Revik sighed, but felt his body react regardless. Waiting for the nausea to pass, he turned the wheel of the snowcat slowly, navigating around a stone fountain in the middle of the town square. Then he shook his head.
“No,” he said. “...Not exactly.”
“But that was true? You did cheat on her?”
Revik glanced at the human, flinching slightly at the look in her eyes. “Yes.”
Shaking her head, Cass folded her arms. “Figures.”
But Jon looked between them, his eyes holding a faint wonder.
“So you guys really are married, then?” he said. “That wasn’t just Terian being a dick?”
Revik didn’t answer at first. Feeling both of them looking at him again, he turned, blowing air out from his cheeks.
“Yeah. We’re really married.” Hearing the silence this produced, he glanced over at the two of them again. “Seers are different. It can happen like that.”
“Like what?” Cass said, snorting a little. “Like...overnight?”
“Yes.” He made a more or less gesture with his hand. “Well. What I meant was, before the rest of the mind catches up with it. Ours happened fast. A little too fast for us.” He shrugged with one hand. “Well. For me, anyway.”
She frowned. “Terian said you hadn’t slept with her.”
Revik hesitated, feeling himself tense a little. Then he shrugged again. There wasn’t a lot of point in keeping secrets from the two of them. Not now.
“We haven’t consummated, no.” He glanced at her. “That’s complicated, too, Cass. For seers, I mean.”
She folded her arms, giving him an openly skeptical look.
“So you didn’t want sex with her?” she said. “With Allie?”
“I didn’t say that,” he said, giving her a warning look.
“So what, then? You slept with someone else, so sex isn’t the problem, clearly.” Her frown deepened. “Is marriage more of an arranged thing with seers? Some kind of social contract...like a business thing?”
“No, it’s not a...a business thing.”
“So what’s your issue with Allie?”
He looked at her. “There is no issue, Cass.”
“Is she not your type? Isn’t she pretty enough for you?”
He felt his jaw harden a little. “You are getting too personal for me, Cass. I don’t want to talk about this, all right?”
Anger touched her eyes. Then she exhaled, and he could feel her thinking. Folding her arms tighter, she frowned a little, but nodded.
“Okay. Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
Jon was looking at him, too, his hazel eyes thoughtful. “You think Terian let us go. To find Allie for him.”
Revik hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. I do.”
Both of them fell silent. Revik saw them exchange glances.
“So we can’t go to her at all?” Cass said.
“We can,” Revik said. “First I need to go somewhere where I can jump safely...see what’s going on with the Rooks...the seers Terian worked for. It’s pretty clear he and Galaith aren’t working together as they used to. I want to know how many people might be looking for us. I also want to talk to the Seven...” He cleared his throat. “...the seers who have Allie. I can’t do that here.” He squinted through snow on the windshield to see the sign for the hotel.
“England could be complicated. I was owned...” He paused, letting that part sink in. “I don’t know if my employers will have my place under surveillance or whether they would turn me in to SCARB. My guess is no...” He glanced at Jon before the human could speak. “...It’s more likely my stuff has been destroyed, my space given to another seer.”
There was a silence. Some of the sharpness left Cass’s light.
“Oh,” she said. “That sucks.”
Revik smiled at her. “Not really.”
“So what would we do then?” Jon said. “If that happened?”
Revik blew air out from between his lips. “I know people in London. People who’d let me use their places to jump. People who would help us.”
“Other seers, you mean.”
“Yes.”
Jon nodded, leaning back in the seat and folding his arms.
“All right,” he said. “London it is, then.”
Jon closed his eyes. Watching him lean on Cass’s shoulder, it occurred to Revik that Jon really thought he had a vote.
In the same moment, Revik wondered if maybe he did.
It took him another few breaths to realize that what he felt for the humans was more than just responsibility for having indirectly gotten them into this. They felt like friends. More than that. They felt like family.
Gazing up at the whitewashed sky, he forced the tense part of him to relax as he thought about the reasons that might be. He thought about Cass’s questions about him and Allie, and realized he already knew why that was.