Page 30 of I Dated the Lost Song

Raek chuckled. “I would offer to help, but my harmony is wrong. It’s too slow for what you need.”

Salmet blinked. “So, it’s true. In theory, a harmonic could bring peace.”

Raek looked at Cadence. “Well, I could not, but I believe that Cadence has the capability that will grow over time.”

“You have a lot of weird fantasies about an activation that just got to be itself today.” She looked back at him.

“What did you do with Maximus?”

She sighed. “Practiced. He was hostile when I got there. We worked things out.”

He nodded. “That falls within what I expected.”

Im-bar said softly, “When he was young, he tried to make things get along, but he couldn’t change their impulses. Having read Cadence’s file, she does that in every project she touches. All of her campaigns are presented without any conflict, as long as she is in the room.”

Cadence shifted on Raek’s lap. “It is harder through clothing that hurts. The effect doesn’t go as far.”

Zera blinked. “I don’t understand why it hurts.”

Raek lifted his hands and held them a foot apart. “If her energy moves like a particle and a wave, it leaves her body and strikes the non-cooperative surface, which sends it back to a different place on her skin, which rejects it, until her entire body is wrapped in what feels like fibreglass. It is constant, and she has gotten used to it, but it does not mean that she can work normally through it.”

Zera cocked her head. “What are you wearing?”

Im-bar smiled. “It is a triple-brushed cotton that I made for Raek so he could rest at home. It is very kind to the energy waves they put out.”

“With some of Maximus’s fibres woven in as the thread.”

Salmet asked, “Who is Maximus?”

There was awooffrom outside the room, and then the door flew open. Kritz jumped to his feet, Salmet turned silver, and Cadence smiled. “Oh, come here, my big, brave boy.”

Maximus walked over to them and lay on the ground, putting his head on her lap.

Raek smiled. “I found him in an Erradian wasteland and took him home. He’s some sort of wolf or something crafted by a Urradan bomb or both. I keep him in a harmonic dimension, but Cadence likes him, and I think he will make a good companion for her.”

Im-bar smiled. “Raek raised him, and aside from the tremendous food bill, he’s very easy to have around.”

Maximus settled at her feet.

She smiled and felt very safe for the first time in her memory. Raek’s energy was pulsing with hers, he had her back, and Maximus was between her and danger. She felt something and paused, looking at Raek.

He smiled. “I felt it.”

She relaxed.

Im-bar cocked her head. “It’s moving?”

“Just a little flutter.”

Raek smiled. “But it has started. Thank Salat and his Khytten for me, please.”

Cadence sat and waited for the next flutter. She grinned when it happened.

Zera smiled. “I am relieved for you. So many actives lose the pregnancy early.”

Raek asked, “They do?”

“It has risen to sixty percent. Power mismatch is the suggested culprit.”

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