Chapter 2
~Sylas~
Present Day
“Are you doing okay?”
I blinked at the sound of Lazriel’s whisper.
I looked to see him staring at me with concern as we sat in class.
“All good. Why?”
“You were shuddering.”
Of course I was. After slipping back into that nightmare—one too real to ever fade—I was surprised I hadn’t done worse before dragging myself back to the present.
“Just a chill, I guess.”
This was fucking worrying.
My heavy compartmentalization was slipping.
Cassius’ words to me the other day played on my mind.
“How are you burying all of that?”
“It’s called high-level compartmentalization.”
“It is incredibly taxing, especially to maintain. Especially when you are seriously ill. It would require magic to hold so powerfully.”
It was incredibly taxing. And it was only growing more so.
To maintain my heavy compartmentalization, I really needed to shut down emotionally and draw back some of the magic I was using, just enough to lessen the mental strain.
But if I did that, it would hurt Lazriel and Velra. Cassius too now.
It would hurt us, what we were building together.
Lazriel had read me the riot act before, so I knew how things needed to be, what they required from me.
“You can’t have it both ways. You want this closeness, you’ve gotta let us in. No more closed-off bullshit.”
As much as it complicated things for me, what he’d asked for had been beyond fair.
And more than even that, I wanted to be that way with them—at least to a great extent. They knew I had my secrets still, but I was trying. I was trying hard to bring them in more.
Just not when it came to this new state of my sickness that Kai and I had determined very recently.
The problem was, knowing I only had months left to live now—and less if I used my magic in extreme ways with massive expulsions of power—was putting me on edge, making me gravitate toward rash decisions and strategies.
Cassius had already noticed and pointed that out, for fuck’s sakes.
It might not be long before Velra and Lazriel did as well.
The new urgency was fucking with me.
Lazriel brushed his thigh against mine and gave me a gentle smile.
I stroked his hand as he was scribbling away taking notes as Cassius spoke. Copious notes at that.
He was really into it. Not that I didn’t think for one moment that part of it was due to his growing closeness to Cassius of late.
I leaned in and kissed his cheek, and his breath caught.
I registered Cassius glaring over at us thinking we were about to put on another smoldering display.
“Relax,” I mouthed to him, as I eased from Lazriel and sat back in my chair.
I didn’t take notes.
I absorbed—or didn’t. After all, I’d been sent here as a punishment, as containment, the Guardian Movement’s attempt to reel me in and quell my vigilante activities. I already had a knowledge base that eclipsed what was being conveyed in my classes. They were just refreshers to me.
Even the Celestial content that Cassius was teaching now as Guest Lecturer of Ritual Ethics & Celestial Lawfare was known to me for the most part, some of that from my own research and the rest from Kai’s, along with his firsthand knowledge by having Ariana Martel as one of his loves, somebody intrinsically linked to all of that.
I tuned back in as Cassius continued to discuss the four types of Celestial beings that had once existed.
“Visionaries were prophets, seers. With those abilities at their disposal, they often questioned doctrine. Healers drew power from instinct and empathy. Because both could function without structure or discipline, they came to be viewed as uncontrollable—a great threat to the Celestial Plane. So they were erased.” He shook his head.
“So much insight and potential lost in favor of paranoia and an extreme version of control. And, let’s be frank, totalitarianism operating under the guise of sanctity and moral superiority. ”
I could see it in his eyes, the vehemence with which he spoke the words, that he wasn’t just referring to the Celestial Plane.
Without making it obvious to the other students, he was also referencing a current day enemy that hadn’t been severed from our reality and stopped in its tracks like the Celestial Plane had. Puritas.
He was equating the damage that their doctrines and despicable outlook would do if they rose again and were left unchecked, to what had transpired through the Celestial Plane’s similar approach.
But these motherfuckers would have a much more personal impact, one that would be all the more brutal and fucking devastating.
I took comfort in the fact that we’d have the key to accessing more information about those demented fanatics soon enough once I tracked down Remnant.
Lazriel had needed some time to process the fact that his father was not only alive, but deeply and dangerously connected to the vampiric underground.
But tonight he was moving into action-mode, wherein he would track down his highly-elusive mother.
Once he’d discussed all of this with her, I’d then have the way clear to finally track down Remnant.
Cassius finished up the lecture and assigned readings on two specific Celestial Doctrines which we would need to be prepared to discuss next class, taking ethical context into account.
As I rose to my feet and shrugged my hooded leather coat back on, I caught sight of Lazriel pulling his phone from his messenger bag after packing his things away.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, as he frowned at it, not making a move to walk into the gangway where students were filtering out. In fact, he was inadvertently blocking my exit.
“Velra should have finished up with her hangout with Kelsana at Vantiqe by now. She said she’d meet us right after class.
” He looked out through the door as students walked through it into the crowded corridor just beyond.
“I didn’t sense her, so I’m checking for messages from her. Nothing, though.”
“She could just be running late. Maybe her and Kelsana ventured into some heavy subject matter instead of keeping it light and fun.”
“Right, yeah. Like Rennick mind-raping Kelsana like a fucking psychopath.”
“A fucking psychopath who is now being held at the Guardian Compound’s Containment Facility for processing.”
I had to add that reminder in for him, because after Rennick had attacked me and then Lazriel had intervened to save me, all bets were off when it came to that fucked-up sorcerer for him.
A flick of familiar white magic drew our attention as it was used to shut the classroom door once the last student had left, and I turned to see Cassius beaming at us, while he recalibrated the floating tomes for the next professor.
“Well done,” he told us. “You didn’t make a spectacle of yourselves this time, nor reveal the unorthodox professor-student relationship that we find ourselves in at this juncture as a result of recent developments.” His lips lifted. “Recent most welcome and… pleasurable developments.”
“Just keeping our promise to Velra,” I told him with a wry grin.
He grinned back, knowing it had been more than that.
Lazriel pushed out onto the gangway and strode toward him, swinging his bag over his shoulder as he went. “Speaking of the pleasurable element, how about just before I track my mom, we tend to that? You know, get down and dirty with some hot fucking and feeding?”
There he was trying to put it off again.
And he damn well knew that offer he’d just laid down would be exceedingly difficult to resist. Especially for Cassius, given that he’d only just started exploring his sexuality and being fully open to that. It was absolutely no small thing for him.
I followed Lazriel down to the front where Cassius was, intending to intervene. Or at least to postpone his wanted fuck-and-feed until after he’d had words with Rhyza Thaine.
But then Lazriel jolted.
“Your pulse is spiking,” he told Cassius. “I know you’ve got a real hard-on for me, for all of us now, but this reaction is kind of extreme.”
Cassius’ eyes widened and then he stumbled in his step.
“Damn,” Lazriel uttered, “It’s not just spiking now. It’s going batshit crazy.”
In mere seconds, sweat formed on his brow. And as he staggered again, he was headed for collapse.
Lazriel burst forward and held him up. “Your skin is like fire,” he said, swinging his head toward me anxiously.
I rushed over there, intending to do a wellness sweep, a standard spell that all magic-wielders could perform.
But then he lurched in Lazriel’s hold and roared out in agony.
In the next moment, he was ripping at his black shirt and jerking it down to a spot just above his heart.
The site of the Soul Brand—those two jagged lines connecting—one his white magic, the other Velra’s purple and the black of her shadows as well.
No.
The purple aspect was fading. Rapidly.
No. No. No.
“Cassius… I don’t… I don’t understand…” Lazriel choked out as he shuddered while he held him, his eyes focused on the Soul Brand.
He did understand.
Of course he did.
He was just… it was too much.
“Something… horrific has… befallen… her,” Cassius rasped, frantically running his trembling fingers over the brand. “A fatal… wound.”
“No,” Lazriel growled vehemently. “Not fatal. Not her. It can’t be right. There must be some other explanation.”
Cassius cried out again, and the white line started to fade in and out.
Lazriel had to ease him down to his knees, Cassius slapping his palms to the ground, just a moment before he began vomiting.
Blood.
The situation became undeniably clear to me. “Your Soul Brand is the only thing keeping her alive.”
“Not… for… long,” he managed to utter, before he threw up again, blood splattering all over the pristine floor.
“It’s killing you!” Lazriel cried, brushing Cassius’ hair out of his face as he retched again.
It was dragging him toward death along with Velra.