Chapter 32
32
A nd then,” JJ says, spreading his arms dramatically, “the dragon defeated the evil princess and saved the realm from destruction! All the people of the kingdom loved their new dragon guardian, and they brought her lots of chocolate and gold?—not because they had to, but because they wanted to.” He tweaks Desi’s nose. “And they all lived happily ever after. The end.”
Cass can’t fight back a smile. He only showed up at the end of JJ’s nightly bedtime story with Desi, too late to hear him do all the ridiculous voices but just in time for the dramatic finish. Now, seeing him perched on the edge of Desi’s bed while she snuggles against his side does things to Cass’s heart that he isn’t quite sure how to articulate.
Desi giggles. “Yay! That one was great, JJ! Can we do another? Please can we do another?”
JJ kisses her forehead. “Not tonight, sweetheart. But I can read you another story tomorrow morning!”
Desi pouts. “Pleeeeease?” she asks, giving JJ her best puppy dog eyes.
Predictably enough, JJ wavers. “Well??—?”
Cass interrupts before JJ can yield to his usual compulsion to give Desi everything her heart desires. “Desi, it’s quiet time now, remember? And JJ is going to need to sleep soon. He needs his own quiet time before he sleeps.”
JJ throws Cass a grateful look. Desi looks disappointed. “Okay,” she says, and she hugs JJ around the middle. “Nighty-night, JJ. I love you.”
JJ hugs her tightly back. “I love you, too,” he says softly, and he hands her Hana the Wyvern before pulling the blankets up over her shoulders. “Sleep tight, okay?”
“Okay!”
JJ checks that Desi’s night light is switched on before tiptoeing out of the room and closing the door gently behind him. Cass’s heart melts a little. “Come on,” he whispers, gesturing down the hallway. “After you.”
JJ waits until they’re safely in the living room before shooting Cass a small smile. “Thanks for the save.”
Cass grins. “Of course. I know that you’re physically incapable of denying Desi anything she asks for,” he says, and he collapses onto the couch, yawning. “But you need your rest, too. And your quiet time.”
And your time with me, Cass adds silently, holding his breath as JJ considers the cushion next to him. Sometimes, JJ will go to his bedroom early, taking a book with him to relax and unwind in private, but sometimes?— sometimes?— he’ll stay out here with Cass, the two of them just enjoying each other’s company.
Sometimes, they’ll even have deep conversations until long past midnight. Those are Cass’s favorite nights. And he’s not ashamed to admit that he does a mental fist pump when JJ finally sits down next to Cass, grabbing a blanket to wrap around his shoulders. “Yeah. It’s nice to have some extra time at the end of the day.”
“It is,” Cass agrees, and he grabs his empty mug from the end table. “Chamomile tea?”
“I’d love some.”
Cass’s mental cheering intensifies. It usually takes JJ almost an hour to finish a steaming cup of tea, so that means Cass gets him all to himself. “Excellent,” he says, pushing himself to his feet and strolling over to the stove. He puts the teakettle on the burner, sets up two mugs with their tea bags, waits for the water to boil??—
Footsteps pad up behind him. Frowning, Cass turns around to face JJ. “I can bring it back for you. You don’t have to wait here for it.”
“I know,” JJ says, leaning against the counter. The blanket is still draped over his shoulders, but it doesn’t quite disguise his uncertain posture. “Actually, I?—I need to ask you something.”
Cass’s heartrate ticks up a few beats. JJ’s eyes are dark and serious, and his voice is halting and unsure, and??—
And Cass just gave JJ his new identity?—and admittedly exorbitant bank account?—a few days ago. JJ has been noticeably contemplative since then, watching Cass when he thinks Cass isn’t looking and making lists of little things he wants to purchase.
He’s asked for Cass’s opinions on a few of them, too. Fairy lights for Desi’s bedroom, a small succulent for JJ’s desk. New utensils that Cass has mentioned wanting for the kitchen. A few cookbooks filled with foods they all enjoy, more cozy blankets to drape over every available surface, an adorable octopus-shaped mug.
It’s like JJ is really trying to create a home for himself here. The thought makes Cass feel lighter than air. And now, with JJ looking at Cass like that, like he has something important to ask him, something important to say? ? —
Tell me you want this as badly as I do, JJ. “Yeah?” Cass murmurs back, leaning forward. “I’m listening.”
JJ’s teeth rake over his lower lip. “Could you give us a soundproofing spell?”
Well, that could be a very good sign. If Cass and JJ are about to make out like horny teenagers, then Cass doesn’t want Desi hearing anything, either. Decisively, he snaps the spell into place, turning off the simmering water at the same time. “There we go. Not even the tea will interrupt us. What’s on your mind, JJ?”
JJ hesitates. Looks away. Traces one finger around the rim of his mug. “Can demons change their appearance? Like, not just putting on a glamour, but changing it permanently?”
Cass blinks back at JJ, bewildered. Maybe his hopes of JJ confessing his undying love were slightly unrealistic, but he doesn’t have any idea where this conversation is going?—or why JJ looks so nervous about it. “Sure. Small-scale changes, like simulating aging over decades to blend in with humans, aren’t too difficult. I’m actually going to start teaching Desi how to do those soon?—we’ll try to match her growth and development to a human child’s, so she can fit in with the other kids.”
JJ nods. “Right. And?—and how about large-scale changes? Gender, skin color, hair texture…?”
“Those are more complicated,” Cass says slowly, leaning his hip against the counter. “They require a lot of power, so they’re more common with neophyte demons?—they have higher soul energy for a few months after they’re summoned, so permanent appearance changes aren’t as difficult.” He winces. “Those are usually the summoner’s choice, though. Not the demon’s. By the time we have any say in the matter, the spell is usually much more demanding. Some still go through with it, but most of us are just… resigned to our human fa?ades.”
Sadness flickers across JJ’s face. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Cass’s eyebrows furrow. “What’s this about, JJ?”
“Did you, um.” JJ fidgets uncomfortably. “Did you know that the spellcaster who summoned Desi gave her the human fa?ade of his late daughter?”
“It makes sense,” Cass says, nodding. “Most summoners do that.”
“Yeah, but?—but his daughter actually looked completely different. Pale skin, blonde hair, blue eyes. But once I killed the summoner and Desi shifted from her true form back to her human fa?ade, she…” He takes a deep breath. “She looked like she does now. Like?—like me.”
For a split second, Cass is confused.
And then realization dawns on him. A smile tugs at his lips. “Oh, that’s adorable.”
JJ looks taken aback. “What?”
“She wanted to look like you.” Cass’s grin widens. “She liked you, so she wanted to look like you. The spell is fairly intuitive for neophyte demons?—most magic is, especially with their higher soul energy?—so she probably just wished for it and made it happen.”
For a long moment, JJ stares at him, eyes wide.
And then, abruptly, he turns away. “Right. Right. That makes sense. Of course that?—?” To Cass’s surprise, JJ swears under his breath. “Yeah. Thanks, Cass.”
“Hey, hey?—?” Cass grabs his arm, concerned. “Why are you upset?”
JJ shrugs Cass off. “I’m not.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” Cass frowns. “Does it bother you that she wanted to look like you? Or that she has that amount of power in the first place?”
“Neither.” JJ’s spine is rigid. “Don’t worry about it, Cass. Don’t??—?”
All at once, Cass realizes it. An old tendril of bitterness curls through him. “Oh. You… thought she did it to manipulate you.”
“No,” JJ snaps, but his shoulders hunch. “I don’t?—I don’t know. I?—?” He scrubs a hand down his face, frustrated. “I didn’t believe it. Not… really. But one of the interrogators told me that, and it got in my head, and I??—?”
Cass’s heart hurts. “You thought they were telling the truth,” he says evenly.
“Not?—?” Suddenly, JJ turns to face Cass directly, something open and vulnerable behind his eyes. “I didn’t think she did it maliciously, okay? I thought she might’ve been scared, and she didn’t want me to hurt her, so?—so she decided to look like my little sister.”
Cass fights back a flinch. “She looks like Lucy? You never mentioned that.”
“Yeah,” JJ says, but unexpectedly, his eyes go distant. “At least, I’m pretty sure. It’s been over a decade since I last saw Lucy, and I don’t have any pictures, so?—so sometimes, I have trouble remembering what she and my parents looked like. But Desi looks similar enough to her that I noticed immediately.”
Pain slices through Cass’s chest. JJ doesn’t even have a picture of his family? Were there none left in his childhood home after the demons tore through it?
Or did the Sanctum not let him keep any?
Apparently, JJ misinterprets Cass’s devastated expression. “I didn’t think it was malicious,” he repeats, a hint of desperation to his voice. “Cass, I never thought she was evil, okay? I just thought she was doing what she had to do to survive. I just??—?”
Impulsively, Cass reaches out, laying his palm flat across JJ’s chest.
JJ goes still. “Cass?”
“Hate is learned. It’s not innate,” Cass says softly, and he taps a finger gently against JJ’s ribs. Right over his heart. “I think both of us still have some unlearning to do, lackey. But that doesn’t mean we’re not trying. It just means we need a little more time.”
JJ’s breath shudders out of him. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Thank you, Cass. For?—for not judging me.”
Cass’s heart cracks. “Of course. And if one of the interrogators said it, then you were starving and sleep-deprived at a minimum. You couldn’t exactly think critically about what they told you.”
JJ gives him a wan smile. “Yeah. I guess. And?—and Chester has always known how to get in my head.”
The words jolt through Cass. “Wait. Chester? Chester Locke?”
JJ’s expression shifts. “Cass??—?”
“Your best friend Chester Locke?” Cass cuts in, dread flooding through him. “He interrogated you?”
JJ’s posture is rigid. “Yes.”
Alarm bells clang in Cass’s head. He and JJ have talked about the Sanctum before, of course. JJ has been actively trying to unravel a lot of their conditioning, wrestling with the worldview that was drilled into him from ten years old, and sometimes, he uses Cass as his sounding board.
But they’ve never talked about JJ’s time in the Sanctum’s prison. JJ hasn’t brought it up, and Cass wasn’t about to push him. In fact, this is the first time JJ has mentioned it, even obliquely.
It’s certainly the first time he’s mentioned that Chester Locke?—the blond hunter who teased JJ about his nonexistent boyfriend while they trained together?—was one of his interrogators. Dutifully, Cass opens his mouth to give JJ his usual line, that he doesn’t have to talk about it if he doesn’t want to.
Instead, what comes out is, “Please talk to me.”
JJ’s eyes fly up to meet his, startled. Cass holds his breath, praying that he said the right thing.
For a few long seconds, silence stretches out between them.
And then, slowly, JJ leans against the counter. Stares down at the floor. “It wasn’t the first time.”
Cass swallows hard. Matches JJ’s pose, putting them shoulder to shoulder. Not touching JJ, not even looking at him, but staying close. “Not the first time…?”
“That he interrogated me. Tortured me.” JJ’s voice is quiet. “When we were sixteen, we had our final exams?—vocation-specific rites of passage to be accepted into the adult hunting community. Strike teams are usually given a high-priority mission, so?—so the Sanctum sent us after the demons who murdered my family. We succeeded.”
Cass remembers reading that in JJ’s file. He didn’t realize it was a test, though. Somehow, the knowledge leaves a bad taste in his mouth. “How’d you feel about that?”
“Relieved. Numb. Disappointed.” JJ’s fingers clench and relax. “I knew that killing them wouldn’t bring my family back. But I?—I think part of me expected more than what I got.”
Cass’s chest hurts. “That’s hard.”
“I survived. We survived.” He takes a deep breath. “Chester’s final exam was less than a week later. For interrogators, there are usually three options: a high-profile demon, a high-profile dissident, or?—or a hunter who pretends to be a dissident. Someone who volunteers to test their mettle under torture.”
Bile rises in Cass’s throat. “You volunteered?”
JJ hesitates. “Yes and no. The Council told me it would reflect well on both me and Chester if I agreed, so?—so I did. But I also felt like I didn’t have much of a choice.”
“You didn’t.” When JJ’s eyes flicker over to Cass, confused, he adds, “They purposefully created a situation where you had to prove your worth?—and refusing would’ve been unthinkable. That wasn’t a choice. It was the illusion of one.”
Slowly, JJ nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I think that was it. So I told them I’d do it, and?—?” He cuts himself off. “When you volunteer as a fake dissident, the interrogator doesn’t know you’re faking it. They think it’s real. And the timing was perfect?—Sawyer and Naomi disappeared just after Kappa’s final exam, so the Council told Chester that they’d brainwashed me. That I’d been caught trying to defect and join them. Councilwoman Nasir gave me a fake address to hide and everything.”
Cass doesn’t even want to ask. “And then?”
“And then Chester tortured me for nine hours straight.”
Tears sting behind Cass’s eyes. “JJ.”
“It wasn’t his fault.” JJ’s eyes find Cass’s again, cracked and desperate. Begging him to understand. “Okay? It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t want to. But the Council ordered him to, and he thought Sawyer and Naomi were manipulating me, and?—and he had to do it. He had to.”
Cass’s stomach roils. He wants to be angry at Chester, furious that he hurt JJ, livid that he tortured his best friend just because his superiors told him to??—
“Just following orders” wasn’t enough to escape punishment during the Nuremberg trials, and it certainly isn’t enough to earn Cass’s forgiveness.
But after everything JJ has told Cass about how he and Chester were treated in the Sanctum, there’s part of Cass that can understand it. Understand Chester’s warped loyalty to the very system that was oppressing him, understand his grief and panic at the thought of JJ being tricked into leaving him behind.
Cass can understand why a scared, brainwashed teenager would torture his best friend. He doesn’t like it, but he can understand it. “It was the illusion of a choice,” he says eventually. “Just like with you. You both did what you had to do to survive.”
Relief flashes across JJ’s face. “Yes. Yes, exactly.”
“And afterward?” Cass searches JJ’s face. “After the nine hours were over?”
JJ’s soft expression falters. “Chester passed his final exam. The spellcasters in the infirmary healed me. And we did get more respect after that, but?—?” He lets out a short, bitter laugh. “But it didn’t last long. The next time either of us stepped a toe out of line, we were right back where we started. It takes years to build up a reputation in the Sanctum, but only seconds for it to come crashing down.”
“That sounds overwhelming,” Cass says quietly.
Abruptly, JJ’s shoulders relax. It’s the way they always relax when Cass inadvertently stumbles on the exact word JJ hasn’t admitted to himself yet, and despite the seriousness of their conversation, Cass almost smiles at the sight. “It was. And it never ended. It felt like we were trapped, and?—and we didn’t even have each other anymore. Because Chester looked at me differently after that. And I looked at him differently, too. I knew what he did down in the prison, but I’d never actually seen it firsthand. It…” He shudders. “Honestly, it?—it scared me.”
The words make all too much sense. “The Council probably knew that would happen,” Cass says, and when JJ frowns at him, he continues, “You said that it felt like they wanted to separate you and Chester from the start, right? Bedrooms on different floors, jobs in different specialties. They wanted to keep you isolated, to undermine your friendship. To make it so you never questioned the Sanctum too deeply. And they knew putting you two in that situation would make it so?—?” Sadness twists through him. “So your relationship would never be the same, probably.”
JJ’s breathing sounds shaky. “No,” he says haltingly. “No, we were never the same after that. We never really… trusted each other again. I mean, I would die for him in a heartbeat, but?—but it felt different. Because it felt like Chester was more loyal to the Sanctum than he was to me, and he probably thought the same thing about me.” He meets Cass’s eyes. “You really think the Sanctum did it on purpose?”
“I wouldn’t put it past them,” Cass says, and he hesitates. “And this last time? When Chester interrogated you again?”
“His shift was only six hours. Could’ve been worse. I think the Sanctum sent him in more to twist the knife than anything else. He got me talking a little in the beginning?—I felt like I owed him some kind of explanation?—but I couldn’t say much without compromising you and Desi, so I didn’t.” His eyes flicker over to Cass’s. “He didn’t want to do it that time, either. He told me that he tried to refuse the assignment, and I?—I believed him.”
“Then I believe you.” Cass considers him closely. “You really didn’t tell them anything about Desi? Or?—or me?”
JJ looks surprised that Cass even has to ask. And, over all these weeks, Cass never felt the need to ask.
He knew he didn’t have to.
“Of course not,” JJ says now, frowning. “I had to protect you two.”
Just like he always has. Cass’s chest aches, but it’s a good ache. “Thank you,” he says softly. “For that. I know I haven’t said this in so many words, but thank you for staying behind so we could escape, and thank you for keeping us safe. That means the world to me.”
“Well, you?—?” JJ cuts himself off. Looks away. “You… mean the world to me. You and Desi. So I?—I’ll always keep you safe.”
Cass’s heart stutters. He knows that here and now, in the middle of a painful conversation long past nightfall, is neither the time nor the place to think about something more with JJ, but??—
But sometimes, Cass just wants. “You and Desi mean the world to me, too,” he says carefully. “And you know I’ll always protect you. So I guess we have that in common.”
JJ gives him a small smile. “Yeah. I guess we do,” he says, and suddenly, his eyebrows furrow. “Actually, full disclosure: I did tell Chester a few things about you when he asked.”
Cass’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh?”
“Yeah.” JJ’s lips twist a little higher. “I told him that you really like churros con chocolate. And that you’re a dick.”
Cass throws back his head and laughs. “Oh, I’m sure he loved that.”
JJ grins back, his posture loose and his smile easy. And even if Cass can’t go back in time to protect JJ from everything that happened to him, even if he can’t use his magic to smooth over those wounds and make JJ feel whole again??—
Even if he can’t do any of that, he’s still thankful whenever JJ gives Cass another little piece of his darkness and trusts him to treat it with care.
He hopes it means just as much to JJ as it does to him.