She nodded. “If she’s asking questions, isn’t that a good sign? That maybe it’ll be different?”
He held her gaze. “I trust you, Olivia,” he said. “And this remains between us.”
She nodded eagerly. “Of course.”
“I am afraid to hope. My hope has been in tatters for more than a hundred years, and I feel it coming back. And it scares the hell out of me because it will only hurt that much more if she dies,” he said, staring down at his hands, at those old scars across his knuckles that reminded him of his long-lost humanity.
He could not throw away his responsibility like Jonas Wynn. If he ran off half-cocked after every lead, he could endanger his court. Every decision had a cost, had a soul behind it.
“I can’t say that I understand. It’s a pretty unique situation,” she said finally. Her warm skin brushed across his hand, and he looked up to meet her warm eyes. “I’m only saying this because I care about you. You can choose not to hope, and I’m not going to tell you that you’re wrong for it. But all of us care about you. And if you can’t hope, then we will. We have enough hope for a thousand Julian Alcotts. If you go it alone and it ends badly, are you going to wish that you’d let us in?”
“I was-”
“And you know Armina Voss is a problem for all of us. She already hurt Alistair and tried to hurt Shoshanna. You think she’s going to stop there?” Olivia asked.
“No,” he said quietly.
Her brows arched. “Especially once she figures out that I’m your favorite human. She’s definitely coming for me, and Nikko won’t like that,” she said, her tone almost playful.
“You are my favorite human,” he admitted.
Her teasing smile faded to a soft, gentle expression as she leaned closer and took his hand. “You don’t have to bare your soul and tell us all your feelings. Just lead, and we’ll follow. We trust you. That’s all. Sir,” she added with a wry smile.
Despite the gut punch of emotion, the little Sir made him chuckle. “We’ve talked about this. Don’t call me Sir.”
“Mm-hmm,” she said. “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help?”
He held her gaze for a while, then finally said. “If she stashed the tracker at that hotel, she could be staying there, or at one of the hotels nearby. Can you call around and see if you can find her? She might be using another name, but it’s a start. Maybe try Voss, or even Kovalev, if she’s close to Kova. And see if you can find any vehicles registered to her name. I suspect it would be in Armina’s name, but it’s worth a try.”
“Julian, did you just give me the go-ahead to make a spreadsheet?” she teased.
He groaned. “Yes. Get to work, Miss Pierce.”
“On it,” she said eagerly, turning on her second monitor.
Let us have hope for you.
He considered returning to bed, but instead went to his office. Sometimes, he missed the simpler days, when he was just a warrior of the Shroud. In those days, he snapped to Hugo’s orders to protect Eduardo. He made few decisions and bore the responsibility only for his personal failures. Now everything carried so much more weight, whether it was the respect of the court or the lives of his loved ones. It was so much more than he’d ever realized.
When he was still human, he had seen the ravages of war, when kings squabbled over borders and flags. While they crowed about empires, villages burned. People were crushed and torn apart. Little girls starved to death and grandfathers died of plague, all while fat nobles dined in their palaces where the blood-soaked mud and shit would never touch their silk slippers.
Everything had a cost. And he had never wanted to be the one to make those decisions. It was too much, even without the looming despair of losing Brigitte.
Sitting there at his desk, he felt the darkness that always lurked somewhere in his mind. For years at a time, it would be a mere shadow, but in these months before Brigitte’s birthday, it was a festering hole. A dark, cruel voice spoke from that tear, reminding him that it was all pointless.
And though he told the others he didn’t dare to hope, that was a lie.
In the weeks before her birthday, that voice always turned to hope, and it grew sweeter and louder with each passing day. Maybe you could save her. What if you give yourself to the witch? What if you track her down in time?
What if what if what if
Sometimes he dared to listen. Sometimes he did idiotic things like track down Armina Voss and throw himself at her feet, only to have her laugh in his face, let her apprentices unleash their worst, and leave him crumpled in a bloody heap with a note bearing only one line of text: soon. A reminder that the inevitable was in fact, inevitable.
And when it was over, when Brigitte was gone and he could still see the light leaving her eyes and still remembered the sound of her voice and the way she smelled; then that voice changed.
You knew it was pointless. Just give up. Lay down and die.
That voice had also gotten the better of him; once that all his brothers knew about, when she had died for the first time and he fought them tooth and nail as they forced him to stay here, to stay in this miserable existence where there was no more Brigitte.
