Chapter 12
Nyx figured there had to be some biological reason for the fact that sex nearly always made men sleepy and women wired, but she didn’t know what it was.
That was a distinctly unfortunate thing, she discovered, when you were lying in a stranger’s bed and he was passed out while your brain was going a million miles a minute with nothing helpful to say, just various colorful refrains of What the fuck did I just do?
She glanced over at Tristen. He was asleep on his back, chest rising and falling rhythmically, and he wasn’t likely to wake up any time soon.
It had already been late when they’d gotten in, and if he hadn’t magically tapped out in the park, he’d at least come close.
Magic drain took it out of a person, especially in Dead Earth.
Sleep wasn’t going to find her, and she wasn’t going to lie in this bed until morning while her brain thought thoughts she didn’t want any part of.
Hoping fervently that Tristen was a deep sleeper, she slid out of the bed.
Although the bedroom door was open, there was almost no light coming in from beyond.
She crouched, fumbling for her clothes in the dark and gathering them into a bundle.
A little more fumbling around and she found Veritas and Alihana, the latter of which she was careful to grab by the scabbard and not the hilt, because she didn’t want to hear their opinion on being unceremoniously dropped to the floor earlier.
Clothing and weapons in hand, she crept out of the bedroom.
Walking naked in a stranger’s house was even weirder than lying awake naked in a stranger’s bed, so Nyx stopped in the living room to put on her clothes.
She’d missed her bra in the clothes grab, but she wasn’t going to go back to find it and risk waking Tristen up.
But while she knew what she wasn’t doing, she still didn’t know what she was doing.
She found her way back to the kitchen, but she didn’t really want anything.
She poured a glass of water anyway and leaned against the counter, sipping it and thinking.
She needed to actually talk to Tristen. She’d definitely struck a nerve with what she’d said to him about being lonely and miserable, but who knew how he would feel or what he would agree to when he woke up.
Her gaze landed on the bowl where Tristen had dumped all of his things when he’d come in.
The cigarette pack and lighter glared up at her, reminding her again of someone else.
She glared back. Then she scooped both out of the bowl and shoved them into her back pocket.
On the way out of the kitchen, her gaze snagged on something vanishingly rare—a landline phone, this one cordless.
She lifted it from its cradle, carrying it in one hand, Alihana in the other, and went back into the second living room, slipping out the sliding door and onto the terrace.
Sliding the door shut as quietly as possible, she then curled up on the outdoor sectional and looked down at the pack of cigarettes.
How many of Seth’s had she thrown out over the years?
She’d never actually smoked one herself.
The only reason she wanted to now was because she was already making bad decisions, and because she wanted to do something that he’d done. She wanted to feel closer to him.
She slid one out, tossed the pack onto the couch, and put the cigarette between her lips.
Two flicks had the lighter going. She couldn’t quite bring herself to drag the air into her lungs as she lit it, only sucking enough air into her mouth to get it lit.
Her nose wrinkled at the smell and the taste in her mouth, but hey, she’d come this far.
The next time she took a drag, she inhaled.
Felt the burn in her lungs and the thick feeling of smoke coating the back of her throat.
Two more puffs and a slight light-headedness hit her, a kind of weightless, pleasant feeling.
She picked up the phone. If she knew Evra’s—or Morgen’s or Kaden’s—numbers, she would call them to explain.
But she hadn’t bothered to memorize any of them.
There hadn’t seemed any point, when all their numbers were stored in the cell she no longer had with her.
She did, however, have one number memorized that she could call.
When they’d tested the landline at the Station and Griff had called her temporary cell, the number had only appeared as twenty-seven.
Presumably, for the Station. When she’d dialed it in return, it had rung through.
She punched the talk button, hit the two followed by the seven, and waited.
Ring. Ring. Ri—
“Nyx? Is that you?” Griff’s voice came across the line and some of her tension eased.
“Hey. Yeah, it’s me.”
“Is everything all right? Are you hurt?”
Of course—she should have guessed calling would worry him. “No, I’m fine. We’re all fine. I guess I just…wanted to talk to you.”
“I see.” She heard his wings rustle, as if he was settling in. “What is troubling you?”
He waited patiently in the ensuing silence as she tried to figure out what to say. She took another drag on the cigarette, which still burned all the way down her throat and heightened her feelings of lightheadedness.
She didn’t know what exactly to say—she certainly didn’t want to tell him she’d slept with Tristen—she just knew she needed something.
Some kind of Dad Advice. It made her feel a little bit like a teenager again, but then, when it came to emotional experiences, she sort of still was a teenager.
Because all the things normal people did as they grew up—making friends, navigating those friendships, navigating the breakup of friendships—were things she had never gotten to do.
She had navigated one full relationship with Seth and two half ones with Elena and Viktor.
She’d never gotten the chance to interact with anyone else.
She hadn’t gotten to build the emotional experience that other people did.
On her own, in Dead Earth, she hadn’t been able to interact with anyone for longer than a few minutes.
Even her relationship with Kaden hadn’t done much to change her, because there couldn’t be much growth in a relationship that had been nothing more than a flimsy shelter shoddily erected over all the things neither of them had been saying.
Evra and Morgen were her first true friends.
Griff was her first true parental figure who actually cared about her.
In light of all that, she figured it was okay that she was still figuring it all out.
She was trying to cram into months what other people had gotten to do over their entire childhood and early adulthood.
“Did you ever do something you knew was dumb?” she asked him finally. “Like, really dumb, and it complicated your entire life, but you couldn’t even make yourself regret it because you needed it?”
“I might know something of the experience,” Griff allowed. “Enough to tell you that whatever you are feeling now will pass. Perhaps not quickly, and perhaps not easily, but it is the nature of all things to come to an end.”
She watched the tip of the cigarette burn, staring at the orange glow and seeing the white edges of the paper curl into black and then to ash. There was something soothing about watching it burn. Certainly more soothing than actually smoking it. “I’m not sure that helps,” she admitted.
“Did your actions hurt anyone?”
“No.” She hadn’t hurt Tristen. He hadn’t hurt her.
And they’d been clear that they were neither of them confused into thinking what they’d done was something more than what it was.
“I guess I’m just thinking that maybe I’m supposed to feel bad.
And I feel confused, but I don’t feel bad, and I don’t know if that’s…
” She trailed off, tapping the lengthening stick of cigarette ashes over the ashtray conveniently sitting on the table set in front of the couch.
“Bad?” Griff finished for her. “Whether we mean to or not, we all grow up with ideas about how we should behave.
What we should want and do. The more diverse the range of views you are exposed to, the more opportunity you have to determine for yourself what you feel is right.
The more limited that range of views, the less opportunity.
“And in that latter scenario, when you feel often that what you are being told—what you have always been told—is wrong, or at least not right for you, but you have nothing to support this belief other than your own reasoning, it can cause a dissonance when your actions fall into a category you believe to be acceptable, but that you have always been told is not.”
She dropped the cigarette into the ashtray and picked at her toenail.
“No one ever really told me what was right or wrong. Elena did whatever she wanted, there was no right or wrong in her eyes, and Viktor did whatever she told him to. I think I just…didn’t want to be like her.
” Because all her mother had known how to do was hurt people.
“And now you are afraid that you have done something she would have?”
As soon as he phrased it like that, the anxiety squeezing her chest released.
“No.” She had been afraid of that, she realized.
But now that Griff had said it aloud, it made the fear seem ridiculous.
Elena Fortuna used people. It was all she knew how to do.
Nyx hadn’t used Tristen. She hadn’t slept with him to try and convince him to do what she wanted—was in fact afraid sleeping with him might complicate any chance of him agreeing to help her—she’d slept with him because for a brief moment, they’d connected with each other.
They’d both needed something from the other, and they’d both been willing to give it.
“No,” she repeated. “I…think I feel better now.”
“Then I am glad I could help.”
“Have you heard anything from Jevryn?”
“Nothing yet.”
New worry crept in where the old had left space.