Page 14

She smiled. “It felt good. It feels good. I mean, it’s a little unsettling too, because I can still feel it acclimating, not yet calmed. But that fear isn’t superseding all else now.”

My fingers brushed her cheek. “That’s phenomenal. I’ve wanted that for you for a long time.”

“I know you have.” She grasped my arm and leaned against my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry it took me so long to get to this place.”

“No. It’s okay. It’s just the journey that you had to take.”

She smiled sadly. “Kai, I know it was never okay with you. And I’m telling you now, I’m promising you, that it will never be away from you again.

That journey, any journey that I take won’t be without the three of you.

” She gestured around us with her free hand.

“That’s why I brought you here. I got this place just before my first year at the Academy, and it was intended as a place I would disappear to after I graduated.

But things are so different now. In me. With the three of you.

” She cupped the side of my face, her touch like liquid heat rolling through me.

“I brought you here because I want this house to be a place of escape for us all when the world gets too loud and insane. I want it to be our sanctuary. A place of peace. A place to heal. A place to just be us. ”

I went to grasp her hand on mine, to pull her closer, to… to do anything, something. Something to convey what her words and the depth of the promise in them was doing to me, what it all meant to me.

But before I could, she dropped said hand and pressed it to my torso, just above my abs.

“Be still,” she whispered at my ear in such a soothing way, it lulled me into doing just that, sinking against the step, my gaze fixed on her palm starting to glide over my skin.

Power sparked, but it wasn’t her usual silver.

It was a blindingly bright white glow.

“Celestial Light,” she told me. “You’ll feel better in a moment.”

I watched as the bruises started to fade, as did the ache that had permeated my being since the damage had been inflicted.

But that wasn’t what impacted me the deepest.

It was her giving this to me, on top of the vow she’d just made me.

She was trusting herself at full power for me, to make me feel better.

I watched as the last of the bruising faded away.

She went to ease her hand away, but I snatched it in mine. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

“I don’t just mean the healing.”

Our eyes locked.

So much passed between us.

Regret, grief, and pain being acknowledged. So much fear, too. “Say it again. Ari.”

She shifted her weight and linked her arms around my neck.

“Almighty sorcerer and pain in my ass, I swear to you with everything we all hold dear, with everything sacred to us, that I’m not going anywhere.

” Her humor dissipated and an earnestness took its place as she uttered, “I can’t, Kai.

The idea of walking away from what the three of us have built and continue to build upon with every passing day…

it can’t be reconciled. I can’t stand the thought of it.

And no matter what comes of recent disturbing events, I won’t let it break us.

I promise you that. I’ll make the same vow to Vorzyr and Nyx when they wake up. ”

“Oh, they’re wide awake now,” a voice came from behind us.

I turned with her holding onto my neck to see V standing there in all his powerhouse glory just in a pair of crimson boxers, and not the least bit modest about the mammoth hard-on tenting them, while Nyx was in a pair of vibrant-blue silky lounge pants, a button down pajama top open.

V had his arm draped over Nyx’s shoulders, the two of them eyeing us with a mixture of intrigue and amusement.

Before I could get a word out, V told me, “We woke up and Nyx reported that he felt a massive rush of deep, heartfelt emotion from you, Kai. If that’s not enough to shock somebody wide awake, I don’t know what is.”

Nyx held up his hands. “I was just worried when you two weren’t there when we woke up, so I reached out with my senses.”

“Aww,” Ariana said, stroking my hair and face, then telling Vorzyr, “Don’t tease him about that.”

“Yeah, I see your point. Getting all of that from him is a rarity. We want to encourage it.” He grinned at me. “For all of our sakes.”

Before I could deliver a verbal sucker punch as I was highly equipped to do, Ari took to kissing all over my face, murmuring, “We absolutely do want to encourage it.”

I looked out at V as she soothed and titillated me at the same time, and I flashed him a shit-eating grin.

He rolled his eyes and Nyx chuckled.

When Ari pulled away, she winked at me, then went to V and Nyx, wrapping an arm around each of them. “I meant what I said. The promise I made.”

“I know you did,” Nyx said, nuzzling against her.

“I’m here for it, gorgeous,” V told her, running his lips over her hair and breathing her in.

She pulled back and gazed out at all of us, a noticeable melancholy coming over her as she sighed heavily, then said, “And in the spirit of that, I’m ready to talk about what happened with Cassius.”

Well, then.

That had come about much quicker than I’d anticipated.

Things were absolutely changing with her.

Evolving.

She really wasn’t running anymore.

This was the Ariana Martel I remembered, the one who’d been lost to me for so long.

But now she’d returned. The real her had risen.

And it was everything.