Through the Static by Jeanette Grey Page B

the restraint it took not to close the distance—to take her in his arms and to feel her face between his palms. To capture that soft, red mouth.
    â€œLook at me.”
    His gaze darted up to meet hers, and thoughts of soothing the ache with his touch faded away. She was still so skittery and angry and wanting for a reason to trust.
    They needed a different kind of congress entirely. For now.
    Her voice shook as she stared him down. “Who do you work for?”
    This was so against protocol. Every instinct told him to stop, but he wouldn’t lie or evade. Not to her. Not now. “I don’t know. We have one contact. Codename Spellcaster.”
    If she knew the name, she didn’t show it. “Who are you?”
    It was the same question he’d asked her the night before. She’d never given him a satisfactory answer, but she hadn’t had to, then, had she? Now she was asking it of him after giving him his freedom—after taking away everything he knew in one fell swoop. And all he could give her was himself.
    â€œThey call me Jinx.”
    â€œIs that your name?”
    His chest swelled with a depth of emotion he didn’t remember ever feeling before. In all this time, no one had ever asked him his name.
    Truthfully, he answered, “I don’t know.”
    The barrel of her gun lowered by a fraction of an inch, and his breath deepened by the same increment. “What do you know?”
    God, but it was a loaded question. Still floored by her question about his name, his thoughts dwelled in the past, and the past, murky as it was, threatened to consume him. Unbidden memories rose to the surface, disjointed flashes from those first few painful, terrifying days after he’d awoken to a world of blinding white, his head full of two new voices and his own mind not entirely his own. He hadn’t remembered anything. Not at the time.
    â€œNot much,” he confessed, taking no pains to hide his recollections from her. She grimaced against the onslaught but stayed firm, her jaw strong. “At least not at first.”
    She raised a single eyebrow, an invitation to talk. He hadn’t realized until that second how his silence had been weighing on him.
    Words began to pour out of him, things he’d kept buried inside for so long, and with each one, the pressure on his ribs seemed to lift. “All I knew back then was what they told me. That I’d been alone, unhappy. Without prospects. That I’d sold myself into this life. I’d probably been a criminal, or…worse.” His gaze darted to hers, and even as the burden of the last seven years left him, he felt other parts of himself locking down.
    Like the hope that she would want to stay with him, after this.
    He clenched his jaw and forced himself to keep going. “Memories started to come back to me, though. As the link degraded, I got more and more, and I…I don’t think I was alone. Before.”
    â€œNo?” Her breath hitched and there was an anticipation of pain somewhere just beneath her thoughts.
    â€œNo. There was a woman. I see her sometimes. Just a wisp in the static. But she…” He refocused his crossing eyes and looked into Aurelia’s to find them hard. The implication was clear, and it was so, so wrong. He had to set her straight.
    His voice went contrarily soft as he confessed a truth he’d never given breath to before. “She has my eyes. And she looks so disappointed in me. In the things I’ve done.”
    Aurelia let out a rough sigh, and a shiver racked her frame. “Your eyes?”
    â€œThe very same.”
    â€œYou think she was family?”
    The admission made this throat rough. “Yes.”
    She lowered the gun completely, even though her grip didn’t ease at all. Instead of disgusted, her eyes shone with a compassion he didn’t deserve and that made him ache. “What have you done?”
    He had just enough control over