Page 6 of A Harmony of Procellarum

“Hey!” Sval stands and shoves him back, forcing Raiden to let me go.

“Boys!” Sister Jane comes running over. “That is enough!”

She grabs onto Sval’s arm and tugs him from the table, her face looking just as thunderous as my brother’s. “You boys need a time out!”

She doesn’t let go of his arm as she drags him from the room. “Wait!” I call out. “Where are you taking him?”

Sval looks back at me over his shoulder, his eyes wide with fear. I hate seeing him afraid.

“Victor,” Raiden says, his hand landing on my shoulder. “It’s fine. The nuns are different. They’re not him.”

“Don’t touch me!” I snap and step away from him as Haynes stands beside Raiden, his eyes flicking back and forth between us. “This is your fault. Both of your faults! You are both useless!”

I storm out of the room with my stomach growling in protest. I didn’t even get to finish my fucking breakfast.

Chapter three

Squall

“Itwasthem,”Igroan as we sit inside the plane at the tarmac. “I could tell it was one of the Order’s fucking minions.”

Raiden and Tempest were supposed to head back to Dominica, and Hail and Sky were supposed to get back to The Sanctuary in Las Vegas. But now that Tiny has been taken, we’re not going anywhere.

“Are they still in New York?” Tempest asks as she paces the front of the plane, a bottle of Grey Goose in her hand.

“They have a main headquarters here and in Nevada,” Hail informs her as he absently brushes his fingers along Sky’s neck. Just watching them has something inside of me tugging with need, I just don’t know who for.

“Nevada?” Sky asks. “Was that the place we went to? Where Tiny was—”

“Stop!” I yell out, unable to hear all the different times I let harm come to the woman I care about. “What are we going to do about this?”

Tempest stalls her pacing to tip the bottle up to her painted red lips, her throat working on a swallow as her eyes narrow on me. I know she and Sky blame me for all of this, and I don’t fucking disagree.

“We need to get a message to Luciphia,” Raiden supplies as he stands from his seat to walk to Tempest and gently takes the bottle away from her. “And we need to remain sober.”

“Then you guys can deal with the consequences of me being sober and scared out of my mind,” she snaps as she falls into the seat Raiden just vacated. Raiden stands in front of me, one hand around the neck of the Grey Goose bottle and the other pressed to his temple.

“I will have to go to headquarters and demand her myself,” he finally says on an exhale as he puts the bottle back on the bar.

“No!” Tempest stands. “They will kill you!”

“And would that be any less than what I deserve?” he asks her as my head throbs. “I brought you all into this. Is it not just I deal with the consequences?”

They begin to argue as Hail and Sky tip their heads together, their murmuring voices being drowned out by Tempest and Raiden’s argument.

“Enough!” I bellow over them and get to my feet. “If anyone is sacrificing themselves for the things they’ve done, it would be me. They grabbed her to get my attention.”

“They grabbed her to get our attention!” Tempest snaps back. “We all love her.”

“Torrent was in with them at one time,” Sky speaks up, halting our words instantly. “He worked for them. Maybe he could help us and contact someone there?”

“Kenny was using him, and now Kenny is dead. You heard Luciphia, we’re all her enemies. Torrent wouldn’t have connections.” Raiden paces now, taking Tempest’s spot at the head of the plane.

“I can’t put him in danger as well,” I mumble as I drop my face into my hands. “He’s safe in that institute, getting the help he so desperately needs. He’s the only one out of us four who couldn’t face what happened to him. The youngest of us and the first to suffer through a violent death at his own hands.”

“Father Robert, right?” Sky asks as the plane falls silent. Anger courses through me at the sound of his name, but it also pains me to know these women are privy to what happened during our childhoods.

Then I breathe through the anger to realize if I didn’t have Torrent to hear my agonized screams at night, or to listen to me as I raged through another flashback, I would’ve told Tiny everything as well. She had a way of looking at me and truly seeing me. Not as Squall, but as Sval. The kid who was abandoned by his mother to a place of wretched horrors.

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