Chapter 26
~Sylas~
“Maximus.”
“Neron.”
“Dacian.”
“Valzar.”
I eyed Lazriel as he reclined on the amethyst couch in the living room after slapping his textbook down on one of the cushions and uttering those words.
Names, actually.
Potential baby names.
Again.
“What’s the last one?”
He lifted a shoulder, those and his glorious arms on full display with just a tank top covering his upper half. “I made it up.”
He moved to kick his booted feet up on the table, his tactical pants straining across his muscular legs.
I snapped my fingers. “Nuh-uh.”
With a grunt, he stopped and twisted, putting his boots flat on the rug that covered the gray stone floor, a geometric print melding amethyst and deep green.
“Better?” he asked.
“Getting there.”
It was a work in progress as I knew it would be when we all fully settled into this home together. At least he hadn’t yet thrown muddied and bloodied clothes onto the couch or the bed upstairs. A far cry from what I’d witnessed of him with his dorm room.
Thuds and the scraping of furniture sounded upstairs and Lazriel shot his head up, getting so easily distracted once again.
It was Cassius helping Ketheron to organize his new room for when we all moved in, once the house was complete and this war was done.
It wouldn’t be long now.
A couple of days had gone by and my system had settled. I was now back at full motherfucking power.
We were just waiting on Ryker and Remnant.
The Shadowed was wiping out remaining outlier Puritas cells so when we moved into battle we’d just have one contingent to deal with, not others still out there to concern ourselves with. It would be all said and done in one fell swoop.
One massive battle, though, because, according to Ambrose, what I’d observed when I’d been held captive in that subterranean crypt with my faculties compromised, hadn’t been the full picture of the remaining central Puritas army.
I’d seen a couple of hundred, but with his abilities, Ambrose had seen into the entirety of the place and clocked three thousand.
While Remnant was working that angle with the outliers, Ryker had agreed to work the strategy Cornelius had offered up and Ry was now prepping the two-thousand hybrid gathering that would serve as a means to draw out Gregor and Puritas—and Morien.
Ketheron and Ariana were ready to work with the Haven Initiative children to siphon the Celestial magic from them.
Ambrose would be in place at a moment’s notice to provide a black magic barrier also.
And Cassius would be a conduit. We needed all those Puritas members imbued with stolen Celestial power to be in one place—to be drawn out by the hybrid gathering—wherein Cassius would forge a link for the Celestial children to latch onto.
For my part, I was scrawling notes and formulas into my journal as I sat in the forest-green armchair across from Lazriel, where I’d been determining the most effective way to hold back a mammoth unleashing of Risen Reckoning expected from Morien.
I had to hold it back during the time it would take for the Celestial power and black magic to be drawn from him.
Obviously with those massive boosts, it would technically make Morien and that spell stronger than me, able to overpower me.
Technically.
There were ways around it, ways to undercut both him and it so it wasn’t a case of just power slamming against power.
“Are you finished?” I asked Lazriel, gesturing at his textbook and notebook tossed onto the couch along with his pen.
He was working on an assignment for Combat and Power Suppression, a class with Professor Voxe, his favorite. But this assignment was theory-based, and Lazriel wasn’t particularly fond of that.
Normally, I’d put his struggle with focusing down to that.
But it appeared to be more than that this time.
“No. I’ll do it later.”
“We have time now.”
He shoved a hand through his hair and rose to his feet. “It’s stupid.”
“Stupid?” I queried, placing my journal and pen down on the marble-topped side table.
“Yeah, I mean, with everything happening, having to bounce between the dorms, the Academy itself, then here, and The Shadow Tunnels before that, Cassius and Ketheron’s apartment…
why am I even still continuing on with my Wraeven Academy studies?
I know what I want to do now—working with Vyrn Hollow Shifter Habitat—so why even bother to carry on through to graduation? ”
“You have merely a couple of months remaining of a four-year endeavor. Do you not think it’s worth completing?”
He scoffed. “Why? Look around. I mean, not around this specific room… you know what I’m getting at.”
“I do. However, you put four years into this. If you tap out right near the end, there will be no payoff. You began at Wraeven Academy as a quiet, lost, and fractured being. Yet, when I met you, you’d come to basically rule that place and everyone within it.
As a wolf. A wolf among more powerful beings.
It was your presence, your take-no-prisoners and forthright attitude that did that, something you were able to develop within the safety of the Academy.
Your sexuality and your issues with your vampire side…
yes, those were still issues at the time and the vampire aspect evolved independently of the Academy’s influence.
Neither did you coming to terms with your sexuality—that was through your relationship with the three of us.
But attending Wraeven was the beginning of a shift in you, of you moving from the boy who’d been sheltered in a safehouse after being cast out by his pack, to somebody walking the halls with confidence and inner power.
To follow that through to the end isn’t about grades or graduation for a diploma’s sake…
it’s a claim to be made for you. To finish what you started, to mark that properly. ”
I sat forward on the chair. “Not to mention, given your career path now determined, Professor Drenn Voxe would be a very useful resource to glean from. He’s a wolf-dragon hybrid, he’s seen a lot, lived, suffered, learned.
Being around him for your classes would provide a great opportunity there and further help to prepare you for Vyrn Hollow and the SSU. ”
“Huh,” he uttered, as he took my words in. “Well, that’s… good points.” He gave me a withering look. “You bastard.”
I grinned. “I know.” I leaned back. “Also, Velra’s carrying on through to the end of the year.
She likes what Wraeven gave her… stability and a path to emerging back into the world from too long spent in hiding.
And it’s also her not wanting all this Puritas madness to interfere in her life again and what she can and cannot do.
It’s already pulled her away several times, so she’s determined to push on through. ”
“Not allow it to win?” He smiled. “Yeah, that’s her.”
“Cassius will also be maintaining his teaching position there,” a voice boomed through the room as the man himself strode on in.
I chuckled as I saw stone debris all over him. And he was carrying a little teddy bear that had lost one of his button eyes.
“You will?” Lazriel asked, the hope in his voice resonating through me.
“Yes. I enjoy my role as professor. It is a nice bridge with my work with the children at Haven Initiative.” His lips quirked. “Also, as you said yourself, my students thoroughly enjoy my Ritual Ethics & Celestial Lawfare class—specifically my teaching style.”
“Wow, who would have thought that teaching that class would ever become about more than stalking our lovely Velra Nox?”
“Stalking? You were the one who begged me to see to her.”
“Well… you were being a standoffish dick to her.”
Cassius stared at him for a moment, tension rising.
But then he gave a nod. “Yes, I truly was. My intention had been to protect her from myself, but it was foolish. And unnecessary. Velra could never—”
“Be such a weak and incapable thing requiring savior complex intervention?” her voice suddenly came, a moment before she teleported in with a burst of her purple power.
She materialized beside the couch, winking at Lazriel, giving me a smile, then turning to address Cassius to her right. “Hmm?”
“Velra, that is not—”
“I’m screwing around. I know it was complicated for you. For all of us. All dealt with. In the past. Done and done.” She grasped his hand. “But I’m really happy that you’ve come to love your job as professor there so much.”
“And you? Your plans are to graduate, then move into a fulltime role with the Crossborn Refuge System alongside Nyx Laryn?”
“That will be part of it, but… I just met with Graceyn from Thryne to hand over the elixir I finalized that will cure King Darethor, and there’s something else I’m going to get involved in as well.”
“With Thryne itself?” I queried.
“No. With Thryne evolving and becoming part of a new Royal Fae Court set up now that the king has seen the error of his ways, my involvement isn’t needed. Besides, Graceyn has it. And Kelsana is already making waves too—in a good way.”
She eased her hand from Cassius as she started talking animatedly, the chains on her leather corset and pants making a pleasant jingling sound as she moved.
Lazriel, Cassius, and I smiled out at each other, loving this excitement from her.
Especially as she unconsciously patted her pregnant belly through it, like she was including our unborn baby in the conversation as well.
“I’m going to work with Darethor on hybrid integration and also moving away from the dangerous and outdated notion of pure bloodlines that’s still running rampant in the Dark Fae Realm.
There was a reason that so many Dark Fae beings were recruited into Puritas and so easily led by my parents.
To stop that from happening in other ways even when Puritas is gone, change needs to begin at the roots.
And that’s what I’ll be working toward with the king. ”
“Wondrous,” Cassius said, wrapping her up in his arms. “Truly wondrous.”