Chapter 11 #2
“Yeah, I suppose you’d know all about it with Tessa. Minus the child part.”
They both fell silent, several seconds ticking by before Theon said, “Kylian said there are rumors she’s still here. In Devram. That she never left.”
“Wouldn’t you be able to feel her down your bond?” Axel asked, bringing his drink to his lips once more.
“It’s too broken,” Theon answered, knocking back the rest of his own liquor. “The three of us… We’re too damaged by what this world has turned us into. Products of a realm run by the same power-hungry villains. Pawns in the centuries’ old games of the gods.”
“Would you have been able to handle it in the end?” Axel asked. “Sharing the bond with Luka? Inevitably sharing her with Luka?”
“I handed a world over for destruction for her,” Theon said, watching the ice slowly melt in his glass. “In the end, it has nothing to do with what I want, but what she needs. But even that… I think in the end, it wouldn’t be the same without Luka. The three of us…”
“Balance each other out,” Axel finished for him. “Take one away, and the whole thing implodes.”
“Yeah,” Theon murmured, thinking over those words.
Take one away, and the whole thing implodes.
“At least the co-dependency between you and Luka serves a purpose now,” Axel added.
Theon’s head snapped up, finding a smirk on his brother’s face.
“Dick,” Theon muttered, flicking his glass in Axel’s direction and letting the ice cubes fly towards him.
Axel batted them away with a laugh, and it was strange to hear it. It’d been far too long since they’d just sat and talked. If Luka were here, it’d be just like old times, plotting and scheming into the late hours of the night.
Several minutes had passed, a comfortable silence settling over them, when Axel broke it, saying, “So about this property you felt the need to torture our potential allies over…”
Theon sighed, knowing this conversation needed to happen. He wanted to wait until after they’d met with the Shifters so Axel could be wholly focused on his task while they were there.
Getting to his feet, Theon set his glass on the side table and retrieved the liquor bottle. He didn’t bother refilling their empty tumblers, instead opting to take a pull straight from the bottle before passing it to Axel.
“This doesn’t bode well,” his brother muttered before taking a drink of his own.
“Cressida showed up at Arius House before I came here,” Theon said, reclaiming his seat.
“Ah,” Axel said, tipping the bottle up again before handing it back to Theon. “And you’re going to tell me you killed her for her treason and her part in trying to kill Tessa.”
“I wish that was what I was telling you,” he replied grimly, taking another drink before resting the bottle on his knee. “She made a compelling argument as to why I couldn’t kill her.”
Axel slowly turned to look at him. “Which was?”
“That killing her would kill my mother,” he said bluntly, not knowing any other way to say it. “My true mother.”
Axel blinked once. Twice. His mouth opened and shut a few times before he finally said, “And you believed her?”
“Again, she made a very convincing argument,” Theon replied before proceeding to fill him in on the conversation, what Cressida claimed, and where he suspected the female was if it was true.
“You’re telling me I was being held somewhere with your mother when I was lost to blood lust?” Axel said, both hands going through his hair. “You’re telling me we’re not actually brothers?”
“No,” Theon said firmly. “We are brothers. Even if we only share a father, we are brothers. The same way Luka is our brother.”
“Yeah, but…” Axel pushed to his feet, starting to pace and stretching his neck from side to side.
Without a word, Theon got up and went to the kitchen, returning with a small glass of blood. The relief on Axel’s face was tangible as he took it, and Theon had to give him credit for not drinking the whole thing at once.
Theon gripped his shoulder, squeezing it tight and keeping him in place. “You are my brother, Axel. This changes nothing, but I do need you to know that when I am able, I will kill Cressida.”
Holding his stare, Axel swallowed thickly and nodded. “I understand, Theon. She’s a threat and a liability. To everything and everyone.”
“You won’t hate me for it?”
“We all know she wasn’t motherly,” he answered, some of the tension leaving him as he absorbed the initial shock of the information. “Sure, she favored me, and now we know why, but she wasn’t… I’ll feel something. I don’t know what it is yet, to be honest, but I won’t hate you for it.”
Theon nodded, squeezing his shoulder once more before returning to the sofa and picking up the bottle of whiskey.
“So did they tell you then? Where this house is?” Axel asked, nursing his glass of blood.
“Kylian said they don’t know. There are wards or some shit,” he answered with a sigh. “They have suspicions I can look into, but there might be something more pressing.”
Axel arched a brow in question, and Theon was almost more anxious to circle back to the topic of Tessa than he’d been to discuss Cressida, considering how he’d reacted to news of Tessa when he first got here.
“I need to look into this claim of Tessa still being here. That she never left Devram,” he said.
“Rumors are rampant in the Underground, Theon. Doesn’t make them true. You know that.”
“I do, but again, when there is a compelling argument—”
“You overthink and don’t sleep and become unnecessarily obsessed? Especially when it involves Tessa?”
“Fuck off, Axel.”
He shrugged, gesturing to the liquor bottle. “Maybe instead of thinking tonight, you should drink the rest of that, and just…not think. For once in your godsdamn life.”
If only it worked like that.
“But I know you’re not going to do that,” Axel sighed. “So what’s the plan here, Theon?”
“I need to leave the Underground for a bit. Find out if it’s true. I’ll get you more rations while I’m gone too,” he added.
Axel nodded but remained silent.
Theon hesitated before saying, “I know you’re going to, but know that you don’t have to stay here, Axel. We can find someplace for you and Kat to stay that isn’t…here.”
Axel huffed a derisive sound. “As it stands, if I leave here, I’ll be in hiding.
Me, as a Night Child. Kat, as soon as it’s realized whose child she’s carrying.
At least here, we don’t have to hide. And I know you don’t know the people of the Underground well, but the vast majority of them don’t deserve to be shunned away from the rest of the world simply because they exist. Yes, there are the truly wicked who deserve to be locked up, but you know where most of those people are?
In the kingdoms. Sitting on advisory boards and on the seats of power themselves. ”
Theon tapped his fingers on the sofa arm, staring up at his brother, into emerald eyes that mirrored his own. Silent seconds ticked by, turning into minutes.
Axel was just finishing the last of his blood when Theon said, “So we topple the whole godsdamn thing.”
His brother choked on the blood, coughing for several seconds before he could get out, “I’m sorry, but it sounded like you just said you wanted to upend the entirety of Devram.”
“You just said the people who deserve to be locked up are running everything. For the most part, the people of the Underground are innocent. Many of them were born here. Generations of families who have known nothing else. And out there? It’s the same.”
“Says the male who just put on a power display to get what he wants from the Shifters,” Axel said flatly.
“To get necessary information.”
“For personal gain.”
“Fair point,” Theon muttered. “But if what Cressida said is true, we do need to find her, Axel. Why was Valter hiding it? He does nothing without purpose. There is an entire half of my lineage I know nothing about.”
“If you find Tessa, you can ask her how that feels.”
“Gods, you’re snarkier since becoming a vampyre,” Theon muttered.
Axel flipped him off, setting the drained blood glass next to the empty whiskey tumbler. “I’ll follow you on this, Theon,” he said. “But I have conditions.”
It was Theon’s turn to arch a brow. Axel had never been so…
dominant. He could command a room, sure, but always in answer to an order he’d been given.
This was different. This was a male who had found something worth fighting for.
This was a male who found himself with something to lose.
This was a male who was going to command a room not because of his last name or the power that had once run in his veins, but because he was going to be worthy of the loyalty of the people who followed him.
“Name them,” Theon said.
“You keep us in the fucking loop. None of this waiting to fill us in until you have every minute detail figured out. You tell us information as you learn it,” Axel said, crossing his arms and staring down at him.
“I can agree to that.”
“You can’t upend an entire system on your own. You have to include us, and you can’t be an arrogant asshole about it.”
“Anything else?” Theon gritted out.
“When hard decisions need to be made, we make them together and for the betterment of all the people we’re fighting for, not just one. Not just me or Luka or Tessa. We don’t sacrifice entire populations for one person, Theon,” Axel said pointedly.
“You wouldn’t do the same for Kat and your unborn child?”
A muscle feathered in Axel’s jaw. “You’re right.
I would,” he finally conceded. “But that doesn’t make it right.
We can’t deem entire people as less valuable simply because we don’t know them as intimately.
We protect those we believe to be our responsibility, and if we do this, Theon? They are all our responsibility.”
Silence fell again, and after a few minutes ticked by, Axel rapped his knuckles once on the end table before heading to the stairs, presumably to join his wife in bed.
“Think on it, Theon. Tell me before you leave in the morning,” Axel said.
“Who said I’m leaving in the morning?”
“It’s Tessa,” he answered. “I’m surprised you’re not already gone.”
He waited until his brother was halfway up the stairs before he called out, “Axel?”
He paused, looking back. “Yeah?”
“Purpose looks good on you.”
The smallest of smiles tipped on the corner of his mouth. “Get some sleep, Theon. Apparently, we’re going to start a godsdamn revolution.”