33. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Celeste
“Goodnight stars, goodnight air,” Celeste whispered, “goodnight noises everywhere.”
Beside her, the twins’ eyes had closed. Slowly extracting herself from between their beds, she rose soundlessly and clicked off their zoo-themed lamp. A sound machine hummed in the corner by their nightlight.
Padding toward the door, she snuck out and closed it behind her. The house was silent. When she’d stopped by several minutes ago, she had found Zeke asleep with his head on the dining room table. He’d been working through plans for the additions, pencils and drafting paper spread out around him.
After the destruction of the Missouri clan lands, Zeke had moved all of them to Ontario. The Canadian location had never been uncovered by the Citizens , and though the threat was gone, everyone felt safer there.
Since the battle, Zeke had thrown himself into work. Every waking moment, he had busied himself with moving their people and ensuring everyone was faring well in the aftermath. The sole remaining sovereign of their double clan, he had been forced into an unenviable position.
Nina’s sacrifice had changed him. In the days since his mate had collapsed, he had met with every member of their combined clans to ensure they knew what had happened. Zeke had personally ensured no one had felt abandoned—and knew that his mate had saved their lives.
Reinforcing the neural net had come next. Those clan bonds that had been linked primarily with Nina before had needed solidifying, the overlaying structure allowing for Zeke to reinforce the links getting weaker by the day.
He gave and gave of himself to the point that even his immense power became overtaxed. Celeste wasn’t certain how long he could continue down this path—and it worried her.
As she crept down the hallway, she stopped outside the first door on the right, as she always did.
Two weeks had passed since Nina had gone to sleep. In the aftermath, they had abandoned the cursed territory where she’d fallen, ensuring no one would be forced to live with daily reminders and get stuck in grief. Regardless of her environment, Celeste felt was unable to move forward. Her best friend lay stricken with no hope of waking, and she hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye. Arguably worse was the note Nina had left for her mate.
I’m so sorry, Zeke. It was the only way.
Questions continued to plague her. Nina had felt compelled to give her life with no other way out, and none of them knew whether she’d been strong-armed into sacrificing herself. Even if she hadn’t been, why had it been the only way?
Walking out of the home and into the night, she made her way back toward Tzuriel’s house. With housing scarce until they built more, she’d elected to bunk with Zeke’s cousin. She’d been staying with him and his mate for the last few weeks as she adjusted to life in Ontario.
By the time she got there, so no longer felt like going inside. Out on the porch, she didn’t have to explain the state of melancholy she existed in—and she didn’t have to fake her smiles. Celeste’s hands curled around the painted railing, the wood groaning as she worked through the anger that never seemed to dissipate.
No one had answers. The three people who could’ve shed light on the situation lay comatose, essentially brain dead.
A crack split the silence.
Startled, she jerked back from the railing, finding it in splinters beneath her fingertips. Sawdust drifted to the porch beneath her feet while the sound of movement inside caught her attention.
Tzuriel.
Zeke’s cousin had taken on nearly as much responsibility as their sovereign. When he wasn’t helping to draft the plans for expansion, he was running interference on the Lexington clan lands. Someone had needed to take charge of overseeing the territory, and Tzuriel had offered. Every lieutenant was running on fumes.
Nina’s brothers had blamed themselves for not seeing the signs of her choice, and the symptoms that’d followed in its wake. While Aidan had thrown himself into reorganizing and revitalizing his nation, Kaien had done the opposite.
The Raeth healer had very much retreated into the comfort of his mate, and Blair hadn’t weathered Nina’s injury well either. Every day, Kaien attempted to heal Nina’s mind, and Zeke continued to funnel his amplification into her to the same fruitless results. Most of her vampiric fledglings had come to Ontario at one point or another, hoping their presence would spark something within their sire.
Nothing had made any difference to her state.
The door behind her creaked open and Tzuriel came out to stand quietly beside her. His calming presence conflicted with her volatile one. He asked nothing of her, simply aligning himself with her in a show of his support.
“I’m sorry about your railing.”
His good-natured chuckle said he didn’t care. “I’m heartbroken, truly.”
Celeste’s lips kicked up at the corners before she remembered the situation that’d brought them here. “Zeke passed out at his work again.”
A beat of silence. “I know.”
“He’s wearing himself out.”
Tzuriel’s face pinched slightly before he echoed, “I know.”
Despair gripped her, and Celeste drowned in the loss of everything she’d held dear. Pivoting to face him, she stared him down.
“What happens when he can’t give anything more, Tzuriel? When he runs dry?”
“We need to give him time, Celeste. Zeke’s just lost his mate—without warning. The future is unknown, and unlikely to bring about her recovery. I’m hopeful he will eventually—” he paused to find the right word, “settle down. This mania can’t last forever.”
Her eyes closed. Though Tzuriel still carried hope for Nina’s return, Celeste could not. One look inside Nina’s mind had shown her the same thing that everyone else had found: she was gone. Her heart still beat, and her lungs still drew breath, but there would be no miraculous cure.
Isaiah and Key, the two other Raeths who’d succumbed to the same psychic injury, were existing in the same state. Neither had woken, nor would they ever.
“Kaien took the scout tonight,” Tzuriel mentioned as he drew her back to the present. “Go be with Blair. I think both of you could use it.”
Twenty minutes later, Celeste was knocking on the door of Kaien and Blair’s home. She held a bag of microwave popcorn, chick flicks she’d rescued from her former home on Missouri clan lands, and far too much chocolate.
Anxiety pinged through her as she waited for the vampire to open the door. The pair of them hadn’t spent any significant time together since what’d happened with Nina. So often, it’d been the three of them. The empty stoop beside her only reinforced her absence.
Movie nights had been their favorite pastime.
Blair’s face appeared in the shallow gap between the door and its frame seconds later. Two weeks had taken their toll on the vampire: her hair hung limply around her features, her clothes were disheveled, and her eyes looked lifeless.
Celeste did her best to smile. “Let’s watch a movie, Blair.”
The vampire didn’t move for half a moment, igniting Celeste’s fear that her friend didn’t want company. When bad things happened, everyone reacted differently. While Celeste had turned to anger, Blair had turned inward to numbness. If the vampire sent her away, there was nothing she could do to convince her that company might be a step in the right direction.
Blair gave her a watery smile. “Okay. That sounds good.”
Throwing themselves into the pretense that everything was okay for the night, they mockingly quarreled over movie selection and the best seats in the house. Celeste gathered an armful of chocolate and teased Blair relentlessly over her liquid diet while the vampire mimed a gag.
It was faking it until they made it, and they each did it for the benefit of the other.
By the time the movie was finally playing, everything felt exactly like before, minus one vital person. Despite the movie being one they both loved, neither was able to lose themselves in the flick.
No more than thirty minutes into it, Blair asked, “What are we doing, Celeste?”
“Why, we’re watching Bridesmaids , Blair.”
The flair of humor in her voice died on her lips. The vampire’s blank stare at the screen was sobering. Celeste bit the inside of her cheek. The air had grown stagnant between them, and it was everything she could do to speak the truth.
“I don’t know,” Celeste admitted. “Trying to go back to life, I guess.”
“Nina’s gone,” Blair replied. “But she isn’t gone . Zeke is throwing himself into his work but won’t admit what happened to her. I’m worried that he’s half a step away from losing it completely.”
Any answer failed her.
Pulling at the hem of her sweater, Celeste could only shrug and drown herself in the rest of her now tasteless alcohol. “I don’t know how to help him.”
No one did.