Chapter 16 #3
They stayed by the water for a half hour longer in comfortable silence, just watching the waves roll in.
It wasn’t until Nyx turned back, retrieving her shoes, that she realized there was another balcony facing the ocean, from a room that must be right across the hall from hers, and there was somebody on it.
Kaden leaned on the stone railing, looking out across the water.
She had the thought that he shouldn’t be out here, where anyone could see him, but then she didn’t see anyone else in either direction.
A dock jutted out from the shore a little farther down the beach, two smaller craft tied off there, but no people in sight.
They were in a cove, she realized as they walked back, the area feeling secluded and private. Kaden’s gaze never shifted from the sea as she and Evra climbed back over the balcony wall to their own room, and Nyx glanced at him only long enough to identify the expression on his face: longing.
She remembered, suddenly, that stupid painting she’d bought him in Dead Earth.
The one they’d seen of ships pulling into harbor, the one he’d stared at for so long with that exact look in his eyes.
Kaden’s face so rarely made identifiable expressions that she’d gone back and bought it for him, even though she couldn’t afford it.
It was the one he’d left with her when he’d left.
The one she’d kept and eventually given back to him.
She wondered, now, if she would find it in his room in the Station if she looked.
It was another one of those questions she hadn’t wanted to know the answer to before. She still wasn’t sure she did.
When they stepped back inside the room, she found Evra frowning at her. “What?”
Evra shook her head. “It is nothing.”
That, Nyx didn’t believe for a moment, and it wasn’t too hard to figure out what she was sour about, considering how she’d been acting for the last few weeks.
“Kaden?” Nyx asked. Evra didn’t agree, but she didn’t really have to. “Can I ask what your deal with him is? You never had a problem with him until we came back from Kiev’s.”
Evra was silent for so long Nyx didn’t think she would answer, and when she did, it was with a question. “Why do you think he is still here?”
“Because we needed him to find Tristen and he agreed to help us?”
“And do you think he is going to leave now that he has done that?”
“I haven’t really thought about it. It would make Morgen happy if he stuck around. And he doesn’t really have anywhere else to go.”
Evra folded her arms across her chest. “It would have made Morgen happy if Kaden had stayed after we found Seth in the Shadow Market. Or after Kaden helped retrieve you from Amentia Furor. Or after he delivered your mother to the Station. He did not stay any of those times. And each time he found somewhere else to go.”
“So he’s growing as a person and trying to repair his familial relationships?” Nyx suggested. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
Evra blew out a frustrated breath. “You cannot be this oblivious.”
“Apparently I can, because I have no idea what you mean.”
“He never by choice stayed at the Station when Seth was alive. Now that Seth is gone, and you are vulnerable, suddenly Kaden is here.”
Nyx narrowed her eyes. “Vulnerable?” she asked, a dangerous note in her voice.
“Grief makes a person susceptible to things they otherwise might not consider.”
“Do you want to spit out what exactly it is you think I’m ‘susceptible to’?”
“You are still the only thing he cares about, and that is not healthy.”
Nyx shook her head, annoyed they were even having to have this conversation, because it rubbed salt in her old wounds.
She might not want Kaden back, embarrassing drunken propositions aside, but it wasn’t exactly easy to point out that she’d never meant anything to him when at one point he’d meant everything to her.
“He doesn’t care about me, Evra—at least not how you’re talking about.
He feels guilty, that’s all.” Because he had come into her life the first time when she’d been vulnerable and susceptible and all she’d wanted was someone to love her, and he’d used that.
But he was also the only reason her father had been able to rescue her from Amentia Furor.
He’d saved her life on Kyvren. He’d let her use him as a verbal punching bag for six months after Seth died. He’d helped her kill Kiev.
It didn’t make things right, but it earned him…
something. “If I can set it aside so Morgen can have his brother back, I don’t see why you can’t.
Because Kaden does care about Morgen. And Maruca, and his mother.
And I’m getting really tired of having to explain Kaden’s emotions to people when I’d rather not be thinking about them myself.
The only thing making this situation awkward is you glaring at Kaden every time he breathes in my direction, so could you just let it go? ”
“If that is what you wish,” Evra said stiffly.
“It is.”
“But I would like it noted, for the record, that I have reservations.”
“Consider it noted.”