The rubble from the explosion was burning as the jet had taken off from outside the city. It would likely take days before the two-block diameter pyre finally cooled.
Her city would never be the same.
Around the whole world, nothing would ever be the same now.
Opus had made that point clear tonight.
Brynne jiggled the ice in her glass then took a long drink of the cold liquid. Water this time, even though her grief and fury called for something stronger. Witnessing the inferno that had devoured her longtime workplace—former workplace, she reminded herself grimly—had been enough to sober her on the spot. The way she felt after tonight, she might never touch another drop.
Zael was watching her from his seat across the cabin. He’d been uncharacteristically reserved since they boarded the jet. Even now, he kept his tongue and his distance, allowing her much needed space to process and reflect.
She set her empty glass on the console next to her. “I keep picturing myself walking those networks of corridors,” she murmured softly. “I keep seeing their faces—the other officers and investigators I worked with on a daily basis at that building. I can’t stop running through their names in my mind, doing a mental body count.”
Zael nodded gravely, but didn’t say anything. He got up and slowly walked over to take the leather seat facing her. His copper-threaded blond hair had gotten tousled from their race across London to view the destruction firsthand.
He raked the thick waves back from his brow and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his bent knees as he gave her time to get all of the words out. His oceanic blue eyes held her gaze, solemn in his sculpted, sun-bronzed face.
And while she was certain she must reek of smoke and death, his scent was fresh and clean, as crisp as a sea breeze. Its presence calmed her.
In this moment, with everything she once knew now blown to bits a thousand miles behind them, he calmed her.
More than she’d ever stoop to admit.
“I stayed late at headquarters most nights,” she said. “Sometimes, if I finished one case earlier than expected, I’d start right away on another. Sometimes I worked all night.”
Being a daywalker, a very rare thing among her kind, she didn’t have to work at night like her Breed colleagues. But more often than not, she chose to. Why wouldn’t she? It wasn’t as if she had anyone waiting at home.
And she’d loved her work. It had been the one constant in her life, her purpose. The one thing she could call her own.
Until today.
“JUSTIS was all I had, Zael.”
She practically cringed as the admission slipped past her lips. But she was too tired and empty to hold it back. And the weight of the terror and violence dealt on the hundred killed and the organization she’d pledged her life to was almost too much to bear.
Glancing away from him, she looked out of the oblong window at her side. In the distance, the sun was just beginning to crest the far horizon. She stared at it as if seeing it for the first time, all too cognizant of how fortunate she was to be alive to witness it. The realization raked at her, putting an acid burn in the back of her throat.
“If I hadn’t been let go today, I’d have been there with the rest of them at headquarters.”
“And you’re feeling guilty that you weren’t.”
She swung her gaze back to him, astonished that he understood. “Many of those people left behind mates and children. They had lives waiting for them to return.”
“Are you saying you don’t?”
Oh, God. She’d gone too far down a path she had no intention of sharing with him.
Least of all him.
“JUSTIS was important to you, I get that. But it’s not all you have. For one thing, you’ve got a very worried sister coming to meet us when we land in D.C.”
Brynne couldn’t deny the tender pang in her chest at the mention of Tavia. They’d only been able to exchange a few words when Zael had called in to the Order to report their location.
Tavia had been beside herself with concern—a notion that Brynne was still adjusting to. Although her connection to Tavia was strong, she and the other daywalking Breed female had not even known about each other until they were adults.
“Tavia and I are half-sisters,” Brynne said, somewhat dismissively, hoping to close the door on this line of conversation before she allowed the Atlantean to crawl any further into her head.
“Did you have the same mother or the same father?”