Chapter Twenty-Three #2
Nobody had asked until now. He suspected Ro was being gentle with him, but he wanted to tell the story.
“I didn’t have my head on right. Got separated from the rest of the group, and I ran across an Eldritch trail.
I thought I could run recon on my own, but they jumped me.
Their weapons were poisoned, incapacitated me quick.
By the time I knew anything, I was trussed and done.
” Quietly, he summarized the journey, torture, and how he’d ended up in Golgoth hands since the Eldritch loyalists quickly fell into disarray after Lord Talfayen’s death.
Sheyla didn’t reach out, but her eyes were kind, if not precisely warm. “I’m sorry. You’ve been through hell.”
That’s true enough. But it wasn’t so bad since he’d passed through and found paradise waiting on the other side. For Slay, that was anywhere Rowena happened to be.
Glad to have the tale told, he took Sheyla’s phone with a touch of embarrassment, staring at it with growing frustration. “I can’t fucking remember anybody’s number. Isn’t that absurd?”
Sheyla shook her head. “Pretty sure I’ve heard it called the digital disease. We’re used to storing important data in our tech so we don’t put it in our brains anymore.”
“I want to call Mags directly. Do you have her number saved?”
The doc nodded, surprising him. “We’re friends. Well, sort of. Neither of us is known for being warm and fuzzy.”
“Then I’ll call her first. She can pass the word to Ash Valley. Or you can.”
Sheyla canted her head, brow furrowed. “You don’t want to call Dom and Pru personally? They’re worried about you.”
Sure they are.
Slay offered a dubious shrug. “He was my best friend. And he married my girlfriend. You think we’re still on speaking terms?”
“Maybe things are awkward now,” she said, “but you’re being stubborn. Whatever transpired in the past, they’d still want to know you’re okay and it’s cowardly to dump that on Mags. In their shoes, I’d be hurt if you didn’t care enough to call.”
Fuck. She’s right. No matter what went down, they deserve an update directly from me.
Maybe it was a sign of personal progress that he didn’t cling to dogged refusal. “Fine, then I’ll make a couple of calls. I assume you’ve got Dom’s number programmed as well.”
She nodded. “I touch base with him periodically and inform him on how the war’s going closer to the front.”
Slay called Mags first because that didn’t take as much courage, and she answered on the third ring. “Everything okay? Did you take Golgerra?”
“We sure the fuck did,” Slay said.
A long silence followed with the sound of her shocked breathing, and then Mags finally said, ‘Shit. Slay? That really you? Alive and well?” Tears she wouldn’t let fall thickened her voice, edging her tone with air.
Damn if he didn’t get choked up too, and it was tough to get the words out. “I’m good. Heard you looked for me.”
Mags breathed in audibly through her nose, a sniff that suggested she might be crying. Holy hell. “ Of course. I did everything but storm the city gates once I figured out who took you. But why did they drag you off to Eldritch lands first?”
“The Loyalists met with some people…I’m not sure, but I think there was another plot that didn’t come to fruition.
I was drugged or beaten within an inch of my life for most of that trip, but I caught snippets.
They were planning to use me…for something.
In the end, they couldn’t see it through and the Eldritch turned me over to the Gols.
They tortured me for intel and condemned me to die underground instead. ”
“I’m sorry,” Mags whispered. “I tried. If I’d found your trail a little faster, maybe—”
“It’s enough that you hunted for me,” he cut in. “You know I’m hard to kill. And I got to be part of a fucking revolution , Mags. I was here on the ground when the resistance pushed into Golgerra, I watched Tycho Vega die. That’s history right there, and I was part of it.”
“Are you saying you’re glad they took you?” she demanded.
In some ways, he was. Because hardship had refined him, burned away the bits he hated, leaving him stronger, forged of a better metal. And Ro had taught him so much about being a good person, about never giving up despite long odds.
He hesitated, wondering if Mags would think he’d lost it if he admitted that. “Would you get mad if I said yes?”
“Whatever, you were always bent.” She choked out a laugh, seeming torn between annoyance and relief.
Slay grinned, recognizing that they’d reached familiar ground. “You love me anyway.”
“I do,” she said.
“Who is that?” A second voice became audible on the call, and it sounded familiar, but Slay couldn’t place the man. “Get off the phone and pay attention to me. You know my bad personality by now, jealous with a tendency toward petulance.”
Slay blinked. He would’ve expected the next sound to be Mags punching whoever dared talk to her like that, but instead her voice came across soft and muffled, like maybe she’d palmed the phone. Animari ears, though, difficult to fool.
“I’ll be right back, love.” To Slay, she added, “Thanks for calling. I’m not in Ash Valley, so if you’re heading back, I’m not the security chief anymore. But I promise I’ll visit and we can catch up soon.”
“I get the feeling I’ve missed a hell of a lot,” Slay said.
Sheyla was waiting, propped up against the wall with her arms crossed. At hearing that, she smiled slightly. “You have no idea. Now make the tough call and give me back my damn phone. I have work to do.”
“How?” he wondered aloud. “You’re in a strange city with no facilities—”
“They have labs here,” she snapped. “And my data is all saved, accessible remotely. I can work anywhere if you’d let me get on with it.”
“Right, sorry.”
Slay took a deep breath and hit the button to contact Dom. It beeped twice, then: “What’s the latest, Dr. Halek?”
The familiarity of his friend’s voice after so long staggered him, and he clutched the wall for support. “It’s me. I borrowed Sheyla’s phone.”
“…Slay?” Such a strange tone, a heartbreaking amalgam of anguish and hope. “Thank all the gods and goddesses. Where are you? Are you sick? Hurt? Never mind, you’re with the doctor, so I guess she’s treating you if you need it. I’ll dispatch a retrieval team right away.”
Huh. He did worry about me.
And it sounded like Dom had no qualms at all about welcoming him back.
Granted, Slay had been the one who couldn’t forgive his friend for stealing Pru, but it no longer felt that way to him.
These days when he reflected, he realized he should have known things weren’t the same after he rejected Pru formally as his mate.
It was asinine to imagine her feelings wouldn’t change after he hurt her so bad. What came after was mostly his fault.
Not entirely, of course, but he’d played more of a role in that mess than he’d initially wanted to admit.
“Slay? You still there?” Dom sounded like he wanted to crawl through their devices, half panicked at the prospect of losing such a tenuous connection.
He needed to be calm and reassuring. “Sorry, yeah. I’m in Golgerra. Everything’s okay now. Finally. The city has been liberated.”
“That means the war is over,” Dom said. “We managed to get the Pax Protocols signed after the battle at Burnt Amber. So with Tycho Vega gone, things can get back to normal.” He hesitated. “They can, right? You’re coming home?”
Where is home?
Right now he couldn’t say for sure that was Ash Valley. It mattered more to him what Ro wanted to do, but he couldn’t go into that with Dom on a borrowed phone since Sheyla was waiting, tapping an impatient foot.
“I’ll go when I can,” he said, careful not to promise that he’d stay. “Spread the good news, all right? Talk to you soon.”
He ended the call without waiting for a response and handed the phone back to Sheyla. “Thanks for making me step up.”
She peered at him with palpable curiosity. “Was that so hard?”
“Pretty much.” He sighed. The odds of his relationship being ‘normal’ with Dom and Pru ever again didn’t seem like any probability a canny gambler would bet on.
“Don’t be pointlessly obstinate. There’s no reason to ruin old friendships over an issue you don’t even care about anymore.”
“What?”
Of all people, he never expected Sheyla to take him to task.
Back in Ash Valley she had few friends and spent most of her time working.
She’d been an asset during the bombing, tireless in her care of the wounded, but nobody ever went to see her for the bedside manner.
Her social skills were even worse than his.
She gave him a pointed look. “I don’t pay attention to people because I generally don’t care what others are doing, but even I can tell that you’re head over heels for Alastor’s former lieutenant. Rowena, is it?”
The woman in question chose that moment to step out of the meeting room, her brows raised in curiosity. “What about me?”
Slay wasn’t ready to have this conversation in a random hallway. “Uh…”
“I was just saying that we met in Hallowell,” Sheyla said, covering smoothly. “Anyway, I have experiments to check. I’ll leave you to it.”