Page 10

~Nyx~

“Ah, damn, much better. Yeah, this is really hitting the spot,” I groaned, as I devoured another dark chocolate wild berry bar, trying to take as much pleasure as I could from the melt-in-my-mouth taste.

I was overcompensating.

Maybe a better term was sublimating.

Or simply just eating my feelings.

I hadn’t stopped snacking since I’d woken up about an hour ago from Kai’s sleeping spell.

Fortunately, entering that deep of a sleep had actually worked to speed up the healing process, and I’d awoken with absolutely no signs that I’d even taken that brutal hit from that True Celestial maniac earlier.

I was sure that Kai had intended it to work that way on my injury. It had been a two-birds-with-one-stone thing for him—keeping me out of the line of fire, especially when I hadn’t been at my best, and assisting with me getting better faster.

When I’d come to, I’d found a note on my pillow from Kai informing me that he and Vorzyr were at Kai’s cave lab, and to come along if I felt up to it.

So, of course I’d headed down there.

And now here the three of us were.

I was sitting on the edge of the stone table that was chocked full of Kai’s experimental apparatus—beakers, vials, shimmering tubing, burners—chomping away on my chocolate bar while I waited for the concoction I was working on to cure.

In the meantime, I was supervising Vorzyr who was standing over a test tube containing a small amount of Ariana’s magic and trying to use his Primal Celestial Resonance on it.

Kai was several feet away with the Unity Council test of Ariana’s levitating before him, while he pulled and weaved its golden threads and shifted the symbols, text and sigils around, while weaving his own magic through it in the form of rose-gold sparkling threads.

He hadn’t stopped for the last hour since conjuring me some food, along with some ribs and the Ashtone Whiskey that Vorzyr liked. Kai hadn’t even conjured anything for himself, but that was no surprise, because he couldn’t eat when he was stressed out.

Obviously, I was the opposite where that was concerned.

I’d just gorged on four chocolate bars with no stopping in between.

They’d filled me in on what had happened in Meforian Forest, them running into Mia Snow and Lucian Black—or more like Mia and Lucian positioning themselves there intentionally as obstacles in their path.

And hearing about the awful bargain that had been struck was weighing heavily on all of us.

It was bad enough that Ariana wasn’t here right now.

I mean, I had every confidence that Cornelius, Jaxon, and Ryker would be able to bring her back, to get her out of that maniacal True Celestial’s clutches.

Their power set individually was insanely mammoth.

And together it was a whole other thing.

Not to mention, Ryker’s defensive magic could cut through pretty much anything as far as I was aware from the many rumors and tales of his exploits over the years.

And he was like Kai in that he found out-of-the-box solutions to complicated and seemingly unconquerable problems.

And there was obviously also Ariana herself. Her power was incredible.

It was being discounted so much as well.

Like, did she even need saving? Did she need a search party out there on her behalf?

I got the urge from her family to protect her. We were all feeling the same sentiment toward her. But that urge was overshadowing her and what she was capable of.

I knew that was one of the reasons that Kai and Vorzyr had agreed to stand down.

They didn’t discount her. They saw not only her power, but her capability to wield it and control it.

Kai was also logical, so he’d recognized that heading out to bring her back made no sense when there was already a search party active, and with her own abilities factored in.

Instead, he’d directed his energy toward something else, something that would truly help Ariana where she actually needed that help.

He was working on finding a way to break the deal that had been struck, the damn thing that made her a servant of the Celestial Plane.

He had Vorzyr testing out his special ability that could make Celestial power submit, both to practice and learn it well so he could employ it more efficiently and the moment it was called for, and also as a means to push back Cassius.

And Kai had tasked me to help fashion a very special type of cloaking spell.

It was an ultimate backup plan, if all else failed, a last resort.

The intention was to have it repel any magical or instinctual search by fusing illusion with the spell and making anything within its boundaries appear non-supernatural, essentially human.

We knew at this point that Cassius was equal in power set to Ariana, but he had a massive leg up on the experience front.

So we couldn’t just have her cloak herself from him.

It wouldn’t hold. He’d be able to see through it.

So this was a workaround that Kai had thought of with a little help from me bringing up the idea of adding illusion magic into it.

If we could pull this off, we could hide Ariana away so that Cassius or any of the beings from the Celestial Plane could never find her.

She’d be able to escape being their servant.

It was definitely a last resort. We obviously didn’t want it to come to that.

But if all else failed, at least there would exist a way for her to actually be free.

A bubbling sound drew my attention, and I jerked my head from watching Vorzyr cursing to himself as he failed to impact the magic in the test tube for the fourth time, and took in the potion in the beaker I was working with.

The bubbling ceased after a few moments, and I watched as it cured properly.

Onto the next part.

“It’s ready. Where’s the vial of the extract you took from the Inhibitor from Polaris a couple of years back?” I asked Kai.

Without looking away from what he was doing, he called to me, “Glass cabinet. Far corner. Bottom shelf.”

Before I could even head over there, he snapped his fingers of the free hand he wasn’t currently using with his magical threading, and then the vial materialized right beside my beaker.

Damn. I grinned. “Thanks.”

He didn’t speak to it, returning his full focus to his task immediately.

Not surprising. He was in obsessive, puzzle-solving mode. And it was even worse this time because the stakes were so high, and heavy emotion was involved.

The truth was, we were all freaking out, and barely keeping our shit together.

Focusing on these tasks was pretty much the only thing tethering us right now.

As I went to continue on with my task, a rush of aggression and frustration hit me, coming like a damn tidal wave from Vorzyr, just a second before he slammed his fist down on the stone table and let out a snarl.

“Motherfucker! I should have headed out! I shouldn’t have let the two of you stop me! I can’t fucking do this! I’m no help here! I’m no help doing this!”

Yeah, we’d already stopped him from doing that—with a lot of effort. It had been a combination of us reasoning with him, me connecting with him on an emotional level, and then Kai’s power as well.

Kai tensed, then pulled away from what he was doing, and spun toward Vorzyr. His palms were down, but I could see that they were still glowing with his magic, just in case.

“You are helping,” I assured Vorzyr, stepping up to him and laying my hand on his left bicep. He sucked in a breath at my touch, feeling the comfort of it, but warring with the need to act instead of accepting said comfort.

“You can certainly do it,” Kai told him. “You have the means. You’ve used the ability twice now. Cracking this will give us a leg up and make a massive difference to Ari.” He drew closer until he was right beside me in front of Vorzyr. “You are having trouble now because your head isn’t clear.”

I added, “Heavy, pained emotion for Ariana and this entire situation is leading the way and you can’t separate it.”

“I did it before on that mountain under other heavy circumstances.”

“You didn’t feel helpless then in the immediate moment,” Kai pointed out.

“The task you have right now doesn’t bring Ari back to us, nor achieve anything in that same sort of immediate sense.

You’re dragon, your instinct is to take action right away.

That can’t be done with this. It’s different and it requires another sort of approach.

But what you’re working on will help her.

In a significant way. In fact, that Primal Celestial Resonance ability of yours stands more of a chance than anything else—than any one of us—being able to defeat this Celestial Plane threat and give Ari her life back.

That’s how vital it is.” Kai waited a few moments for Vorzyr to absorb his words, and then he pushed, “Okay? Do you hear me?”

Vorzyr drew in several calming breaths, and I watched some of the tension lessen from him, enough where he could respond to Kai. “Yeah, I understand what you’re saying.” He grasped my hand on his bicep and offered me a smile, albeit a weary one. “I’m sorry,” he told us both. “It’s just—”

“We’re right there with you, believe me,” Kai told him.

“That we are,” I uttered.

He pulled at his silky ponytail. “This could break us,” he rasped.

“We’d all just reached a really good place together, as a unit.

She’d just reached a good place. For fuck’s sakes, she’d come so far that she’d even taken back her power.

Now this… it could undo all of that progress.

It could shatter everything we’ve fought to build together.

And if that’s not bad enough, with this bargain in play, this duty forced on her, it could actually even take her away from us. ”

“We won’t let it,” Kai rumbled, a whole lot of powerful conviction radiating off him. He gestured at the areas where we’d been working. “That’s why we’re doing all of this.”

“We can’t drown in fear and what-ifs,” I said. “We’re rising beyond that, taking a proactive approach.”

“To trick ourselves into feeling better?”

“No. To make things better in actual reality,” Kai told him. “And to take some of the pressure off Ari at the same time.”

I nodded along. “She needs to know she’s not alone. But with something as heavy as this, words won’t be enough, especially not for her, and especially not after she was so recently lied to by her own family. It has to be in actions that we demonstrate that to her.”

I felt him coming around, calming down, wanting to fall into it. “Just… if we lose her…”

“You won’t,” a wondrously familiar voice sounded from across the cave.

We all spun to see Ariana standing in the doorway.

We’d been so caught up in our tense and weighted conversation that none of us had felt or sensed her approach at all.

There she stood, looking disheveled, her expression tired and weary.

Her long, golden waves were wilder than normal, all over the place.

Her jeans were caked in mud and what looked like ash, too.

Even her black, lacy tank was tainted with it.

Her well-worn brown suede jacket was hanging off one shoulder, as she slumped against the cave wall.

She was mentally exhausted, not physically, I realized quickly as I continued to study her.

And then the root of that hit me.

At full force.

Her emotions cut into me like hundreds of knives dipped in holy water.

Yeah, unfortunately, I was more than familiar with how that felt.

Damn , it was… a lot… coming off her. I could barely breathe through it.

And, for me, those feelings were secondhand, something I was picking up, not like they were to her.

It had to be virtually crippling for her.

Yet, there she stood, her lips quirking into a smile as she looked out at the three of us.

As she not only managed to stand there, but also offer us affection, and connect with us.

“Are you hurt?” Vorzyr asked, going to her in quick, urgent strides.

She held up her hand, which stilled his approach. “I’m unharmed,” she assured us.

“Did your family overpower Cassius?” Kai asked.

“No. He let me go and they showed up after he’d already taken off.”

“Taken off? Just like that?” Vorzyr queried.

“Yeah. He said what he needed to. He told me about a bargain that my family made to… I can’t. I can’t get into it right now. I’m sorry.”

“Mia and Lucian revealed the whole deal,” I offered up, wanting to spare her.

She arched an eyebrow. “Huh… well… good. It’s out all around then, isn’t it?”

There was so much bitterness in her tone. But it was superseded by a whole lot of grief and hurt. It was almost fucking drowning her, threatening to pull her into the undertow.

As Kai went to speak, I shook my head, willing him to let it be for now.

I grasped Vorzyr’s wrist, and as he turned, I was able to indicate the same to him.

“What do you need, sweetheart?” Kai asked.

“Yeah, what can we do?” Vorzyr asked.

She had us tensing as her eyes darkened, and then she pushed off the wall.

“No more talking. Just be with me.”

She shrugged off her jacket, letting it simply fall to the floor in a heap, starting to bare herself to us.

A primal growl came from Vorzyr.

Kai shifted his weight, his eyes hooding.

“I need the three of you.” Her voice was all husky and heavy with lust and desperate, undisguised need for connection and comfort as she uttered, “All. Over. Me.”

As the three of us stared out at her, a whole lot of sexual tension ramping up, she suddenly swept a glowing silver palm around and in the very next moment, we were all enveloped in a cloud of teleportation, our surroundings slipping away.