by Lan Chan
“Ha. Ha. Start talking.”
Astrid blinked slowly. She sighed. “I don’t know how much insight I can give you,” she said. “It seems I was unconscious most of the time. I remember attempting to teleport you here. Then we were in that room for a few minutes before I fell asleep. Next thing I knew I woke up here. Kai was losing his mind and we couldn’t get a lock on where you were.”
Basil chimed in where Astrid couldn’t. “You both disappeared off the face of the dimension,” he said. “No amount of scrying could pick up any trace of you. I had to scour the MirrorNet for two weeks straight before you made contact. We almost blew up the whole network when we only managed to grab Astrid. It was four days before she woke and could give us enough of an idea of where to find you.”
“But we were in there for less than an hour!” I countered.
“It’s like you don’t understand how magic works,” Diana said. “Whatever dimension that was, time moved much faster there.”
“Speaking of dimension, there were photos of you on the walls,” I told Astrid. She nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “From what I’ve managed to piece together with the First Order, it was some kind of astral projection room. A mixture of my thoughts, some of Chanelle’s, and something else entirely.”
The food turned to dust in my mouth. “Are you telling me that...that she...” I still refused to say her name out loud. Every time I thought about her, it was like a trigger went off in my mind. All I wanted to do was hit something.
“I don’t think even she is evil enough to have conjured up that thing that tried to kill us,” Astrid said.
“That’s not what I saw.”
“The First Order mages are looking into the disturbance in case it’s not an anomaly,” Basil said. “Anything you can tell us…them, would be helpful.” I smiled wanly at his Freudian slip. It made me wonder what Basil would have been like as a proper Order mage with a license to practice his craft with impunity.
I scrubbed at my face and recounted my experience. “You tried to curse the necromancer with an Angelical word?” Basil said.
“Not my brightest idea.”
“You can’t even master basic Fae.”
“I know! It’s a wonder I didn’t blow myself up.” We left unspoken the reason I knew Angelical words. It didn’t bear thinking about right now. “Did you recover the necromancer’s body?”
“What was left of it after Kai was done with him. He wasn’t anyone notable. It makes this whole thing even stranger.” Basil rubbed his eye. “I’ll report it to the First Order.”
After he left, Astrid tugged at a lock of her golden hair. It was the first time I’d ever seen her give way to a nervous habit. “I’m sorry,” she said. She looked at me with such a pained expression I almost burst into tears. “I shouldn’t have allowed my emotions to get the better of me. I just have a poor reaction to Chanelle.”
“Understatement of the century,” Diana muttered. “Yet nothing compared to how Kai went off after you disappeared.”
My nose scrunched. She tapped her chin. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Blue. He deserves a kick in the face for not telling you about the bond but –”
“No buts,” I snapped.
Sophie laced her fingers through mine. “I know you’re angry,” she said. “We are totally not speaking to him right now. But he’s had a rough time with both you and Astrid missing.”
I mimicked playing the world’s smallest violin. Done eating, I pushed the tray aside.
My lips had turned down. “Besides the obvious,” I said, “why do you hate her so much?”
Astrid hugged her knees to her chest. It was more than a little disconcerting to see someone as composed as her turn insecure. “She’s not a very nice person,” Astrid said. I snorted.
“Yeah, I got that,” I said. “But given her...situation, I’d have thought she would try and get along with you.”
“She doesn’t need to get along with me. If she bonds with Kai, she’ll be the woman who restores Raphael’s line. She’ll be the most important Nephilim besides Kai.”
“So what?” I seethed.
Astrid looked at me for a long beat. Her smile was sad. “Last time this happened, she made Kai stop being my friend.”
“She did what now?” Diana asked.
“She has a way of manipulating people to do what she wants. Kai was so angry back then. Our Council convinced him she was his last hope of restoring Raphael’s line. She wanted him to stop being friends with me. So, he stopped.”
Astrid was looking at the floor. One hand formed a shackle where she held her wrist to keep her knees in place.
“That can’t be true,” I found myself saying.
“It is,” she swiped at her face. “She’s very possessive. It wasn’t just me. She didn’t like how close Kai and Max are either. Or how protective he is of Cassie.”
Beside me, Sophie fisted a bunch of my blanket in her hands. As angry as I was with him, I couldn’t believe he would be capable of hurting his friends. “That just can’t be right,” I told her. “He’s stupid, but there’s no way he would cut you out just because someone else asked him to. Maybe there was something else going on. Didn’t you ever ask him?”
He was every bit as protective of Astrid as he was with Cassie. So much so that he’d risked my irritation by bringing her to the Academy when we weren’t technically speaking to each other. Astrid shook her head.
“When he started speaking to me again, I was so happy I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardise it.”
And now I was back to being annoyed. It was no wonder his ego was so massive. If everybody stepped on eggshells around him, he would think he could do whatever he wanted. The jackass.
Astrid cleared her throat. “If you believe he had different intentions with me,” she said, “can you perhaps believe he didn’t mean to hurt you?”
One of these days I was going to make good on my threat and throw something at someone’s head. “It’s different,” I bit out.
Astrid nodded. “Yes, I know. But at the time he made his promise, the circumstances were very strained. He was young. He’d just lost his entire family.”
I hated when someone pulled out the murdered family card. I’d never win that argument. So instead, I pretended I was tired and they left me in peace.
It was impossible to get any peace in this place. After five minutes trying to drown out the high-pitched laughter of the shifter kids, I gave up.
Downstairs was a disaster. Nanna was there with a few other shifters who were in charge of looking after the children. Odette was in the corner of the room cooing over Danielle Thompson who was suspending a fireball in the air.
“There’s a four-year-old playing with fire,” I commented.
Sophie nodded like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Funnily enough, Dani has an easier time at daycare then she does at home.”
“Oh, you mean she’s not that happy with two older brothers who control her every movement?”
She grinned at me. Max was overprotective to a fault, but Charles was still young enough not to be pumped full of lion shifter hormones. Even he turned into a snarling ball of fur where his baby sister was concerned. I wasn’t surprised that she was thriving with Odette who was as gentle as a hummingbird.
“This doesn’t seem legal,” I said, eyeing two bear cubs who were “playing” by wrestling all over the floor. They transitioned between human and bear shape and they were doing a darn good job of destroying the carpet. “Basil must be loving this.”
“Last I heard, he’s thinking of moving.”
Nanna came into the room holding a crown of herbs in her hands. Three cubs followed behind her each holding a crown of their own. One of them was Edward. When he saw me, his chubby little face lit up.
“Less!” Faster than a speeding bullet he was in front of me, offering up the crown he’d been holding. I tried to keep my focus on the upper part of his naked little body. How he d
idn’t catch his death of a cold was beyond me. Then I remembered what he was. Some people had all the luck.
I crouched down in front of him so he could place the crown on my head. The scent of rosemary, sage and chamomile had my eyes misting up. I grabbed him in a hug. When I stood Nanna was smiling at me. “It’s been a long time, big girl,” she said.
When I was little, we used to make herbal crowns all the time. She’d shown me how to run my thumb along the branches of the woodier herbs to make them pliant so they could be shaped. I’d wear the crown twenty-four seven until it turned crusty. Then we’d crush them up to use in our cooking.
“Some things you never forget,” I told her. Edward kissed my cheek. For a second, I was hit with a wave of such tenderness that I almost teared up again.
“So you don’t have an actual issue with having cubs,” I heard Shayla say. I looked towards the doorway where she now stood with Jacqueline.
“Why would I have an issue with cubs?” I asked. This particular cub had his head rested on my collarbone. He was humming something to himself. The first time I’d met him, he’d been chasing a rabbit on all fours in his human form. When he’d caught it, he pinched its tail and then allowed it to run off. I couldn’t imagine a day when his leopard half would become so dominant, rabbits were the last thing he would think about.
Shayla gave me a knowing smile that I pointedly ignored.
“Down, please,” Edward said. I let him go and he bolted to catch up to his friends. For most of the day I managed to avoid all conversation about Kai. Dinner was an exercise in trying to avoid conversational landmines. Basil was all too happy to chat about anything else. As far as he was concerned, Kai was a non-issue. But that was well-established before all of this had happened.
It was evening when Nanna finally cornered me. She led me into Basil’s study. I stifled a laugh at the crayon drawing on the wall. “I take it Basil hasn’t seen this.”
Nanna rubbed her forehead. “It’s the first time I’ve seen it too. I swear we locked this door.” She probably had. Locks were just...well...child’s play for supernaturals.
“Next time get Basil to lock it,” I suggested.
“He’s been threatening to move.”
“Can you blame him?”
She guffawed. “I suppose not. He didn’t really sign up for this.” She sat down heavily on his old - I mean, vintage - leather couch and patted the seat beside her. By the time I’d settled myself, she’d pulled out a manila folder from the bookshelf behind us. I didn’t need to guess what it was. I’d seen that folder at least a dozen times inside the office of the Child Services officer who was in charge of me.
Nanna flipped it open. Her hands shook as she turned the pages. I reached out and took the folder from her and dropped it on the glass coffee table. I’d give anything to produce a fireball like Dani and burn the damn thing.
“When did you get that?” I asked her. She clutched at my hands.
“Malachi helped me apply for it the day after I left Seraphina.” There was that twitch again. I couldn’t seem to temper my reaction whenever anyone mentioned him. Nanna reached out a hand and cupped my cheek. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
I shook my head. “It’s okay,” I told her for the billionth time. She’d been apologising to me every ten minutes since she woke. Like it had been her fault that a demon has chosen to possess her.
“It’s not okay.” She glared at the folder as if it were going to transform into a beast and attack us. “The things you had to go through.” She retracted her hands and slammed them onto the arm of the couch.
“I’m okay,” I told her. I tugged on her sleeve to get her to look at me again. “I’m really okay.”
Her eyes watered. “You don’t always have to be, Alessia.” She hugged me to her, and I squeezed back. She never used my full name unless she was super upset. “Two of those people are in prison.”
“I know.” I’d called it the moment I set foot in their homes. They were up to code, of course. They had to be in order to pass as foster homes. But there was just a feeling in there that had set off something instinctive in me.
“When I think about what might have happened to you....”
I held her shoulders at arm’s length and showed her my fearsome smile. “It’s a good thing I was taught not to take shit lying down.”
She frowned at my expletive. “It makes me sick to think you felt safer living on the streets.”
Safe was an interesting word. I didn’t put much stock in it anymore. Nanna cleared her throat.
“This thing with Malach–”
I dropped my arms. Nanna tipped my chin up when I tried to avert my gaze. “I know what it will cost you to forgive him.” She was just about the only person in the world who would understand. I had no parents. The people who were meant to protect me had either been overworked and underpaid, or had turned out to be monsters. I lived for years watching my own back every second of the day. At this point, self-preservation wasn’t second nature. It was who I was at my core.
“For what it’s worth,” Nanna said, “I lived in Seraphina for months. Even as a clueless human I saw glimpses of the amount of pressure they put on him. The last of his line. The only Nephilim with his ability. Just the very fact he’d managed to retain a small part of himself is a miracle.”
Great. Nanna had joined the Malachi Pendragon fan club. It was an all-ages club it would seem.
“I know, Nan. But would it have killed him to give me a heads up?”
“Maybe it would have,” Nanna said. “Maybe after spending all his time trying to be what everyone else wants him to be, he wanted something untouched by all of that?”
“You know, you’re supposed to be warning me off boys.”
She laughed. “I think Basil does that enough for the both of us.”
She grabbed me and hugged me again. “He’s spent so much of his life fighting for others,” Nanna said. “Maybe it’s time someone fought for him.”
As I hugged her back, I realised that smug jackass had gotten to Nanna. When I got my hands on him, I was going to strangle him. Then he’d really need saving.
5
By lunch time the next day, I still wasn’t feeling any more magnanimous about the situation. But I couldn’t drag this on forever when I’d be seeing Kai at the Academy.
“Can you open up a portal for me?” I asked Basil. Some not so discreet enquiries with Cassie and Jacqueline told me Kai was in the Grove this morning.
Normally, stepping through a portal was instantaneous. This time there was a lag. My muscles bunched at the thought of something snatching me. Great. Now I had portal post-traumatic stress.
Basil’s magic flared. It gathered around me and gave me a push through to the other side. I landed just inside the gate of the Grove. My heart was racing. I wrapped my arms around the old oak tree beside the gate. I pressed my forehead to the bark and breathed in the familiar scent. When my eyes closed, I saw the moss-green lines of the Ley dimension running from the oak into my body. The branches groaned overhead.
With a small yelp, I let go. If I’d stayed there any longer, the oak might have come to life like the trees had the night the Academy was attacked by Giselle. The nymphs would skin me alive if I did anything to their home. I rubbed at the oak’s bark with my hand. Then I made myself walk down the path.
I tried to breathe meditatively. It was working until I got to the Arcana-tree clearing. Kai was crouched down beside the watering pond with the nymphs flying about his head.
I swear I hadn’t meant for the acorns to lift up off the ground. They hung suspended in a wall behind me. Who knew how they suddenly launched at him like a spray of bullets?
The key to good aim for someone as uncoordinated as me is volume. I might not be a crack shot, but with hundreds of acorns at my disposal, at least a dozen of them popped Kai in the back of the head before he realised what was happening.
A flurry of nymphs scattered. They lifted themselves int
o the air above the firing line. Kai turned. His wings snapped out to form a barrier. The nymphs emitted high-pitched screams. I braced myself for their retaliation. To my surprise, a second wall of acorns appeared on the other side of Kai and pelted down on him.
There was no way they thought this was a game. The nymphs tried to give off a benign impression, but they were sinister to the bone. If they could get away with attacking someone, they would. And I was providing them with the perfect excuse.
Kai simply stood there with his wings unfurled as acorns hailed on him. It wasn’t enough. At this point, I could have probably still claimed a smidge of innocence. That went out the window when I layered the acorns in the same magical resonance that I used to phase through objects. It sent them sailing right past his wings. The sound of him grunting as they hit his head again was very satisfying. Not as good as if I had punched him myself, but I doubted I would ever get the chance.
The nymphs hissed their amusement. They waved their arms at me in encouragement. Kai suddenly spun so that his wings became a solid disc. The momentum caused the acorns already in the air to scatter. I drew a circle around myself to protect against being hit by the ricochet. A flick of my hand and I sent them flying back.
Green angelfire created a wall between us. Black-and-blue hedge and bone magic pushed against it. We became locked in a battle of wills. He might be physically stronger, but I would be damned if I couldn’t hold out in a test of stubbornness.
Inch by agonising inch, I pressed the magic forward. Through the transparent layers of colour, I saw his top lip curl into a smirk. That smug jackass thought this was funny. I had half a mind to make the bougainvillea behind him come alive and yank his feet from beneath him. As soon as the thought left my mind, Kai’s angelfire disappeared. The abrupt withdrawal of power caused my magic to surge forward. My physical body staggered with it.
Instead of evading, Kai turned his shoulder and allowed the wall of magic to hit him. I had a second to retract the worst of the energy before I went tripping right into him. The bone magic brushed his aura. I inhaled sharply as my mind was flooded with images of fair-haired Nephilim, their faces crystal clear in my thoughts.