoyed me even though I knew it shouldn’t.

We’d spent the last week practicing with them. Teleporting sometimes up to thirty times a day, until they had built up a near-immunity to the experience.

Ripping yourself through space had a hell of an impact on the body.

Before I could second guess it, I set my hand awkwardly on Evelyn’s back, rubbing a gentle, meant-to-be soothing circle on her back as she regained her bearings.

Her muscles tensed under my touch and she froze. When she stood, finally, I saw that her eyes had glazed over a bit, as she muttered a muddled “Thanks, Eli. I’m okay.”

“Er,” I pulled back, cleared my throat, realizing this was the first time I’d initiated contact with her in years. I turned to Dec. “The big hop across the pond is next. You ready, or do you want a minute to psych yourself up?”

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