Chapter 20 Silvered Mist #3
‘Simi’Ren Idan Caliostheles,’ the femme fatale intoned. ‘My party is running late. Would it be terribly rude if I joined you to catch up, even if it’s for a few minutes?’
Kainan eyed the goddess, noting her ethereal beauty before offering a polite nod. ‘Any friend of Idan’s is welcome. Join us.’
Issa, however, remained still as stone, her gaze darting between the cold fury tightening Idan’s jaw and the flash of triumph in Artya’s eyes.
‘It would be an honor to join you all, especially given the infamy of the Rider family,’ she purred, gliding closer to Idan.
Artya slid toward the gap next to him, her hip brushing his shoulder as she tried to wedge Sheba aside.
‘I believe this spot is spoken for,’ Issa clipped, leaning over to block the Sacran woman’s path.
Artya’s lip curled, but she draped herself over Idan’s other upper arm instead, squeezing into the narrow space between him and Molan.
She leaned down, whispering into Idan’s ear. ‘Fokk, I’ve missed you, lover.’
It was loud enough for Sheba to hear, and she stiffened.
To his credit, Idan reared away from Artya, the sigils on his neck flared a violent, angry dark gold.
He exhaled, biting back a curse as his arm went around his rightful lover’s waist. ‘Have you met Sheba, my other half?’
Artya’s eyes blazed with a heat she quickly suppressed, shooting Sheba a tight, fake smile.
‘A pleasure. I hope you don’t mind us former amours catching up.’
‘As long as you behave,’ Sheba murmured, matching the goddess’s faux simper.
Artya appeared nonplussed, flicking her eyes over Sheba, raising a chin in a nonchalant greeting before turning back to Idan.
‘We Sacrans believe in open love, so am I now welcome to your harem, Simi’Ren?’
As she spoke, her elegant fingers plucked a piece of fruit from his plate while her other hand wandered beneath the table, boldly squeezing his thigh.
Idan’s growl was a tectonic shift.
‘Enough,’ he rumbled, the sound vibrating the glassware.
‘How do you two know each other?’ Harlow interjected. She stood over them with a platter of flatbreads, sensing blood in the air as she glared at the newcomer.
‘Idan and I were affianced on Sacra,’ Artya said, her voice dripping with feigned nostalgia. ‘He was always my true love, but his wars kept us apart. Our passion never faded, did it, darling?’
‘Strange that. I haven’t thought of you for months,’ the god warrior in question growled.
Before Sheba could respond, Artya leaned over and took a deliberate, mocking sip from his wine glass, her eyes locked on Sheba’s with glittering, dark intent.
Idan snapped. ‘Fokkin’ hell.’
He surged to his feet and stepped out of his bench.
With a muttered grunt of ‘Excuse us,’ he snagged Artya by the arm, hauling her upright.
He led her toward a shadowed stone alcove out of earshot and towards the back of the dim restaurant, ignoring the Rider family’s curious and amused glances.
Sheba followed, her right hand still clutching her goblet of Pinot, concerned that he might lose his unholy shit and level the building.
‘Let’s please keep calm, honey,’ Sheba said, rounding up on the pair, her voice steady despite the divine anger rolling off his bunched muscles. ‘Artya, I think it’s best you leave now.’
Artya laughed, the sound like breaking crystal as she sneered at Sheba.
‘You poor, fragile, misled, mortal temporius. You’re but a heartbeat in his timeline.
A plaything. He’s using you to fill the silence until he grows bored.
When your skin sags and your breath stops, he’ll still be exactly as he is now.
And he will come back to me, because only a deity can love a god. ’
‘I’ve seen and heard enough,’ Sheba snapped.
She raised her glass and tossed the wine back into her mouth.
Idan arched a brow. ‘Salkia, for a moment I thought you were going to fling your drink in her face.’
‘It’s too good a vintage to waste on her, my love,’ Sheba smirked.
The goddess spluttered with rage.
‘Fokk you, she hissed, leaning in to Sheba.
Sheba, undeterred, stepped into the immortal, brandishing her now-empty flute as a weapon. ‘Nada, you’re the one who needs to take a freakin’ chill pill. I’ve dealt with many wildcat women like you, and I can throw down hard.’
‘Sheba, nada,’ Idan warned in a deep, reverberating growl.
Artya’s hand darted in a blur.
She pulled a sapphire dagger from the folds of her dress, a blade tipped with a tiny syringe of shimmering green liquid.
Idan jolted, recognizing it as Vraxian Marrow, a neurotoxin that could paralyze and cause an agonizing death for a human.
She lunged for Sheba’s heart.
Idan moved faster than lightning as his eyes turned into pits of molten gold and silver.
Pushing Sheba away from harm, he let out a potent burst of psionic power that erupted from within him.
Artya’s arm froze mid-air, her muscles twisting against her will as Idan seized her mind.
‘Did Sulfiqar send you?’ he growled.
Artya spluttered, trying to deny his question, and he sent a psychic barb deeper into her mind.
She screamed in agony, her terrified eyes meeting his. ‘Naam, he wanted her out of the way.’
‘Why?’
Artya’s eyes dilated, and she stammered. ‘He thought he could use her to make you surrender to his cause, but he’s changed his mind as he is wont to do. He wants her dead, as an example of what happens if ever you and your brother work against his wishes.’
‘Fokk him and his games,’ Idan rasped. ‘Fokk you too, for seeking Sheba’s end.’
With a psionic push, he forced her to turn the dagger on herself.
Artya gasped as she plunged the dart deep into her own upper chest.
‘You will remember this moment for eternity,’ Idan growled, his timbre a terrifying thunderous storm. ‘With agonizing screams as you ceaselessly replay your betrayal and attempt on my woman.’
With a snap of his fingers, Artya glimmered out of existence.
Back in the alcove, Idan pulled Sheba into his chest, cursing under his breath.
‘Where did she go?’
Idan’s mouth twisted.
‘Right now she lies thrashing on the airless, regolith sands beyond the city, her lungs burning while the Vraxian poison burns her immortal cells with white-hot fire.’
‘Will she die?’ Sheba murmured, suppressing a shiver.
‘Nada,’ Idan rumbled. ‘Most gods outlive a Vraxian venom attack. But her nerves are shot to shit, and she’ll be screaming in agony for an epoch to come, perhaps for the rest of her perpetual existence.’
Sheba gazed up at him, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘Once again, you are scary as hell, my love.’
The corner of his mouth twitched, and he caught her face in his hands, kissing her with a desperate, crushing intensity that claimed every inch of her soul.
‘Remember,’ he murmured against her lips, ‘I intend for our love to endure for eternity, never forget that.’
They sauntered back to the table arm in arm. The Riders glanced up, their expressions curious.
‘So,’ Kainan drawled, leaning back with a smirk. ‘Where’d the ex-fiancée go? Did she find a better party?’
Idan sat back down, pulling Sheba onto his lap this time, his expression unreadable.
‘She had a sudden change of scenery,’ he rasped, his tone dry as bone. ‘I don’t think she’ll be back for dessert.’
Despite his god warrior alpha energy, Idan was not coping well on Eden II.
Over the next few days, as they waited for Issa to arrange a meeting with her father, Idan’s possessiveness dialed up.
Sheba began to notice his need to be close to her presence at all times, whether for relief or reassurance, which evolved into a cycle of check-ins.
Even within the modest square footage of her flat, if she drifted into another room for too long, his psionic reach would find her. Probing, seeking, making sure she was near.
She wondered if Sulfiqar’s impending threat was fracturing his composure, turning his protective instinct into a territorial cage.
‘Where are you going?’ he growled one morning, looming over her as she picked up a shopping basket.
‘The market down the street,’ she answered.
He peered out the window, eyes suspicious and narrowed.
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘Why?’
He swiveled to face her. ‘Because I have an indescribable pull to you, like an invisible tether linking our souls.’
She took his words in, blinking as she acknowledged to herself that she felt the same uncanny connection to him.
‘Also, because my Sacran heart belongs to you, plain and simple. You are the heaven-sent heat that purifies me and keeps my spirit grounded. You’re fast becoming my only sanctuary, and I need to know you’re safe in this fokkin’ chaos of a city,’ he grumbled.
She sighed. ‘I’ll be fine.’
His jaw clenched into a stubborn set, and she relented.
Grabbing a jacket, he followed her out the door, his molten eyes tracking her every move.
He didn’t just claim her heart; he wanted her within his line of sight, a permanent fixture in his orbit that he could monitor, protect, and avow each waking second.
Sheba emerged from the sheets one morning while the room remained shrouded in pre-dawn indigo, unfurling her legs from Idan, who lay in a deep, rhythmic sleep.
She dressed, did her makeup and hair, and focused on the interview ahead for an all-important Director of Nursing and Midwifery position.
The role promised the permanence she craved. She was done with the transient nature of off-world field and combat clinics; she needed a workplace of concrete certainty.
Scribbling a brief note on the bedside pad, she slipped out and, in moments, was in a fly-cab heading to the centre of Eden City.
Two hours later, while immersed in her interrogation board’s rigorous questioning, a sudden, insistent pressure bloomed at the base of her skull.
It was Idan’s neural signature, a proprietary, golden pulse that thrummed with a demanding frequency.
Sheba gritted her teeth, trying to remain present for the Chief of Medicine’s query regarding trauma protocols, but the mental interruption was a persistent tug on her mind.
She faltered mid-sentence, her answer trailing into a disjointed mess of half-formed thoughts.
‘I’m so sorry, may I begin my response all over?’
The interviewers exchanged skeptical glances, then nodded as Sheba’s face flushed.
With an inhale, she shut off her neural link and turned her entire attention to the task at hand.
Later, she exited the glass-walled boardroom, worrying all the way home that her evaluation had been a disaster.
When she returned to her apartment, she found Idan standing on the terrace, his silhouette braced with rigid tension.
He didn’t turn to greet her; his posture stiff, eyes to the busy metropolis beyond.
When she tossed her satchel onto the sofa and stepped through the open sliding doors, he sliced eyes to her.
‘Where did you go?’ he rasped. ‘I tried to reach for you. You didn’t respond.’
She sighed.
‘I was at an interview, honey. I left a note by your bedside. I’m focused on my next career move, you know that,’ she countered. ‘The neural pulse you kept sending me was so distracting, it might’ve cost me the position.’
‘I needed to know where you were,’ he insisted, his jaw locking. ‘The static of this city obscures your signal. When you remain silent, it feels like a fokkin’ threat. I’ll remind you Sulfiqar is on the warpath and you out there, alone, messes with my mind.’
‘If he ever decided to come this way, Mirage would sense him, wouldn’t she?’ she countered with a sigh.
‘Did she see Artya coming?’ he snarled at her, his eyes flashing with a sudden, annoyed heat. ‘How can we prepare for this war without me being certain you’re fokkin’ safe?’
He let out a series of Sacran curses and strode toward the fire escape and ascended to the rooftop.
Sheba followed, finding him at the edge of the parapet, his teeth gritted as he surveyed the sprawl of the city.
‘Idan, I’d rather walk over explosives than tread on eggshells around you. While I appreciate you’re focused on saving me from danger, how you’re going about it is unnerving.’
Silence fell between them.
‘It’s the claustrophobia,’ he rasped after a beat, the words forced through a tight throat. ‘This metropolis presses against my ribs. I’m used to fields, mountains, and nature, not the density of millions of pulses crowding my air and cluttering the tether I have to you.’
She waited for his apology, but nada came.
Sheba leaned on the brickwork, observing the way his muscles corded as his gaze turned back to the horizon.
She didn’t believe the urban landscape was the primary culprit; he was most likely worried about Sulfiqar and the inevitable battle to come.
For that reason, she let the matter slide for now, touched with compassion for her god-warrior’s predicament.
Even so, she thought in a wild tear, the reckoning with Sulfiqar couldn’t come soon enough.