Chapter 17 #2
I studied him—his nonchalant posture, the relaxed expression on his face. It was true that he didn’t look worried.
But why? “What makes you so sure?”
“You’re Titus’s mate ,” Miles replied, looking over our little balcony.
He sounded so detached and so factual. It was as if whatever happened between Titus and me didn’t affect him in any way.
“He’s not going just to let you stay lost. Besides, everyone will be going insane with you being in danger. ”
“I’m not in danger,” I answered slowly, watching him. “I’m with you.”
“Yeah,” Miles replied. “So now they’ll care.”
His words caused my heart to echo in my ears, and my lingering anxiety vanished as my soul ached.
He didn’t think anyone cared about him?
Indignation twisted my heart, and I clenched the blanket in my fists, pulling the scratchy fabric tight over my shoulders. “How could you say that?”
My question was low, but he heard it and returned his attention to me, brows rising.
“What?” he asked.
“Everyone cares about you!” I said. “Did you know Damen keeps a picture of you in his wallet?”
Miles frowned, but the tension remained heavy in his squared posture.
“Julian watches over you too,” I pointed out. “When I’m making a mess of things, he helps me communicate so your feelings aren’t hurt. And what about when he thanked you after you helped him keep his control with Finn?”
“Actually,” Miles interrupted with a frown, “he never thanked me.”
“And sure,” I ignored his statement. “Titus gets annoyed with you, but you usually start it. I know you told me to read The Hobbit to annoy him, but he wouldn’t have dropped work to come after you if he didn’t care.”
“And what about you?” Miles shifted, his jaw locking.
“Me?” I blinked.
“You said ‘everyone’ cares about me.” Miles shrugged.
“But only three out of the four most important people in my life made it into that little speech. How do you see me? Normally, we would have grown up together, but we didn’t.
I’m not blind. I know you don’t look at me like you do at Titus or Damen.
And you’re far more comfortable with Julian than me.
You must have been fine without me there. ”
What was this stupidity coming from his mouth?
“It was my idea to come get you!” I pushed my fist against my chest. “I was the one who wanted to come after you the most. I even cleaned your room .”
Did he even understand how horrible that’d been? Even now, there were still dark corners left unexplored.
Miles opened his mouth, but I wasn’t done yet.
I closed the distance between us, poking his chest. “And how am I supposed to learn how to trust you if you just up and run away?”
“I wasn’t running away,” Miles pouted. “I was going on—”
“— A journey of enlightenment .” I sighed. “I know.”
“Besides, you don’t need to worry about me. You’re Damen’s bodyguard, not mine,” Miles protested, stepping back and waving his hand. His eyes flared with the stirring of a deeper emotion, and his body shook. “You keep trying to protect me, but that’s not your job.”
The argument faded from my lips. “What?”
I was Damen’s… bodyguard?
“Oh, he hasn’t told you yet?” Miles chuckled, and a mean smirk curled at the corner of his lips. “Of course not; it would ruin his image. He’s still trying to impress you. He’s never cared about impressing you before.”
I blinked at him, not liking this darker side of him. “What are you talking about?”
“Mu is Huo’s closest confidant. This means that, usually, Damen would never do anything without consulting you first. He depends on you,” Miles said. “However, he’s also our weakest link—and he knows it.”
“What?” I blinked. So he was supposed to run his plans by me?
“Besides, no one in their right mind will attack me or Titus.” Miles shrugged. “Titus, for obvious reasons, and it’s just bad taste to attack religious figureheads. And most people are too afraid even to approach Julian.”
“Why?” I hadn’t noticed any reason why. For all his posturing and self-proclaimed doom, he seemed normal enough. Although, now that I thought about it, that one kidnapper had been pretty scared of him.
“Because Julian hates humanity,” Miles replied, giving me a strange look.
“The three of them do—that’s what makes them separate from you and me and gives them greater access to their abilities.
But while Titus and Damen are more outwardly destructive, Julian specialized in torture in the past, plus he can murder an entire household without anyone even being aware of his presence or leaving any trace that he’d been there. ”
I frowned. Had this happened already?
“Plus, it’s impossible to lie to Julian,” Miles said. “Even if someone withstands his questioning, he can still discover a person’s secrets through his abilities alone. While Titus is our front line of defense, Julian is the one who kills anyone who makes it past him.”
I stepped back and shivered. Miles was still watching me but didn’t comment on my reaction.
Instead, he continued, “Which brings me back to my original point. Yes, you’re Damen’s bodyguard.
Huo is the figurehead of our group and historically has been the most targeted.
Anyone who bypassed Titus and Julian—Jin and Shui—usually do it through trickery, and you’re the expert in spotting a person’s true nature. ”
My heart was pounding as I stared at him. Why did it seem there was a ‘but’…
“However—” Miles narrowed his eyes, and my mouth went dry. There it was. “Nobody has targeted Huo in multiple lifetimes—not once his weakness had been made clear.”
“W-weakness?” I hugged myself, trying to chase away the chill.
“ You .” Miles’s voice echoed in my ears. He wasn’t even giving me the chance to run away. “You’re his weakness.”
The air thickened. “Wh-what?” I asked. “But Julian said he and I never—”
“Mu has never been with Huo romantically, at least that I know of,” Miles interrupted.
“But there’s always been an obvious interest. I don’t know what happened between the two of you, but I do know that you had an agreement.
Regardless, Officers, the Council, the public—most people are under the impression that something was already there.
People’s focus shifted from Huo to Mu because the easiest way to force any of us into compliance would be to use your safety as motivation. ”
I sucked in a breath.
“That makes this especially hard.” Miles sighed as he rubbed the back of his neck.
“Wh-what?” I asked.
“Like I said, you and I are the ones who care the most about humans,” he replied, pointing between the two of us. “I, however, only had a passing interest. You’re the one who changed the status quo and started the reincarnation cycle.”
I bit my lip. What did that mean? Though, it didn’t seem like the right time to ask.
“You’ve always been interested in humanity—you care about their emotions because you can feel them.
You wanted to learn about this realm, about people, which led the rest of us to follow,” Miles continued.
“That is how you’ve become the emotional center of our group while Damen remained the leader.
You gave us a purpose. You made us see that humans were worth the effort. That people could be good.”
My heartbeat was echoing in my ears. My toes and fingers turned numb.
But… People were mean and scary and took advantage of you. The world was dangerous.
Miles frowned at me, his mouth twisting before the indecision melted from his expression, and he stepped forward, grasping my hands.
“What happened to you represents the darkest aspects of human nature. I wasn’t sure how to say this before, but we’re going to run into some serious problems if you’re not careful. ”
“What do you mean?” My lips felt numb.
“The others…” Miles’s voice was tight, and a hint of regret twisted on his expression. “Their connection to humanity stems through you. If you don’t believe in the people of this world, they won’t either.”
But… what would happen then?
“I—I don’t think everyone is bad…” I protested weakly, pulling my hands from his and fingering the edge of the blanket. I shook my head at Miles’s doubtful glance, my resolve firming. “I don’t!”
He didn’t seem reassured.
“I’m just scared…” My voice trailed off as the expression on his face began to dissolve into something heartbreaking.
I didn’t want him to feel sorry for me.
“I know there are good things in the world.” My skin grew clammy. “I don’t want most people to get hurt…” Only some individuals, explicitly chosen by me. But they didn’t count. “I try to be normal.”
“You are normal.” Miles wrapped his arms around my shoulders as he pulled me to him. His shirt was rough on my face, and his touch was steady as he stroked the back of my head. “I didn’t tell you this to upset you. I wanted to give you hope.”
“Hope?” I sniffled.
“You stopped Damen and Julian from punishing Finn,” Miles said, brushing the back of my hair with his fingers. “I don’t think you understand the significance of that.”
How would it be? Why should Finn have been killed because of something I did?
Now, if they were going to kill him for any other reason? Maybe…
“You keep going back and forth,” he sighed. “As much as it pains me to say this, I don’t think you hate Finn. I don’t think you want to hate Finn. You’re angry that you feel guilty about feeling angry.”
My breath caught—he was so wrong.
I wanted to hate Finn with every fiber of my being. There was absolutely nothing appealing about his arrogant face, the hesitant way he looked at me, his social awkwardness, his smelly socks, or the way he cheated at Old Maid.
Absolutely nothing.
The tight feeling in my chest wasn’t guilt.
It was vengeance.
“You’ve rarely been wrong about people, and he’s been your friend for ten years. You chose him for a reason,” Miles said, maintaining his delusions.
I bit my tongue. I couldn’t respond without questioning my own past judgment.
“I think,” he continued, “you still believe there’s something good about him, something redeemable, and it’s proof that you still have hope in this world.”