Page 46 of Rising

“Honestly, Amaia, it’s none of your, my, or anyone else’s business. It’s a journal, he’s grieving. Why are you hyper fixated on him?” Her voice was harsher than most would appreciate, but I knew my friend was just trying to understand where I was coming from.

The familiar feeling of guilt racked over my body.A journal? Grieving?Another feeling I knew all too well.

We’d been two grieving people, using our words as weapons to mask the pain. But that still didn’t excuse his resistance to answer simple questions, and it certainly didn’t explain his sense of timing with his arrival. Matter of fact, he hadn’t arrived at all. He washidingand was found. There was a difference.

I squared my shoulders, deciding that I should still proceed with caution with him … but that didn’t mean I couldn’t have a little bit more compassion.

“There’s something off,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know what it is, Moe, but he’s hiding something.”

“Maybe it’s not for us to find out.”

I gave my friend a grim smile, wanting to dive deeper but also trusting her position on this. If anyone understood grief, it was her. She wasn’t the same as the rest of us. She’d been lucky when it all happened. Her whole family had made it out alive, just to be torn apart later on. Literally.

“Moe …” I decided to try pushingjusta bit more.

I didn’t want to pull the General card, but there were things I needed to know to do my job properly. Vengeance was still fresh on my mind and I knew grief could make people do crazy things.

She obliged, knowing where I was headed and sparing me having to pull the power card. “His little brother. All he does is talk about his little brother. He’s using it to work through his grief. Some are poems, some are letters. But like I said, it’s not meant for anyone’s eyes but his. It’s invasive.”

There was distaste in her voice, they’d said nothing since I’d gotten back. At least nothing to my face. Wanting to keep what fragile peace existed within the group. But I saw the whispers under their breaths. The side eyes that were thrown my way about my skepticism towards Alexiares. Riley double checked my math on each route, and Seth had made me read my list of materials for the soldiers’ packs out loud before signing off.

They were questioning my judgment; I was sure of it.

“I skimmed it for the most part, but it’s some real heavy shit in there, Maia,” Moe concluded.

I frowned, deciding to back off for now. I didn’t have any siblings. I couldn’t possibly understand that level of loss.

Finding myself stuck with more questions now than ever, I changed the subject. Opting to give her a different reason to feel uncomfortable, “So … tell me about you and Seth, miss ma’am. Apparently, I missed a lot.”

Moe’s face reddened as she turned her head to the left, trying to hide the wide smile that replaced her sad one. We walked back towards our study’s, ready to wrap up the rest of our work for the day. Chatting, two normal girls out for a gossip walk in the park. It felt good to feel like this again, to feel weightless and carefree even if it were just for a few fleeting moments.

Seth and Moe had spent the last few nights together, Seth pushing to stay close in case things went wrong in the middle of the night. Moe pretending that she was insulted by his insistence on playing protector, but the tenderness in her face betrayed the words on her lips, looking every bit like a woman in love. I was happy for her, for them, truly, I wanted to support my friend, but they were fire and ice. And part of me feared that one day the intensity of their connection might consume them both.

* * *

A few days passed.Seth had heard from all groups but one. San Diego had last reported near Riverside and had gone silent since. He’d tried each soldier multiple times and had received nothing but brain static.

I wasn’t naïve enough to be hopeful any of them were alive. It wasn’t just that they had chosennotto answer Seth. He’d attempted to feel around in their minds, poking and prodding, but there was nothing.

I’d had to bring Reina in, her power claiming him, bringing Seth to a sedative state. No matter how death had become a standard in our daily lives, it would always be a lot to handle. To insert yourself into the mind of another person was an intimate, personal thing.

You feltthe essence of that person as you spoke to them. He could only enter a willing mind, but with effort he could take what he needed if no magic was there blocking him out. On the off chance that there was, he’d be able to feel it, pushing defensively against his magic as he searched for an in.

There was none. No magic telling him he was forbidden to enter. If someone died with Seth having access to their minds, he would be able to take on their entire being, or what was left of them if entered in time. He’d done it enough for me to know that the feeling of death on someone who was very much alive was, well, a feeling worse than death itself. Because although you were alive, you now knew exactly what it felt like to die. Knew exactly what the immediate after felt like too.

I was torn about my next course of action. Sending someone out after them was to send someone else on a death mission. It could prove futile. Pointless. But I also couldn’t just leave them out there. Those weremypeople. I was responsible for them.

And I’d sealed their fates the moment they walked out those gates.

It was Riley who offered a solid solution, to redirect some of the men he’d sent out in that direction days ago. They were men of shadows, who evaded both the living and the dead assuming their life depended on it. Theydiddepend on it. I was reluctant, not wanting to damn what was left of Riley’s family, but knowing we needed answers.

Moe’s visions were only able to provide so much, it had drained her magic completely, channeling that many people, but their deaths had been savage and quick. We’d received the answers we needed. It’d been Pansies, and no, we wouldn’t be able to send people out to retrieve them even if we wanted to. There were too many of them.

Riverside was overrun.

It hadn’t been an active city, but that didn’t mean there weren’t people who had been living there, in between settlements. San Diego was on their own until the rest of us had time to regroup, and by then, who knew what would be left?

“And Alexiares?” I asked, bringing him up for the first time since he’d left my watch.

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