Free Of Shadow Born by S. L. Gray

everybody?"
    She was still scowling at him. She took a breath to speak. Closed her mouth, took another, then glared and slammed the door. She stalked past him and back to the couch, where she sat, gripped the edge of the cushion like she might fall off and stared hard at nothing.
    "This is crazy." The words came out a whisper. He heard her take the next breath. It whistled going in. Another followed, then a third, each one shorter than the last. "I don't want to die. I can't breathe."
    Kade came around the couch and dropped to a knee on the floor in front of her. This was something new. She sucked in another short breath with an audible wheeze.
    He scanned the room. There were shadows, yes, but nothing moved within them. No intruders. If this was another attack, how had they gotten to her? Something in the water she drank? Was Dalton in on this?
    "Kade." She snatched for his hand and held on hard. "Purse," she gasped, then pointed. Her lips were pale.
    He followed her finger, springing to his feet when he spotted her bag. She yanked it from his hands when he got close enough and dug through it frantically until she came up with a small cylinder which she put between her lips and squeezed.
    The puff of air sounded loud but took almost immediate effect. "Asthma," she croaked when she could a moment later. She held up the inhaler. "Sorry."
    Asthma. Kade heaved his own breath of relief. Not poison, not an attack. Asthma. And he'd been calling her paranoid. He pushed off the floor and claimed the spot on the couch beside her. "You had me worried," he confessed between her quieter breaths.
    She managed a wan smile. "Me too." When she could breathe silently again, she asked, "The men. The ones who attacked me. They really blew away?" Her eyes were dark, color absorbed by her pupils. She wasn't seeing him now, though she looked at him. Looked through him. Kade could almost see the night’s adventure replaying in her eyes. She blinked and her gaze refocused. She came back to the present with a jolt. "I thought I'd imagined it. That impossible things looked like they were happening because I was nervous. Scared." She made an apologetic face.
    He should comfort her somehow, he knew. He should let her believe she'd made things up, imagined herself in danger where no threat existed. But he'd taken that path before. When his father and brother asked him if things were under control, he'd told them he could protect them and keep them out of harm's way. It hadn't worked then. It wasn't likely to work now.
    All he had was the truth in an answer. "They were real, but so am I. Don't have to be afraid of me. I'm on your side, remember? You just have to put those artifacts back together. As soon as possible."
    She shifted her weight, then leaned against him. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder and sighed. He felt her posture soften as she trusted him to hold her up. After a moment, he slid his arm around her shoulders and she nestled closer.
    "I can't even tell you for certain what all we've got. What are you expecting me to find?"
    "A tablet." That was all he knew. It didn't feel like enough. "Broken, you know. There'll be writing and probably a lot of pieces. It's important that you find them all."
    She tilted her head to look up at him . "What's on this tablet that's so important? How big a tablet, for that matter? What sort of writing?" Her voice steadied. "What you and I think when we hear that word is very different than what an ancient culture would have used. They could put a lot of writing on something very small."
    "I don't know." It frustrated him. Some secrets just got in the way. "Nobody does, one hundred percent. That's the p roblem. Once it's reassembled, we'll know it for what it is."
    "But it could have passed you by." She frowned , sitting up a little. "If you don't know what you're looking for—"
    Kade cut her off. "Trust me when I say that the second this thing resurfaced, bells and whistles went off. We didn't miss