The Brightest Night Read online

  “I could swear I heard someone say it recently.” He lowered his head, stopping when the bridge of his nose brushed mine. “I’m not worried, Peaches.”

  Peaches.

  In the beginning, I thought that was such a weird nickname, but now? Hearing him say that made my heart feel as if it were being squeezed in the best possible way.

  Genuinely curious and disbelieving, I asked, “How can you not be?”

  “Because I have faith.”

  I stared at him.

  “In me.” His head tilted, and I felt his cheek against mine, curving up in a bigger grin. The next breath I took was full of pine and fresh air and so very full of Luc. “I have faith in you. In us. You’re not going to turn into some mindless minion.” A pause. “Unless it’s Halloween.”

  He was referencing my last costume. “I thought you said I looked like Big Bird.”

  “My sexy little Big Bird,” Luc corrected, and I wrinkled my nose. He slid a hand back, curling his fingers through my hair as he gently guided my head until our eyes connected and held. “You’re Evie. You will not lose control. I won’t allow that. You won’t allow that. Do you know why?”

  “Why?” I whispered.

  “Because we didn’t come all this way, survive all we have, only to lose each other again,” he said. “You won’t allow that. I know you won’t, but if you can’t believe in that yet, then believe in me until you can. How about that?”

  Emotion swelled so acutely that when I blinked, my lashes were damp. His words broke my heart and also soothed the sting. I nodded as some of the panic died.

  For a heartbeat, Luc rested his forehead against mine. The simple comfort released the rest of the panic. “Together,” he murmured. “We’re in this together.”

  The shaky breath I took felt clean. “Together.”

  Lifting his head, he stopped to press a kiss against my temple before pulling away. His hand dropped from my hair but stayed against my lower back.

  “I thought you two forgot I was even here,” Eaton remarked dryly, but when I looked over at him, his lined features had softened. “The Daedalus still haven’t taken it into consideration.”

  “Taken what into consideration?” Luc asked.

  “Love.” A brief chuckle followed that one word as Eaton leaned back against the couch. “No matter what they do, they never take love into consideration. It’s like none of them have ever experienced its power.”

  “You have?” I asked, not knowing much about the man.

  “He has.” Luc’s hand moved in a slow slide, traveling up the length of my spine. “He was married once. Had a son.”

  I had a bad feeling none of that had ended with a happily ever after.

  Eaton’s smile was more of a grimace. “Why am I not surprised you know that even though I haven’t spoken about Amy and Brent to Daemon or Archer?”

  Luc didn’t respond as his palm made another pass down my back. He didn’t need to.

  General Eaton didn’t appear to need the answer either as his rheumy gaze met mine. I was sure that when he’d been younger, those blue eyes were as brilliant as the summer sky. “Sylvia healed him.”

  Luc cursed.

  I’d already suspected as much, but hearing it confirmed knotted up my insides. Sylvia … would, God, she would always be Mother, no matter what she’d done. I couldn’t change the way I saw her or how I thought about her, but she had lied so much, and those lies hid terrible things and ugly truths.

  She had been so convincing when she told me about what my “father” and the Daedalus had been involved in—so convincing, so seemingly horrified by how the Daedalus had begun to exploit the Luxen in the pursuit of using the alien DNA to create weapons of destruction and by what Dasher had attempted to do to Luc.

  How could she be that skilled of a liar? Convincing me wasn’t an Olympic-level feat, as I hadn’t known any better at the time, but to lie to my face like that?

  “I listened in on their thoughts but didn’t pick up on any of this.” Anger vibrated in Luc’s voice. “I knew they were using deflection, thinking about inane crap, but to be able to block all of this?” Bronze waves toppled over his forehead as he shook his head. “I should’ve known something else had to be going on there.”

  “It’s not often you’ve had to go up against those who knew exactly how to be prepared when it came to an Origin’s ability to read minds,” Eaton reasoned. “They knew how to deflect your ability, because they had a hand in creating the Origins. It wasn’t a failure on your part.”

  My heart pounded against my ribs as I opened my mouth, about to tell Luc that this truly wasn’t his fault. I thought about when April had attacked Heidi. It took nothing for me to see Emery cradling Heidi against her as the Luxen had slipped from her human skin to her true form, a beautiful human-shaped light so intense that it had hurt my eyes to look upon her. Even though Emery hadn’t been as skilled as other Luxen when it came to healing humans, she’d saved Heidi’s life by placing her hands on her and summoning the Source.

  You do not get between a Luxen and who they love, no matter what.

  That’s what Luc had said when Emery had taken Heidi, and within hours, there’d been nothing but a faint scar where April had put her hand through Heidi, destroying tissue, muscles, and organs.

  So either my mom was skilled at healing, or she still loved that man.

  The world seemed to shift under my feet. Feeling sick, like I might actually projectile vomit all over the floor, I took a step back. I needed distance from Eaton’s words—from further evidence of the fact I never really knew my mother and I would never know what about her, if anything, was ever real.

  Because she, too, was now gone, taking with her all her lies and whatever, if any, truths.

  Luc’s hand was a warm presence along the center of my back, stopping my retreat. His hand was just there, not holding me in place, but even if it weren’t there, I wouldn’t have bounced out of the room like a rubber ball.

  Denial was a luxury I could no longer afford.

  I needed to deal with this, and it didn’t matter how much it hurt to realize that everything about her had been a lie. Yes, my mother could’ve had a change of heart at some point after I’d been returned to her with no memory of being Nadia or any of the training I’d obviously received. That much could be true—could be real. She had died making sure I escaped before the Daedalus could capture me, but none of that changed what she’d done, and I had to face that.

  I had to deal with that.

  Swallowing hard, I lifted my chin and squared my shoulders. I could do this. I’d already dealt with so much—the kind of stuff that would send most to the nearest corner where they’d do nothing but stare at empty space. I’d accepted that there had been a real Evie Dasher who’d died in a car accident. I’d processed that my actual name was Nadia Holliday and then realized that I was neither Nadia nor Evie but a mixture of both and someone completely different. I’d handled the truth that Sylvia and Jason Dasher weren’t my parents. I’d survived an attack by an Origin who had one hell of a grudge/obsession with Luc. I’d stumbled across dead classmates, and it had been me—as a stealth assassin and sort of unaware of what I was doing, but whatever—that had taken out April. I was working on the knowledge that I was capable of doing some real harm and that there was someone out there that could seize control of me.

  Sure, I had some messy baggage, a whole lot of missing memories, and I was possibly a psychotic alien hybrid that may or may not one day go completely banana pants on everyone, but I was still here. I was still standing on my own two feet.

  Luc dipped his head and murmured into my ear, “That’s because you’re a badass.”

  “Stop reading my mind,” I said, and he tilted his head up, winking. I sighed. “But thank you,” I tacked on, because I needed to be reminded of that fact.

  A half grin appeared a second later when my stomach grumbled, empty. The energy bars Luc and I had grabbed before meeting obviously hadn’
t been enough.

  Cheeks flushing, I dragged my gaze from Luc’s. Only I’d be hungry after learning such traumatic news. “Did she … Do you think she still loved Dasher?”

  “I can’t answer that.” Eaton dragged a thumb along his chin.

  “A Luxen doesn’t always have to love the person they’re healing.” Luc’s hand curled into the back of my shirt. “Remember, some are just extraordinarily good at it. Sylvia could’ve been, or she could’ve been properly motivated, something the Daedalus became very skilled at doing. Loving someone means they have a higher chance of being successful, especially for those who aren’t adept or don’t have the experience.”

  “And it also means it’s more likely that the mutation would take hold without the human dying in the process,” Eaton added. “That’s the part the Daedalus could never figure out. There are degrees of science to the process, but there’s a mysticism to it that hasn’t been fully explained or understood.”

  Pressing my lips together, I briefly squeezed my eyes shut. What if she had loved him?

  “She could’ve, Evie.” Luc’s voice was quiet. “Maybe she was feeling a lot more hate than love. Emotions are complicated.” His eyes searched mine. “But it—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Eaton tipped his head back against the bare wall that once had been the color of butter.

  Luc’s gaze sharpened on Eaton.

  “You’re right. It really doesn’t.” And that was the truth, and it hit me with the speed of a racing freight train. There were more important things—stuff that mattered in the here and now. Placing a hand over my still-grumbling stomach, I considered the one thing that could make this situation so much worse. “Do you think she…” Throat dry, I tried again. “Do you think Dasher was mutated?”

  2

  Out of all those who could access the Source, a hybrid was the weakest. They became exhausted when using the Source, unlike Luxen or Origins, and they couldn’t heal. However, they weren’t something to take lightly. Doing so was like saying a ton of dynamite wasn’t dangerous. Yeah, compared to a nuclear bomb, it wasn’t as bad, but it could still take out a city block.

  A hybrid, a trained one, wouldn’t be easy to kill.

  As soon as that thought finished, my eyes widened. Here I was thinking about how hard it would be to kill someone and not about the actual act of killing them. I wasn’t even fazed, which probably meant I was a good candidate for some extensive therapy.

  “What do you think, Eaton?” Luc asked. “Has Dasher gone and gotten an all-new upgraded, sporty version of himself?”

  “I can’t answer that, either.” Eaton dropped his hand to his knee. “I haven’t seen Dasher since the war ended, when I learned about the Poseidon Project. Obviously, we had a falling-out after that.”

  “But if he is, he’s going to be harder to deal with.” I folded my arms over my chest, chilled despite the lack of airflow.

  “Hybrid, human, or chupacabra, he won’t stand a chance against me,” Luc stated. Surprisingly, that wasn’t coming from a place of extreme cockiness. It was just the simple truth. “Or you.”

  It took me a moment to realize he was speaking to me. Surprised, I blinked. Not like I didn’t remember what I’d done in those woods. I’d touched the ground and the soil had moved like a hundred vipers. My words and thoughts had turned to action without me even touching the men. I’d uprooted trees and broken entire bodies with a curl of my hand.

  But it was still hard to think of myself as dangerous.

  “He wouldn’t stand a chance against me if I somehow learn how to … access those abilities and … you know, not try to kill you or any other friendly in the process,” I told him.

  “Technicalities,” he murmured.

  My eyes narrowed. “That’s a pretty big technicality.”

  “Like I said, Peaches, I’m not worried.”

  “You should be,” Eaton commented. “I am.”

  Man, this guy should give anti-motivational speeches.

  “The Trojans are the Daedalus’ crowning achievement. They succeeded where they failed with the hybrids and Origins, eradicating the whole idea of free will and sense of self. They have a true hive mentality, responding to who they view as their m—”

  “If you say master, I may actually break something,” I warned him, 100 percent serious.

  “Maker,” Eaton answered. “The Trojans see Dasher as their maker. Their god.”

  What in the screwed-up-ness in all screwed-up-nesses? I raised a brow at Luc and repeated, “Their god?”

  A ripple of heat warmed the air when Luc growled, “He is no god.”

  “To the Trojans, he is. If he commands them to eat, they do. If he orders them to obey another, they will do so without question. He tells them to kill, they will slaughter without hesitation. He demands that they end themselves, they’d slit their own throats in a heartbeat if provided the blade.”

  Well, I wasn’t sure how it could get any worse than that.

  “I learned of the Poseidon Project shortly after the war ended. Dasher introduced it as the answer to any future hostile invasion and a way to keep existing Luxen in check so that those weaker would have protectors.” Eaton’s eyes went unfocused. “I think in the beginning, that was their purpose.”

  I frowned. “I thought the Poseidon Project’s goal was to run the entire universe, like all cliché villains.”

  “Dasher—like most in the Daedalus—is complicated like Sylvia,” he said, and I flinched. “There are threads of goodness in them, an initial goal of attempting to do the right thing. Dasher believes that the Poseidon Project is the way mankind survives.”

  “Because mankind won’t survive another invasion,” Luc mused, and then he nodded as if he were agreeing on what movie to watch and not the annihilation of the human race. “Not another sizable one. The invading Luxen were barely beat back last time, and that was only with the help of the Arum, which took a huge hit in the battle. There are still more Luxen who haven’t come.” He paused. “Yet.”

  That little factoid was something that had dominated the news in the wake of the war. Experts had estimated that there were still millions of Luxen who hadn’t arrived during the invasion, but when the days turned to weeks, to months, and then finally to years, those statistics were chalked up to nothing more than fearmongering.

  “But there are Luxen here who would fight back.” I thought of Daemon and Dawson, Emery and maybe even Grayson—well, depending on what kind of mood Grayson was in. “Those who’d want to protect their homes and the humans they’ve befriended. Not to mention all the hybrids and Origins.”

  “The moment the Daedalus learned all they could from the Luxen, they stopped trusting them, especially when they discovered that many were aware that more were coming with plans to take over.” Eaton shifted on the flat cushion, seeking comfort that couch had long since given up on. “It’s why they are seeking to neutralize the Luxen through technology and fear. They don’t want any aliens here, and if you ask me, I think they only want certain humans here, ones they deem worthy or necessary. Their thread of goodness has long since rotted.”

  My brows knitted. “You know, after what we’ve been doing to the innocent Luxen who just want to live their best lives, I wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t help fight back and just let us all go to hell in a handbasket.”

  “And there’s that,” Eaton agreed softly.

  “Do you think other Luxen will eventually invade?” I asked.

  Luc shrugged. “Possible, but let’s not borrow trouble.”

  I wouldn’t classify millions of human-hating Luxen as mere trouble, but that wasn’t happening. Yet. The Poseidon Project was.

  “My brain is starting to hurt.” I sighed, and truthfully it was. There was a faint throbbing behind my eyes. Knowing my luck, I was probably coming down with a cold.

  Wait.

  Could I even get a cold now? I wasn’t even sure. All I knew was what I could remember as Evie, and other than minor
sniffles, I hadn’t been sick. According to Luc, the Luxen DNA in the Andromeda serum would prevent any future severe illnesses.

  Too bad it couldn’t prevent a headache.

  Luc’s features softened. “I’ve got a cure for that.”

  Warmth invaded my cheeks when my gaze connected with his heated one. I had a feeling I knew what kind of cure he was talking about. Him. Me. Kissing. Lots of skin-on-skin activities.

  Biting down on his full lower lip, he nodded.

  The heat increased, spreading down my throat. “You’re the worst,” I muttered.

  “I’m the best,” Luc replied, sitting down on the computer chair. It didn’t make a sound under his weight, whereas it had sounded close to dying when I’d plopped down on it earlier. “Tell me what you saw when you learned of this project.”

  “At first, I thought they were Origins, but I saw the way they moved, what they could do.” One side of Eaton’s lips quirked in a humorless grin. “He was so proud of them, like they were his children and he was showing them off. They moved like … God, like there was no humanity to them. Even you … there’s a touch of humanity in the way you move.” Eaton stared at Luc. “More so when she’s involved, but whatever part of them that had started off human had been erased.”

  Unnerved, I swallowed hard. “They were like robots?”

  “No.” His eyes half closed. “They were primitive, like a pack of wolves, and Dasher was their alpha.”

  I think I preferred the robot comparison.

  “As proud as he was of them, he didn’t see them as people—not how you and I see each other,” Eaton continued. “I learned that pretty quickly when one of them lagged behind the others. I think it was someone who had just been mutated. He wasn’t failing at the tasks. He was just behind, and he was only a boy. Couldn’t have been more than sixteen, but Dasher was disappointed.” The older man’s face paled as his eyes closed. “Dasher leaned in, whispered in the boy’s ear, and that kid just turned around and ran into the cement wall opposite of us, slamming his head into it until—God, until there was nothing but a mess left behind.”