Shield of Winter

Chapter 59

WHEN A THIRD Arrow walked out of the orchard to join Vasic and Aden, Ivy wasn’t the least surprised. They’d started doing that ever since she and Vasic had settled at the cabin, just turning up. She’d fed more than one at the dinner table—though that was easy enough, since most just wanted nutrition bars. It wasn’t the food they came for, of course.

“Home,” Vasic had told her. “They come because they know they’re welcome in our home. To men and women who have never had a true home, a place of warmth and safety, it is a treasure beyond price.” He’d kissed the top of her head. “And they know you’re my treasure. So they come to check on you when they’re nearby. Do you mind?”

No, Ivy didn’t mind. She wanted to have Arrows dropping by for decades to come, wanted Vasic to build extra rooms onto the cabin so their guests could stay overnight, wanted to tease him into trying real food. “I want him safe, Rabbit,” she said, angry at the entire universe. “I don’t want to be in a world where he doesn’t get to survive. How is that in any way fair?”

Vasic froze right then, and for an instant, she thought he’d heard her and that she’d ruined the day. Then came a deeper, more violent fear.

She stood and ran toward him as, turning, he jogged back to the cabin. Sweat stuck his black T-shirt to his chest, the thin black of his martial arts pants outlining his thighs as the wind pressed the fabric against him. Ivy still had trouble letting him out into the snow dressed like that, even though he assured her that as a Tk, he was never in any danger of freezing.

Today, it wasn’t the cold that was the risk.

“What is it?” Her eyes and her hands went immediately to the gauntlet. “Is it—”

Vasic cupped her face in hands so gentle, she knew he could sense the vicious control she had on her fear and her anger. “Samuel Rain has demanded our presence.”

Her heart kicked. “What are you doing here? Let’s go!”

“Give me two minutes to shower.”

“Vasic—”

“I may need to be clean.” He kissed her hard as the import of that statement punched her in the solar plexus.

Watching him head inside to shower, she turned to Aden, terror knotting her guts. “If I lose him, I’ll break.”

His mind touched hers. You can’t break, Ivy. You’re the only home my Arrows know—no matter what, that home must survive.

She met his eyes, shook her head. But he was adamant. You’re strong. That’s why you’re Vasic’s. You’ll honor him . . . but that is a conversation we may never need to have.

Ivy took a deep breath, straightened. Yes, she said. We won’t. Because he’s going to be all right.

Going to Rabbit, she petted him in gentle reassurance. “Mother and Father are on their way to pick you up,” she said, having just telepathed them. “Be good and stay with Aden until then, okay?”

She rose as Vasic stepped out of the cabin in jeans and a leather-synth jacket paired with a light blue T-shirt she’d talked him into because it made his silver eyes even more striking. Walking over, she slipped her hand into his.

“Rabbit?” he asked, looking to where their pet stood solemnly with Aden and the third Arrow.

Ivy swallowed past the emotions choking her up, told him she’d made arrangements. “He won’t be alone.”

Then they went to talk to Samuel Rain.

Clara met them in the foyer of the sprawling house that was the core of Haven, having requested Vasic not teleport directly to Samuel as the staff remained unsure of his mental state. “This way,” the manager said at once. “He hasn’t permitted anyone inside yet.”

No more words necessary, the three of them headed upstairs to Samuel’s quarters. There was a massive skylight in this section. It drenched the corridor in light, likely the rooms, too. Stopping at one on the farthest end, Clara knocked. “We gave Samuel the corner suite because it gets the most light and he’s always demanded natural light in his workshops.”

“Who is it?” Samuel Rain yelled suspiciously from the other side of the door.

“Ivy and Vasic to see you.”

The door opened to reveal a man with wild, matted, and overgrown hair, his blue checked shirt buttoned crooked, and what looked like over a month’s worth of beard growth on his face. “Come.” Eyes blazing with either intelligence or madness behind his spectacles, he stepped back to give them their first glimpse of what lay beyond.

Ivy gasped.

He’d turned the central chamber—lit by two glass walls and part of the main skylight—into a laboratory. That wasn’t what made her gasp. It was the fact that sitting in the middle of the workbench was a gauntlet identical to Vasic’s, except without the carapace. Linked to a computer that simulated the Psy brain, brain stem, and spinal column, the gauntlet had been split open to display its intricate internal workings. The faux bone and tendon and muscle within it were scarily realistic.

Samuel Rain, Ivy realized with a trembling awareness of the true depth of his genius, had built a working copy of one of the most complex pieces of technology in the world from scratch in the space of just over six weeks.

“It’s useless,” he said now, and her heart dropped, until he added, “Too many issues to be grafted. But I can get it out with the help of a halfway competent surgeon.”

The world stopped, Ivy’s hand bloodless around Vasic’s.

There is only one choice, Ivy. Vasic cupped her cheek, touching his forehead to hers in a way that had become part of their emotional lexicon. I would have eternity with you.

Stomach churning, she wrapped her arms around his neck. Don’t leave me. Please.

I won’t. I’ll always be here. Winter frost holding her in thrall. Even if my body goes, my soul will remain. It’s a mess, but it’s yours. It’ll always be yours.

I love you, Vasic. I love you. It was so hard for her to release him, to watch him turn to Samuel Rain. “My unit has almost completely destabilized. Can you operate now?”

“Yes,” the engineer said without hesitation. “I need a sterile operating chamber with these monitors.” He scribbled a list on a scrap of paper. “I also need a nurse and a surgeon. Make sure it’s someone who can follow instructions and doesn’t have a God complex.”

Shoving both hands through his hair, he continued. “I can remove the majority of the gauntlet myself. I might not be able to do the neurosurgery, but I understand biofusion in a way no one else does. I’ll need to make split-second decisions, and the surgeon must obey.”

It took a terrifyingly short time to accommodate his requirements. Edgard Bashir was brought in as the surgeon, rather than the surgeon originally scheduled to operate on Vasic. “She won’t follow instructions,” Vasic said when he made the decision. “That makes her an asset as a solo operator, but for a team, Edgard is the better player.”

Ivy wasn’t so sure she wanted the man who’d originally grafted the device to Vasic working on him, but holding her close, Vasic assured her that Edgard was an excellent neurosurgeon. “He just isn’t creative, and he doesn’t need to be with Samuel in the room. All he has to do is have steady hands.”

The operation was to take place in a secure Arrow medical facility that Samuel Rain and Dr. Bashir, plus two theatre nurses, were teleported to so they could have no knowledge of its location. Vasic ’ported in Ivy himself, with Abbot standing by to bring in anyone else who was needed while he was down.

Zie Zen chose to wait with Ivy’s parents at their cabin. “I will speak to you when the gauntlet has been removed,” he said to Vasic over the comm, but though his face was serene, his hand was bone white on his cane.

Then it was time. “I’ll be back soon, Ivy.”

Ivy held Vasic’s promise to her heart as she sat outside the operating room. Aden sat with her, his combat uniform reminding her piercingly of a thousand moments with her Arrow. When she closed her hand over Aden’s, he didn’t protest, curling his fingers around her own. Two hours passed before he stood and made her get up, too, to stretch her legs. When he tried to give her an energy drink, she waved it off.

He didn’t move. “Vasic trusted me to watch over you. I won’t let him down.”

“Stubborn, high-handed, both of you,” she muttered, while her heart bruised with every beat.

Aden held out the drink again.

Taking the bottle, she forced herself to finish it before returning to her vigil. This time Aden stood against the wall across from her, and though he was as remote as Vasic had once been, she didn’t feel alone. They were family, tied together by their love for the loyal, courageous, wonderful man beyond the doors to the operating room.

Three hours.

Four.

Five.

“Do you think we can ask for an update?” Her throat was scratchy from disuse as she looked up at Aden. “No, we shouldn’t interrupt,” she said before he could respond.

Aden sat down beside her again. “Would you like to hear the story of the first time I met Vasic?”

He was trying to comfort her, she realized, to get her mind off the painfully circular path in which it had been running for hours. “Yes.”

Leaning forward with his forearms braced on his thighs, Aden looked at the wall in front of them, but his stare wasn’t blank. It was as if he was watching a stream of memory. “I was seven years old and a very well-behaved child.”

There was something about the wording of his statement that made Ivy frown.

“Vasic, only a year older than me, was considered a problem. Those in charge of the squad at the time had no intention of releasing him—he was too valuable. So they had to find a way to break him down.”

Ivy’s nails cut into her palms. “He never broke.”

“No,” Aden said. “I think he believed for a long time that he had broken, but they never managed to destroy the core of who he is. It’s why he carries such guilt for actions he couldn’t have fought, consequences he could’ve never changed.”

“He’s built to protect, to shield, and they made him a killer.”

“Yes.” Aden continued to look into the past. “Even as they tried to break him, they had to teach him. Brute strength is never enough to make a man an Arrow. All of us train with sparring partners when young—mental and physical. However, in most cases, they’re rotated. The reason given to us at the time was that it was to ensure we could all work together, but I believe it was also so bonds couldn’t form between long-term partners.”

Encouraged by his earlier acceptance of her touch and wanting to comfort him as he was trying to do her, she put a careful hand on his shoulder. He didn’t shake it off, but neither did he react. “Vasic, however,” he continued, “was such a problem that he kept destabilizing his psychic sparring partners. They’d work him against another child, and even if that child had been in a relatively calm state previously, he or she would be erratic afterward.”

“Why not adults?”

“That was to be the last-case scenario. It’s harder for a child to spar against an adult, because an adult always has to hold back in case they cause harm, and so the balance isn’t natural and it impacts speed, accuracy, everything.” His lashes came down, flicked back up. They were black like Vasic’s, but unexpectedly long and with a curl at the ends.

He was handsome, she realized in a startled way. With sharp cheekbones and dark eyes against olive colored skin, he no doubt caught female attention. Only Ivy was always too focused on Vasic to notice.

“Finally,” he said, as her need for Vasic keened again, “they decided to try me. I was the last choice, because I was considered the weakest child in training at the time.”

Ivy knew beyond any doubt that there was nothing weak about Aden.

“Still, the trainers figured they might as well pit me against him just in case. I was led into our first session in a bland beige room furnished with a heavy metal table and two metal chairs. Vasic should’ve been sitting on one chair already, but he was standing in a corner, staring at the door.

“When I came in, he continued to look at me with this unblinking stare he shouldn’t have been able to maintain as a child.” Aden angled his head to meet Ivy’s gaze. “He was trying to disconcert me, make me run. Later, he told me it had worked with several of the other children. He broke their nerve just with his eyes.”

Ivy’s emotions knotted in her veins—affection for the boys they’d been, fury for what they’d both suffered, pride at the men they’d become. “What did you do?”

“Took my seat like the well-behaved child I was, and waited for the trainer to leave the room. I knew, of course, that the evaluation team would be monitoring our interaction via the surveillance equipment, as well as on the PsyNet. Then I watched him watch me.”

Ivy found herself charmed by the thought of two small boys trying to win a battle of wills. “Who blinked?”

“That’s a matter of dispute. I say he did. He says I did.”

Laughing softly, Ivy leaned in a little closer. “And?”

“When he realized I wasn’t going to leave, he went to phase two. Taking the seat across from me, he started lobbing psychic strikes at me in an erratic scattering rather than the mandated training pattern.” Aden’s profile was clean, no smile, and yet Ivy had the sense the memory was a good one.

“Apparently, he’d driven off quite a few others with that tactic. At that age, we’re taught in rote patterns,” he explained. “It’s meant to make certain things instinct, and it does, but it also leaves most child Arrows without the capacity to deal with unexpected situations.”

“You handled it,” Ivy guessed.

“I think it’s better to say I held my own,” he said. “Session completed, I got up and left. We went through pretty much the same routine ten times, never speaking a word. Then late one night I was in my room studying when the ceiling panel slid aside and he looked down and asked me if I wanted to go outside.”

Ivy started to smile. “What did you do?”

“It was past curfew, with all violations to be strictly punished.” A pause. “So I said yes and stood on a chair, and he hauled me up.” A glance at her laughing eyes. “I was much shorter then, while Vasic had already started to gain his height. We snuck outside and just walked around.”

It was the freedom, Ivy understood, that had been important, the fact they’d made a choice. “Vasic told me you once painted a training room in zebra stripes.”

“That was later, after we’d been partners for four years. We planned the operation down to the second, were back in our rooms before anyone discovered the incident.”

“I’m glad you had each other,” she said, releasing his shoulder to lean forward in an echo of his own position. “Thank you for looking after him.”

Aden’s responding look was quiet. “You don’t understand, Ivy. I didn’t look after Vasic. He looked after me—he understood I was a scared boy whose parents were Arrows who were gone ninety-nine percent of the time on missions that could end their lives, and who knew his place in the squad was shaky at best.

“Vasic had the handicap of a heart that felt too much, but he was always the more emotionally strong of the two of us . . . until the past two years, when I think the weight of the guilt began to crush him.”

Ivy understood both men would say the same thing with the opposite meaning. To Vasic, Aden had helped him stay sane. To Aden, Vasic had helped him stay upright when he would’ve fallen. One lost boy helping another.

Reaching out, she closed her hand over his again, knowing she was breaking boundaries, but these Arrows needed to have certain boundaries broken. Who better to do it than an empath? The squad had become so ferally protective of the Es that an E had more latitude with an Arrow than pretty much anyone else in the Net.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “There’s no ledger. You were there for one another, and because of that, I have a man who lives in my heart and he has a friend he knows he can rely on no matter what.”

Aden’s fingers twined with hers. “He also has a woman willing to walk in his darkness and not judge him. You don’t know how much that means.”

Soul aching, she leaned her head against his shoulder, and that was how they stayed for a long time. Then he made her eat again, drink again. She didn’t argue this time, realizing that Aden was sublimating his own fear by looking after her—if he lost Vasic, he’d lose the one person who was his family. So she did what he told her, even walked up and down the corridor after he said her back would get stiff.

Fourteen hours after the doors had closed on the surgery, they opened again.