Arc 9 | Chapter 374: Going. Now.
Rafe was going to kill Halen.
It wasn’t the first time he had had this thought, although most of those moments of murderous intent had occurred in their first few years of knowing one another, the other boy having transferred into their class and turned all their lives upside down. Emilia and Halen had almost immediately butted heads, and Rafe—who despite having been friends with Emilia for a decade at that point—enjoyed peace more than chaos. He loved Emilia, though—had loved her since he was a preteen and just coming into his body and the knowledge that he could be attracted to anyone like that; loved her now, despite the distance he had forced between them—and with that love came the responsibility to support her in everything she wanted. Teenage Emilia had wanted to destroy Halen; therefore, Rafe had diligently supported her.
Of course, that sort of undying support wasn’t healthy—he knew that. It was a part of him, however—this obsession written into the core of him that he knew he would never be able to escape. It was what had driven him to aid Emilia so heavily in her war against the other side of their class, just as it was the thing that had left him sliding knives across Warren’s skin, dissecting him while one of the Black Knot’s most terrible skills kept him alive because he had hurt Emilia—caused her nightmares that still trailed her ten years on—and Rafe had needed to hurt him in return.
It had been around then that Rafe had stopped imagining killing Halen. Even before then, he wouldn’t have actually killed Halen—Emilia, for all that she had always complained about the guy, clearly loved playing war with him, and Rafe would never take that from her. After Halen had pointed him Warren’s way, his hands clenched so tightly he was drawing blood as he told Rafe that he was pretty sure it was Warren who had hurt Emilia, and he couldn’t abide someone using his Censor hacks to do that to anyone, let alone Emilia, Rafe couldn’t bring himself to hate Halen anymore.
They were comrades, in a way. They were two souls who hadn’t just killed with one another—regardless of the fact that Halen had walked away and never asked what happened to his terrible, rapist friend he had known what would happen the moment he gave Warren’s name to Rafe—but men who loved the same beautiful, infuriating woman. Rafe wasn’t sure if Halen knew that he knew about that love—and how could he not, when there were so many moments stuck in his memory of Halen’s eyes sliding over Emilia with softness that didn’t suit their antagonistic relationship. Still, Rafe knew, and he wasn’t the sort of person to hate someone who had the good sense to love Emilia—not unless they were a danger to her, anyways. Halen wasn’t a danger to her; if anything, Halen might very well be just as willing to die for her as Rafe or the triplets were.
Still, Rafe might yet kill Halen.
“What. The. Fuck,” he grumbled, wiping a hand over his wet face because Halen had spit his drink all over him.
They hadn’t been talking to one another, just standing beside each other, minding their own business as they waited in a local café for their drinks to be made. Halen had been called first, stepping forward to get his thankfully cold drink. He’d taken a sip, turned, and then—and then, sugary liquid. All. Over. Him.
Rafe’s face was sticky. His shirt was possibly ruined—he wasn’t sure any of Emilia or Halen’s cleaning skills would get the sugar off him. Even under his shirt, his chest was sticky, and it was disgusting and Halen wasn’t even trying to clean him up! Instead, he was just sort of… staring into space— No, not space. Reading something on his Censor.
“What’s wrong?” Rafe asked, activating a skill and cringing when it cleaned up some of the mess but left the unfortunate feeling of stickiness all over him.
Yeah, he was definitely going to need to shower. Immediately.
Halen blinked at him, rapidly, as though only now seeing him for the first time. “What?”
As he didn’t like Halen, Rafe was tempted to roll his eyes and leave—let the man deal with whatever had distracted him so thoroughly he didn’t even seem aware of the cleaning robot trying to move him out of the way so it could clean the floor, it’s automated voice echoing an “Excuse me, please! I must clean here! Just a moment, please! Excuse me, please!” in increasingly desperate tones because Halen wasn’t moving.
Halen, as far as Rafe could tell, didn’t even seem to realize he had just sputtered his drink all over him and the café. Halen, who he had only ever seen flustered by a handful of Emilia’s cruellest pranks over their fourteen years together, was acting too weird, and that was concerning.
“Halen? What’s wrong?” he asked again, reaching out to tug his former classmate out of the robot’s path, before a staff member showed up to force him to move.
The physical touch seemed to jerk Halen out of his… shock? Was this Halen shocked?
A second passed, and then Halen was moving, ripping himself free of Rafe’s grip and bolting from the café. Rafe contemplated whether to let him go or give chase—every time he’d seen someone bolt off like that it was an emergency, and while his family all being Black Knot agents likely skewed the chances of an emergency at any given moment higher, it would be rather terrible to die in an attack Halen had somehow known about just because he had assumed the guy was running off without good reason.
Then, messages slotted their way into his mind.
Most were messages sent to Halen from Emilia. That was odd—while Rafe thought the two might eventually find some peace after graduating and realize they both enjoyed their prank war, he hadn’t thought they’d figure it out so quickly. As he read the messages, sent earlier that morning, they began to make sense: Emilia had finally admitted to Olivier de la Rue that his copy of {Blissful Silence} gave her the ability to stalk him. Fortunately, he wasn’t mad. Unfortunately, he still refused to update it. Emilia had let Halen know—apparently they had met the day before in Seer'ik'tine and discussed it?—and then asked if he had any ideas on how to break the function, so the lawyer would have to update it.
While Halen seemed to think it unlikely he’d be able to, he had still asked for access to the original code and side function that allowed Emilia to see Olivier de la Rue’s vitals. Those vitals had been open on Halen’s Censor as he was getting his drinks, then gone dark as he turned. Potentially seeing the lawyer die had caused the sputtering.
That was… unfortunate? Rafe wasn’t sure. While he knew he should feel bad that someone might have died, with his black knot, it wasn’t something he could actually feel for someone he didn’t even know. He could feel other things about the man’s potential death: frustration for Emilia, as he was considered her last chance at escaping her manslaughter charges; sadness for her, as she had been friendly with him; concern because she was still with him, and what if she was in danger?
It was that last one that had his own feet moving, his drink forgotten on the counter where it had just been set. His long, meandering message log with Emilia popped up, his mind already posed to send off a thousand messages, making sure she was okay. Then, it closed because he wasn’t stupid, and he knew Halen loved Emilia. Even if things between them had been painful and strained—even if they really had hated one another—Halen still would have asked if she was okay if he thought she might not be. Better to just catch up with Halen and ask if he’d been able to contact Emilia, rather than bombard her with ever more messages that could distract her from whatever was happening.
Fucking Halen, though! Where had he gone? Probably the asshole had microsparked off—enough people knew about its existence in The Penns that none of those with the skill would hesitate to use it in an emergency. Was this an emergency? Rafe wasn’t sure, but as he pushed his way into The Black Knot’s security logs for the area, the OIC’s ever watching eyes sending back details of where the guy had gone—Emilia’s house; probably looking for Miles, then?—he decided it was enough of an emergency that he let his own body slide along the lines of the aether. Barely a dozen steps later, he was standing at Emilia’s door, Halen groaning and asking Emilia’s mother if there was any way to contact her husband—apparently there wasn’t.
“Not unless you go through the clones, I suppose. He’s been tied up in important meetings on and off all month.” Marina Starrberg glared between them—two people who she also knew loved her daughter and yet didn’t care for one another. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” they both had the misfortune of saying in unison.
Beside him, Halen tensed, just the slightest bit. Nearly a decade and half of knowing Halen told Rafe he had gotten a message—the man was nearly as flawless in his Censor use as Emilia and Andre were, but there were still signs, and with how tense the man already was…
“We have to go,” Halen told Emilia’s mother, grabbing Rafe’s arm.
His former classmate barely gave him enough time to accept the weird, nauseating tandem skill that allowed one person to move another through microsparking. Not accepting wouldn’t kill the person being dragged along, but Rafe knew from experience it was not pleasant.
“Is Emmie alright?” he asked, glaring around the backyard Halen had brought them to. It took a moment, as he’d never been there before, but when a teenager with curly black hair and deep black skin poked their head around a tree, followed by the dark brown curls and green eyes of a Hyrat clone, he realized it was Halen’s parents’ house.
“You okay?” Halen’s cousin asked, sliding out from behind the tree and surreptitiously tugging at his shirt and if pretty much everyone—except Alaric, Rafe thought—weren’t already aware that Cyan wanted to eat his best friend alive, Rafe thought this would be the moment the clone’s desire to be something more than friends with Alaric would have been revealed to him. Rafe didn’t think they’d been making out behind the tree or anything; rather, it was the way Cyan was watching his friend, eyes devouring every little glimpse of dark skin as the other boy righted his clothing.
Alaric’s soft golden eyes shifted between Rafe and his cousin; Cyan just continued staring at Alaric’s back. Rafe felt sorry for the teenage clone, as he knew exactly how difficult it was to be a lovesick black knot. Hopefully things would work out better for these two than it had for Emilia and him.
“Uh. No,” Halen muttered, turning and bolting inside. “Do you have your willbrand?” he called back.
“Did monsters come out of the sea again?” Cyan asked, his eyes finally ripping away from Alaric to gaze in the direction of the Covren Coast, where they had recently been seeing monsters popping out every other day—something about a recent population boom further out that was leading more towards shore, seeking territory. Mostly they were just annoying, and certainly not something any member of their class would need willbrands to deal with.
“Are we going to war?” Rafe asked when Halen reappeared a moment later, his Censor already sending off a message in their emergency, Emmie Did Something and We Have to Fix It group message—the one that only included their classmates, rather than the bigger, more serious one that also included other people they trusted, like his older brother and Loren. He might yet send something out on that one, but until he knew more, better to keep the circle of people who knew something was wrong small.
Plus, if whatever was happening with Emilia were too big, most of those adults would stop them from interfering, even if most of their class had graduated with more training than members of the military, and certainly more than even many of the clones and Black Knot agents.
A dozen responses immediately popped up, asking what had happened, and annoyed, Rafe contemplated if Halen needed to be added to it. He could be kicked out later, of course, but most of the things in the chat had to do with his war with Emilia, so perhaps he shouldn’t add Halen until he knew more?
More messages slotted into Rafe’s head from Halen: his subsequent conversation with Emilia while she panicked that Olivier de la Rue had vanished. Their conversation had been tense, Emilia clearly believing that something was wrong because Cameron Fulbrun had shown up and started attacking her. Rafe knew Emilia well enough to hear the lingering energy of something else in her words, something she wasn’t—or perhaps couldn’t—tell them. At the very least, Cameron Fulbrun’s attacks didn’t seem too serious—more the Drinarna officer being annoying and thinking that babysitting Emilia and keeping her from causing any disturbance in the city was more important than finding Olivier? Bitch. Emilia seemed to still be engaged in combat with the woman, but Rafe was positive she would win. Still, what a mess, and yes, unfortunately he probably was going to need to add Halen to the group. Worse, it wasn’t even clear if they were going to war; they were, however, going. Now.
Better to start heading to Lüshan and learn everything was fine, rather than wait around and…
And nothing. Emilia would be fine.
She had to be.