Page 544 of Shadowblood Souls
Jacob
When Riva finishes speaking, her words bounce around inside my skull, refusing to totally sink in. Every muscle in my body has tensed as if preparing to fight off the enemies who aren’t even here.
“You want us to ask theguardiansfor help?” I spit out, the idea sounding even more absurd when I say it out loud. “The assholes who kept us in cages and treated us like lab rats?”
Riva folds her arms over her chest, looking totally unfazed by my reaction. She was probably expecting me to be at least this pissed off, if not more. “Not exactly asking, and not exactly help. But bringing them into the mix could be useful to us.”
Annoyingly, Dominic has to make it all sound reasonable in his usual thoughtful tone. “I can see her point. Balthazar was part of the Guardianship for decades, since they were founded. There’ve got to be people there who know him way better than we do.”
I swivel toward him. “Better than us maybe, but we’ve got his closest assistant on our side. What could they know that Toni doesn’t?”
Not that I like relying on the bitch who stood by while he tormented and killed shadowbloods either, but at least she’s admitted she fucked up. And she’s already here.
Andreas rubs his jaw. “She saw one side of him, but they’ll have seen others. There’d be people there he interacted with more like equals than a superior.”
I throw my hands in the air. “Who the hell cares? We can’t trust them farther than we can kick them! Didn’t we all learn our lesson when we ran to Engel for answers?”
The memory of our creator turning on us merges with all the moments the other guardians hunted us down, and anger crackles through my nerves.
Several of the books hurtle off the nearby bookshelf to smack against the opposite wall.
I close my eyes, my hands clenching. I’ve got to simmer down. No one’s going to pay attention to my opinions if my talent is going haywire like a toddler having a tantrum.
Griffin takes a step closer to me. My twin’s voice comes out so gentle it almost makes me angrier. “I don’t think Riva has any intention of trusting them. But it makes sense that you’d hate the idea. None of uswantto have anything to do with the guardians.”
“I know,” I mutter, willing my body to relax. “I just don’t—I don’t want to see us make another mistake.”
Riva aims a soft smile at me that’s worse than Griffin’s reassurances. “We’re not doing anything yet. I’m only saying we should talk about the possibilities. They’re… a potential resource, like Rollick always puts it. Maybe we could use them like they wanted to use us.”
Dominic nods. “Balthazar definitely wouldn’t suspect that any contact he gets from them has anything to do with us. He knows that we hate them and that they’d never work with us as allies.”
“Exactly.” Riva smiles brighter at him. “If we can manipulate them into passing on information or influencing his actions, they might be able to create the opening we need without him or them having a clue that’s what’s going on.”
When she puts it like that, I can understand why she’s excited about the possibility. It’s not like we’ve gotten very far against our psychopathic former captor so far.
Hehas all the resources, all the plans in place, and we’re playing catch up. Drawing in the guardians to our benefit could give us a leg up.
Even if imagining reaching out to them in any way makes me want to smash every piece of furniture in Rollick’s elegant mansion.
I heave a sigh, expelling more tension with the breath. “Okay. I know we’ve got to consider every possible plan that could give us an advantage. But I don’t think the shadowkind are going to like it either. The guardians wanted to exterminate them just as much as Balthazar does, even if they weren’t as ballsy about it.”
Riva shrugs. “I guess we’ll have to see what they say, then.”
If I was hoping that Rollick would see things my way and quash the plan before it even got off the ground, I know I’ve lost the second a startled but awed laugh spills from his lips.
He leans back in the leather chair at the desk in his mansion’s home office, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Of course you’d figure there’s a way to make use of even your other enemies. I’dlove it if these guardians of yours could lend us a hand against their own interests. Seems fitting.”
Zian, who caught up with the rest of us as we searched the demon out, frowns pensively. “Are your shadowkind friends going to be okay with it? A lot of them already seem kind of unsure about working just withus.”
Riva has brightened at Rollick’s approval in a way I can’t help appreciating. I’m not in love with her plan, but nothing could shake my love for her.
She bounces on her feet with pent-up energy. It can’t have been easy for her spending so much time putting together plans rather than springing into action.
“We wouldn’t really be working with them,” she says. “We’ve just got to find a way to get them acting on our behalf without realizing it.”
Rollick flashes her a smile. “Exactly. But first we need to locate the people who’ll decide on those actions. You said the man who brought you to that island is, ah, no longer in the picture, correct? He was the last of the other founders in this Guardianship?”
Andreas nods slowly. “He was theoretically at the top of the ladder when he had us running missions for him—but the guardians had other levels of authority. There was a guy who came to visit him… Richmond, that was his name. He talked about a board that I assume he was on, who had the power to take control over the organization if they decided Clancy was screwing things up.”
