Chapter 146: The Wrong Turn (1)

The corridor outside Caius' room was dimmer than the room itself. Most of the wall lamps had burned low, leaving long stretches of shadow in stone. The Crematorium had settled deeper into the night while they talked. The distant murmur of survivors had faded, doors had been shut, and bedrolls stopped rustling.

Misha barely noticed any of it as her feet moved without direction. Left, then right, past an unused preparation room, a rusted iron door, and past several narrow alcoves where old equipment still sat beneath dust. She did not know where she was going, she only knew she needed distance from Astrid, from that yellow orb, and from the every new truth she had learned about Mateo.

Her thoughts would not quiet.

Her brother was alive, and she even met his daughter. Misha should have been laughing, she should have gone back and hugged the girl until Astrid complained about her ribs. Instead, tears were sliding down her face beneath the mask.

She walked faster despite her vision blurring. Twice, her shoulder brushed the wall, and she nearly stumbled into the stone before realizing the corridor had ended.

Misha stood there for several seconds, staring at the stone in front of her, then her legs gave up. She sank against the stone, drew her knees to her chest, and wrapped both arms around them before burying the expressionless face of her mask against her sleeves.

The first sob escaped quietly, to which Misha immediately clenched her jaw as though she could force the sound back inside, but her body refused to obey.

Her shoulders trembled once, then again. The next breath left her in a broken shudder, and whatever strength had held her together finally gave out. She pulled off her mask and pressed her forehead against her knees, allowing the tears to fall because holding them back demanded more strength than she had left.

She had found him, not Mateo himself, but proof that he was alive. At last, she had a trail to follow. She should have felt relieved, so why did the discovery feel so much like grief?

"Why…" the word came muffled against her sleeves. Misha did not even know what she was asking, only that the question had been trapped inside her for too long.

Why had she not found any of this sooner? Why had she remained frozen inside an old memory while Mateo continued living in this dangerous Tower? He found someone to love, built a life, and became a father.

He had become someone beyond Misha and Caleb's older brother.

Knowing that should have comforted her, but it only sharpened the ache. Perhaps that was what hurt the most. Misha had carried an image of Mateo that belonged entirely to the past, untouched by time or change. Now she knew there were entire versions of her brother she had never met and years of his life she might not understand.

Her fingers tightened around her sleeves. It felt irrationally like losing him for a second time. The brother preserved in her memories had vanished, replaced by a man whose life had continued without her.

And yet, amid all that pain, one impossible thought remained warm enough to reach her.

She had a niece.

Her brothers had always been the only family she possessed. The word niece stirred something unfamiliar in her chest, something tender and bright beneath the grief. Misha had found a piece of Mateo.

Perhaps that was why something inside her softened whenever it came to Astrid. The girl was sharp, fiercely responsible to an unhealthy degree, and capable of staring down people twice her age without blinking.

Remembering Astrid's stern expression toward Hiiro drew a broken laugh from Misha.

"Yeah," she whispered, wiping her wet cheek against her sleeve. "Definitely his daughter."

Misha drew a deep breath and forced it to remain steady. She wiped the last of the tears from her face, swallowed against the tightness in her throat, and lifted her head.

"Stop this, Misha," she murmured. "You have to move forward. You can't keep living in the past."

The words were easier to speak than to believe, but she knew they were true. Whatever waited for her could not be faced while she remained chained to memories of what had been taken from her.

Then, a faint sound reached her.

At first, Misha assumed it had come from somewhere farther down the corridor. It was little more than a low breath followed by something softer, almost resembling a moan. She tilted her head and listened.

Silence returned.

Several seconds passed before the sound came again, clearer this time. Her tears dried almost immediately as another muffled noise drifted through the corridor.

It did not sound like pain, or at least not any kind she recognized.

Her brows drew together as she pushed herself to her feet, grimacing when her knees protested after being cramped against her chest.

The sound came from the corridor to her left so after wearing her mask back, she followed it cautiously, her hand hovering near Twinfang out of habit, although the noises became considerably less threatening the closer she came.

A breath, then a muffled murmur, and a faint scrape of fabric against stone.

When Misha approached the corner, she heard a woman inhale sharply. Then, Misha leaned just far enough to look around the edge and stopped. Her hand fell away from her weapon as disbelief emptied her mind of every other thought.

'Oh, you have got to be kidding me.'

Alaric had a woman pressed against the wall. One of his arms was braced beside her head while the other encircled her waist, holding her firmly against him. The woman's fingers were tangled in the back of his hair, and her other hand gripped his shoulder as though she needed it to remain upright.

His face was buried against the side of her neck. The woman tilted her head farther aside and released another breathless moan.

Misha stared blankly. For several seconds, every complicated emotion she had been drowning in vanished beneath pure, unfiltered disbelief.

'Seriously?'

They were inside a crematorium. Injured people were sleeping only a few corridors away, some of them frightened and starving. Yet this bastard had somehow found the time and energy for this.

Misha slowly withdrew behind the corner, her lips pressing into a hard line as her nose wrinkled in distaste.

'Unbelievable.'

Perhaps she should have expected it. Alaric flirted the same way Hiiro searched for monsters to punch.

'What, were you deprived of female contact for too long?'

Considering Alaric, that might genuinely be the problem. Perhaps several consecutive days without someone touching him had caused some rare Valehart medical emergency.

The thought nearly made Misha snort.

She turned and immediately started walking away. Whatever was happening there was none of her business, and she intended to keep it that way. After the emotional disaster of the past half hour, she refused to let Alaric Valehart's inability to keep his hands to himself become the next crisis she had to manage.

"What have we here?"

Misha froze when she heard the voice came from behind her.

She spun around and found Alaric standing only a few paces away, wearing the same amused expression he always seemed to carry whenever he was out of danger.