Chapter 27 Nyx
Nyx
“I think it’s a good idea,” August says from his spot across the circle.
“Of course you do.” Ronan jabs his fork in August’s direction. “Fucking bleeding heart—”
“Watch it,” Elas growls, and Ronan clamps his mouth shut even though he continues to glare. His face contorts as if he’s actually biting his tongue to keep from arguing.
“I’m with August.” Taryn purses her lips and taps her chin thoughtfully. “Right now, we’re blind to what’s happening out there, and have no idea what the future might bring. This is our only advantage.”
“We could travel in a group to make it safer,” Elas adds, although he’s still locked in a glare-off with Ronan. Reyes hums next to me, and it’s an awfully smug sound.
“Funny,” he says while inspecting his fingernails and refusing to look at Ronan, “I said the same thing.”
Xeni chews on his lip, and when he meets my eyes, I force myself to hold his gaze. He spent many years at Ljómur during my time there. Handled needles and instruments while I was pinned to those tables, and shoved a tube down my throat when I tried to starve myself.
But contrary to what everyone here believes, not all the workers in that place were cruel.
Some were. We were the playthings of far too many evil souls, but to lump them all into that category would be wrong.
Some detached themselves from their reality just like us prisoners did.
Others were sympathetic, though they never stayed very long.
The best we could hope for were the carefully neutral ones—the ones that never held on too tight and tried their hardest not to cause more pain than necessary.
Xeni was one of those. I still remember the way his hands brushed over my forehead as the other medic strapped me to the table, and the regret he couldn’t hide when he forced my jaw open.
“They won’t let you starve,” he whispered in my ear, speaking the old language and feeding me words I could understand.
Tears had blinded me to anything but pale hair and skin as I gagged on that tube. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you know what they are doing at the rifts?” I ask him, and everyone falls into silence. If the surprise on Xeni’s face tells me anything, he didn’t expect me to speak to him… and by the close way the others watch, neither did they.
“Not enough for me to give any guidance, no. The medical staff only handled… procedures.” He cringes apologetically. “Anything beyond what happened in those rooms was a mystery to us, too. In that sense, I don’t know any more than you do.”
“But you said the scientists and medics talked,” Elas argues, and Xeni nods slowly.
“Some of us were friends, and we talked some, yeah, but we never knew who was listening, or who supported what they were doing there. Someone could turn you in for a leg up and not think twice about it. They also took security very seriously. The duties were split, so no one person worked on the whole picture. We probably could’ve sat ten of us down in a room and only had a quarter of the information.
” He pauses, and takes a deep breath. “We did talk, though. The scientist I was closest to was responsible for trying to isolate the essence—”
“Wait, back up,” Ronan interrupts, and Xeni is guarded as he looks at him. “What is this essence, anyway?”
Xeni nods towards my hand intertwined with Reyes’s, and even with the bright afternoon sun, the glow is visible.
“Whatever marks the mates. Magic of some sort, as best we could tell. They pulled it out and studied it, but it is unlike anything in written history. The working hypothesis was that the Fates created it when they created the mates.”
“What do you know about the prophecy?” Elas asks, but Xeni shakes his head.
“I was born on this side of the rift. Anything I’ve learned about that is what I’ve been taught, same as you.”
“You were born here?” August asks.
“In Atlanta,” Xeni says. “My parents were military. They, uh, worked for Project V, so when I was old enough, I was offered a position as well.”
“That name was in the files,” Reyes says from my side. “What is it?”
Xeni sighs, rubbing his palm with his thumb as he stares down at his hands. “Ljómur had agents in every city. You saw some of the propaganda that they pushed onto the public.”
August nods. “They made it sound like the glowing marks were a virus that needed to be contained.”
“Correct. By the time I joined, the people who lived in the city were used to being told what to do. It wasn’t hard to convince them to follow orders.
The earlier generations were more suspicious, but the humans inside those walls are docile now.
Hells, even our civilians are used to taking orders. ”
“How old are you, exactly?” August asks.
“Forty-one. Not that much older than you, unlike that dusty blue thing beside you.”
“Xeni,” Elas warns with a growl, but the Cavese only rolls his single visible eye and continues.
“A member of the project was stationed at every hospital and clinic. Any time someone came in with a mark, we were the ones to isolate them and start the protocol to transport them to Ljómur.”
“How did it not get out?” Lillith asks. “Granted, I’m pretty young, but whenever I heard the prophecy discussed, it was as a hypothetical, not as fact.”
Xeni continues to stare at his hands. “When enough people disappear for talking about things they aren’t supposed to know, you learn to keep your mouth shut. Ask too many questions, and the best-case scenario would be a transfer to Ljómur. They’d get their questions answered, all right.”
“And the worst-case scenario?” August asks, and Xeni lifts one shoulder in a helpless shrug. He doesn’t have to say it out loud for the rest of us to understand.
“While this is all very interesting,” Ronan interrupts with a haughty sniff, “it doesn’t answer the question we asked in the first place. How were they going to use this essence to open the portals? And why was Nyx so important that they used him more than the others?”
I wince, and Ronan tosses me a silent apology.
His words are the ugly truth, though. The other prisoners were kept in their cells, and only pulled out once or twice a week.
They took me almost daily. Poked and prodded, injected and sliced open until I was too weak to handle more.
Those were the only days I had any rest.
My thumb drifts absently over the dotted scars and track marks along my skin, and Reyes leans over and places a soft kiss on my temple. I lean into him, absorbing his comfort as he puts an arm over my shoulders.
“Nyx is the only one who ever caused the rifts to react,” Xeni says, and my pulse ramps up.
“What?” I whisper, and every eye falls on me. “That is not true. I never… I could not…”
Xeni gives me a sad smile and dips his chin in a nod.
“Early on, when you were still with the humans, there was a report of golden sparks in the middle of the field when you were… very upset. It was when…” His gaze drifts to Reyes, who hugs me tighter, then back to me.
“Your… mate… did some pretty awful things to you.”
He nods at my hair, and immediately, I understand what day he means. Old pains flare in my chest, and I’m hit with an assault of memories.
Laurent flashes me a smirk as his superiors gather around him, all staring into my cage like I’m an animal.
He speaks, but I can’t understand his words as he holds up his glowing hand.
It’s a trophy, nothing more. They all lean in, examining it, touching it, praising him for something he had no control over, and Laurent looks so proud.
More words pass between them, then they step closer to my cage as one.
I back into the corner, pushing myself against the bars even as they dig into my bones.
Too thin. I’m too thin to fight, not that I ever could.
My ribs show, and my shoulder blades and spine are prominent.
They throw me scraps of meat, and they don’t understand that I don’t want them.
It makes me sick to eat it, and the lack of food has left me weak.
Hinges creak as my cage is swung open, and it’s Laurent that grabs me.
Hands that feel like they should save me but only ever hurt.
I shout and push him away, hating the draw to him when he only causes pain.
Hating myself for wanting comfort from this terrible person.
My defiance makes him furious, and the murmurs of his superior officers grow louder, but Laurent won’t be deterred.
He snatches my chin. His fingers squeeze so hard my mouth pops apart, and his fingernails scrape marks into my cheeks.
So much fury burns in those brown eyes. He says something else, awful, hate-filled words that make the others laugh.
Angry fingers fist my hair and yank, and I shout again as I’m dragged from the cage and thrown on the ground. Dirt fills my mouth and nostrils, and I choke, but I understand one word.
“Obey.”
More raucous laughter explodes in the tent as something slices through the air in a whisper.
Green strands fall around me, chunks of waist-length hair strewn into piles as I sob.
The last pieces of myself I recognized are scattered in the dirt, no better than straw in an animal’s den.
Fury and mourning like I’ve never felt ring through my body, but when it fades, there’s nothing left.
They laugh and they laugh, but I feel nothing at all.
Reyes’s soft voice in my ear brings me back to the present, and I blink away the memories. “It’s alright… I’m right here with you.” When my eyes move to his, he gives me a shaky smile. “There you are.”
“He was awful,” I whisper, and Reyes whines quietly as he presses a sorrowful kiss to my lips.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” he whispers back, and though I’m aware of the others watching us, I kiss him again to remind myself where I am, and who I’m with.
After a few shared deep breaths, I pull away and lay my head on his chest. “That day… I didn’t know. This is the first time I have heard.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Xeni says with surprising gentleness. “They wouldn’t have had a way to tell you, even if they wanted to. The only reason I learned of it is because I got… curious. I liked to read the old files.”
“Why?” Ronan demands.
“Because despite what you might think of me, there was more happening there than any of us realized. It was bigger than that one base, and I needed to know what it was, because someday it was all going to come crashing down on our heads. I wanted to be prepared.”
“And yet, you still did nothing with that knowledge,” Ronan snaps. Xeni’s nostrils flare, but he steadies his anger with a few breaths.
“Hate me for it if you want. I did what I could with the resources I had.”
Ronan takes a deep breath, but a hand stops him, and we’re all shocked when Elas is the one to come to Xeni’s defense. “He’s right, Ronan. We’ve all done things we’d rather forget.”
“We have to go,” I say, and even though my voice is quiet, it catches everyone’s attention. “If we can do something, we must. It can’t all be for nothing.”
My eyes sweep to Ronan’s, but the steely determination I saw in them earlier is missing. Now he looks only resigned, and maybe a little scared as Cameron lays his head on his shoulder. “I’ll go with you then,” he says, his voice soft and somber.
“Me too,” says Elas, and my eyes fill with tears at their support.
“Having a medic is a good idea. I’ll tag along,” August offers, but Elas turns to him with a snarl.
“You are not running into danger again,” Elas growls, and August scoffs.
“Like you’re about to?”
Ronan leans forward, shaking his head at Elas. “We can’t leave the village vulnerable. You stay.”
“I am not your dog to boss around and heel at your command. I can protect—”
Ronan flashes his fangs even as he looks at Elas with nothing but pure adoration. “You can protect your mate, and mine, if something were to happen to me. You are the only one I trust to keep him safe.”
The indignation fades from Elas’s expression. “Drama queen,” he mutters affectionately, but dips his chin in silent acceptance and settles back against August.
“I’ll go.” Xeni’s words drag the attention to him, and he nods to himself as he swallows. “It makes the most sense. We’ll have a medic, and maybe being there will make me remember something I read.”
“The four of us, then?” Reyes asks, and Ronan cocks a brow at him. Reyes pushes his chest out defiantly before anyone can speak. “If any of you expect me to let you drive off with Nyx in that van, you’re fucking insane. He doesn’t leave my side.”
I nod, leaning against him, and any argument that might’ve been brewing dies with my decision. I might be stronger, but he gives me that strength. Anything we do, we do together.