Page 166

“What the fuck are you thinking?” Luka demanded, kicking the door shut behind him as he stalked back into the room.

“I was thinking neither of us want her near Cordelia right now,” Theon answered, his voice monotone as he stared at his phone.

He hadn’t felt her since yesterday.

Yesterday, when he’d felt her terror and panic. He had no doubt she’d undergone an assessment. Luka had felt it too. Theon hadn’t talked to her afterwards, being told she was too tired, and now he’d missed her godsdamn call.

“So you think some random female is the answer?” Luka continued. “What is wrong with you?”

“You’ll be with her, Luka,” Theon said flatly. “You’ll be there to hear everything she’s being told and monitor how she’s being treated.”

“I don’t understand how you are okay with all this.”

Theon shot to his feet. “Okay with all this? I’m okay withnoneof this, Luka,” he said, his voice rising. “I am not okay withTessa being in Faven. I am not okay with speaking to her once a day, if that. I am not okay with my time running out. I am not okay with not being able to feel her, see her, touch her. I am not okay with the fact my father wants to see me first thing in the morning. I am not fucking okay, so I’m entrusting her to you during those times. Because at least in this, in this one fucking thing, I have some godsdamn control.”

“It is not my place.Youare hers, not me. You need to be there?—”

“I’m done debating this. It’s final,” Theon snapped.

Luka went silent, his mouth pressing into a thin line. After several seconds, he said, “This meeting with your father?—”

“I’ll attend it alone.”

“Theon.”

“Good night, Luka.”

His friend studied him a minute longer before he made his way to the door. He paused at the threshold, not looking at him when he said, “I talked to her tonight.”

Theon’s head snapped up. “When?”

“When you didn’t answer, she called me,” Luka said. “It needs to be you there.”

“How is she?”

There was an extended silence before he finally looked over his shoulder, meeting Theon’s gaze. “She’s starting to trust you, Theon, which is why it needs to be you there.”

“She doesn’t trust me,” he retorted, reaching for his bag that held his laptop.

“It’s fragile, but it’s there,” Luka replied before he left the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

Theon pulled a book from his bag, along with a stack of notes. Separating the notes into piles, he opened the book, flipping to the page that had made him risk taking the book from thearchives. He’d return it tomorrow, but if someone learned he took it…

He’d deal with that if it happened.

This book was the one Kat had found with dozens of pages devoted to the Sister Goddesses of Witchcraft and Sorcery. It was in an old language, one of the ancient ones that would take him ages to translate. Katya would be helpful. She was more proficient, but he wasn’t going near Axel’s room any more tonight. No, translating it would be long and tedious, especially with most of his resource books back at Arius House.

He’d shed his suit coat long ago. Now he finally took the time to remove his tie. He unbuttoned his top few buttons before rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. Slipping off his shoes, he set them aside, along with his socks, before padding barefoot back to the sofa. They were still within reach though. He almost always wore shoes, always ready for his father to show up and demand something of him. Never wanting to be caught unprepared.

Powering on his laptop, the next hours were spent slowly translating the text and typing it up in an encrypted document. His eyes ached by the end, but he wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway. Tessa was clearly tied to the Witch history in some way, and the Witches all descended from Taika and Zinta. But even if her mother was a Witch, where did the Achaz power come from? And the ability to summon a storm? None of that was Achaz or Arius. And what gifts did she get from her father? A god of the wild and untamed?

It explained her recklessness, he supposed. That wildness and that inability to control herself at times, but there had to be more. To be a direct descendant of a god, let alone a First? There was more.

The first peeks of sunlight were filtering into the room when he finally sat back, shoving his hands into his disheveled hair.There were a few words he’d had to guess at, but he understood the general idea of the pages.

Taika and Zinta were two Lesser goddesses, but they’d been created with a purpose far greater than the other Lessers. They were the first two Lessers brought into existence by the Firsts, and their purpose was to provide a balance. They could create new forms of life, but their gifts had to be combined with another’s. They worked closely with the other gods and goddesses to do just that, and eventually, one became loyal to Achaz and one to Arius, just as Scarlett had said. New beings were created in addition to those that emerged from the Chaos, and when the gods needed to provide for their Legacy, they came together to create the Fae.

Theon had skipped the next section that spoke of the various Fae created, leaving that for another time. He didn’t need to read about that when the Fae lived among them. He knew of their magic, but the next passage? That was of interest. Because that passage seemed to speak of history that had taken placeafterthe creation of Devram.