Chapter 15 #3
Winds blew in a wild maelstrom through the room, whipping her hair into her face and flattening Griff’s feathers. The vines around her grew in size.
“I am not breaking my promise,” she shouted above the noise of the wind. “If you don’t want to wait, then we won’t.”
Kaliaris said. They hadn’t sounded so hostile towards her since they’d first begun talking to her, back when they’d disliked her because Griff had almost died trying to help her.
“I already said that I would.” Her own voice was bitter, to the same degree Kaliaris’s had been angry.
“And maybe if you stopped being afraid, and remembered that you know me, you’d realize I’m not trying to break any promises to you.
Everything I’ve said is true, but if you want to know if there’s another reason I’m asking this of you, then yes, there is.
“I will miss you when you are gone. You are my home, and you are my friend, and while I understand that I will have to let you go some day, I had not planned for that day to come so soon. So yes, I am being selfish. Yes, I want you to choose to stay in the way that is safest for all of us, until the final time comes. But I will honor your wishes, whatever they are.” And because her feelings were hurt, she added, “Now if you’d be so kind as to let me out, I have things to do. ”
She felt the air in Kaliaris shift, forming the current that would lift her out of the Heart. It was not moving around Griff. “Are you coming?” she asked him.
“In a moment. You go ahead.”
She did. Back in the main part of the Station, she cut herself off from Kaliaris's senses and tried to tamp down her hurt. She understood Kaliaris’s position, on an intellectual level.
She couldn’t claim to understand what it must have been like to have been imprisoned for over nine-hundred years.
But she’d thought they knew and trusted her more than to think her primary motivation for asking what she had asked was because she wanted to slither out of her promise to them.
She had thought they would miss her, at least a little.
The fact that they apparently wouldn’t didn’t change how she felt. But it stung.
She went up to her room and sat down on the floor, her back to the bed post. She took a deep breath, all the way into her stomach, trying to ease the way her insides felt like they were twisting.
She didn’t want to lose someone else again.
Not now. Not so soon. It didn’t feel fair.
Elena Fortuna’s snide voice popped into her head, complaining about Nyx’s childish expectations of fairness in anything.
“Fuck you, Mom,” she muttered. “Fuck you, and Laiveran, and my dead uncle, and the Council, and fuck all of this.”
For a brief moment, she considered what her life would be life if she actually said fuck it.
No more pending collapse of universal transit, no more strange magical artifacts that wanted to consume the universe, no more ancient beings threatening her and her friends’ lives at every turn.
But it didn’t work. Because her friends’—her family’s—lives were inextricably wound up in all of this now.
Maybe Morgen and Evra could walk away, if they wanted, but Kaden and Griff and Jevryn couldn’t.
Morgen and Evra wouldn’t. And Nyx didn’t want to, either.
She didn’t want to quit. Circumstances had placed her here, but she kept going because it was the right thing to do.
But she really wished she was on the other side of it, already.
She wished she knew that it ended well, so she could be certain she was making the right decisions.
She shook her and forced herself to her feet, checking her companion journal. Nothing new. She hadn’t expected Jevryn to write her when he hadn’t written to Griff, but she’d hoped.
Reminding herself that her father had survived the universe for nine centuries without her worrying over him, she connected back into the Station’s senses and found Kaden was inside.
He’d brought everyone’s bags—except Evra’s, who had had hers with her, and Tristen’s, who wouldn’t have any need of refreshed clothing—and appeared to be swapping out items in his and Morgen’s bags. Her own he’d left outside her door.
She retrieved it and repacked, shoving her last shirt into the bag just as Griff came up the stairs. She forced false brightness into her voice. “I think we’re all good here. Kaden just finished packing, and I think it’s been enough time to try and check in with Evra.”
“Nyx,” Griff said, obviously noticing her fake upbeat tone.
She forged ahead. “I don’t know how long we’ll be gone, but if it’s longer than a week, I’ll have Evra send a letter through the ley line courier service, and—”
“It is not that Kaliaris does not care,” Griff interrupted gently.
She dragged the zipper on the bag closed, her jaw clenching. “Really? Because it seems like they don’t care.” And she didn’t care that they could hear every bit of this conversation.
“They are afraid. There has never been an end in sight, for them. For either of us. We are both afraid.”
Her head jerked up. “Why?” She understood why she was afraid. She had thought Griff would only be eager.
“They are afraid this opportunity will escape them. I am afraid this will not work. I am afraid that I will not be what I once was, that I do not understand how to be myself anymore. I am afraid that the people I care for, who believe they care for me, will find they no longer need me once this place no longer exists.”
“Griff—I know I haven’t known the two of you even a fraction of the time that you’ve known each other, but you are everything to Jevryn. You can’t doubt that.”
“What I can and cannot doubt where he is concerned is my own to deal with. And we are far from anything easy. But Jevryn is not the only person in my life.”
Surely he didn’t mean her?
“Kaliaris brought you into my life. We have roles here that are comfortable and defined. When Kaliaris is gone, we will neither be what we are here. And it is easy to remain close with someone, when you live under the same roof. When that changes—when roles and proximity change—people who think they will remain in touch often drift apart from each other.”
She dropped the bag and walked over to him. “Yes, Kaliaris brought us together. But I don’t care about you because I’m the Guardian and you’re my Avatar. I have never wanted that relationship. I have never liked the disparity of knowing that I can force you to carry out my commands. I hate it.”
“You have only ever done so once, and only then to save my life.”
“I know. But the power imbalance exists, even if I don’t use it.
Do you think I haven’t wondered if you’ll want to deal with me when you don’t have to anymore?
I’m a mess. I attract trouble, and I always need advice.
And,” she added softly, “I’m not really your daughter.
You don’t have any obligation to put up with me. ”
He lowered his head to come eye level with her. “Unless you wish to disown me, never say that you are not mine. You are the daughter I chose. You are the daughter I would choose again. You are the daughter I am fortunate to have.”
Tears pricked at her eyes and her throat closed up. “And you’re the dad I always wanted. Whatever else changes, that doesn’t.”
He opened his wings and she accepted the hug. “Then, as I believe they say on this planet, we are stuck with each other?”
“Yeah.” She sniffed. “We’re stuck with each other.”
“Then I find I am not so afraid after all.”