24. Atlas

24

ATLAS

" P lease tell me we're not really thinking about letting her go through with this shit, right?" Darius narrowed his eyes as he approached the table.

I was sitting in the restaurant, at the far back table, where I'd asked them to meet me.

Max was with Rowan, Izzy, and everyone else who was trying to reorganize and hold things down while everyone processed the shit show that those ridiculous tandem missions had been.

Charlie and Bishop's immense presence in this place only became more obvious by the struggle to fill their roles.

I clutched my coffee mug, shoving thoughts of Bishop away.

Charlie's scream still reverberated through my skull whenever I let myself linger on that moment, on the sheer despair of it.

I was supposed to bring him back to her.

To their child.

Instead, he was just gone.

Wade and Eli made their way over, both of them looking as exhausted and burdened as I felt .

Darius grinned as he studied me. "No, you won't let her do it. You have a plan."

Wade's brows raised at that, some of the weight he was carrying temporary lifting. "You do?"

Eli spun the chair next to me around and sat down, his head resting on his arms. His eyes were dark, lined with shadowy bags, devoid of the spark and arrogance I was used to.

He glanced at me, and straightened up, like he could feel my pity. "Where's Dec?"

"Here," she yelled, rushing through the door. "Sorry, lost track of time getting Mavis settled in."

Right, Mavis.

Fucking hell, what a mess that kid was.

Whatever The Guild had done to him made my early relationship with my wolf look like a healthy, co-beneficial partnership. I had no idea if he'd ever come out of it—if even an echo of the man I knew still existed in there at all.

If Bishop sacrificed himself for a ghost.

I took a sip of my coffee, cringing at the tepid temperature. I must've been sitting here, lost in my thoughts, for longer than I'd realized.

"I've been thinking," I cleared my throat, blinking the memory of Bishop's final breaths back, "about the fact that there are only two council members left."

The four of them studied me, a panoramic of equal parts hope and impatience.

I focused on Wade. "Whenever a council member dies, what's the first thing that happens?"

"Another is anointed," he said, not missing a beat. "So what?"

"So, if what we learned was true," Dec's brows pinched, and I could see her already putting together the puzzle pieces of my plan, "two had already died before our mission. From their fucked magic infusions. Likely a while ago. "

"So what?" Eli echoed Wade's question, but with a far more cynical tone. "Good fucking riddance."

"They didn't name any replacements." Wade sat straighter, the tremor of interest tugging at a muscle in his cheek, below his right eye. "And they probably won't be in a rush to fill the three other seats we left newly-vacant either."

I nodded. "Exactly. Why?"

Eli sighed. "Why the fuck does it matter?"

"They want the power for themselves," Wade continued, a spark of something lighting his expression. The kid always loved puzzles. And while Dec was better at reading me, often following my thoughts down to their logical conclusions before even I'd reached them, Wade was the real problem-solver of the group. "They're going to use this as a chance to move the seven-person council down to two—" he grunted, "or, better yet, probably a one-person dictatorship. More power centralized, less arguing about how things are run."

I nodded. "Which means that those who would likely otherwise be in the running, might be disappointed by this new shift in protocol, this abandonment of tradition."

Eli grunted. "So what? The council is greedy, let them kill each other off. They're hardly our biggest issue at the moment."

"You want to sew discord and chaos." The corner of Darius's mouth curved into a hook. "Turn them against each other. Fantastic."

"We don't know where the final two council members are right now." I scanned around the room, but we were alone. The restaurant wasn't open today. Charlie was usually the one cooking and running it. Everyone was giving her some space to grieve, but this place was like a cold shell compared to the usual warmth and conversation that flowed over lunchtime. "And we don't know how to get in touch with them, or where they're keeping the stone. But?—"

"But those who are feeling shafted, might know the answer to both of those locations," Declan finished for me, her nose twitching as she tried to hold in her excitement. I understood. It felt wrong being excited about anything right now. "And unlike the untraceable council members, Arnell can get us a line to them. They're reachable, less protected." She arched her brow. "And if we can spark that discontent into a flame, perhaps we can convince them to give the remaining council members up. A trade."

"Not a trade. A coup." Eli ran a hand roughly through his hair as he considered, his expression softening some. He nodded. "We offer to get rid of them, do their dirty work. They can't do it. But with Max and her power, we're stronger than they are. Not a terrible idea."

"Sorry, but how exactly does this save Max?" Darius asked with a shrug. "I'm all for fucking with The Guild, and this isn't the worst plan I can think of for getting the stone and killing those last two dingleberries, but it seems this plan just pushes us closer to the ritual. Closer to—" he swallowed, not finishing the thought.

We all felt the heaviness of it anyway.

"I've been thinking," I glanced at him, "about what they said to you. Promising to bond to her, to use her power—that if she bonded to a full council, she might survive somehow."

"She'll never do that," Eli groaned, "didn't you listen to her? She's determined to just throw the fucking towel in rather than give them any more power?—"

I raised my hand, nodding. "I know, I know. What I'm saying is, what if we become that council. What if we find a way to anchor her?" I glanced at Wade, gesturing between him and Darius. "Like what you just did, spreading the weight of his magic through the bond, letting Max reshape it? What if we did that for her, but on a larger scale. If giving her power to shadow-tainted council members might save her, why can't we do that instead? The five of us? Get them to tell us how they were planning to save her, to use her power to keep them all alive. But instead of destroying the hell realm or sealing it back up, we bring down the barrier for good."

"We kill them and use our bond to save her instead." Eli's brows lifted, impressed.

I turned to Darius. "You said that one person could never survive that amount of magic coursing through them. We share a link with her—a true bond. That has to be better than whatever bullshit the council would try to forge with her."

Eli grinned. "One person couldn't survive it, but maybe the six of us could, together."

"Exactly," I said. "We spread it through all of us, carry it alongside her—maybe she doesn't die?"

"Or maybe we all do," Declan added, though there wasn't any resistance in her tone, just a simple acceptance of the fact. "Two council members died from just their miniscule injections of magic that wasn't theirs, and one of them ended up a flesh-eater who was as good as de—" she paused, her eyes darting briefly to Eli, and I knew, like mine, her thoughts had shifted to Seamus. "We might die too. That kind of magic, we don't know what it'll do to us. How it might change us." She shrugged, "but if that's our best option, I'm in."

"I'd rather die alongside her than watch her shift into the afterlife without me," Darius sat back and sighed, looking oddly calm and collected for someone potentially forfeiting their life, "far more tolerable than being left in this world without her anyway."

"She'll never agree to it," Wade shook his head, "there's not a chance. Not if she thinks any of us might die."

"That's not her choice to make," I said, my voice more clipped than I'd intended. "She kept her plan from us. For months. And if she expects us to respect her decisions, her autonomy, then we're owed the same. "

Dec took a deep breath, exhaling on a sigh. She considered for a moment, then nodded. "Agreed."

"We keep it from her until the end then," Eli met each of our eyes, as we nodded. "Which means she can't come with us when we shake down the council's underlings. She's smart. She'll figure out what we're up to, and there won't be a way to talk around the details we need from them."

"Someone will stay here, distract her," Darius agreed.

"And once we have what we need from the council's former minions, we leave no witnesses," Dec added, her face unreadable but for the unflinching flare of violence in her eyes.

"Not just a coup of the remaining council members, but we cut out those excited to take their places too." Eli considered for a beat, clearly surprised and impressed with her ruthlessness. He nodded. "I like it."

"And we do it soon, before they have time to regroup," Wade added, the wheels in his mind spinning on full throttle now. "We ask Arnell to get us in touch with them immediately."

Darius cleared his throat. "When it's time, I may know of some back up that we can enlist in the fun."