When I opened the door, Jessie was nose-deep in her Governing Council tablet.

She smelled faintly of decontamination mist and more strongly of therapy exercise, and she barely glanced up at me as I walked in. "Hi, Kade."

"Hi, Jessie."

Then she dove back into her…whatever she was doing. I let her sit in the comfy armchair that Ellen claimed whenever she was over and focused on the mess in the kitchen. Cereal bowls, some at least a week old, sat on the counter, unwashed. Take-out containers from a half-dozen different restaurants sat mixed in with them. It smelled like a combination of dirty dishes, wet rags, and a citrus-scented candle. It took me almost thirty seconds to find the candle, though. It was unburnt, with the lid open.

"So…" I said.

"Former delver, huh? What happened?" Jessie asked.

I sat down and launched into my explanation for at least the second time today—the third if I counted repeated questions from the various council members. But this time was worse. So much worse. As I explained further and further, Jessie's face grew darker. Her glare grew deeper, and it stayed locked on me. For all that my conversation with the Governing Council had been stressful because of the things I couldn't tell them, here it was the opposite. Jessie knew all my secrets already, and anything I left out, she'd figure out anyway.

When I finally finished, my sister stared at me. Then she walked over, tottering a little as her post-therapy joints tried to betray her, and punched me in the shoulder. "Kade, you massive idiot."

"I—"

"No. You made promises. Lots of them. We were supposed to have a guild. I'd found a place for it. We were saving money—and we were getting close. With the payments for the convoy—assuming you didn't agree to spend it on something stupid—"

I grinned sheepishly. "I'm going suit shopping with Ellen tomorrow."

"God dammit, Kade." Jessie said. She stared at me. Then she hit my shoulder again. "Kade, you promised! You promised me that you'd be okay. And then you come back and try to put off this conversation. If that delver woman hadn't said something, I wouldn't know. I'd still be in the dark, just like…"

"Okay, first of all, her name is Deborah Callahan—"

"That's Deborah? She's the one you've been worried about? Doesn't seem like much to me."

I ignored that. "—and second of all, I was going to tell you all of this, but I was going to do it here, not in public. It was supposed to be a clean explanation, and I was supposed to—"

"No, Kade. It wasn't." Jessie's face was turning red—and not the embarrassed kind. She sat down on the coffee table, pushing a pair of plastic soda cups out of the way. The table creaked under her. I ignored it. "You. Promised. Dad."

I stopped. My eyes met Jessie's, and I looked down. "I know, Jessie. I know. But I promised Ellen and Jeff, too. I only had one way to meet all my promises. I did my best. I'm sorry."

"No. No, you don't just get to apologize your way out of this. You need to solve this. And I don't mean your half-assed 'I can fix it, the GoT will help me' garbage. I mean, I want to know your plan for fixing it. Your timeline. I want to know what your endgame looks like. Ellen might be crushing too hard to push you on it, Kade—"

"How do you…?" I trailed off.

"It was obvious weeks ago. You and her are worse than Stephen and me."

I snorted. "I don't think that's—"

"No subject changes, Kade. I am not going to accept 'I'll fix it.'. You're going to talk to Eugene, and you're going to do it right now. And you're going to come back here with answers."

I started to protest.

But instead, a golden portal opened, and I had just enough time to shoot a glare at Jessie before I was ripped through it and into the God of Thunder's domain. And I found myself face-to-face with a gigantic lightning dragon in the middle of a fit of hysterical laughter.

I waited as thunder peeled in massive waves of laughter and wind erupted from the God of Thunder's mouth. I stared at him—if he'd been human, he'd have been pointing and laughing, and my face grew hot. I was all but ready to attack him. But no. No, I couldn't. So I just kept waiting.

And then I waited some more.

Eventually, Eugene pulled himself together. "Kade Noelstra, if you weren't salvageable, I'd have tried to recruit your half-sister by now. She's even more of a storm than you are, kid."

"Tell me about it. So, you heard all of that?" I asked, sitting down as the God of Thunder transformed from his draconic form into the human-ish one in full Stormsteel armor. He sat on the ground, and I sat across from him. "This is going to work, right? This…thing…you're planning?"

"Yes, this will work. No, it will not be easy. There's a good chance you're not ready for it yet. Let's have a look at that core of yours, shall we?"

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Before I could stop him, Eugene opened my status. This time, I didn't bother looking, but the God of Thunder took his time, and pain ripped through me as he forced my shattered, broken core to cooperate with him. "Hmmm, yes. I see. Yep, this is perfect. Simply perfect. A clean break—Mana-flow into that assist on the consolidation. It's settling nicely, too."

Then the pain stopped. "Kade Noelstra, I'll explain this once so you can explain it to your lightning rod of a half-sister, because I can't have her killing you. Every single monster who walks the Stormsteel Path eventually experiences a core break. It's in the nature of the Path. The storm does not want to be contained, and the steel isn't strong enough to do it by itself. Right now, your core is broken, like you said. And right now, it's a bad idea to try to put it back together. Let's focus on your body."

I expected pain. But, shockingly, it didn't hurt. The God of Thunder didn't try to open some theoretical Status for my physical condition. Instead, he simply stared at me for an awkward amount of time, saying nothing. Then…

"No, not yet. Close. But not yet. We need more time."

"What does that mean? Can't we start now?"

Eugene snorted. "It means exactly what it means, and no. If you want to end up like Tallas—or even stronger—then you need to do exactly what I say. This next step is critical."

"Okay. What is it?"

"Keep pushing your body. You've been doing good work, kid. But your body's going to be taking the brunt of the core repair. No core means all the strain's on you, not on it. Get. Yourself. In. Shape."

I stared at Eugene, eyebrow up skeptically. "That's what I've been doing."

"No, you've been doing your best under your circumstances. You need to stop letting those circumstances control what you can and can't do. Stop trying to get strong enough and get strong enough."

"What?"

The God of Thunder sighed. "Kade, what I mean is that your core and your body are two parts of the equation. Without a core, all the strain I'm about to throw at you is going to be on your body, and right now, you don't believe your body's ready. You still want to rely on your core for your strength. That's understandable. But it's wrong. You need to trust that you can handle what I'm about to help you do. Until you can trust yourself, you won't succeed at it. So, make your body something you trust. In the meantime, I'll work on changing the Hurricane Paragon's core into something you can use. That will take time. Two weeks."

I wanted to respond. But instead, the golden portal opened again. "Your half-sister is waiting. Tell her I said hello."

God, the God of Thunder pissed me off.

I stared Jessie down across the living room, hands pressed to my temples as I thought about what to say to her. Eugene could have given me something. Instead, I had a timeline and a goal. Two weeks to get myself into shape, whatever that meant.

"The God of Thunder says hello. Two weeks, Jessie," I said. "Two weeks, then I'm back in the game. In the meantime, I have a lot of work to do. Apparently, this process will put a lot of strain on my body, so I have to get it stronger to surv—"

"Two weeks. We can make it two weeks. That's doable. So you'll need all your focus, and to be as strong as you can get? We can make that happen," Jessie said, almost like she already knew what I needed to do. "We'll start tomorrow. In two weeks, you'll be ready for…what did he say you were going to do?"

"Repair my core, and reforge it stronger, I guess? It's common on the…Path that I'm following."

"Right. The Path. The Path that keeps trying to kill you?"

I changed the subject. "How have things been going here? You didn't sound confident earlier."

"Oh, they're going. Stephen and I have a date this weekend, and I'm going to wear the dress Ellen helped me pick out. It's Korean barbecue. I've never had that before. And school is…Kade, I'll be honest, school is completely pointless. I'm never going to use the stuff I'm learning, and even Civics is a waste of time. And I know it. This isn't just me complaining, I know what the teacher's teaching us isn't how things work here, but I can't say anything."

"Because the Governing Council—"

"—would come down hard on me, yes," Jessie said. "It's so frustrating, and it's such a waste. If you had a guild running, I could just blow off the rest of school."

"No, you couldn't," I interrupted. I told Dad I'd take care of you. You're finishing school."

"Okay, whatever. I like work more, though."

Deep breaths. Jessie was on a roll. "How is work?"

The roll stopped. Instantly. Jessie clammed up, staring at me over her tablet. I stared back, and eventually, she looked down at the screen again. "It's fine."

I waited. Then I waited a little more. Usually, Jessie broke when I pulled this—I'd learned it from Dad, after all. But this time, she stayed quiet. So I studied her face a little more closely.

Jessie was not calm. And she wasn't in pain—or more accurately, not more than usual. Her eyes weren't screwed shut, or wincing, and she wasn't doing that thing she did when she tried to pretend she was fine.

No, her eyes were open wide. And her hand was shaking.

"What's wrong, Jessie?" I asked. "What happened at work?"

"Nothing."

"That's a lie." I kept my eyes locked on her as she looked at the floor. "What happened?"

Another long wait. Then she cleared her throat. "Okay. You're right. Something happened while you were gone. I'm not in trouble or fired, or anything. The Governing Council doesn't even know anything's wrong—and I'm not going to tell them. I'm not going to tell you, either, Kade. Not yet."

"Yes, you are." I stood up. "I promised Dad—"

"You think you're the only one who promised Dad something?" Jessie asked. Her eyes narrowed, the terrified look replaced by a storm of anger, and I tried not to flinch. "I told him I wouldn't let you break yourself, no matter how hard you tried. What happened at work isn't something you can help me with. Not right now. I promise I'll tell you in two weeks—the second you're a functional delver again. Then you'll be able to do something about it, and I'll know what I want to say to you. Okay?"

"No." I took a deep breath. "No, it's not okay. You're terrified, and—"

"I'm not afraid for me, Kade. I'm afraid for you. This isn't about me, it's about you, and if you show up like you are, you're going to get hurt. And it won't be because…it won't be because of my secret. It'll be because you just can't stop yourself. You'll get in a fight like you used to, but it'll be against someone stronger than Jeff, and—"

I put a hand on her shoulder and stared her in the eyes. And then, after she shut her mouth and took a few breaths, I said the hardest thing I'd ever had to say to anyone. "Okay, Jessie. You're scared, and you don't want me to get hurt, and I appreciate that. I'll let it rest. But if you change your mind…"

"I won't. There's…the person who's involved wants…there's no time issue. Not really."

"Okay," I said again. "We'll drop it for now."

"Thanks." Jessie gave me a hug, and I returned it.

And my phone went off in that exact moment, making both of us jump.

I thumbed my phone open and answered the call. "Jeff, what's up?"

"So, Kade, I have a problem. I'll be at your place in ten. Can we talk there?" Jeff asked.

I cleared my throat and raised an eyebrow at Jessie, then said, "Sure, Jeff. Ten minutes. I'll be waiting."

"Great," my best friend said.

Jessie groaned. Then she gathered her tablet and laptop. "I'm heading to bed."

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.