Page 42 of Siege of Shadows

“Ridiculous?” I sat up straight on my bench. “How about you stop being a jerk?”

Rhys’s jaw went rigid. His shoulders slumped. “Jerk,” he repeated quietly. It seemed as though he wanted to say something else, but he thought better of it. Instead, he turned away with a pained expression that still didn’t reveal his guilt one way or the other.

I heard Belle’s quiet sigh before the road split off from the main highway down a closed-off path: Route L-9. The tunnel was available for commercial and civilian use, but the Sect’s Route L-9 remained hidden from prying eyes. And it wasn’t difficult to see how.

Our path was blocked. The wall stretched up from the paved road to the tunnel ceiling. For a moment, both delivery vans had to slow to a stop—that is before the solid wall smoothly shifted to the side, revealing the Sect’s secret, expansive two-way network. It wasn’t so much a tunnel as it was a miles-long underground bunker.

“We’ve reached the route without any issue,” said Rhys in his usual, mission-fit tone as if he hadn’t just sucker punched me.

“Good.” The tension in Sibyl’s voice was audible. “We haven’t been able to detect any kind of dangerous frequencies on our end either. Checkpoint one, report.”

Checkpoints. Sibyl must have meant the booth on the second-floor walkway above us, blocked off with a safety railing. It could have been either of the two agents standing at attention by the railing who answered, “No hostile sightings. Route is secure.”

“There’s a secret facility outside a small village in Oxfordshire,” Rhys explained to us. “Only a select few agents know about it. Heavily fortified. This tunnel is a direct pipeline.”

“And the ring will be safe there?” Belle crossed her legs, watching the monitor. “What of the other carrier?”

“On their way to another secret location,” Rhys answered. “Everything seems all right on their end. Though their route is a little shorter than ours.”

“Sounds like you missed out.” It was lame, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“Maia, look, I really don’t know what’s been up with you, and I don’t know why you’ve been acting up around me or what I did to you that you can’t stand to be around me. But whatever your deal is, it isn’t my problem.”

“Isn’t your problem?” The dam broke. My voice rose several decibels. “Like hell it isn’t. You ofallpeople don’t have the right to judge me. Foranything.”

Rhys’s lips snapped shut as he looked at me in silence.

I could feel Belle’s attention on me without looking. It was then that I realized the situation I was in. Rhys, a potential murderer. Belle, his potential executioner. With jittery hands, I clenched my teeth, thinking of a way out.

“Maia?” Belle leaned over when I turned my head and hid my expression with my thick bush of hair. “Are you okay?”

We crossed another checkpoint. Voices rang through our comms as various people reported in. Agents stood at attention as we passed, firearms ready at their sides.

With trembling fingers, I touched the scarf around my neck, hiding the neck-band keeping Natalya under control. All those weeks having the same nightmare tearing me apart every day and still no answers. No answer I wanted to believe, anyway.

“What I mean is...” I sucked in a long breath to still the rise and fall of my chest. “I may not be as calm as you are on a mission, Rhys. But not all of us were lucky enough to be battle-trained since childhood, so cut me some slack.”

“Lucky.” Rhys whispered the word as if it were poison. “You think I waslucky?”

We stared at each other, unspeakable words brimming beneath our heavy gazes. Rhys had told me once about his training at some facility in Greenland. He’d met Blackwell’s right-hand man, Vasily, there as a child. Twisted, violent, vicious Vasily. But according to Rhys, not all of his malice could be blamed on nature.

Some training facilities are a little tougher than others, he’d said once.

“Forget it,” I said more to myself than to anyone else.

“I agree,” Belle said with a dangerous note of finality in her voice. “This is a mission.”

Rhys gripped the handle on his knife. “Fine.”

The agonizing minutes of silence that followed were mercifully broken by Eveline. “All’s clear. We’re approaching checkpoint three,” she said.

“Good. We’re getting close. Checkpoint three, report,” Rhys almost mumbled.

He must have been distracted, stewing in his own anger, because it took him a while before he realized no one had responded. Blinking, he looked up at the monitor. So did I.

Two agents were there by their booths, standing behind the railing like they were supposed to be. Like the others we’d seen, they had their long, stalky firearms, similar to the one I’d seen Howard use to vaporize Saul’s phantoms in New York. What I couldn’t figure out was why their firearms were pointed at us, charging blue along the metal side strips stretching up the length of the guns.

Belle was already on her feet. Rhys had grabbed my hand before I knew what was happening, but it was too late. The deafening blast tore my eardrums, and all I could hear was a terrible ringing as our van launched into the air.

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