Chapter 5
Five
Zephyr
Keoni looked like he'd expected as much but wished it wasn't true. I felt the same. I missed Rei, missed her happy smiles and the way I never felt lonely when she was with me.
"It's how I lost this," I said, raising my metal forearm before dropping it back in my lap. "I tried to protect her, and he sliced right through it and didn't stop until she was gone."
"God, Zephyr, I'm so sorry," Keoni whispered in a choked voice, and I met his gaze only to find his eyes full of tears.
Shaking my head, I pulled my hand out of his and wiped his tears. "Why are you crying for me? It was a long time ago."
Keoni shook his head as more tears trickled down his cheek, and something warm unfurled in my chest. I wasn't alone now either, was I? I had a family bigger than I could've ever hoped for, and I also had Keoni.
I might not have had Rei anymore, but I had them.
"What happened next?" Keoni asked, and I frowned.
"I can tell you later," I murmured, not wanting him to shed any more tears because of me, but he shook his head.
"Finish it."
I decided to skip some of the gory parts that came after and went straight to the conclusion.
"Losing my arm and my familiar, it put my magic into chaos.
I was useless to him, so he ditched me. I don't know why he didn't just kill me.
Maybe he thought I would die on my own. But I didn't. Instead, I recovered and taught myself to use my magic again.
Once I was strong enough, I found him, and I made him pay. "
"He's dead?" Keoni asked, a hopeful note in his voice, and I nodded. "That's good. I'm glad he can't hurt you anymore."
I hummed, and Keoni pressed his hand over mine, holding it against his cheek. "I'm sorry. I brought you out today so you could relax, and instead I made you dig up your past."
"You don't have to apologize. I'm glad we talked about it. I've... I've never told anyone before."
Keoni's eyes widened. "Really? Not even Draven?"
While Draven—the dwarf who'd made my metal arm, and one of the first residents of the Sanctuary—was a good friend of mine, even he didn't know the details of my past.
"He only knows that I lost my arm and my familiar at the same time. That's it."
Keoni was quiet for a moment. Then, he smiled softly, and removed my hand from his cheek. He pressed a kiss on my knuckles, then squeezed my hand. "Thank you for telling me. I know it couldn't have been easy."
While it hadn't been easy, it hadn't been as difficult as I'd thought either.
A part of me had wanted to talk about it.
I'd kept it all buried for so long, and ever since I saw Nolan again, the memories had been at the forefront of my mind, just begging to be taken out.
Telling Keoni about them had made them just a little easier to deal with.
"It's almost lunch time. Wanna find a café or restaurant to get some food?" Keoni asked, pulling me out of my musings, and I nodded quickly. I hadn't been eating well the last few weeks, and my stomach had long given up on protesting my inadequate diet, so I wasn't hungry, but I guessed Keoni was.
We found a café with a good sandwich selection and comfortable seating, and placed our orders.
"If you have any questions about my past, you can ask me," Keoni said once the server had left. "Though you already know pretty much all there is to know."
That wasn't true. I'd heard about Keoni's herd, but other than that, I didn't know much.
"Your parents?"
"I didn't know my father. He belonged to a different herd that crossed paths with Mom's and resulted in me," he said with a grin, his smile softening as he continued.
"My mom was great. She was strong, and badass, and when I was born like this, she declared she'd raise me.
Centaurs believe in 'letting nature take its course,' but Mom didn't. She loved me, so she raised me with help from her closest friends.
But when I was eight, she died from an illness.
After that, her friends raised me, but when I turned of age, the herd told them they had to pick between taking care of me, or staying in the herd.
They had partners and kids of their own, so of course, they chose the herd. "
As much as I wanted to, I couldn't blame his mother's friends. They'd done everything they could for him, but they couldn't be expected to choose him over their own kids. Who would do that?
Still, I wished his herd had been kinder. Then again, we wouldn't have met if they had, so maybe everything worked out the way it was supposed to.
"Don't feel bad, okay? I don't. My life has been much better since I came to the Sanctuary.
If I'd known about it before, I would've wanted to come here right after Mom died," Keoni said, his eyes bright and sincere, and I smiled.
I could tell he meant it, and I was glad.
This was why I'd built the Sanctuary, after all.
At first, it'd just been a couple of rooms, a place where I could hide from the world.
I'd created it some fifty years after taking my revenge on Fredrick, and it had taken me another 200 years to perfect it into the place it was today.
Or the place it had been before all these problems started cropping up.
The Sanctuary had started off as my safe haven, and now it belonged to all the supes who lived there.
Maybe the reason I was so hesitant about accepting Nolan's help was that the Sanctuary wouldn't be just mine anymore.
Once his magic was mixed into the foundation of the pocket dimension, the Sanctuary would belong to him as much as it did to me.
I'd never thought I would share the Sanctuary with someone one day, and I didn't know if I was ready.
Keoni
After lunch, we went shopping. Or rather, I dragged Zephyr to a clothing store so I could buy a few shirts, and I made him judge them as I tried each one.
Zephyr didn't want anything, but I still found a shirt I thought would look good on him—it was black, his favorite color, but also had a pattern of tiny white witch hats, which was not his style—though I had to guess at his size since he wouldn't tell me.
Zephyr paid—I'd forgotten all about the need for money when I dragged him out of the Sanctuary—and then we took a leisurely stroll on our way home.
"Did you have a good time today?"
Zephyr hummed, sidestepping a human intently focused on his phone.
Seriously, humans were obsessed with those things.
I had one too, but I usually didn't know where mine was.
Everyone I wanted to talk to was within walking distance, so what was the point?
I kept it close these days only because Khush and Dustin were living outside, and I wanted to stay in touch with them.
"I didn't realize how much an outing like this could help. Thank you." Zephyr's voice was warm, and I beamed up at him.
"You need to take better care of yourself, or I will," I warned, and Zephyr was quiet for a minute.
Then, in a murmur I could hardly hear, he said, "I won't mind if you do."
I grinned, though I kept my gaze on the sidewalk. I'd been doing what I could to sneakily take care of him, but now that I had his permission? Well, he might just end up regretting it.
"Okay, then I will," I decided as I started making plans.
The first thing was getting him to eat properly.
I'd brought him lunch that day because I wanted to talk to him, but it would be much better if I made him eat with everyone.
He used to do that a lot before things started going wrong, and it would be good for him to spend some time with everyone, to see that no one blamed him for what was happening.
When we got to the Sanctuary, Zephyr and I parted ways at the door to his office after he helped me put away the wheelchair. I handed him the bag with the shirt, and he eyed it distrustfully before accepting it because he knew me well.
"I'll see you at dinner," I said, and he pursed his lips.
"I need to catch up with the work I missed this morning," he said apologetically, and I rolled my eyes.
"I'll see you at dinner," I repeated firmly, and he sighed, then disappeared into the office without agreeing or disagreeing.
I shook my head, then made my way to the Forest, my shopping bags stacked in the cart behind me. Most of the space in the cart was taken up by my body, but there was enough to stash all the bags without worrying about them falling off.
"Did you rob a store?" Silas asked with a whistle as he peered at my cart, his shaggy black hair falling forward, and I snorted.
"Yeah, Sy. And they were nice enough to give me shopping bags to carry my loot since I forgot to take a bag," I teased, making him laugh.
He was in his human form, so he was only a few inches taller than me, and his cute little tusks were fully visible.
Before he met Touya, he used to hide his tusks with a mask when he was in his human form, even around us, but he didn't do that anymore.
His black eyes sparkled as he shook his head, then trotted beside me as I started walking to my place. "Touya said you took the headmaster to the human world."
"I did. He needed a break."
"That he did. Did you two have fun?"
"We did! We shopped, we ate lunch at a really nice café, hung out in a park for a while, and even visited Khush and Dustin," I listed, knowing that if I was forthright, Silas wouldn't ask as many questions.
I didn't want to talk about our conversations because they were ours, but I knew Silas wouldn't be satisfied without some concrete details.
"Oh, and I told him he needed to take better care of himself or I would, and he basically gave me permission to do it," I said, figuring that part I could share.
Plus, I would need everyone's help if I wanted to make good on my promise.
It would have to be a team effort, and I knew everyone shared my desire to take care of Zephyr, though not for the same reasons.
"Oooh, he shouldn't have done that," Silas said with a wince because he knew me well, and I chuckled.
"Too late."
Silas grabbed my shopping bags and stashed them into my cabin to deal with later.
Then we found Touya. He was integral to my plans, since he knew the ins and outs of Zephyr's daily tasks and what could and couldn't be moved around.
If we wanted to make Zephyr's schedule more manageable, he was the one to do it.
I'd also need to talk to Nolan, since other than Zephyr, he was the most powerful person here, and he could pick up the slack once I convinced Zephyr to let him help stabilize the Sanctuary.
I wanted to convince Zephyr soon so Khush and Dustin could come back before the baby's arrival, and this time, I would ask everyone in the Sanctuary for help.
I understood better now why Zephyr was so reluctant, but I needed him to see that things were different now.
He wasn't alone anymore. His familiar might have been gone—and the wound left from that might never heal—but he had people on his side now.
He had me, yes, but he also had the others: Nolan, who would help the moment Zephyr said yes, Touya, who wanted to take care of him like I did, and Silas and the rest of the Sanctuary residents who loved him immensely.
Zephyr had a pocket dimension full of people who loved him, and I would make sure he saw that.