“Sounds like you cared for her a lot.”
“It wasn’t hard. I think Egan and I became surrogate parents for them all.”
“Which would have made leaving them there even harder.”
I flinched slightly as the knife pressed into my skin, but it didn’t really hurt as much as I’d expected it to.
“Yeah.” I tried not to remember Carli’s tears or the fear in the other little ones’ faces when we’d finally told them what we planned. “Sanat is eight, Tate and Marco are nine, Cooper is thirteen, and Jace is fifteen.”
“And how long have they all been in there?”
“Carli’s been there the longest—four years.”
He grunted. “Did you ever see your mother?”
I shook my head. “They kept us separated at all times.”
The knife dug deeper. I winced and clenched my fist against the need to jerk my foot away.
“Then how did you know your mother was a captive like you?”
“Because I could feel her. And she was able to contact me twice.”
“If sea dragons share kin telepathy—”
“And they do.”
“Then why weren’t you able to contact her more than that?”
The knife twisted in my flesh. “Ow!” I said, then added, “I tried, trust me. Whether it was the drugs that stopped me for so long, or something else entirely, I don’t know.”
“But she was the one who warned you about your dad, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. But that was the first contact we’d had for years.” And her mind had been a jumbled mess of confusion and distance. Only her fear for Dad had been sharp and true.
“Got it,” Trae said, and held out his hand for inspection.
Sitting in the middle of his palm was a small disk little bigger than a freckle. Only it was metallic and shiny looking.
“You sure that’s it?”
There was doubt in my voice and he smiled. “Well, unless it’s part of your unique body makeup to have circuitry in your flesh, then yeah, I’m sure.”
I studied it dubiously. “So what are we going to do with it?”
“This.” He dropped it on the floor and smashed it with his heel. “Hopefully, that’ll end the problem.”
I frowned at the metal bits on the floor. “Not necessarily. They might be on their way here right now, for all we know.”
“Which is why I’ve set up perimeter alarms. We’ll have plenty of time to sneak away should they come.”
“Air dragons can fly over alarms.”
“But the scientists can’t, and any attempt to disconnect them will set them off anyway.” He reached out and caressed my cheek with his thumb, his touch so soft, so warm and somehow so caring, as if he were touching something very precious.
It made me feel good, and yet in some ways, it scared me. I didn’t need another reason to be afraid, and those damn scientists had already snatched away too many people I’d cared about.
“How’s the shoulder?” he said softly.