Chapter Sixteen #3
“He wanted more than the place God had given him. He couldn’t understand why the throne wasn’t his to claim, why he should bow to another when he believed himself worthy to rule. Jealousy took root, and instead of mastering it, he fed it until there was nothing left of the angel he’d once been.”
The fire cracks softly behind Fury.
“We’re taught his story almost as soon as we’re created. Not because anyone expects to meet him. It’s a warning.”
I look at Blade. “I never believed I would.”
The admission sits heavily in the silence.
“To us, Calix was history... a lesson. A cautionary tale repeated often enough that you stopped thinking of him as someone who had actually existed...” I pause. “I was wrong.”
I can still hear his voice, still remember the certainty with which he’d spoken.
“He knew exactly who I was. He knew what Heaven had done to me, and he offered me a place beside him. He said Heaven had already discarded me... that I no longer belonged there.” I shake my head. “I refused.”
When I finish, the room falls silent.
“Calix isn’t new,” Vex says quietly.
The room turns toward him.
“I’ve come across references to him before. Different names, different centuries, but always the same pattern. He finds people who are grieving, broken, or searching for purpose, then offers them exactly what they think they’ve been missing.”
“The Devoted,” Blade says.
Vex nods once.
“They’re human, every one of them. Calix gathers them over decades... centuries, and binds them to himself through a ritual. They don’t lose who they are all at once. It happens slowly, piece by piece, until there’s almost nothing left except his will.”
Lily folds her arms. “So, they’re not possessed?”
“No.” Vex’s answer is immediate. “They choose him.” Nobody says anything for a moment. “At least in the beginning,” he continues. “By the time they understand what they’ve become, the choice has long since been taken away.”
“What has Calix become?” Blade asks.
“Nobody knows exactly what Calix has become. The oldest tests call his kind Reclaimants. They hunt power that’s been cut off from its source.
Fallen grace, corrupted light, anything that used to belong to something holy.
” His eyes settle on me. “Especially when it’s been broken.
” The words land exactly where they’re intended.
“Things like me,” I say.
No one rushes to disagree, Vex least of all.
Instead, he holds my gaze for a long moment before giving the slightest nod. “I think that’s why he came.”
The admission sits heavily in the room.
“I didn’t think he was looking for Alaska,” I reply with a wry smile.
His voice remains calm, matter-of-fact. “I think he was looking for you.”
Flint, who has been silently turning pages throughout the conversation, finally looks up from the ancient text spread across Lily’s table.
“There are only three recorded accounts of a Reclaimant being successfully bound.”
His finger traces a line of faded script before he continues, “All three required the presence of a Living Seal.”
“Tessa or Vex?” Blade asks.
“Possibly.”
Flint turns another page.
“Or the bond itself. Vex and I spent weeks researching the ritual before we freed Tessa from the Khorvath. At the time, we dismissed these passages because they weren’t relevant to what we believed we were facing.” He glances down at the open book. “They appear considerably more relevant now.”
The room falls silent again, everyone absorbing the implications.
The briefing continues for another hour.
Rooster contributes almost nothing to the discussion, and I don’t expect him to.
He remains by the window, watching the tree line with the same unwavering focus Scout gives the perimeter.
Every so often, he shifts his weight, scans the ridge, then returns to listening without ever taking his eyes off the mountain.
Night comes quickly, the way it always does this deep into January. The last of the daylight doesn’t so much fade as it simply surrenders to the mountains, leaving the cabin surrounded by darkness that feels almost solid.
Blade doesn’t waste time.
The briefing is barely over before he begins issuing quiet instructions, assigning each man a position with the confidence of someone who has led us through more battles than I could count.
There’s no discussion or second-guessing.
He knows our strengths as well as we know them ourselves, and every assignment makes perfect sense the moment it leaves his mouth.
Scout takes the high ground, his wings giving him an unrivaled view of the clearing, the ridgeline, and every possible approach to the cabin. Ranger shifts back into his wolf before disappearing into the western tree line, where his senses will pick up anything that slips through unseen.
Flint moves east.
He doesn’t remain entirely human, allowing just enough of his dragon form to surface that his size alone becomes a deterrent.
Steam rises from his body in slow curls, the snow around him hissing and melting before freezing again as the temperature struggles to decide which force is stronger, the Alaskan winter or the dragon standing in the middle of it.
Blade sends Fury south.
It’s the approach most likely to be used if Calix decides to test our perimeter, and Fury is the one brother capable of turning an entire section of forest into hostile ground.
Even in his hellhound form, the heat rolling off him extends well beyond his body, distorting the air in shimmering waves that ripple through the darkness.
Before Calix found them, the Devoted were human.
Whatever rituals they’ve endured, whatever they have become, they’re still flesh and blood beneath it all.
But flesh has limits.
Fury has spent centuries learning exactly how to exploit them.
Rooster remains close to the cabin, watching over Lily and me while keeping one eye on the tree line, his relaxed posture fooling no one who’s ever seen him fight. Vex vanishes almost as soon as he steps outside, slipping into the darkness without a sound. I don’t know where Blade places him.
I doubt anyone except Blade ever does.
Within minutes, the clearing is empty again.
At least, it appears to be.
But I know better.
Every approach to the cabin is covered.
Every brother is exactly where Blade wants him.
The cabin settles into a comfortable silence.
Rooster remains on the porch, which, for him, counts as being inside.
Every once in a while, his shadow passes across the window as he paces the length of the timber boards, never wandering too far from the door.
He’ll complain if anyone points out that Blade has essentially assigned him bodyguard duty, but he hasn’t strayed more than a few yards from the cabin since we finished the briefing.
Blade sits at the table with a mug of coffee he helped himself to without asking.
The steam has long since stopped rising from it, yet he still cradles the mug between both hands as though the ritual of holding it is more important than drinking it.
He hasn’t spoken since assigning everyone their positions.
He doesn’t need to.
Blade sits at the table with a mug of coffee he helped himself to without asking. The steam stopped rising from it a long time ago, but he still cradles it between both hands, running through something in his head. He hasn’t spoken since assigning everyone their positions. He doesn’t need to.
Lily retreats to the corner she’s claimed ever since I arrived at the cabin, with her back against the eastern wall where she can see every window, doorway, and possible threat without needing to turn her head.
She isn’t trying to sleep. I’ve learned enough about her to know she rarely sleeps before exhaustion leaves her no choice.
Instead, she grows very still and processes.
Her eyes remain open, fixed somewhere beyond the room, following thoughts only she can see.
Bear lies curled against Lily’s boots. He has belonged to Lily long before I quite literally fell into her life, and despite my occasional attempts to convince him otherwise, he remains steadfastly loyal to her.
I cross the room and lower myself onto the floor beside her.
Not close enough to invade the space she keeps around herself, because those boundaries exist for reasons I haven’t earned the right to ask about.
But I am close enough that neither of us is sitting alone. For a while, neither of us speaks.
The fire crackles softly, and the wind brushes against the cabin walls. Somewhere outside, snow slips from the branches with a muted thump.
Lily keeps her eyes on the window, watching the darkness beyond the cabin’s reflected glow.
“Your family,” she says quietly.
“Yeah.”
Another silence settles between us.
Not awkward, but thoughtful.
When she speaks again, her voice is softer than before. “Are they what you remembered?”
My gaze drifts around the room, and I smile. “They’re better.”
Lily doesn’t answer because she doesn’t need to. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the smallest shift in her posture as she settles a fraction closer to the wall, the tension in her shoulders easing just enough that someone who didn’t know her would never notice.
Outside, my brothers hold the line.
Somewhere beyond them, the darkness waits.
Snow continues to fall, blanketing the mountain in white as though it can somehow cover everything that’s happened here.
Lily made sure I survived.
Outside, my brothers hold the line.
Whatever Heaven took from me, it didn’t take them.