Page 46 of Sidhe (The Incubus Saga #3)

Before Nathan could stutter out any words of warning, everything was somehow miraculously okay as the gun went flying across the room—where it landed in Jim’s waiting hand.

The Gatehouse wards could no longer protect them if a gun went off.

Nathan wondered if Solrin knew that or just assumed he was immune.

“I’ve had about enough of this,” Jim grit out.

“You don’t know anything about us or Nathan .

And you certainly don’t get to point a gun at us after we’ve been accommodating you .

Now listen up,” he said, sounding eerily like Nathan actually as he shoved Solrin’s gun into a nearby drawer, “you think what you see is monsters? Fine, we’re monsters .

There’s dark fae blood in both our veins, I won’t deny it.

That’s why we are what we are and can do what we do.

But if you think you’re any different than us with that eye of yours then you really are one delusional son of a bitch . ”

“ Jim ,” Nathan countered, thinking Jim was so not helping the situation by being a dick. He tried to move around Solrin again and was rightly frustrated when the guy held out his arm to hold him back. “Sol, listen…”

“An incubus ,” Solrin sneered in disgust, “and some…abomination. I could practically smell you, but I wanted to believe Nathan hadn’t been so easily taken in. Clever of you to take on the guise of loved ones. Clever and cruel. Just as monsters would be.”

Tension crackled through the air between them.

Sasha was still lying on the med room’s dentist chair, looking startled and weak and caught in the middle, but Jim’s fists clenched at Solrin’s words.

Nathan watched in growing trepidation as Jim’s eyes flashed amber—not white, which meant he was fueled with anger instead of power, and really, Nathan hated that the amber was part of Jim at all anymore.

Nathan stared beyond Solrin to appeal to Jim; they needed to find a calmer solution to this or things were going to go from bad to worse real fucking fast.

“You think I am like you?” Solrin scoffed at Jim. “I am not like you. I can turn the darkness in on itself. I can prove to Nathan that it is in you.”

Nathan expected Solrin to act physically or to maybe suddenly reveal another power, but he didn’t move. Jim’s brow became knitted but he didn’t seem as though anything were affecting him either.

A small gasp left Solrin after a moment as surprise and frustration filled his face. Nathan could tell when Solrin switched his attention to Sasha, and whatever hadn’t happened to Jim immediately happened to the redhead.

Sasha looked sick at first, nauseous, sweat forming at his temples.

His eyes flashed red in moments. His lips curled back to show fangs as a growl built in his throat, and then the incubus leaned forward like he meant to get up, not in pain but with intent.

Only he wasn’t intent on Solrin. He turned his revealed red eyes onto Jim and tensed like he meant to attack.

With a growl of his own, Jim waved a hand at Sasha and all those incubus attributes vanished. Sasha was left blinking in confusion, his breaths coming heavy and sharp.

“He can’t only see and draw in dark fae,” Jim snapped toward Nathan, placing a hand on Sasha’s shoulder possessively, “he can control them, just like I can. But you couldn’t control me, could you?

” He turned to Solrin with something of a pleased sneer that reminded Nathan a little too much of the parts of Jim he didn’t like.

“Turn the darkness in on itself? You think you’re above us?

We’re no different . I have plenty of abilities, and several of them are the same as yours.

I can sense fae, I can see them most of the time too, and I can control them.

The difference is? I don’t . Not without good reason.

Sasha isn’t something for you to just use .

” Jim’s eyes flicked up at Nathan, angry and challenging like Jim was trying to hint, shouldn’t you be the one defending your lover here?

Solrin spoke before Nathan could intervene.

“No,” he said firmly, fists clenched tight, even the one on the arm outstretched to hold Nathan back, “I see the truth. I know your lies. Perhaps you can challenge my abilities. But the difference between us…is that I draw evil because I know to destroy it!”

Swifter than Nathan could have predicted, the arm keeping him back reached down to pull another gun that had been tucked into Solrin’s cargos. “Jim!” Nathan warned his brother as he prepared to tackle Solrin to the ground.

Jim motioned from Solrin to the far wall and the white-haired seal went flying that direction, his gun left clattering near Nathan on the floor. “The reason we kept the truth from you,” Jim said viciously, “was because we knew you were a fucking psycho!”

“Jim!” Nathan shouted again, this time in anger. Sure, Solrin had tried to shoot him twice now in the span of only a couple minutes, but still. It wasn’t like Jim to just blow up.

Of course Jim never used to take pride in what he was.

“Jim, come on.” Nathan walked toward his brother, holding up his hands and trying to be calmer so that Jim would follow suit. Sasha looked so spooked and pitiful on that dentist chair, unable to do anything, and Nathan really wished there was time to offer the incubus some soothing words too.

Jim lessened his hold on Solrin so that the fierce looking man, snarling now, was lowered back to the floor but still held in place against the wall. “I’m not letting him go just so he can try and pull another gun,” Jim grumbled. “You want to try and talk some sense into him, go ahead.”

Nathan took a few deep breaths before turning to address Solrin. “Now just focus on me for two seconds and listen.”

Solrin turned his gaze to Nathan and his eyes softened if only for that, that he was looking at Nathan .

“Just hear me out. Notice how I’m not freaking over what Jim can do, or over what both of them are.

I know what they are. I’ve always known.

Yeah, Sasha’s an incubus, and Jim’s a changeling—like you.

Neither of them is a bad guy. They haven’t tricked me or lied to me.

I know it’s hard for you to believe, and if all those scars came from fae doing a number on you then…

then I get it, I get why you hate them all, I do.

But trust me,” he took another slow step forward, eyes locked onto the pale green clashing against the shimmering dead grey eye beside it, “not everything that seems evil is. Jim and Sasha aren’t monsters.

They’re still the same nice guys you met.

Well,” Nathan couldn’t help smirking a little to break the tension, “Jim’s just a little extra sensitive as you can see, it being his time of the month and all. ”

There was a huff from Jim, but no smirk or smile, not even a twitch of Solrin’s lips came as a reply to Nathan’s words. Nathan was surprised, however, that the anger on Solrin’s face quickly became replaced with something more like grief. Then Nathan realized it wasn’t grief.

It was pity.

“Nathan,” Solrin said slow and direct, almost patronizing as he strained against Jim’s hold keeping him to the wall, “they have clouded your mind so well you do not even know what you are saying. I admit that Jim and I seem to share something in our…abilities, but I see their true faces, and that is more than simply seeing an incubus for what it really is, or the darkness spilling from Jim just as light spills from you. I never thought something like you could exist,” he said with that same strange reverence taking shape on his face, “something to counter all the evil I have seen in my life. You are the proof, Nathan, the proof that what I see in them is real because I see the very opposite in you.”

Deep down Nathan knew that there had to be something wrong with what Solrin could see, because if there was any light in his life it was from the men that fought beside him.

“Nathan, this is pointless, he’s not going to listen,” Jim said.

“Hang on.” Nathan turned back to Jim with a glare, angry when he found the same hatred on Jim’s face that he could see on Solrin.

Jim was still keeping an arm outstretched to better pin Solrin to the wall, but his other hand was behind his back, holding readily to the gun he had tucked there.

“What are you gonna do if he won’t listen to reason, Jim? Shoot him in cold blood?”

“It’s not cold blood if it’s self-defense,” Jim said at least a little more Jim-like, whiney and insistent. “If we just let him go, he’ll come after us and keep on coming. To kill us .”

“Gladly,” Solrin confirmed with another attempt to jerk forward that made his shoulders bounce and pound back against the wall.

Jim gestured pointedly with the hand holding Solrin in place as if to say, see ?

Nathan looked to Sasha, hoping to see some sympathy there, but there was only more pity. Pity for Nathan. Like he just. Didn’t . Get it.

“Solrin, please,” Nathan really didn’t know how to solve this one, but he had to try, “you’re wrong, okay?

I know you’re wrong, because one thing you can’t fake is love.

You can’t fake it and an evil thing couldn’t feel it, and I know that Jim and Sasha love me.

Jim’s my brother. Annoying , sure,” he tried not to look back at Jim as he said that even though he was sorely tempted, “but he loves me. And Sasha does too. I’ve never doubted that. ”

“There was another creature in that house, wasn’t there?”

Nathan blinked at the sudden change in subject. “What?”

“I felt it from the beginning,” Solrin said.

“Again, I dismissed it for you, Nathan, wanting to believe I had been mistaken when, after the nachzehrer was gone, the sense that there had been a second creature disappeared as well. It would make perfect sense why the incubus is so drained,” he said bitingly, his eyes focusing sharply on Sasha, “perfect sense…if the other creature was one of his own.”