8. Tornado in the living room
Nevaeh
“How old are you?”
“23,” Anxo answers, gently scratching my scalp as I lean into his side. My personal heater.
“Wow, you’re old.”
With a horrified gasp, Angel tries to stop the bone-relaxing head massage, but I quickly claim his hand back.
Grace and Seiji volunteered to fill me in on the changes around the kingdom when they saw everyone needed a break between heavy topics.
I was feeling strange knowing so much about them yet not anything important, so I started asking every silly question that popped into my head about their life, work, and how old they were.
Turning to Seiji, I ask, “What about you princess?”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 22!”
Weird way to answer a simple question.
“And just so I'm clear, I don’t like that nickname.”
The overgrown teenager pokes his tongue when a loud snort is only my response.
Grace points to Seiji, mumbling ‘Same’ while staring at me like I’m her favorite new puzzle. Her curiosity about me is starting to get creepy.
Hazel is already glaring at me before I can ask her. I think she keeps hoping her bitter attitude will make me leave her be, but too bad for her, because it's only making me like her more.
“26. Make a comment and I’ll bury your ass right where Anxo picked you up from,” she bares her teeth at me .
I think Sharky suits her better than Hazel.
Since supernaturals age significantly slower after reaching their twenties, I’m not surprised we all look about the same age. Grace is the only exception here who will continue to age like a normal human until she finds her mate. She might be a Bookkeeper but Grace won’t get the ‘supernatural club’ benefits without a mate.
Talking about mates...
Now that I’m sure everyone here is older than eighteen, I’m confused about the lack of hugging and kissing, but their mates could be back home for all I know.
“So… mates?” I ask curiously—except Angel, of course.
Hazel folds her arms on her chest and grumbles how I’m asking too many questions for someone who just woke up from the dead.
She can be moody all she wants, but Angel has made it clear these people are his family, which means now they’re mine too. Anxo has known these people for years and has shared memories and loyalties with each of them, and until I form my own loyalties with them, I have to make sure Angel doesn't feel like he has to choose between us.
When Seiji and Hazel take their sweet time to answer a simple question, Grace drops her head back with a groan.
“I’m human. So, I won’t have one.”
“That’s stupid. You’re also a Bookkeeper.”
My sharp response makes Grace shrink back and fidget with the hem of her skirt. I’m shocked to see it’s not just doubt, she genuinely believes she doesn't have one.
Why hasn’t anyone told her that being a Bookkeeper means her mate will be someone very high on the supernatural food chain?
I’m distracted by how deep this irrational thought of not having a mate goes when Seiji claps his hands together and leans forward for his turn. “Well, I’m not-so-patiently waiting for the day I meet mine.”
He goes in-depth about how hard it is to be the most eligible bachelor in the Tetrad kingdom. Especially now that Angel is off-market. I don’t even realize when we go from talking about mates to why mixing cold milk in a dry cake mix will ruin it by forming lumps.
When Seiji explains how frosting is a multipurpose tool, Hazel smacks his head with a pillow, and calls him a ‘disgusting pig’.
Relaxing in a bright, warm room with people I’m not planning to run from is new... a nd addicting .
I try to shove the feeling deep down because only fools fall for the first good thing offered to them. But maybe I should fall for this. Stay around with people who are nice to me and aren't out for my blood for a change.
Now that Hazel is the only one left, I wait for her to enlighten me on how she feels about the mate bond.
The stubborn siren ignores my burning gaze, but I don’t give up until my persistence irritates her enough to talk. Scrunching her nose in annoyance, she twists her head in my direction and finally gives in.
“Don’t have one.”
The lie is as transparent as the wall I almost smashed my face in this morning.
Another idiot who thinks she doesn’t have a mate.
“She doesn’t mean it,” Anxo shushes her.
“Uh, yes I do. I would’ve found them already otherwise. They’re probably deep in the fucking ocean, happy with their chosen mate since I’m here on the dusty surface and out of fucking reach.” Her voice grows tighter the more she talks—or grumbles.
I make a mental list of things I’ve noticed about people who are supposed to be my fate family.
1. Anxo is a touchy person.
2. Once Seiji starts talking, there's no stopping him.
3. Grace is not just quiet, she's timid too.
4. Hazel hates having her emotions on display .
The more I observe Hazel, the more I relate to her.
I see the way she keeps her daggers close. It's more than her love for the weapon. It’s a telltale sign of someone expecting danger. She keeps glancing at the glass walls, listening for the chime of the elevator opening on every floor.
I know she's doing all that because I’m doing it, too.
Where my twitchy fingers and paranoia are caught by Angel quickly, Hazel is much more subtle with her ticks.
It makes me wonder if this is permanent. Hazel shares my nerves and panic three years after living with the Horsemen and being a strong warrior.
This fear doesn’t leave—not entirely, at least.
I need a distraction from counting every guest that enters this building, and so does Hazel.
“Oh… now it makes sense. You’re all grouchy because you want your mate.” I coo in the baby voice I use with my little monkey sometimes.
Judging by how Hazel is fuming, I’d say my noble plan to lift her mood is a success.
“If I knew a way to hurt you without hurting Anxo, I would’ve punched you hours ago.” She is trying her best to hide it, but I can still see the slight twitch of her lips.
She likes me. I know it.
“Sure, water fairy.”
“Do not compare me to those emotional sissies.”
“Isn’t it a little weird how Nevaeh was made and not born ? Like no one pushed her out of her Va-jay-jay, ” Grace squeaks, interrupting my fun interaction with Hazel.
“Ew, why are you calling it va-jay-jay , nerd?” Seeing Hazel's scowl, Grace shrugs sheepishly.
“Yeah, just say coochie like normal people.”
“That’s not what normal people call it, fucktard! It’s called a vagina .” Hazel corrects Seiji, who refuses to repeat the word ‘vagina’ because it makes him feel queasy.
The debate on what the right term for the female private part should be ends with Seiji running for his life with Hazel on his toes yelling how she is going to ‘choke the stupidity out of him’ today.
With no signs of them slowing down, Angel tiredly trudges to the middle of the living room. Seiji immediately hides behind him, taking refuge from the siren.
“ Drop it . I don’t want another kingdom to manage. I’m barely surviving three as it is.”
The stern order makes both overgrown kids huff and reluctantly back up to different corners of the room.
I can’t even pay attention to how parental that was of Anxo because what he just said causes a streak of questions to line up in my head.
“Three kingdoms?”
Suddenly, the room falls silent. Both Seiji and Hazel drop their fight and turn to me with wide, horrified eyes.
Fuck. I was hoping bad news time was over, but it looks like we’re circling back to it.
By the looks of uncertainty masking their features, I think they hoped to avoid this for as long as possible too.
Fear grips me when Angel looks like he would rather be anywhere else. Blowing a sharp breath that does little to ease my anxiety, I sit on my hands to hide how they’ve started to tremble.
Without breaking eye contact, Angel eats the distance between us in two giant steps and sits down on the floor before me. Removing my hands from under me, Anxo grips them in his.
There's one question in my mind and the reality of my worst fear coming to life forces me to speak past the lump in my throat. “Where’s Papa?”
Angel's head snaps sideways to Grace, who mirrors his alarmed expression. Hazel covers her face, muttering ‘oh shit’ over and over again, and Seiji runs off to the kitchen. I thought he was hiding from an uncomfortable conversation, but he came back a minute later with a mug of hot chocolate to soften the blow.
I’m starting to hate how they give bad news. Idiots just stare at each other, talking with their eyes and leaving me out of the loop.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
It’s not really a question. I already figured something was wrong if he didn’t come for me yesterday. After the stories Visha has drilled into me, the only logical conclusion is that she killed him.
I was so na?ve to think everything she said was a lie because one thing wasn’t. My mate is alive. There was no attack on our kingdoms, and as much as I’m happy about that, I know she can’t be wrong about everything.
Maybe she did what she said.
Maybe I did lose everything in that cell.
I’m busy imagining what my life as an orphan would look like when they exclaim in sync, making me jump in my seat.
“No!”
So, there's bad news, but Papa is not dead?
“Then why isn’t he here? Why did he send amateurs to get me rather than coming himself?”
Seiji mock gasps, “Uh, excuse me? These amateurs saved you yesterday.”
“ I saved myself .”
“But… B-but we’re taking you home.”
“Wow! How mighty of you. It must take a lot of blood and tears to cross a fucking portal, huh?”
Sure, they helped out me near the end, but I got myself out. A ll on my own . I deserve 80% of the credit.
“That’s a lot of sarcasm for someone who was in a cell for a decade. Who'd you learn it from, the rats in the cell?” Hazel snickers.
“Idiot, I was the rat in the cell.” I snort very un-princess-like, and Hazel looks at me with a mix of stunned and impressed.
“Quiet!” Angel growls, and all our mouths snap shut .
Grace chastises Hazel for making light of my trauma, and her chin falls to her chest in guilt. I accidentally let a smile loose, watching Hazel get scolded like a child, and her remorse turns into a snarl when she sees it.
Oops.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Angel takes a deep breath. Without thinking, I let my fingers brush through his soft curls, mimicking the way he played with mine earlier. His shoulders sag, as Angel drops his head in my lap with a sigh of content.
After a quiet minute, Angel knows he can't stall anymore and looks over his shoulder to see if anyone else will volunteer, but the cowards avoid his gaze and look around the room like they're searching for something.
With his hand in mine, Anxo's eyes ask me for patience, and even though I don’t have any when it comes to my fears, I try not to get ahead of myself.
“Searching for his missing daughter day and night wasn’t easy on him, Nevaeh. Every time a team returned without any information on you, he got more depressed and… just tired. He was losing himself, sweetheart.”
With every word, Anxo silently begs me not to hold Papa’s absence against him.
“Three years ago, Dean came to ask me if I'd be willing to take over for him for a while. He didn’t dump anything on me, though. Before leaving, Dean sorted out his paperwork for a year in advance, and Grace has spent so much time working with him that her insights help me immensely.”
Papa hasn’t been home in three years?
If he did a year’s worth of work and only wanted a break, what’s taking him so long? What if he got so tired of pausing his life for me that he just wanted out?
What if he is never coming back?
“Dad will be back,” Grace says confidently as if she read my mind. “He didn’t want to leave, but he needed that break. Your disappearance was hard on him, Nevaeh. H e was fading away . I all but forced him to leave when it got so bad eating or sleeping was an occasional thing.”
The image of him standing outside my old room, drowning in guilt and shame, starts playing in my head.
His sadness, his anger, his remorse.
The thought of him neglecting his health and losing himself because of me makes my throat close up. One more thing Visha destroyed for me.
Turning to Grace, I wonder if she can help me find Papa. I don’t realize I’m making her uncomfortable with my stare until her eyes sparkle with tears.
“I’m so sorry, I won’t call him dad if it bothers you. He said I could, but I didn’t even think how that would make you feel—”
“What? No. Where did that even come from? I was actually wondering about your gifts.”
Grace slumps back with a hand over her heart, “Oh, thank God. Your resting face almost gave me a heart attack.”
When I don’t encourage her nonsensical thoughts, Grace finally focuses on the part about her gift. “I don’t have anything to show you since it’s all in my head. But you can ask me anything about the supernatural history, and I’ll have the answer.”
“She’s like a dictionary and Google combined.” Seiji boasts. When I keep staring at him blankly, he pauses to explain what Google is.
Even when the kingdom of Death was in the human realm, I wasn’t surrounded by human technology growing up. Papa used to say ignoring people and riding our horses was better than moving steel entrapments or answering plastic bricks.
I’m starting to think Papa did that because he didn’t understand human technology, and now thanks to him, I’m a million years behind on anything latest.
For Papa, it’s not ‘what doesn’t kill me that makes me stronger’ , but ‘if you fail to kill me , I’m going to kill you’ .
“Can your gift help us find our father dearest?”
The previously unshed tears are now freely falling down Grace's almond cheeks.
Panicked, I turn to Angel only to find him smiling like a fool. Seeing my distress, he whispers it’s because I said our father.
“I still don’t understand why you’re crying, Honeybunch . Papa adopted you and made me. That makes us sisters. I’m sorry, but you’re stuck with me. As you can see, I desperately need a mentally stable sibling in my life.”
And now she is full-on sobbing with a broad smile showcasing all her teeth. My head is spinning with her range of emotions.
Maybe it’s a human thing.
Angel assures me they are happy tears, and not because Grace is sad about our dynamic. Seiji rubs her back until she’s only smiling... without any tears. I stare at her dumbfounded by how fast she can turn bright and sunny when she was weeping a literal second ago.
Finally sobering up, Grace shakes her head with a grimace at my earlier question.
“But is he okay? You know... alive ?”
Hazel exasperatedly throws her hands in the air, “Why do you keep assuming everyone is dead?”
“Because almost everyone I knew in the last decade is dead. Not to forget I was told everyone was dead.”
“Visha lied, golden glittery soul eater.”
“No shit, shark in human form.”
“I don’t like you,” Hazel mutters with a straight face.
“Oh, But I love you” I say sarcastically, but I have to admit I feel protective of her on some level.
Papa always preached how important family is, and since Hazel is family, she falls into the small list of people I consider family.
1. Papa
2. My little monkey
3. Harvey the eternal dumbass
4. Angel
5. Grace, Hazel, and Seiji
I can't rank these people for the life of me, so I'm going alphabetically to be safe.
I thought the difficult part of this conversation was over, but then I remember Angel saying three kingdoms.
Feeling my questioning gaze, Angel scratches the back of his head nervously. I want this conversation to be done with already, so I ask him to just blurt it out.
“I took over Conquer and War at seventeen.”
Rearing my head back, I look at him absurdly.
Why the fuck was he crowned Conquer at seventeen , much less War ?
“Why War ?”
My face probably tells him there is no logic in what he said because Angel reels back to find the best way to go about this topic.
I can come to terms with him taking over Conquer at just seventeen—which is a challenge itself, but why would Uncle Henry give him War ?
“That’s Harvey’s bloodright.”
I see the reflection of my eyes burning gold in Angel's as my Divine stirs wildly, sensing the possibility of going against my mate to protect my best friend.
Instead of looking offended at my unsaid accusation, Angel smiles at me. “Everything is still his, sweetheart. The title. The kingdom. T he piles of paperwork and responsibilities are all his inherit.”
The way Angel genuinely hates paperwork isn’t lost on me. It makes me happy to see how eager he seems about Harvey taking over.
“He uh—Henry was sick. His health didn’t allow him the stress of such responsibilities anymore, so he asked me to step in until Harvey came back.”
I can tell Angel is holding something back, but I can’t seem to ask for more. The way his eyes gloss over and warily study me, how tightly his hands are squeezing mine, terrifies me from asking more.
I can’t deal with any more bad news.
When Angel waits to see if I want to know, I shake my head to say that I need him to keep the rest to himself.
As they start talking about how things will change when we go home with Harvey, another fear of mine fades away. All our lives, it’s been Harvey and me against the world, but now it doesn't have to be just us.
Anxo and Seiji share a mischievous glint, and Grace suddenly starts laughing at Hazel's scowl.
Smirking like he's about to share a secret, Angel looks deep into my eyes before I hear his voice inside my head without his lips moving.
“What would you like for lunch, sweetheart?”
Wait a damn minute...
“You can read minds?!”
Angel laughs loudly, and I’m stuck staring at the magnificent sight.
“Nuh-uh, only tap in for a private conversation.”
“Is that what you guys keep doing? I thought it was a shared creepy obsession with staring at each other.”
Angel chuckles, brushing his thumb on my cheekbone. “After my coronation, along with casting illusions and creating barriers, telepathy was my other gift. Since it's intended to stay between Horsemen, it took some time to be able to extend it. It’s easier with you and Seiji with our bloodlines, but now I can add Grace and Hazel too.”
Horsemen bloodlines aren’t born with all their gifts. Sure the strength, senses, and the presence of our Divine are given at birth, but most of our powers are only awarded if Fates choose us. It's fun to think the few Reaper powers I do have, I can't control. I suck at the things even children are good at.
Kissing my head, Angel brings me out of my head, and by some miracle, I don’t die. I swear my heart stops when his lips touch my hairline.
Seiji clears his throat—unnecessarily loud, and it breaks our delicious eye contact .
Horrible timing, princess .
“ That is nothing. I will show you something worth being impressed by.”
Before I can tell Seiji I’m familiar with his gifts, I watch in awe as he rotates his forefinger in lazy circles. The wind around us follows his movements, and an adorable little tornado brews on top of his finger.
What I saw yesterday was much more violent, but today, I see the delicate side of his powers.
I thought Seiji was going to stop there, but he doesn't. Releasing the little tornado off his finger, he allows it to roam the room before he starts rotating his entire palm , manipulating the air in the room.
The little tornado isn’t so little anymore. It grows bigger, destroying the room in the process.
The windows shudder with the force, and the furniture starts shaking. When the tornado reaches its peak, Seiji adds bright purple lightning to the mix, and the tornado turns into a dark storm.
This is exactly what I saw yesterday—minus the organ exploding and vomiting part.
When the disaster heads in our direction, Seiji swiftly scatters it with a heavy gush of air, and everything caught up in the tornado falls to the floor in a mess.
“You’ll be cleaning this up later.” Angel gives him a pointed look, and it’s clear this isn’t the first time Seiji went too far with his showing off.
Turning to his Warriorhead, Angel says, “I think we're ready for lunch?”
Taking the hint, Hazel takes a deep breath before whistling a soft, melodic tune that I want to imprint in my head and never forget.
And she’s not just flinging it, it’s a specific tune.
I soon find out the intent behind it when the elevator chimes and five waiters come rushing in with trays overflowing with food .
The staff completely ignores the jungle the living room looks like and moves past it to place the trays on the kitchen counter before leaving almost robotically like they are in a trance— Or being manipulated by a siren .
I’m left gaping when Hazel stops whistling and winks at me smugly.
“I think she’s my favorite,” I whisper.
“I made a thunderstorm and she’s your favorite?!”
“I can’t eat clouds, princess.” I shrug, practically salivating from the delicious smell coming from the kitchen, while they burst out laughing.