Chapter 24 #3
“He’s good to go,” Tristen confirmed. After another few seconds, in which no one moved, he added, “You can stop touching him. He won’t change back.”
Jevryn and Griff looked down at their clasped hands.
Their fingers flexed. The look of fear on Griff’s face that he tried to hide—the fear that this wasn’t permanent, that he would be forced back into a body that was not his own—made Nyx’s anger at a dead man rise all over again.
Her uncle had not paid nearly enough for his sins.
But he was gone, and she would have to settle for that.
With painful slowness, Griff and Jevryn finally let go of each other. The room went silent, even Kaliaris’s ever-rustling vines stilling. Griff was trembling. Jevryn’s hands were tightly fisted, his knuckles bone-white.
Griff did not change back. When it became clear he wasn’t going to, their gazes snapped to each other. There were so many things wrapped up in those looks. Love and confusion and longing and centuries of bad decisions.
“Come home with me,” Jevryn said.
Griff hesitated, his gaze flicking to Nyx.
“You should go,” she said softly. She knew they had things to work out, and she didn’t want to hold them back. “I’ll be fine. I am fine.”
He nodded and looked to Jevryn. “Come here.”
Above them, Nyx felt the opening that led from the Heart to the portal room yawn wide. Jevryn walked to Griff and stopped in front of him, circling his arms behind Griff’s neck.
Griff’s arms came around Jevryn’s waist, pulling him close.
There was something dangerous and almost violent in his eyes, so at odds with the gentleness he always showed to her.
She had a feeling that as Griff and Jevryn had grown closer again in the last few months, they had also avoided discussing their past, and the schism that lay between them.
Now that Griff was free, she didn’t think they could avoid it any longer.
“Hold tight,” Griff said.
A flicker of a smile danced across Jevryn’s face. “I remember how this works.”
Griff’s wings flared wide and with a single, powerful stroke he and Jevryn shot upward, the wind in the wake of their flight blowing Nyx’s hair back from her face.
Already they were so high she could barely see them.
She heard the sound of another stroke of Griff’s wings and felt through Kaliaris’s senses as they emerged into the Station above.
Tristen stared up at where they’d disappeared. “You know,” he said slowly, “I’m only mildly inclined in that direction, but that was hot.”
Nyx wrinkled her nose. “Those are my dads you’re talking about. And they’re like nine-hundred years old.”
“They don’t look nine-hundred years old.”
“Jevryn would literally kill you.”
Tristen thought about it for a minute. “Also kind of hot.”
“There is something wrong with you.”
“Yeah, I thought that was established.”
“Please go back to mooning over Maruca and stop thinking about my dads in any romantic capacity.”
He looked affronted. “I’m not mooning over her.”
“So you’re not the teensiest bit heartbroken that she didn’t want to come on our grand save-the-Stations adventure?”
“I mean, if the opportunity were to come up for you to invite her, you should do that. It’s common for two people to develop a bond when they face adversity together.”
Nyx rolled her eyes. “If you want her to come, I’m the last person who should invite her. We’re on slightly better terms than we used to be, but I’m pretty sure she still strongly dislikes me.”
“How come?”
“She doesn’t think I’m good enough to be her brother’s ex-girlfriend.”
“Right.” He drew the word out.
“There might also have been an instance in which Kaden nearly got cut in half by a closing Station door on another planet, and that might or might not have kind of been my fault.”
“Out of curiosity, how many times, roughly, would you say you and the people around you have nearly died since you became the Guardian here?”
She shrugged. “It gets hard to keep track after a while. If you’re trying to drag Maruca into this, does that mean you’ve decided to go through with the rest of it?”
His mirth died down. “I haven’t decided.”
Of course he hadn’t. Was it too much to have hoped for that connecting with Kaliaris would have been enough to sway him to her side?
“But I’d like to talk the Congregation.”
“Now?”
He shook his head. “Tomorrow. I…have some things to think about.”
“Alright. Tomorrow.” She’d have to talk to Ankira and set a time. “Kaliaris will take you up.”
“You aren’t coming?”
She shook her head. “I’m going to stay for a while.”
Kaliaris’s vines bore Tristen away. When he was gone, Nyx settled onto the floor, her back resting against the vine-covered pedestal in the center of Kaliaris’s Heart.
“I want to.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Tell me a story, K.”
“Yeah. You must have thousands right? Of your people? Tell me about them.”
they began.
She smiled, and couldn’t help but interrupt. “In a galaxy far, far away?”