Chapter 29 Nyx
Nyx
Wheels bump along the wooded path, and the thinner the trees become, the faster my heart pounds. I haven’t been inside a vehicle since we arrived at the village. This is the first time I’ve left.
“Are you okay?” Reyes murmurs from where I’m tucked under his arm.
His lips are pressed against my temple, and I sink into him.
Words are hard right now, so I only nod, enjoying the scruff of his beard against my skin.
The insides of my thighs are deliciously raw with the burn he left there.
I’m sore and stretched in ways that shouldn’t give me so much peace. But they do.
What we shared… the manifestation of everything we both feel…
Sometimes it’s too much, like this body isn’t big enough to hold it all, or maybe part of me still worries I don’t deserve it.
Reyes hums a little sound, dragging his nose along my cheek, until he kisses beside my ear. “I love you, sirrha,” he whispers, as if he can hear my insecurities. His thumb traces over my knuckles, and my skin ignites where we touch. My eyes drop to our hands, and it hits me.
The change.
The difference from last night.
“What is it?” His gaze follows mine as he notices my rigid shock, and he breathes a laugh as he resumes stroking my tanned knuckles. “Look at that. We’re beautiful together, aren’t we?”
I flip his hand and stare at the dots of green that scatter over his thumb and the pads of his fingers, tracing the shapes as he kisses my jaw again.
“You are my whole world, Nyx.” Gods, I can’t get enough of him and the easy way he loves me.
I twist my head, pressing my lips to his with a quiet, happy hum.
“We can hear you,” Ronan complains from the driver’s seat, and Reyes rumbles a frustrated growl as he pulls away.
“You can choose to ignore us,” he says, and Xeni chuckles from the passenger side.
“Kinda hard with the noises you’re making back there,” Xeni teases, and Reyes’s lips twitch as he tries not to smile.
“Perverts,” I mutter, and Reyes loses all control with a loud laugh that pushes from his belly. Xeni joins in, and I can tell from the way Ronan’s cheeks lift he’s fighting his own laughter.
“You never told me who taught you that,” Ronan muses, his eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror. I only shrug, and he scoffs. “Had to be Elas.”
“Birdie,” I say, and his brows shoot up to his hairline.
“What?”
Reyes snorts a laugh as he weaves our fingers together.
“A little birdie told him. It’s as plausible as anything else.
” The trees finally give way to the barren soil beyond our hidden cluster of paradise, and Ronan stops the van at the edge of the canopy.
He climbs out and checks for wanderers or other prying eyes.
When he’s satisfied there isn’t a threat, we continue on our journey.
I stare out the window, looking for anything familiar in the dry landscape, but it’s an endless sea of cracked clay dirt and blue, cloudless skies.
Aside from our forest, there’s very little vegetation to be found.
Without the plants surrounding me, I realize how much they comfort me.
I remember very little of the drive here.
The entire day is a blur in my mind—a scattered series of memories, and there are pieces too painful to revisit.
I never thought I’d be grateful for the hell I lived through, but as I turn to rest my cheek on Reyes’s chest, I am.
It led me here.
Reyes squeezes my hand, and I trace along the fabric of his shirt, smiling to myself at the hair underneath.
“I brought something,” he says, reaching under the seat and pulling out a book.
It isn’t one of the naked man books, but one with a human in a long coat, wearing a funny hat.
“It’s a mystery. The story is about a detective. ”
“Detective?” I sound the word out, and he tilts his head from side to side as he considers how to explain.
“A detective is someone who finds things. They search for answers.” My interest is piqued as I take the book.
I pull the worn cover closer, examining the details of the picture before opening to a random page.
The symbols are jumbled and confusing, so I slam it shut and thrust it back into his hands.
Reyes swipes his thumb over my fingers as he takes it. “I thought I might read to you.”
“Out loud?” I ask, my gaze moving up to his, and he gives me a soft smile and a nod.
“It’s a long drive, and I think you’ll like the story.”
My eyes dart between Ronan and Xeni in the front seat, and some of that familiar shame builds in my stomach. “We don’t… you don’t have to. For me. Just because… I don’t want to… to bother.”
“We don’t mind,” Ronan says softly, and Xeni shoots him a glance for answering for them both, but he cranes his head and meets my gaze.
“As long as Reyes does the voices properly,” he teases, and I offer him a shaky smile that feels like a truce.
We were never enemies, he and I, but we were standing on opposite sides of an obvious line in the sand.
Him versus me, us versus them, but that division is no longer clear.
Suddenly we stand on the same side of that blurred line, and grudges are fruitless.
“If you want, I can hand it to you when it’s time for the broody parts,” Reyes says, and Xeni surprises me when he grins wider.
“But then what would Ronan read?” Xeni asks, and Ronan scoffs as he flips his hair over his shoulder, not sparing them a glance as we crawl over the bumpy terrain.
“Drama queen parts,” I answer, and this time, Ronan can’t hold in his laughter. It fills the van, coming from all four of us.
“Now I know it was Cameron or Elas that taught you that one.”
“Reyes,” I respond without thinking, and Reyes squeaks beside me as Ronan’s eyes find him in the mirror and narrow.
“Damn,” Reyes says, and Xeni laughs harder.
“Sorry,” I say, tugging on his shirt and forcing his eyes back to mine as Ronan continues to glare. “I did not mean to… hit you with a bus.”
“Throw me under the bus,” he corrects with a blinding smile, and presses a soft kiss on my lips. “Don’t worry. Ronan’s all bark.”
“All… bark?”
“Mm-hmm,” he hums as he kisses me again, like he can’t help himself. “It means he likes to make a lot of noise, but he isn’t that dangerous.”
“I’ll show you dangerous,” Ronan mutters, but Reyes only huffs another quiet laugh as he tucks me into his side.
He cracks open the book and reads, tracing his finger along the page so I can follow, even though it’s nothing more than scribbles to me.
The thoughtfulness of the action momentarily distracts me from everything else, but soon, I’m drawn into the story.
My eyes close and I lose myself in the calm tones of his voice.
The ride is quiet. The hum of the wheels is relaxing, and when it’s paired with the sun’s heat on my skin, it makes me drowsy. Ronan even turns the fan on instead of rolling down the windows, allowing Reyes to keep reading without the wind blowing his pages.
We stop to stretch and eat at midday, and when the van door opens, I hesitate.
The foreign sights and sounds of a world beyond the village become menacing without the window as a shield, and anxiety forms a ball in my stomach.
I take a deep breath to calm my nerves, but when Reyes comes back and holds my hand, I find the strength to step out onto the dirt.
My toes curl inside my shoes. Stupid, restrictive things. They only add to my discomfort, but I didn’t argue when Reyes said it would be safer to wear them. We eat and stretch our legs, and Ronan seems to be in no hurry as he leans on a rock.
I raise my eyebrow at him. “You are… what is the word?”
“Annoying?” Reyes offers, and Ronan scoffs.
“Bossy?” Xeni guesses from where he stands in the shade, bouncing on his toes.
“Slow.” I cross my arms with a scowl. “On purpose.”
“Procrastinating,” Ronan says, then sighs and rolls his eyes up into his head. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Why?”
“I was hoping you’ll change your mind and we could turn around before we run into trouble. This group has a knack for finding it, you know.”
“You can go back,” I argue, and he hikes that brow again. “Drive away like a turkey.”
“Chicken,” Reyes whispers in my ear, but I only shrug.
“Turkey, chicken—doesn’t matter. I need to do this.”
Ronan chews on the side of his lip and glances at Reyes as he slips an arm around my shoulders. “He has his own voice, Ronan. I won’t speak over it.”
“Gods fucking damn you both,” Ronan growls, jabbing a finger in Reyes’s direction. “Can I just say I fucking hate how good for him you are.”
“You’ve mentioned that,” Reyes says in a dry tone. “Several times.”
“Ugh, the support and consent and, and… devotion. It’s all just so fucking annoying.”
“Sounds awful,” Reyes agrees, fighting back a grin.
“It’s horrible,” Ronan groans. “All I want to do is find fresh reasons to hate you, and then you do… this! And make me grow some…” He trails off, scrunching his face in disgust.
“Go on,” Reyes coaxes, and Ronan’s eyes could be lethal with the way they glare.
“Respect,” he spits, then shakes his head like he’s trying to rattle the memory away.
Reyes snorts an abrupt, breathy laugh. “Oh, it is so awful you had to say that. You poor thing.”
“It is the worst,” Ronan agrees before huffing another dramatic sigh.
“We’ll get there a few hours before dark if we keep this pace.
I want to scout ahead and make sure there are no signs of life before we go barging in.
If there is any sign of military activity, we leave.
Any sign. I will not negotiate on this.”
“That’s fair,” I say, and a slight tremble tilts my words.
The possibility of running into soldiers disrupts the nerves in my stomach again.
What would I even do if we saw them? How would I react?
The thought plagues me as we climb back into the van, and all four of us are more unsettled than we were earlier.
“You said Nyx was the only one able to affect the rifts?” Reyes asks Xeni, who nods.
“That I’m aware of, yes. There are thousands of files, and I’ve only read a small portion of them.
It’s possible there are more. Leadership wouldn’t have told us of any breakthroughs…
they wouldn’t have shared that with any of us.
That knowledge would’ve been left to the scientists that discovered it, with the kind of threats that would keep them quiet.
” He doesn’t have to expand on that for us to understand.
Death threats, to the scientists and their families, or promises of worse.
“But with Nyx, they never saw it for themselves? Only heard about it from the humans?”
“Yes,” Xeni says with another nod. “It could’ve been a trick of the light, or his magic manifesting in strange ways. Maybe it was nothing at all, or a ploy for the humans to gain favor when they handed him over. There’s really no way of knowing for sure.”
Maybe it was nothing.
My fingers trace mindlessly over the minefield of scars along the ditch of my elbow.
More patches of skin like this exist all over my body—behind my knees, on the small bit of meat of my ass, and scattered across my thighs.
Tiny, raised memories of the endless needles that plunged their poisons into my veins.
Syringes with strange substances they forced into my blood, and faces standing around waiting to see how I would react.
Cold hands on my shivering body, and lips against mine as they pushed life back into my lungs.
How many times had I died by their hands, only to be brought back?
How long had I suffered? Tortured, bruised, and shattered into pieces… all for the possibility of an answer I might not even carry?
What if it was nothing?
Fingertips scratching against my scalp pull me from my thoughts. Reyes watches me with those careful eyes, and the brown hues glow copper in the sunlight. I’m sorry this happened to you, they say.
I’ll try to make this better.
I love every broken piece of you, without condition.
“I love you, too,” I whisper, and his eyes soften as he gives me a shaky smile. He leans in and drags his nose along the side of mine, his breath puffing against my skin as I shut my eyes and soak in the closeness.
“This responsibility doesn’t belong to you, you know,” Reyes whispers as he presses a kiss on the corner of my mouth. “You can’t carry that weight. If we get there and nothing happens with the rift, that’s okay. It doesn’t change anything, and it doesn’t mean you’ve failed.”
“Then what does it mean?”
He pulls me into his arms, and I bury my face into his shirt, inhaling the familiar smell. “It means you tried, and that’s all any of us can do.”