Authors: Annette Marie
“Well, let’s hear it,” Seiya said. “Where were you?”
“Let her eat first,” Lyre said. “We’re all starving.”
Seiya scowled. He scowled back. Piper kept eating, ignoring the tension. Lyre and Seiya clearly weren’t budding besties. Overall, that was probably a good thing. The first time Lyre had met Seiya, he’d seemed a little too fascinated with her. She was young and beautiful—the exact type incubi found irresistible. Piper did not want to know what Ash would do if Lyre ever seduced his sister. At best, it would be the end of their friendship. At worst, it would be the end of Lyre’s life.
“This is really good,” she said, pointing at her bowl with her spoon.
“Thank you,” Seiya replied without warmth.
Piper went back to eating in silence, suspecting if it had been just her and not Ash, there wouldn’t have been a hot meal waiting for her upon her return.
Once she’d eaten enough to sate her immediate hunger, she broke the heavy silence by reiterating the whole tale of her abduction and rescue for Seiya.
“So,” Piper finished, “now I have to tell all this to my father so they can stop the Gaians from destroying more Consulates.”
“I don’t envy them that job.” Lyre drummed his fingers on the countertop. “It’s an idiotic plan though. Daemons aren’t going to just shrug and leave because the Consulates are gone.”
She nodded. “There’s more to their plan, but they didn’t share the details with me.”
Seiya pushed her ponytail off her shoulder. “It’s idiocy. It’ll never work.”
“Destroying the Consulates will create a power vacuum,” Ash said, “which the Gaians think they can fill, but I doubt they have the resources to implement a new power structure. Either way, they won’t get far. Once you reveal who’s behind it, the prefects and Consuls will start hunting the Gaians and their plans will collapse.”
“Huh.” Piper poked a piece of potato in her bowl. Feeling a little better that the world wasn’t about to dissolve into anarchy, she ate another bite.
Ash set his bowl in the sink. “I’m going to get a few hours of sleep.”
At the thought of sleep, Piper was overcome with a jaw-popping yawn. “I need a shower first.”
“Right over there.” Seiya pointed to a door off the entryway. “There are towels folded on the shelf.” With a brief nod, she followed Ash out of the room.
Piper blinked after them.
“Grumpy pair, huh?” Lyre commented, coming around the island to stand beside her. “I’ve been stuck with them for two months.”
“What’s Seiya’s problem?”
Lyre shrugged. “She’s just overprotective.”
“Of Ash?”
He nodded.
“Why would that make her give
me
the cold shoulder? I’m not the enemy.”
He shrugged again.
Her eyes narrowed and she lowered her voice. “Does this have anything to do with your note—”
He cut her off with a warning look. “Didn’t you want a shower?”
“Yeah, but—”
He looped an arm around her waist, pulling her off the barstool and guiding her toward the bathroom. “You should have your shower.”
“Lyre—”
He dragged her into the bathroom, released her, and turned on the taps. Water sprayed loudly and filled the small room with noise.
“I don’t want any little dragonet ears listening to us,” he said quietly, his voice almost lost to the sound of the running water.
Nervousness churned in her stomach at the extent he was going to conceal their conversation.
“Why are you being so secretive?”
He sighed, the sound full of frustration and anxiety. “I want to talk to you about Ash.”
“What about him?”
“He tells you things he doesn’t tell me.”
“He does?”
He shrugged a little. “He told you about Seiya when he’d never mentioned a word about her to me.”
“Oh right.”
“I thought he might have said something to you.”
“About what?”
A long pause. “About what’s wrong with him.”
Alarm swept through her. “What do you mean?”
“You saw it, Piper,” he said, his voice roughening. He turned toward the sink and put both hands on the counter, shoulders hunched. “You saw him last night. That total loss of control. That wasn’t the first time. It’s been happening more and more often over the past two months.”
She stared at him without seeing him, the image of Ash’s wild lunge off the bed, like he’d woken not knowing where he was, filling her mind.
“There’s something wrong with him,” Lyre said, eyes closed, “and it’s getting worse.”
Forcing her hands out of fists, she said softly, “I told you a little bit about what he was like when I got him out of the Chrysalis building.”
“Yeah,” he said, straightening from the counter. “That’s why I thought maybe you could get some answers out of him. He won’t admit to me that something’s wrong. But since you were there with him, maybe he’ll have an easier time talking to you.”
“Maybe,” she whispered, though she didn’t have much hope. Ash wasn’t the sharing type. She let out a shaky breath. “I thought he was okay. I thought Vejovis had healed him.”
“Vejovis can only heal so much, and he didn’t have a lot of time.”
“Maybe you should take him to another healer.”
He shook his head before she’d even finished. “Healing the mind is pretty much a forgotten art. Vejovis is the only healer I can think of who would potentially know how to do it.”
She twisted the leather band around her wrist. “So you think Ash is losing control of shading?”
“I’m not sure. It looks like that on the surface, but it’s not ... it doesn’t quite match what I’ve seen of other daemons with shading issues.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just ... I don’t know. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
She closed her eyes, eyebrows pinched together. She thought of Ash when she’d first entered his cell in the Chrysalis center. Violence and rage burning in his eyes. Blind hatred. He’d wanted to kill her simply because she existed. She shivered.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
“Can you try talking to him?”
“I’ll try.”
“Thanks.” He sighed. “All this shit definitely hasn’t helped matters.”
“What shit?”
“You being dead. He didn’t take it well.”
She went still. “Oh?”
“Well, neither did I. We felt like we’d failed you. Ash blamed himself because he hadn’t insisted on taking you into hiding with us. Then we suddenly found out you weren’t dead, and we had to find out where you were, who had you, whether you might actually be dead after all. It was pretty intense.”
“Oh, yeah, I guess it would have been.”
“You should clean up and get some sleep. I’m going to head out for a few hours and see what I can find out about your dad.”
She nodded. He turned toward the door.
“Is that it?” she asked.
He glanced back, brow furrowed. “Is what it?”
“Aren’t you going to offer to wash my back in the shower? Or warm up my bed for me? Or—you know—something inappropriate?”
His eyes glinted as he grinned wickedly. “Is that an invitation?”
“No.” She raised her eyebrows. “Just wondering if you were feeling all right. It’s not normal for you to be so well-behaved.”
“I like my women feisty, so I’m waiting until you’re properly rested.”
She snorted. “I see. Here I was worrying for nothing.”
His quiet chuckle made her smile as he closed the bathroom door behind him.
After showering and changing into a borrowed shirt and sweats—courtesy of Lyre since Seiya’s clothes were too small for her—she settled on the sofa with a blanket. Ash was in the second bedroom, probably sleeping like the dead after flying around all night.
Heaving a sigh, Piper closed her eyes, listening to the quiet clink of dishes as Seiya cleaned up the kitchen. Worries spun through her head as she silently rehearsed how to bring up Ash’s shading control issues. She was just starting to drift off when a weight landed on her chest. Her eyes flew open and she found a dark nose snuffling her chin. Zwi trilled a greeting, blinking her large golden eyes.
“Hey, girl,” Piper whispered, stroking the dragonet’s mane.
Zwi lay on Piper’s stomach and chittered in a conversational way. The cat-sized dragon had once been too shy and aloof to approach Piper. She smiled, honored that Zwi now considered her a friend. As she petted the creature, her fingers encountered a leather strap over her tiny shoulders. Sitting up a little, Piper frowned at the lightweight harness. A leather triangle covered her chest—some kind of armor?
Seiya approached, stopping near Piper’s feet.
“Do you need anything before I lie down?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” Piper said, trying not to frown. She didn’t know Seiya very well—barely at all, in fact—and her dark past made it even harder to measure her expressions and mood. Piper’s overall impression of their first meeting hadn’t been one of warm friendliness, but Seiya was definitely colder now than she had been two months ago.
“How have things been?” she asked hesitantly. “What’s it like to finally be free?”
Surprise flashed across Seiya’s face before her expression hardened. “That would depend on how you define ‘free.’”
Piper blinked. “Um. What do you mean?”
“Being out from beneath Samael’s thumb has been wonderful,” Seiya said, the words at complete odds with her tone. “But I wouldn’t call this freedom. Running, hiding, constantly looking over our shoulders. Every shadow is a potential enemy. We traded Samael’s chains for the chains of fear.”
“I’m sorry,” she replied hesitantly. “But isn’t it better than being a prisoner? Than being tortured?”
“Of course. Our quality of life is a thousand times better. I just wouldn’t call it being free.”
“Oh. I see what you mean.”
“I’m afraid for us every day,” Seiya said, ice creeping into her voice. “And now it’s that much worse.”
“What’s worse?”
“The danger.”
“What do you mean?”
“Being here,” Seiya snapped. “Everything here—flying across the city, breaking into buildings, making scenes. In other words,
you
.”
“Me?”
“There’s a good chance that reaper spy saw Ash. If he did, it will be the first time since we’ve escaped that a Hades spy has come close to locating us.”
“I—I’m sorry. I didn’t know—”
Seiya folded her arms, towering over Piper. “That’s just it. You don’t know.”
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t know how dangerous you are. How much danger you create.”
“I—”
“I’m really grateful for everything you did for us,” Seiya interrupted. “You saved my brother’s life, and mine. But this needs to stop.”
She stared, baffled. “
What
needs to stop?”
Seiya gave her a long look. “You need to leave my brother alone.”
A moment of silence.
“I need to
what
?”
“Leave him alone. Break it off. In other words, get over him.”
Piper spluttered.
Her eyes like blue ice chips, Seiya leaned a little closer. “Do you think I don’t know how you feel? You’re obviously in love with him.”
Piper sat up sharply, forcing Zwi onto her lap. “I—You—”
“You have no right to feel that way. In what world would your feelings be reciprocated? You just moon after him in your own naïve little world and make everything more complicated—and more dangerous—for him.”
Piper’s mouth opened and closed in soundless outrage.
“You and him,” she went on, waving a finger in Piper’s face, “can’t be together. It won’t work. My brother has dealt with enough shit as it is; he doesn’t need to get tangled up with you, feeling responsible for your safety. How many times will you make him risk his life for you? Until he’s killed?”
“You—” Piper began furiously.
“He already feels responsible for you and that’s just as your friend. Look what your friendship has gotten him—a reaper spy on our tails.”
“I didn’t—”
“What’s the point, anyway? You can’t even look at him without glamour. You’re going to move on and do whatever you haemons do. Be a Consul or whatever. Where does he fit in that future? We’re going to spend the rest of our lives hiding from Samael.”
Piper stared at the girl, speechless and barely able to believe what she was hearing. Zwi mewled, pawing at Piper’s leg.
“There’s no future for you and Ash,” Seiya went on relentlessly. “But here he is, putting us at risk to save your ass. You need to deal with your own problems and leave him out of it.”
Piper sprang off the sofa, unintentionally dumping Zwi on the floor. She’d heard enough. Teeth bared, she pointed a finger aggressively at Seiya.
“I didn’t ask Ash to save me! I didn’t even know he was out of the Underworld. And if he risks his life for me, it’s because he decided to, not because I asked him!”
Seiya opened her mouth again but Piper turned and yanked the blanket off the sofa.
“Save your breath. I don’t give a damn what you have to say.”
She stalked across the room to the spare bedroom and slammed the door behind her. Glaring around the barren room with nothing but gear and weapons along the wall, she crossed to the opposite corner and curled up on the floor with her blanket. Pillowing her head on her arm, she ground her teeth and breathed hard through her nose.
What did Seiya know? So Piper cared about Ash. She was attracted to him. That was it. Besides, it didn’t matter either way. She knew it was impossible. There was no future where the two of them fit together. And she wasn’t even sure he wanted that kind of relationship with her anyway. Considering Piper had risked her life to save Seiya from imprisonment and torture, the girl seriously lacked gratitude.
She clenched and unclenched her jaw. It was a long time before she calmed down enough to fall into a fitful, uncomfortable sleep.
. . .
Lunch was a tense affair.
Seiya stood on one side of the counter, nibbling on a sandwich. Piper sat on a barstool, glaring at her untouched food. Ash and Lyre stood just outside the kitchen, exchanging confused, wary looks in some sort of male Morse code as they puzzled over the problem.
Piper angrily picked up her sandwich and took a bite. No point in starving just because Seiya had made it. Her head throbbed in time with her chewing. It had been aching since she’d woken up in a stiff ball on the floor.