“Norwood has done a really good job of isolating them in Illinois,” he replied bitterly. “If they waited much longer, they would be completely on their own. Stone Valley felt the same way.”
“I just can’t believe Stone Valley agreed,” I murmured. “I figured they would be dead set against us after what happened with Mom.”
“They were at first,” Remy agreed, breathing deeply, “but the enemy of my enemy and all.”
“Right.” I chewed on my bottom lip. “Did you tell my mom about it?”
He nodded, his expression shifting into something I couldn’t quite read.
“What?” I pressed curiously, feeling the sudden tension in him.
“Your mom said something,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t even know what it meant, but it’s been bothering me since.”
My stomach clenched with unease. “Okay.”
“She said that her bond was broken for her. Not that she broke it,” he told me, frowning deeply. His dark eyes studied me curiously. “Did she ever say something like that to you?”
“Mom only told me she was bonded to Nikolai literally right before the bombs went off. Nikolai said she was the one who broke their bond.” I paused, remembering how bitter he still seemed about it.
Remy hummed a little, digesting that.
“So, if Mom didn’t break it and …” The realization hit me so hard, all the air whooshed out of me. The room tilted as a wave of dizziness swept over me, my skin turning clammy as my veins filled with ice.
“I’m going to be sick,” I muttered, dropping the phone on my bed even as Remy shouted at me from it.
I staggered across the floor, barely flipping on the lights in the bathroom and dropping to my knees before I emptied whatever was still in my stomach into the toilet.
Once I was finished, I flushed and hauled myself up, rinsing my mouth under the faucet.
I could still hear the tinny shouts of Remy through the phone’s speaker in the other room. I made my way back to the bed on wooden legs, picking up the phone as I sank onto the floor, my back braced against the bed.
“What the fuck, Skye?” he demanded, equal parts furious and panicked. “What happened? Are you okay?”
I sucked in a shuddering breath. “I’m fine, Remy. I think.”
“The hell you are,” he snapped. His fingers ripped through his hair, and I knew he felt frustrated by the distance between us.
“Rem,” I said, firming my voice as I shoved down the roiling emotions in my gut. “I’m fine. But I need to go.”
“Go?” he repeated, incredulous.
“Can you … I need you to trust me,” I said quietly. “Can you do that?”
He sighed loudly, the sound mixing with a warning rumble of his growl. “Skye …”
“Can you do that, Remy? Yes or no?” I tightened my voice. “I’ll call you in a few hours.”
“Hours?” he echoed. His eyes narrowed into thin slits.
“Yeah. I need you to just trust me. I swear, I’m fine, but I think someone here has answers I need.”
His jaw clenched. “Fine. Call me in one hour.”
“Two,” I hedged, not sure how long I would need.
His gaze turned flinty. “One.”
“Fine. One hour.” I repeated, giving in.
“I love you,” he told me fiercely.
His words threatened to thaw the ice wall around my heart. “I love you, too.”
I hung up and scrambled to my feet. It took a second to grab new clothes from the closet and pull them on. I tucked the phone into the pocket of the hoodie that I slipped over my head and headed for the door. Once I stepped in the hallway, I realized I had no idea where I was even going.
“Skye?”
I turned, my heart pounding like I had been caught.
Lulu frowned at me as she walked down the hall. “What are you doing?”
“I need your help,” I blurted out, not sure if she was someone I could actually trust, but I was kind of out of options.
“Of course,” she answered automatically, coming to a stop a foot away from me. “What can I do?”
I took a deep breath. “Take me to my uncle.”
Surprisingly, Lulu didn’t hesitate to help me. She took me back downstairs to the elevator and into the tunnel that connected the house to the mountain. She sat in silence as we moved underground via the cable car, not pressing me for issues.
Once we got out of the car, she used her handprint to unlock the elevators, pressing a combination of buttons once inside.
I frowned. “There’s a code to get in here?”
She glanced back at me. “Your uncle is being held in the lockdown section. Not everyone has access to it.”
“And you do?”
A bitter smile twisted her pretty mouth. “Occasionally I’m needed there to help extract information.”
“Because you’re a …” I struggle to say the word.
Her gray eyes cut through me. “Witch? You can say it.”
I smiled weakly. “Dimitri said you didn’t like being called that.”
Lulu snorted lightly. “Dimitri doesn’t know shit about my people. And it’s not our preferred pronoun, but it’s the one that makes the most sense, I guess. I try not to be too offended by the word.”
“So, what do you prefer to be called?”
“Elementals,” she answered, wrinkling her nose at my confusion. “I know. Society has normalized witches and magic, so it’s typically how we explain this to outsiders.”
“And how does that work exactly?” I asked hesitantly. “Being an elemental, I mean.”
“How does being a shifter work?” she countered, arching a brow. “It just is. My people have existed since the dawn of time. We’re people that are more attuned to elements and can access and even manipulate them in raw form. My people, the Romani, have a connection with the earth and all it’s creatures.”
“And your people created shifters?”
She nodded.
“So, can you create more shifters?” I asked slowly.
After a beat, she slowly shook her head. “No. The magic that was used was not something we have had access to in a couple centuries. Merging a man and a beast takes a great deal of energy. It’s not something a normal Roma can do. Besides, even if one was strong enough to pull that much magic from the earth, there’s certain … things needed to happen to make such a transformation positive.”
“Such as?” I pressed as the doors opened.
Lulu stepped out and gave me an unreadable look. “We believe there is a way to replicate the spell, but there are certain circumstances that have yet to align.” She smiled, this time it was more genuine. “But we’re hoping things have changed.”
She led us down a sterile, gray and white hall with blindingly bright fluorescent lights overhead until we reached a solid steel door with another biometric scanner. She placed her hand against it and a second later, the door pulled open to a wide room lined with cells.
A few people slept in some of them, all of them men.
“The women’s cells are on the floor below,” Lulu explained.