Unbound

“I don’t like you.”

“But you love me.”

He didn’t say anything.

“And there’s your ‘tell.’ You’re actually quite incapable of a lie, JJ.”

“Moral pinnings aren’t weaknesses.”

“Sure they are. They make you predictable.”

He thought about that, took a step forward. “You love me, too.”

Her turn to fall silent now, but she didn’t move back.

“It means you can change…if you choose to.” And the thought fueled the first flush of excitement he’d felt in months. How sick was that?

“No,” she ultimately whispered. Her dark eyes were buried into his as she looked up. “I no more want to be you than you want to be me. You forgot that, even though I warned you.”

“So what now? You’re warning me again?”

Solange wrapped her arms around his neck. JJ let her.

Why the hell did he let her?

“What do you want?” he finally said, voice muffled against her neck.

“I already told you that.”

He thought back, brows furrowing, then shook his head. There was too much emotion marring his thoughts when it came to her. Like static over a phone line, it kept the real message from getting through.

“The first night,” she prompted. “In the desert storm. On the hood of your car.”

He’d asked her what she wanted then. Relevance. “I can’t give that to you.”

Her fingers trailed along his back, blindly found his tattoo. “Do you know the meaning of the word quintessence?”

“It means typical.”

She pulled back, offended. He pulled her tight again, and held her there. For a moment it felt like she’d struggle, but then she relaxed, her hipbones playing just beneath his. And then she pulled him down so they were seated across from each other, legs intertwined on the warmed marble. “It means pure. A highly concentrated and most perfect embodiment of a substance. You know what the basic elements are, right?”

He rolled his eyes. “Air, fire, earth, and water.” As an Aries, JJ was a fire sign. Solange was Pisces, a water sign. Maybe that was their problem.

And she’s a Shadow agent.

“So think about it. Quint-essence. The fifth essence, or element. The Pythagoreans called it ether. They claimed it flew upward at creation to comprise the stars.”

JJ furrowed his brows. Another piece in the puzzle that was her obsession with the constellations…but it still made no sense to him.

She smiled softly. “You, JJ, are the perfect embodiment of Light. I smelled it all those years ago, a mixture both warm and sweet.”

Oh, now he saw. “And you are quintessential Shadow, right? Never swayed, unchanging?”

“You tell me. Scent me again.”

Though an agent’s every sense was heightened, their noses were perhaps the most keen. Enemies were easiest to scent when emotions were high; an evolutionary gift, but JJ didn’t need to sniff to know Solange. His olfactory nerve had memorized her unique blend of heat and spice and that’s what he said.

“You sure?” she asked, tilting her head.

He hesitated, then tentatively sniffed at the air. Lifted his chin. Sniffed again. “You smell…different.”

Her scent had turned, not soured, but altered. Her spice had softened, the biting hooks melting into peppered waves, as if buried in something as heavy and sweet as melted caramel.

She wants relevance.

And in a matriarchal society such as theirs, the best way to achieve that was to mother a child of legacy, one of both Shadow and Light…the Kairos. “Oh my God. But the soothsayer said she’s already here, in this city.”

“She is.” Solange placed a hand on her belly. “Inside of me. And has been from that first night under the stars.”

A child of Shadow and Light. A baby who would be mothered by a Shadow. But his baby.

“Her name will be Lola. She will be the Kairos.”

Then the glossy door burst open and cool air rushed in. The man framed in the doorway wore a ratty trench and smelled like soured sweat. He had no place in an upscale spa, but JJ knew he’d moved so fast the reception staff hadn’t seen him. Sola’s glyph smoked to life, and JJ’s glyph burst with light, though whether it was in response to her or Warren, he didn’t know.

“Step back, JJ.”

He did it automatically, used to obeying his leader.

“Oh,” she said, turning her face up to his. Tears brimmed in her eyes, and JJ realized then what it looked like. “Touché.”

He reached forward, grip tightening on her arm. “No—”

She didn’t fight, and she didn’t look away as Warren advanced.

“Your emotion is up, son. Didn’t I warn you about that?”

“How long have you been following me?” JJ asked him, as if Solange—his enemy and lover—wasn’t right there.

“Since Tonya Dane told me you needed following.” He halted in front of them, looking with distaste at Solange, eyes taking her in like she was a snake. “So. You’re it.”

Like she was a thing, an intangible, trash to be discarded. Next to Warren she looked tiny.

“No,” JJ said, before his leader could act. “Wait—”

“I don’t think so.”