Chapter 8
He had lost his mind.
He saw it in the way Vandor followed up his orders in a robotic, uncomfortable way, collecting the golden and black pillows like holding a drowning kitten, while expertly avoiding Kylix’s gaze. The man could kill any criminal without doubt, but this was out of his comfort zone.
As it should be. They were soldiers, not baby cuddlers.
“You’re bringing your little fling?” Helianth frowned when he took in Mirel. “You even let him dress in your Invar suit?”
“Not my fling. And he’s cold without it.” Kylix hesitated. His veins flickered with fire when he took the chain and cuffed Mirel’s wrists. He had no explanation why he’d decided to bring Mirel along. He simply knew he had to. Had to stay close to him.
He told himself it was logic, not need. Keeping Mirel near meant watching him, containing risk, nothing more.
Yet every time the man moved, Kylix felt the air tilt.
The silence between them itched. When he reached for the collar, his fingers lingered too long.
He felt the pulse under the skin, quick and defensive and alive.
It made his own heart answer like a match to flame.
Vandor saw it. He looked away fast, the perfect soldier pretending blindness. It only made the shame worse.
Straightening Mirel’s collar, Kylix leaned in and breathed in his scent. Then, because he couldn’t contain himself, he flicked his tongue out and dragged it over Mirel’s throat, up to his earlobe. “Behave,” he murmured.
Mirel shivered, golden eyes flaring with something between rage and shame. Kylix looked over his shoulder and saw he’d only managed to finish one single piece of bread so far.
“Vandor, pack up the food too.”
“Yes, sir.”
They left the Waltr and moved into the darkening light.
It wasn’t late, but winter had struck upon them, frosting the streets lightly.
Cold hissed off the pavement. Lamps burned with haloed light, snow granules drifting but not settling.
Mirel’s breath smoked. Kylix’s did not. For the first time he noticed how the air refused to bite him.
Fire bled from his veins into the atmosphere, warding the cold like ownership.
“The suit has heat-reactive fibers. It should regulate your body temperature.”
“T-thank you.”
Kylix hummed, satisfied, then glared at Helianth’s baffled look. “Report to me.”
“A call came in when I was with Enzo.”
“And where were you with Enzo?”
Helianth had the decency to look embarrassed. “In the office. But—”
“You shouldn’t have been in the office. You got badly injured.” And Kylix had felt himself horribly guilty for it.
“I know, but I was bored. Besides, if I hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t have known, right? With your multi-slate being on mute and all.”
Kylix clicked his cousin’s cheeky grin away. “Fair enough.”
“Are you going crazy?” Helianth whispered.
Yes. He totally was.
“Who’s this guy? Why are you chaining him and bringing him on business?”
Because he couldn’t leave Mirel alone. But he’d rather bite his tongue than speak that truth.
“Don’t worry about him. Tell me what happened when you were with Enzo.”
“Yes, so we heard the tech team going crazy. Some software hack caused the prison bars to just open. Can you believe that? I thought the prison was unbreachable.”
Kylix pushed Mirel inside the hovercar until the other man nearly fell face-first onto the pillows. He was pissed off for taking him, for his heart giving such misleading information to his brain. “It should be. We’ve never had any escapes before.”
He sat down next to Mirel, pressing his thigh against his. The hum of the hovercar was steady as a heartbeat, too confined for safety. Every turn threw their shoulders together, every silence made the air denser. Kylix told himself the heat came from the engine, not from him. “Comfortable?”
Mirel flinched at the touch, but didn’t move away.
The warmth bled through the thin fabric.
Kylix watched the pulse at his throat, small and frantic.
He told himself it was curiosity. He was learning how the body reacted, how the frost behaved under stress.
Still, his hand drifted closer. Not a command this time, only contact.
The chain clicked once, settling between them like a word neither dared say.
Mirel stared at him with wide eyes. He looked as baffled as Kylix felt. “Y-yes.”
“Good.” Kylix handed him the packed food. “Now, eat.”
The car left the curb.
Across from him, Helianth sat, eyes darting to Mirel.
“How many of them escaped?” Kylix asked.
“Five, including Bekn and some medical doctor.”
“All Attica members?” Kylix was already busy typing on his multi-slate, hating to have been temporarily indisposable.
He was Head, he was control, he should have been the first to know.
“They’re still checking background details,” he confirmed before Helianth could answer.
His cousin still looked pale, but the past few days had healed his earlier injuries.
Right now he carried that same enthusiastic look in his eyes that made him remarkable and loved by Helions.
“I want to be on the case with you, Kylix. I’m feeling much better. I can do this.”
Kylix nodded. He hadn’t expected anything less. “Of course. We’ll get those bastards. And when we do, they’ll regret ever having gotten in our way.”
They arrived at Moargan’s mansion when the sky had gotten fully dark. The car stopped in front of the door. Against it leaned Aviel, smoking a red-cinder cigarette. It glowed in the blackened light, sparks catching the frost in the air.
“Are you going to take him inside?” Helianth asked.
“I—” Kylix glanced at Mirel. He had finished his food and had dozed off. He seemed to do most of that these days, in his attempt to catch up with normal life. Eat, drink, sleep. He should just let him rest in the car.
But he didn’t want to.
He watched frost bead along the window. Mirel’s reflection looked almost peaceful, lashes pale against bruised eyes. Kylix had the absurd thought that waking him might break something sacred. He brushed the back of his fingers over Mirel’s hair.
Besides, there was no delaying this any longer. He hated hiding from Moargan and Cyprian, especially with Cyprian having felt Mirel’s presence. It wasn’t as if he was going to give him away anyway.
“Yeah, he’s coming with me. Go ahead, I’ll just wake him up.”
“Are you sure?” Helianth frowned. “I mean—”
“Go. I’ll be there shortly.”
“Alright, alright.”
Kylix watched them leave inside the house. He leaned into Mirel and breathed in his quietness. His soap. His innocence. “Wake up, little ghost. We’re here.”
Mirel stirred, then blinked. His body tensed the moment he saw Kylix.
Kylix grinned. “Welcome back to reality. We’re here.”
“Where’s… here?” Mirel yawned, then looked around.
“At Moargan’s estate. Now, I’m going to need you to behave.” Kylix lifted the chain and yanked Mirel into him, claiming his mouth the moment their noses met. Mirel’s lips trembled against his, and with a satisfied purr, Kylix licked the shape of them. They tasted divine. “Can you do that for me?”
Mirel shuddered against the hot breath. “C-Cyprian?” he managed.
“Yes. He’ll be there too. Why are you asking?”
Mirel looked away.
“Stubborn little ghost. Alright, we need to go. I have a lot of work on my shoulders. Come on.” He dragged Mirel out of the car, held the leash with both pride and hunger. Perhaps a tiny bit of pity for his remarkable wastelander, who’d had the misfortune of having been noticed by him.
“Pretty little snack you brought out here tonight.” Aviel flicked his cigarette away.
Next to him, Mirel flinched. “Move, Aviel.”
“Ouch. Even your spicy treat can’t help you from being your grumpy self.”
“I’m not in the mood for your shit,” Kylix barked. He opened the door, mouth twitching. Aviel was a crazy son of a bitch, but he liked him anyway.
Inside, the place was buzzing with Luminary guards.
That was usual, especially since Helianth had been kidnapped and Cyprian had been in danger, but there was another vibe to tonight’s air.
Trepidation mixed with anticipation. Add in danger and the Dariux energy, and there was the cocktail Kylix could drink every day happily.
It made the fire element in his body stir.
Screens glowed along the counters, faces lit in spectral blue. Dariux symbols pulsed on open data sheets. The hum of machinery mixed with the smell of spice and ozone, like warmth trying to disguise power. Voices came from the kitchen.
“...check the other screen,” someone barked.
“I am. There’s nothing there,” Yure clipped. He was Moargan’s friend, Aviel’s best friend, and free from Dariux injections. He was a software mastermind, someone Kylix would happily recruit to join the Luminary after graduation.
“Excuse me.” Aviel slipped in from behind. “Duty calls.”
Kylix pulled on the chain, wanting to make Mirel stumble.
His little ghost fell into his embrace. Kylix’s lips ghosted the tender skin of Mirel’s throat.
“Final warning. If you don’t behave, you’ll be in trouble.
Do you understand me?” He cupped Mirel’s chin and lifted his gaze, forcing their eyes to meet.
Mirel nodded.
“Words.”
“Y-yes.”
“Good.” Kylix brushed a blond hair from Mirel’s temple and dropped a kiss on the cool skin.
Then they stepped inside the kitchen.
Warmth welcomed them. Not just from the stove, where Aviel was back and in his usual position, but also from those present. His family and those he considered family as well.
Moargan sat at the island, sleeves rolled, jaw set as he swirled a glass of ember liquid. “What if you try it again?” he asked Yure, who sat next to him surrounded by holo-screens and a team of software engineers Kylix had hand-picked himself.
His eyes flicked to Kylix, then swept past him and over Mirel. Kylix’s grip on the chain tightened. “So this is the prisoner Helianth mentioned?”
Someone gasped.
Moargan rose from the island in time to catch Cyprian, who fell into his arms, face white as a ghost, his eyes on Mirel.
“You,” he whispered. Peeling himself free from Moargan’s embrace, he took a few unsteady steps closer. “It really is you.”
Around them, the kitchen had gone awfully quiet.
Cyprian smiled as he closed the distance. They all stared as a glow stirred faint in his veins, brightening even through his clothes.
“Brother.”
Davon-tus.
The word lingered through the air, a hush that seemed to glow together with the Dariux map that resonated on Cyprian’s body.
Cyprian started crying, his eyes shining a fierce yellow with every tear he shed.
“You were there, that day. In the arena. You were with me. I felt you. You killed Ludo with me. Good Light, that was you, wasn’t it?
I’ve searched for so long. How did you find me?
I thought I’d dreamt it only, the voice, the ice. But that was you?”
“Let him talk, lover,” Moargan mumbled, his hands tightening around Cyprian’s shoulders as he pulled him against his chest. His eyes landed on Kylix in both a warning and a worry.
“Of course,” Cyprian smiled through his tears.
“F-found me,” Mirel mumbled. With all the attention, he seemed to have shrunk.
“Hang on, you’re the one who created the ice?” Helianth asked. “You’re so small. I mean, I never thought… you saved me that day. From those monsters.”
The name burned through him like a fuse.
Heat folded in his chest, sharp and hollow.
Brother. The word struck like impact, not sound.
He looked again at Mirel and saw it now, the gold flicker under the frost, the same light that lived behind Cyprian’s eyes.
Every breath that left the boy shimmered faint, catching in the air as if the blood itself remembered.
Kylix’s pulse stuttered. His fire should have risen.
It did not. It turned inward, confused, tasting its own smoke.
He thought of the arena, of Cyprian’s glow cutting through the dark, of a second pulse he had felt that night but never named.
That echo had belonged to this man. All this time he had chained the other half of Helion’s fire.
He wanted to speak, to ask how such a thing could live inside the same body that trembled beneath his hands.
Instead he reached for silence, the only thing that hid him.
The heat in his palms shivered. The air thinned.
Vandor shifted behind him, sensing the crack that ran through command.
Kylix forced his shoulders straight. Control first. Questions later. The world could burn after.
Cyprian’s blood. He saw it now, the gold under the frost, the same impossible pulse. For once, the fire in him didn’t know whether to rise or bow.
“I-I…” Mirel shrugged, shoulders deflating.
Kylix pulled on the chain to bring him in closer. “You’re scaring him,” he barked.
“And you lied to us, didn’t you?” Moargan’s grin was lethal. “When we came over the other day, you already had him in your custody. Care to explain?”
The room held its breath.
Cyprian’s voice cracked through the hush. “He’s really mine?”
No one answered. The word hung there, trembling like heat.
The silence was heavy, bright around the edges. He could hear hearts again, each one separate, beating out of time. Cyprian’s was the loudest, quick with wonder. Mirel’s trembled against it, fragile but steady.
Kylix kept still. He felt the pull between them, blood recognizing blood, a light that had nothing to do with flame. It tore at him. For a moment he saw himself from outside, the chain in his hand, the mark of control over something that should never have been bound.
Moargan waited, eyes sharp. Helianth’s curiosity gleamed like a blade. Even Aviel had gone still, the smoke from his cigarette curling upward and holding shape.
Kylix’s throat burned. He thought of tearing the chain away, of stepping back, of pretending the fire had not just met its reflection. But the instinct that had brought him here refused to loosen.
Mirel’s shoulder brushed his chest. The touch steadied and condemned him at once. Frost caught the light, small shards rising, almost weightless. The fire inside him answered, low and hungry.
“Say something, Kylix,” Moargan said quietly. “Before the boy burns himself out.”
Kylix lifted his head. The silence that followed felt deliberate, edged. He could feel the tremor in Mirel’s body, the quick rhythm of a heart that still did not trust him. He set his hand on the chain, slow, measured. “Later,” he said. Heat hummed under his palm.
It wasn’t a promise. It was a warning.