Allie's War Season Four (148 page)

I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

And yeah, maybe I
did
know, in the deeper levels of my light, but I had too much else going on with the prep work for an extraction in Dubai and Revik changing all of the security protocols around me and Lily...as well as Lily herself, and dealing with Revik my husband and trying to keep our team on track...for me to even go there, at least at the time.

Yeah, I can be dumb like that.

I SAT IN a squashy couch, smiling as I watched Lily bug Revik to color with her. She wanted me to color with her, too, of course, but I was a little too entertained watching the two of them, so my paper and crayons sat on the couch next to me, pretty much untouched.

Something about watching the two of them argue about what color a rabbit should be brought my mind back to the first time Revik and I had walked into this room.

We’d both been so damned nervous.

It was weeks before they let us in to see her in person, and even then I pretty much had to throw a fit...and then Revik had to throw a fit...before Balidor and the other Adhipan seers cleared us. They still didn’t know everything Menlim had done to her light, although she had high-ranked seers looking at it pretty much every day. Revik and I had spent long hours looking at it, too, even if they only let us do it via transcripts and recordings at first.

So did Tarsi and Balidor and whoever else.

Either way, by the time they finally let us in there, we’d both been going a bit stir-crazy.

Revik and I stood outside that room together like a couple of dorks, truthfully.

Neither one of us moved, while Chinja and Tenzi opened the outside door, and I clutched Revik’s hand tightly enough that it had probably hurt him.

Per security protocols, the whole shift watching over her cell changed every twenty-four hours, even back then...along with all of the codes...which meant it took around four minutes to get all the way through the doors, even with five people monitoring that console of the security station. Since Revik had taken over security for this area, too, all of that had gotten even more complicated, and now getting in here took closer to ten minutes.

But back then, yeah, more like four, maybe five minutes.

They’d given us the rundown on our own restrictions, too, while we stood out there. Two hour stretches inside Lily’s tank for either of us, maximum. Nothing invasive with our lights, at least in terms of her higher aleimic structures. Four hour gaps between the two hour stints in the tank. No sleeping in there. No letting her resonate too much with Revik’s higher column, or even mine, although they were mostly worried about the Menlim thing.

We stood out there, listening to all of this crap, but only half-listening, too.

Revik had held my fingers firmly back, despite me gripping him so tightly, but I remember feeling every ounce of his attention focused on what waited for us on the other side of that door. I also remember thinking I was probably distracting myself by touching him as much as reassuring either of us.

When that door had finally opened, a lurch of nerves hit my stomach hard enough that I think my throat must have closed entirely. I remember I got dizzy, which threw me, until I realized that I’d probably been suppressing just about every real feeling I’d had about that whole thing––about losing Lily and what Cass had done and being cut off from our daughter for most of her life––until it hit me that it might finally be ending.

More than any of that, though, I remember being terrified.

In the mother department, I mean.

I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the fact that I even
was
a mother.

In some ways I’d still felt like I hadn’t earned any part of that title. I mean, sure, I’d knocked the person my daughter
thought of
as her mother on her ass when I went to save her...but, really? I wasn’t positive that counted.

Revik must have been nervous too, but he’d been the rock in all of that, far more than me.

He’d been reassuring me on the motherhood thing for weeks, even though we rarely talked about the actual logistics of what it would be like, being parents.

I’d tried to convince myself, even then, that it was only because Revik had been alive longer, and had more confidence in his ability to parent a child without completely screwing them up.

Of course, a quieter, more nagging voice in the back of my head told me he was only less nervous because he’d never spent any time with small kids.

Letting out a faintly-amused snort, he’d looked at me when I thought that, gripping my hand harder.

Stop being such a baby,
he’d chided me.

I’d knocked into him with my arm, without letting go of his hand.
Tell me that in ten years, when our daughter’s in therapy because her biological mom beat up her fake, kidnapping mom right in front of her...

Revik had only clicked at me, though, giving me a wan smile.

Should one of us go in first?
I’d asked him nervously, watching as Chinja and Tenzi pulled the thick, organic-metal door open.
Try not to overwhelm her too soon?

No,
Revik had said. He hadn’t look away from the opening door. Instead, he’d only gripped my hand tighter.
No, we go in together,
he’d said.

He’d sounded so sure, I’d found myself relaxing a little.

Feeling his eyes on me then, I’d glanced up, and saw his mouth pursed in a faint frown, amusement in his eyes.

I think you really are more nervous than me,
he’d said.

Or you’re hiding it better,
I’d retorted.

Maybe.

I remember feeling my stomach knot and clench again as we’d walked towards that open door. I don’t know what I’d been feeling exactly, but it had felt a lot like terror. In fact, it had felt like an almost debilitating terror, like nothing I’d ever felt before, definitely not in actual, life-threatening situations. Even then, I could see how ridiculous that was, but I didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it.

I remember I kept thinking about little Lily crying after I’d knocked Cass out, and how she’d watched me suspiciously the whole time back on the helicopter.

Probably not,
I’d admitted to Revik, quieter.
Hiding it better, I mean.

Pulling me closer to him, he’d smiled and sent a warm pulse to somewhere in the middle of my chest. He’d been really affectionate with me that day...I remember that, too. He’d also sent a thread of heat at me, one that I felt all the way down to my feet. Closing my eyes briefly, even in mid-step towards the door, I’d thunked my shoulder into him, smacking the forearm connected to the hand of his I’d held in both of mine.

Stop it,
I’d sent sternly.
Not in front of the baby.

That made him laugh aloud, causing Tenzi, Chinja and Deklan to aim puzzled looks in our direction. When I glanced back, only Balidor had looked amused. Catching my glance, he’d made a motion with his fingers towards the open door, that half smile still on his lips.

“Stop stalling, Esteemed Bridge,” he said, his voice joking.

But I’d already looked away from him.

I remember seeing Tarsi there, too, who must have entered the security enclosure when I hadn’t been looking. She was like a light-ninja anyway. I’d never come across any seer who could enter a room like her, so that no one noticed her at all, at least, not until they saw her with their physical eyes. She’d shooed me towards the door, too.

“Stop being such a baby,” she’d said, in her heavily-accented English, mirroring Revik. “Won’t get any easier with you hiding out here...just putting off the inevitable.”

Nodding, I’d swallowed, not quite able to smile in return.

“We need to visit Maygar, too,” I’d reminded Revik.

He’d nodded to my words.

Of course, I only found out later that he’d been visiting Maygar pretty much every day since we got back to the ship. I remember being kind of off-balance from that at first, too, meaning the fact that Revik and his son had an actual relationship now, one I knew absolutely zero about. Truthfully, I still felt pretty out of step with a lot of things, just from being out of commission for so long. Even now, months later.

“He wants to talk to you,” Revik said, looking up from where he was still making his rabbit bright blue, despite Lily’s scolding. “About Dubai. About how you want to use him there. He thinks I’m sidelining him after what happened in Macau.” Rolling his eyes a little, he smiled at me. “He’s still blaming himself. For Jon getting stabbed.”

I smiled, clicking softly. “You’d never know it, with how he grumbles at Jon.”

Revik lifted an eyebrow at me humorously. “He’s a complex person.”

I laughed aloud at that. “Wait. Could you say that again? I might need proof you said that...I also want to make sure it got recorded.”

Revik grunted, but gave me another smile.

Lily looked between us, her clear, green-rimmed eyes sharp. “Who?” she demanded of Revik, her mouth set in a frown. “Who is complex?”

“Your brother,” he told her casually, going back to coloring.

She looked up at me, as if to verify his words, and I laughed.

“Don’t look at me,” I said. “Do you really think your father is lying to you?”

“He said bunnies
can
be blue!” Lily said at once. “I looked it up,
just now.
I showed him, but he says he doesn’t care. Bunnies are brown...or black...or white. Not
blue!”
she emphasized, looking disapprovingly at Revik’s very blue rabbit.

He glanced up, smiling at me, and rolling his eyes.

“She is definitely your daughter,” he said.

I clicked back, laughing in spite of myself.

“You think so, huh?” I looked at Lily then, smiling at her. “You father doesn’t like rules, baby,” I told her. “You may not win this one.”

She gave me a surprised look at that, then stared at Revik’s downturned dark head, as if contemplating this new information, or maybe incorporating it into the information she already had about him. Her hair had gotten longer, I noticed, looking at it from behind. As it grew longer, the curl got pulled out of it by the weight, leaving it looking even more like Revik’s. She looked older to me again, too.

I frowned at the thought, looking at the length of her legs. Balidor said there wasn’t anything they could do about whatever Menlim had done to speed her maturation process.

It bothered me, though. It bothered me a lot.

When I looked up next, she was staring at me again, a sharper look in her clear eyes. Her round face reminded me strangely of Revik’s too, more from what I remembered of him as a kid when looking at Barrier images, but enough to take my breath at times. Her light was all her own, though. It had flavors that felt familiar to me, bare glimpses that I couldn’t react to with anything but emotion, but those things weren’t either mine or Revik’s.

They were hers.

She watched me look at her, that serious expression still on her face, even as she continued to lean against Revik’s shoulder and side.

That only reminded me of that first day, too, though.

She had just stared at us as Revik and I walked in here that first time. We’d stopped within a few feet of the door, and just stood there as the security team rolled it shut behind us.

I guess we’d been letting her get a look at us, although we didn’t talk about that, either.