Chapter Eighteen
Five Months Later
“You’re sure this is the place?” Bel bounces his heel in the passenger seat’s footwell.
“It’s the address Ilbryen gave us.”
I slow as the house comes up on our right. Plenty of spaces on the road are open to park, but as I pull into one, Bel flaps his hands with a panicked screech.
“Not yet! No—circle the block again. One more time.”
“You’ve said that for the last three times, sweetheart.” I obey though, drifting away from the curb and rounding the block, giving his thigh a firm squeeze where I’ve been holding it since we got in the rental car an hour ago.
He sinks into the seat, gnawing on his lip until I lift my hand to tap his chin.
“Hey. I quite like that lip. Be nice to it.”
He pops it out at me in a bratty pout. But that pout dissolves quickly, leaving him with a bouncing leg and the flustered concern that’s been growing larger over the past few weeks.
There’s been no more Galaxrien cultist activity.
No rumors, no rituals. The official church of Galaxrien Vossen reached out, wanting to meet their lord’s progeny.
Bel politely declined, and they’ve respected his wishes so far.
On the other side of things, the Urzoth church quietly pulled out as his sponsor for next season, but Bel seemed relieved they were the ones to cut that tie; he doesn’t need them anymore.
While none of that means all threats are gone, Ilbryen felt, after the failed ritual that got broadcast all over the world and the arrest of Tem and his closest cultists, that we could take some calculated risks with Bel’s safety.
I’m not about to lower my own vigilance, hell no; he’s still wearing the pearl safety necklace, too.
But the one risk we can take, the one risk we have to take, is letting Bel see his cousins.
Bel and I both are due to start conditioning soon for the next rawball season with the Hellhounds. Before we get too busy with training and travel, we asked Ilbryen to reach out.
It was their choice. Ilbryen asked if they’d feel comfortable being a part of his life again, and gods, waiting on their response was the longest two days of my existence.
I did what I could to distract Bel, but he was a wreck, practicing cheer routines in the living room until the late hours of the night, making Thio come over to cook with him, dish after dish we still have stuffed in our freezer.
But they said yes.
Yes, they want to see him.
Yes, they miss him as much as he misses them.
And now, we’re here. Circling a suburban block in a city outside Austin, not far from the town where Bel originally lived with them.
Their mother, Bel’s aunt, still lives in his childhood home, but the sisters moved a few years ago.
The oldest one, Mila, owns the house we’ve been inadvertently casing.
Bel swallows, his throat clicking against the purr of the engine. “And they’re … they’re both going to be there?” he confirms, even though he very well knows the arrangement.
I flash him a smile. “Yes. Ilbryen set it up with them.”
He scrapes his palms on his baggy whitewashed jeans and snatches my hand off his thigh, clinging to it. I pulse my grip on his fingers and slow into the next turn, taking us onto the house’s road again.
“They miss you,” I say. The same thing I’ve been reminding him of, over and over, in the days since we got the green light to plan this trip. “They want to see you.”
“I know, I know.” He sucks in a breath. “What if this is a bad idea?”
Luckily, no other drivers are on this road, so I let the car drift to barely creeping forward. “What do you mean?”
“What if … what if the cultists come back? And I put Mila and Jemma in danger. Maybe it’s better to stay away. It’s better to not—” He frees one hand to rub at his chest, his voice small. “I don’t want them to get hurt.”
He’s been saying some version of that since we left Philadelphia. It’s easier if I stay away. We’ve changed so much, why would I disrupt their lives like this?
I’ve let him talk, let him get all the worry out, and I’ve waited for him to say what he’s truly afraid of.
But we’re here. No time left.
I pull his hand up to drop a kiss to his knuckles. “It’s easier to keep people at a distance. No one gets hurt that way, right? Not them. Not you.”
Bel peeks up at me. “I’m not … I’m not worried about me,” he says like he’s testing the words. There’s no truth in them.
It’d be easier not to reunite with his cousins, in case he has to leave again.
But we’re not living that way anymore. Neither of us. We love and embrace and open ourselves to all the messy parts that come with those things, because the bad doesn’t get to poison the good. We deserve that good. It’s ours.
We arrive at Mila’s house again. This time, when I pull over in front of it, Bel doesn’t protest. He stares at it, his rose-gold face pale.
I tug on his hand. After a beat, he reluctantly looks at me, his irises glistening with tears.
“They understand the risks,” I tell him. “Just like I do. Just like Seb and Thio, and my parents, and Marlow, Darian, Aaron, and Roesia—just like the whole Hellhounds team and cheerleading squad do. Because, Bel, you’re worth the risk.”
Listing all those people makes my eyes heat.
Gods, we’re so loved.
“We won’t live our lives in fear,” I continue. “If you have to run again, we’ll figure it out. But it won’t be like last time, because the cultists don’t deserve to get any part of you, least of all your happiness.”
“You’re my happiness,” he whispers.
One side of my mouth kicks up. “You’re my happiness, too.”
A tear slips down his cheek. He groans and swipes at it. “Fuck. Why the hell did I even put on makeup today?”
But he settles with a heavy sigh and bites that lip again.
I tug it free. His smile is small and reticent, and he leans across the center console to brush a chaste kiss to my mouth.
He holds there, just the gentle rub of thin skin, the taste of his berry lip gloss.
“Okay,” he murmurs. He pulls back, checks his makeup in the dropdown mirror, and straightens his cropped white tank. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
We climb out of the car.
I round the hood and stand next to where Bel stops on the sidewalk, palms scraping against his jeans again.
He still sometimes chooses to use the illusion spray, but more often than not—like today—he’s in his demon form.
His tail’s tucked away, but he’s letting his horns grow back, two rose-gold knobs at the front of his pink curls.
Mila’s house is a small ranch with eggshell-blue siding and a little porch where a swing rocks in the breeze. Bel’s gold-black eyes shift over the door, the windows with frilly curtains.
One of those curtains moves.
A face appears, then it’s gone, and before either of us can do anything, the front door opens.
Two women dash out. Both have waves of brown hair and pale skin, one’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, the other a floral dress.
I expect them to hesitate, stop and gape like Bel’s doing, but they don’t slow down. I catch tear-stained cheeks and a choked oh my gods before they’re hurling themselves around Bel, a chaotic, clustered hug.
For a moment, he stands there, stiff and shocked.
But only for a moment.
He melts, looping his arms around them as they stroke his hair, exclaiming and sobbing and smiling. He’s crying, too, messy and raw, and in their arms, unwinding like this, he looks so young. The fifteen-year-old version of him who was forced to run, who barely got a chance to say goodbye.
The woman in the floral dress notices me first. She pulls away from Bel and scrubs at her eyes, blows out a self-conscious laugh. “Who’s this?”
Bel turns to me; his joy is the sun.
“This is Orok,” he says, voice choked in tears. “My—mine.”
My cheeks hurt with my smile. His.
I hold out my hand, and the woman shakes it.
“I’m Jemma,” she says. “And that’s—”
The other woman, Mila presumably, is already turning from Bel to throw her arms around me.
“Thank you,” she whispers into my shoulder.
I return her hug. “It’s my pleasure. Truly.”
“Oh my gods, my manners!” Mila yanks back from me and grabs Bel’s hand. “Come inside, both of you! We want to hear everything!”
She hauls Bel for the house, Jemma following and peppering Bel with questions about the rawball championship ritual and if he’s really okay from it, though it was months ago. She promises to see him perform next season, and Mila adds how they’ll come to as many games as they can.
Bel looks back at me. He’s dazed, his face red from crying and laughter.
I trail them and mouth, You good?
He nods immediately. And says, I love you.
People aim too far out when they think they need to belong to a god.
All I ever needed was to belong to this one man.