Chapter 2
“We’re going after Tristen without Jevryn,” Nyx announced as she and Griff walked back into the kitchen.
Three sets of eyes stared back at her with no small amount of confusion. Well, okay, two sets of eyes looked confused. The third—Kaden’s—maintained their default setting of inscrutable-but-alert.
“Jevryn is busy,” Nyx continued, since no one was saying anything, “and has asked us to go on without him.”
Evra and Morgen shared a look. “Do you think that is wise?” Evra asked.
And that vote of no confidence didn’t sting. Not at all. Nyx crossed her arms. “Sure. Why not?”
“We seek a Shaman who has taken a life before and suffered no repercussions for it,” Evra said.
“Not only that, but for him to be on Dead Earth, of all places, means he was likely either stolen from, or sold by, his family. Neither option will make him particularly trusting, especially towards anyone from the wider universe.”
“When you put it that way, it’s probably better that Jevryn isn’t coming,” Nyx said. “He doesn’t exactly scream harmless-and-here-to-be-your-friend.”
Evra took a bracing drink of her cappuccino before saying, “I think you are missing the point. Veld is dangerous. He already knows that he can kill without consequence, and a Shaman without restrictions can kill in an instant. There are some defenses against Shamanic magic, but those defenses require more than a second’s notice to implement, and a second is all it takes for a Shaman to stop a heart. ”
Uh-huh. “If defenses take time, then what is Jevryn going to do that we can’t?”
“Based on what I’ve seen of your father’s death magic, it is one of the few things that could provide an immediate counter to Shamanic intent,” Morgen said smoothly.
“I have death magic too.” Was her father a more badass death magic user than her? Indisputably. But it wasn’t like she was useless.
Evra and Morgen looked uncomfortable. Kaden still hadn’t felt the need to chime in. Griff was watching it all with the air of a parent who had said his piece and was now letting the children sort things out for themselves.
Morgen got up, went to the kitchen windowsill where a potted aloe vera plant was greedily soaking up the morning sun, and plucked it from its resting place.
He returned to the cafe counter and set the plant in front of her.
Nyx looked at the aloe. It was one of those delicate varieties, the leaves slender and elegant and dotted with delicate white specks.
She gently brushed a fingertip to the underside of one of the leaves. “What is this for?” she asked.
“Kill it,” Morgen said.
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“Kill it,” he repeated. “It’s just a plant.”
She felt an urge to wrap her hands around the plant’s pot and draw it protectively to her. “Why? It hasn’t done anything.”
He pointed at her hands, which had indeed instinctively curled around the pot. “That right there is why we’re worried. You have Jevryn’s magic, but you’ll hesitate to use it.”
“I don’t hesitate when it counts.”
“You didn’t hesitate the one time you used it, because you had a personal stake in killing the person, and you knew he deserved to die,” Morgen corrected.
“Not everyone is Kiev A-Morridahn,” Evra said, picking up the thread of the argument.
“You knew exactly what he had done, and exactly what you wanted to do in response.
Veld is not the same as Kiev. He was likely taken from his home, and even the Congregation said it understands why he did what he did.
“All of that makes him a sympathetic figure in your eyes. You will hesitate to hurt him. If he lashes out, you will be slow to defend. Jevryn would not be so…inhibited.”
Nyx wanted to snap back that they had her figured out wrong.
For one, she was much more sympathetic towards plants than people these days.
At least, so long as they were harmless Earth plants that weren’t intending to implant seeds in her to eat her death magic and use her body as a breeding ground.
For another, while she would hesitate to kill Tristen, for any number of reasons, she wouldn’t hesitate to defend herself—or anyone else—against him.
Morgen must have taken her silence as a sign that she just needed a little more convincing in order to see reason, because he said, “Kaden, do you want to back us up here?”
Nyx managed not to roll her eyes by sheer force of will.
Remembering how angry Kaden had been when she’d gone to Arkadia, and how critical he’d been of her choice to go to the Shadow Market after Seth, she didn’t need to hear what his opinion was on her capabilities regarding Shamanic defense.
She could already hear him talking in her mind, lecturing her about how she hadn’t had to make the truly hard choices.
She wasn’t an ex-Enforcer who’d spent her adult life answering directly to the governing body of the universe.
She’d grown up ignorant and naive in an isolated pocket of existence.
She’d heard it all before, so she more or less knew what he thought about her abilities and her choices, and it wasn’t much of either. She braced herself for his less-than-glowing recommendation.
He didn’t look at her, or anyone else, his gaze on some indeterminate point just past his coffee mug. “She won’t hurt him unless she has to. But you are wrong if you think she’ll hesitate to defend if he attacks. Especially if he goes after one of you, rather than her.”
The room went silent. Kaden either didn’t notice, pretended not to notice, or was simply unbothered by the reaction.
Nyx, who was very bothered by the fact he hadn’t sided with Morgen and Evra and brushed her capabilities aside, attempted a levity she didn’t feel.
“Well, there you have it. If both my father and Kaden Moor think there isn’t a problem, who is anyone else to doubt me? ”
“Funny,” Evra said unconvincingly. “Consider reconsidering.”
“If the two of you are scared and need to stay behind, I understand,” Nyx said, in an intentionally patronizing voice.
“I’ll just go by myself to face the big, bad, exiled Shaman.
” She had no interest in going by herself.
For one, she needed Kaden’s Hound magic if she was to have any hope of finding her quarry.
For another, she didn’t actually want to do this alone.
She’d tried that before, and though she hadn’t wanted to admit it at the time, she was glad her friends had come after her and forced their way into her vendetta.
“That is not the issue,” Evra began. She didn’t continue, which made it plain enough where she’d intended to go.
“This isn’t about Jevryn being more capable of countering a threat, is it?
” Nyx asked quietly. For Griff, it had been.
It was why he’d been persuaded that she could do this.
Her friends were not being persuaded. Which told her that in their eyes, this was about Jevryn not being there to protect her from herself.
“You think I can’t be trusted,” she accused. They thought if she was outside the Station—outside of Kaliaris and Griff’s ability to monitor her at all times—she’d fall apart. Apparently, however bad a job she thought she’d been doing of faking normal, she’d been doing an even worse one.
Morgen dropped his chin wearily onto his palm. “Can you blame us?”
“Yes. I’m not fragile.” Everyone thought she was. Poor Nyx, who didn’t know much of anything about the universe, and who apparently needed her daddy to protect her from her own emotions. “I’m not wallowing in the depths of my depression. I’m fine.”
“Nyx,” Evra said, with a gentleness that really didn’t suit her, “your eyes are still blue.”
She stiffened. Who the fuck had decided to tell them what that meant?
One of her fathers, or Kaden? She looked at the latter, but though he met her gaze, she couldn’t tell anything from it.
He knew what she was looking at him for, but he didn’t feel the need to deny or confirm it.
Fucking typical, unflappable Kaden Moor.
Sometimes, she wanted to punch him just to see if he would show an actual emotion.
It was an uncharitable thought—she’d been having a lot of those lately—and she didn’t know where it came from.
For a long while, when she’d been living in Jevryn’s home, she and Kaden passing each other like ghosts, she’d hated him simply because he was alive and Seth wasn’t.
But somewhere along the way, between brushing the surface of how broken Kaden actually was—how much Kiev had broken him, no matter how well he hid it most of the time—and realizing that he was never going to try and push to be in her space again—they spoke words in passing, they were around each other in larger groups, but he never actually tried to talk to her or be alone with her—she’d stopped hating him.
She hadn’t stopped being frustrated by him. Probably because she still didn’t understand him, and she’d always had an inability to leave alone what she couldn’t understand. But she was going to leave this alone if it killed her.
She shifted her interrogative gaze to Griff, who wouldn’t quite meet her eyes.
Of course he’d been the one to tell them.
She couldn’t entirely blame him. If Evra’s eyes had suddenly changed color, Nyx would have been curious, and if someone important to Evra had just died, maybe she wouldn’t want to ask Evra about it directly.
Since neither Evra nor Morgen had asked Nyx about the eye color shift, they’d probably asked Griff.
Even if he’d only told them Salyrian eyes changed color with intense emotions, it wouldn’t take supreme powers of deductive reasoning to conclude what emotion blue conveyed.
Nyx returned her attention to Evra. “So they’re blue. I realize it’s a pretty color, but lots of people have blue eyes on Earth. I assure you, it won’t jeopardize the mission.”
“That is not what I—”