Chapter 14 #3
I glanced up to find that Riot’s expression had softened.
“I think that’s probably as good as confirmation, Gracie.
Viper didn’t remember the nightmare, but he woke up terrified.
And covered in piss,” he added as an afterthought, not looking terribly bothered by that idea.
I guessed he wasn’t the biggest fan of Viper .
“Why would Bullet visit my dreams?” I asked, perplexed.
Riot gave me an incredulous look. “You’ve got more experience with this whole polyamory thing than I do.”
“Oh.”
Oh.
He thought Bullet was…mine. My second soul bond. Could that be? I hadn’t given much thought to the idea of having more soul bonds because I still hadn’t felt the call . Then again, I hadn’t felt the call to seek Riot out either.
“What are you thinking?” Riot asked, tipping the rest of the chow mein onto his plate. I made a mental note that he liked that dish. “I can feel your confusion.”
“I’m thinking I haven’t felt the call to anyone else, but I never felt called to you either.”
There was a little rush of insecurity from Riot before he pushed it down, and I chastised myself for not wording it a little more considerately.
“That kind of makes sense. A call implies we’re signalling you or whatever, right? Like we’re lighthouses and you’re the boat. But we don’t have that built-in signalling function because we’re not agathos.”
He shrugged and continued eating his dinner while I stared at him in stunned silence, feeling like an idiot for not considering that before. Of course the call would come from them. Why had I always thought it would come from me?
I really was a terrible agathos if I was getting schooled on the inner workings of soul bonds by a daimon.
“If he was,” I began slowly, not entirely sure how to approach this conversation. I’d always assumed my soul bonds would be aware of what they were and accustomed to the idea of…sharing. “How would you feel about that?”
Riot chewed slowly and I set my chopsticks down, suddenly too nervous to contemplate eating. What if he was totally against the idea?
“I’m not going to lie, I’ve grown accustomed to having you all to myself,” Riot replied thoughtfully while my heart sank like a stone into my stomach. “Though it would be nice to have someone else who was unequivocally on our side.”
“You already know Bullet, wouldn’t that make it easier?”
Riot’s lips twitched. “He’s fucking infuriating most of the time, but you’d probably like him. You could do High School Musical duets together.”
My face heated up instantly, even though that sounded kind of fun.
“Well, I guess we won’t know until I meet him,” I replied eventually. “I’m not entirely sure how I feel about him visiting me when I sleep…That seems a little creepy.”
“I don’t know how he does it,” Riot said absently. “If I saw you every single day and each time you forgot who I was, I’d lose my fucking mind.”
Sugar. Who was the real agathos and the real daimon here? Riot was far more empathetic than I was.
“Do you want to go meet him?” Riot asked, glancing up at me.
“He lives in Devil’s Den,” he added with an understandable grimace.
Milton was surrounded by agathos communities on three sides and the Long Island Sound on the fourth.
Getting to Devil’s Den was probably a stressful experience for a daimon.
Yes? No? Accepting Riot and I were soul bonds was one thing. In my mind, it was an anomaly, but a good anomaly. One that I was grateful for, because it was him.
Two daimon soul bonds meant it was a thing , and I wasn’t sure I was ready for it to be a thing yet. But that was more than a little selfish of me if Bullet already knew about us, about what I was to him.
“Gracie,” Riot said in a way that made me think it wasn’t the first time he’d called my name. He reached across the table and tangled our fingers together. “Your emotions are giving me whiplash.”
“I feel...I feel like going to see him, that would change everything.” Riot gave me an understanding look even as I struggled to articulate what I meant.
I hadn’t sought Riot out, it had just happened. I’d continued on with my life basically as normal, knowing that nothing was actually normal, but not needing to make any urgent decisions about that either.
Deliberately seeking out a daimon that I believed could be my soul bond felt like I was walking away from my life as I knew it and entering the unknown. It felt irreversible, and that was terrifying.
“You don’t have to decide anything right now, Grace. You should probably just focus on getting through the memorial tomorrow without raging at your parents and the Elders in front of everyone,” Riot said, quirking a smile as he gave my hands a squeeze.
“But if Bullet is waiting—”
“You’ll probably see him in your dreams tonight anyway. You might not remember what you talk about, but he will. Besides, he’s psychic. He knows when you’ll meet him better than you do.”
I nodded silently. Hopefully when I woke up in the morning, I’d feel a sense of reassurance that whatever happened in my dreams, I’d made the right decision.