An inner dam breaks and the only thing holding back the deluge is my self-imposed blindness in the moment. “No. You—you just said you’re late for your rendezvous. I don’t—don’t just drop that because I’m . . .” I grapple for my coherency. “You don’t need to come here. You need—it sounds like you need to find somewhere safe. Don’t risk—I’m not . . .” Why can’t I get out the right words? My nails dig into my palm in my free hand. “I’ll be back in Annar soon with Karl. I just . . . I wanted to let you know I’m okay. To tell you I—” I’m flat out flailing. “Just . . . stay safe. Please just . . . stay safe.” Oh, gods, this is awful. I’m doing a horrible job at this. I might as well rip my heart out and stab it to the ground right now, it hurts so much. Plus, I apparently cannot string together cohesive sentences and now I sound like a total fool. The last thing he needs when guns and bombs are going off around him in fricking Kuergal, a country on the Elvin plane renown for its violence, is dealing with me on the phone. “Can you . . . when I get back, can I see you? Can you—” Another explosion goes off, leaving my ears ringing. Jesus, how can I do this? “Can you and your brother come to see me? There are a lot of things,”—another fruitless attempt at swallowing—“I, uh, we need to talk about.”
There’s a pause in which I debate a thousand times whether or not I just made another massive mistake. Finally, like he’s saying the hardest thing he’s ever had to admit, “You don’t want me to come get you?”
More gunshots fill the background. Angry voices yelling a language I don’t know punctuate the tiny bursts of silence between explosions. My fingers tighten around the phone.
I don’t know how I’m going to do this. Misery and shame and love and a dozen other messy emotions bloom and threaten to cripple me. “It’s not that I don’t,” I choke out. “But, you’ve got a job, and . . . It’s . . . I’m so sorry. I need to do this. I need—I need to come back to Annar and I need some time to think.” Gods, how selfish does that sound? Time to think? Like I haven’t already spent six months thinking? I’m butchering this. Flat-out hacking to pieces this lousy first contact between us in months.
Somebody on his end shouts at him, this time in English; I can only pick a few words out, but they’re terrifying ones: hide, protect you, get the fuck out of here, anarchy. He ignores them to ask me, “You swear you’re okay?”
My crystalline heart shatters as it drops to my feet. He sounds like I’m the one with the gun, and I’ve shot him right in the chest while grinning. “I swear,” I tell him, even though at the moment, I’m not even close to fine. And then, because I am the worst kind of girl, I put my foot on top of his bleeding chest, like a hunter with a smoking rifle downing my trophy and posing for a victory photo, because I say next, “I’ll text you the address I’ll be staying at when I get back to Annar.”
Getting air into my lungs is becoming increasingly difficult.
I love you, I want to shout. I miss you. I choose you. YOU. I love you. I’m so sorry.
But my lips don’t move. His do, though. “That’s . . . that’s what you want? To text me an address where you’ll be staying when you get back to Annar?” He says it like he can’t believe he’s saying it. Like it’s a jumble of foreign words he’s merely regurgitating.
My voice shatters entirely when I tell him it is.
Another explosion fills the phone, and then there’s silence. Our connection is broken.
I’ve never felt more panicked in my entire life.
Kuergal is in chaos.
I’m staring in horror at the small television set I’ve just created, as it runs cellphone videos of anarchy at its worst. Whoever was yelling at Jonah wasn’t kidding about that. Cars and buildings are burning, people are dying, and guns and bombs are going off.
I’m two seconds close to creating a portal in the Dane’s living room to get myself to the Elvin plane when Karl comes back inside from his perimeter check. “Ah,” he says quietly. “You got through to Jonah.”
All I’m capable of is a number of gurgling sounds. I decide right then and there that I need to make sure Jonah’s okay. I need to see it for myself. I make myself a screen, but Karl snatches it away from me the moment a picture flickers to life.
He crushes it between his hands. “Things have gotten really bad in Kuergal lately,” he says, sitting next to me on the couch. I stare at the mangled screen, still dangling from his fingers. “That’s why Jonah’s there. He’s trying to get the conflict to end.” Karl drops the mess on the coffee table and scrubs at his hair. “Funny thing is, the civil war didn’t even start due to any of our missions. Took the Council totally by surprise; things had been quiet there for a good few years now.” He pauses. “Well, quiet for them, at least.”
It’s a weird relief, knowing Jonah wasn’t the cause behind this madness. Still, since I can’t see how he’s doing and the line I just called him at seems to be dead, I drill Karl for information. “Does he have a team with him?”
“Yes. He brought four additional Emotionals with him, including Kellan. This is a really tough gig, though. There are a lot of deep-seated prejudices and hatreds in that area that need more than a quickie Emotional hit.”
So, Kellan is there, too. I . . . I don’t even . . .
“That’s all he has? Emotionals? Nobody else to back him up?”
“There are some other Magicals working in Kuergal right now, but Jonah felt it best that, for what he was going to do, he work with Emotionals.” Karl taps a finger against his knee. “According to mission specs, they were supposed to separate today to work in different quadrants of the city. I can’t promise you right now he has anyone with him.”