At some point the lasers must have turned off, and his body had gone to sleep to heal because the next time he woke it was to the delicate pinpricks of Grim’s teeth, nipping at his fingers. “Damian,” Grim said, letting go as he roused. “The others are waiting for you.”
“Why?” he asked, sliding a hand over his face and rolling flat. He was a mess, but it didn’t matter, because things weren’t going to get better any time soon.
“I believe they’ve got actual enemies for you. So you can stop fighting yourself,” Grim said, sounding peeved.
Yes. Fighting, his dragon said agreeably, unfurling in his mind, before gently continuing. You like fighting, don’t you, human?
In general, yes, Damian said, then snorted. Is this your way of trying to be nice to me? His dragon didn’t respond as they walked down the hall.
They reached the conference room quickly, where the rest of his team was waiting, and Mills sucked in air at the sight of him. “Oh, Damian.” She was dressed in business casual, black pencil skirt and a flowy cream-colored blouse, for their presumable business meeting, her long hair tidily up in braids, quite a contrast to what little was left of his suit on him, and all of his body smeared with green. He knew he reeked of sweat, blood, and ozone. “Grim, you should’ve made him shower.”
The cat hopped up onto the table and yowled an apology Mills couldn’t understand.
“He says he did the best he could,” Damian translated, his voice a rumble. “And he told me there was a fight coming up.”
“Yeah, about that, Damian….” Jamison began, sounding hesitant.
“Are you cosplaying the Incredible Hulk intentionally? Because if so, good job,” said an unaccustomed voice with a slow ironic clap. Damian turned his head, scanning across his crew’s faces until he found someone new in their midst. Stella, the small and likely insane werewolf girl Andi had saved last night, now wearing black motorcycle leathers.
What was it Andi had said? That Stella had warned her?
“You,” he said, rounding the table, angling for the woman.
“Whoa, D,” Zach said, putting himself in Damian’s way, his crisp black suit making him look every bit like an unsuspecting bystander.
Damian shoved the werewolf aside without thinking, knocking him back into the wall so hard he bounced. Jamison ran out the door as Austin ran to his brother’s side, and Damian continued on for Stella. “What did you tell her?” he demanded.
“Tell who?” Stella asked, instantly jumping up and pulling out her handgun as she backed away. “I know you’re a fucking dragon, but this is a Ruger Super Redhawk loaded with 454 Casull. It can take down a buffalo.”
“Damian, I know things are rough right now,” Mills began, appearing at Stella’s side. “But we invited Stella here, to help us with the hunters. Remember them?”
Damian cleared the distance between them until the muzzle of Stella’s gun was resting against his sternum, rising and falling in the rhythm of his breath. “What. Did. You. Tell. Her.”
Ryana appeared on Stella’s other side. “Really, brother? Did murdering one little human do this to you? You’re very out of practice.”
Max ran forward to sweep Ryana back to safety as Damian heard Austin say, “Oh, shit, are we really doing this?” and then a mottled gray and black wolf the size of a picnic table leapt out of nowhere and careened into him. Zach. Damian swatted it back and then felt its fangs clamp on his hand and wrist—yanking him to one side as it fell. The pain traveled up his arm slowly, like it was coming from a great distance, and it was absolutely nothing compared to the pain in his soul since he’d left Andi behind.
“Zachariah!” Mills snapped, and then another werewolf ran at him from the side, a shaggy auburn blur, buffeting him with its shoulder, knocking him down. “Austin! Cut that out!”
Damian knew they were his friends, that he shouldn’t fight with them, that there’d be more appropriate fights to come, and yet, he moved his hand inside Zach’s wolf’s mouth to grab hold of the inside of his lower jaw and squeeze. The wolf whined, but it didn’t let go, and his brother’s jaw found the meat of Damian’s thigh to viciously bite and pull.
“Boys! Stop it! All of you!” Mills demanded. She strode forward to put a foot on his chest. Her hair was down now and it seethed like a living thing, winding itself around each of his limbs.
“You murdered her?” Stella accused him. She hadn’t used the wolves’ distraction as an excuse to run away; instead, she’d moved her half-cocked gun up for a headshot.
“Of course not,” Mills answered on his behalf, as a strand of her hair came up and wrapped the barrel of Stella’s gun, too, whipping it away from the woman. “Explain yourself!” she demanded. “Starting with you, Damian!”
Damian lay there, gnawed on by werewolves, strangled by magical hair, and it was all he could do to keep breathing. Not because of anything they were doing to him, but because she was gone. The day his entire crew had prepared for, for when he’d finally go wild, was here—only, instead of it being his dragon’s fault, this was all him.
“Andi left me,” he confessed. “To protect me from her uncle and her brother.” He let go of Zach’s jaw and the wolf began to release his arm in turn.
Stella took a step back, retrieving her weapon as Mills’s hair proffered it back to her. “Well, she’s not wrong. He’s a fucking scary dude.”
Jamison ran back into the room with his dragon-shooting armature on, the weapon making a high-pitched whining as it charged. “Back it up, buttercups,” he announced, focusing the aiming light on Damian.
Mills waved him down. “We’re all right,” she said, then stared down at Damian. “Aren’t we?”
Damian was fairly sure he’d never be ‘all right’ again but he forced himself to answer, “For now.”
“Hell of an operation you’ve got here,” Stella told Mills, as Ryana wrested herself free of Max’s arms to come back to the fray, peeking her head over his so that she was upside down in his field of vision.
“So, you didn’t murder her?” she tsked. “For shame.”
After that, Mills tasked the two wolves with making sure Damian showered, shouting, “The three of you…go cool off!” They herded him down the hall like oversized border collies with a reluctant sheep, if that same sheep could also become a fire-breathing dragon. Grimalkin brought up the rear, hissing any time a wolf so much as looked his way and they went into the communal showers outside the training gym together.
Damian stepped under the nearest shower, with the remnants of his suit still on him, and let the hottest water hit him, listening to the sickening sounds of his friends changing back to human nearby. The first time he’d ever seen his friends change on a no-moon night, and it was to stop him. He really was fucking cracking up. But he had unfinished business with Andi—no matter what she thought. He had to pull himself together.
“Take off what’s left of your shirt and pants, Damian,” Grim counseled, hopping between the water jets. “You need to get clean.”
Damian did as he was told and saw the river of blood pouring out of the wounds on his arm where Zach’s fangs had pierced him, and again, on his thigh where Austin had. The blood swirled, a watered-down emerald green against the shower’s bright white tile. The amount of blood leaking out of him lessened as his wounds healed from the inside out.
“Dude, I cannot believe I bit you,” Austin said, coming up beside him to clap his shoulder hard, staring at the green splashes on the floor. The tattoos Austin had rippled over his muscled chest and down his arms. “So let me just say, Zach started it.”
Zach snorted, coming up beside them both. “Thanks.”
“It’s true!” Austin protested, with a lopsided grin, before shaking himself like a dog. “What the hell were you thinking, shifting?”
Zach groaned. “I wasn’t. I’m sorry, Damian…you were coming in hot—”
“I was,” Damian agreed, waving his friend’s apology away as the last of the green washed off of him. “I…don’t usually let my emotions get the better of me. I should be the one apologizing. I’m sorry.” No matter what Andi believed, he was scary.
It was just a mystery to him that somehow her uncle was scarier.
The werewolf brothers shared a pointed look. “Are you…okay?” Zach asked.
“If you’re asking if I’m going to dragon-out on you, the answer’s no.”
“What about the rest of it?” Austin pressed, one eyebrow high.
Damian inhaled, considering the honest answer: No. I am fucked up. And I am going to remain fucked up for quite some time. Possibly forever. But he couldn’t let on. He didn’t want to worry them anymore than he already had.
Zach put a serious hand on Damian’s shoulder before he could speak again. “Do you want to talk about it? Before my brother offers to take you to a strip club, I mean.”
“That’s not my only go-to, Zach,” Austin snarked before rebounding. “Although now that you mention it…pussy does solve a lot of problems.”
Damian took a deep inhale. “Not when the only pussy in the world I want is worried her brother is going to kill me. Or me, him.” Austin hissed and Zach winced as he turned the water faucet off. “You see my conundrum,” he went on. Grimalkin materialized a set of towels nearby, and each of the men took one.
Austin cinched his, appeared thoughtful, and then held his hands up like he was selling products on a TV infomercial. “Have you thought about alternate sources of pussy?” he asked.
Zach rolled his eyes to the heavens, and not for the first time, Damian thought it was interesting that their tattoos matched, because nothing else about them did. He stared at his brother flatly. “Not helping,” he said, then faced Damian. “Did you tell her? The mates thing?”
“Of course not.” Damian sighed. “I wanted to, but she’d already gone through so much tonight. Besides, it’s not like it’s a magic wand. We’d still have the same problems.” Damian raked a hand through his wet hair.
“But if she’s your mate, then this is temporary,” Zach said, trying to logic things out. “She can’t escape fate, right?”
“Purportedly. Only I forgot the part where she’s also fated to fight by her brother’s side.”
Austin groaned. “I mean, really, Damian. There’s so much no-fate-pussy out there.” Zach went to punch his brother’s shoulder as Austin danced aside. “Wait, I know a guy. Two doors down from me, third hallway. Wears goggles, shifts into a bear? Named Max?”
“I’m not using the Forgetting Fire on Andi to erase her memory of her family. That’s fucking dark.” Damian glared at the shaggier wolf.
Zach moved so that he occupied Damian’s field of vision instead. “Okay. I agree that my brother’s an idiot, and that things are hard. But let’s acknowledge that this is not a problem we’re going to solve tonight.”
Damian stared into Zach’s eminently reasonable ice blue eyes for a long moment, reminded of all the reasons why he let Zach run Blackwood Industries without him. “Agreed.”
“Good. So let’s focus on the now. Mills and Jamison have some targets for us to take out. You like beating things up. These Hunters sure as shit deserve to be beaten. It’ll be an easy win. Let’s go take it.”
Damian slowly nodded.
“Thanks, coach,” Austin said ironically, bobbing up in front of his brother, his rust colored hair just beginning to dry. “And when we’re done?” he said with a dangerous grin. “I know this place by the interstate. Pussy as far as the eye can see.”
Damian went up to his room to get dressed and brought his orrery down with him from his office. It chimed musically as he took the stairs. By the time he returned to the conference room, Mills’s hair was rebraided. “So, Andi’s gone?” the witch asked, her brow furrowed with concern.
Damian sat down again beside her, putting the orrery down between them. “She’s trying to protect me from herself. Her brother told her she’s going to fight by his side, so she’s trying to take herself out of the equation.”
“Destiny doesn’t work like that.” Ryana crossed her arms, frowning at the thing Damian had brought.
“That’s what I told her, but she’s human.” Damian spread his hands out on the table. “She doesn’t want to betray me. But she doesn’t want to look at me and know that I’ll have to kill Danny. So, although it pains me, I cannot blame her.”
Max grunted, putting both his elbows on the table. “No one said it has to be you who kills him, Damian. We’ve got plenty of weaponry.”
“And don’t forget the big gun,” Jamison said, gesturing at the armature he’d set down in the room’s corner.
“I’m fairly sure any one of us vaporizing him will feel the same to her.” Damian shook his head.
Zach cleared his throat. “So, is there a solution to the Hunter problem that doesn’t include killing him?”
“For as long as he’s a traitor to dragonkind….” Ryana said, letting her voice drift meaningfully.
“Yes, sister, your opinions on traitors are well-known.” Damian snorted.
“She’s right, D,” Austin said, and Ryana gave the shifter a begrudging nod. “I know you care for Andi, but he’s on the other side. This is no time to get soft. I mean, would he hesitate if he had the chance to kill you?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t met the man before,” Damian muttered, but then realized that wasn’t true. “Wait, we did see him fight in Rax’s casino that one time.” Danny had come in, wild and half-draconic, to save Andi from the other Hunter—back before Andi’d realized all of her family’s Hunter ties.
“I remember that fight,” Mills said, tapping a finger on her lips.
“Yeah, we saw him stick his claws through that guy’s eyes into his brain. Who could forget?” Jamison’s lip curled in disgust.
Damian would’ve…because of everything that night that’d come afterward. Him in Andi’s bedroom, satisfying her thoroughly before holding her as she drifted to sleep in his arms. He realized all he had of her now were memories. His hands moved to the edge of the table and grabbed hold, like he was trying to pull his happier past closer.
“Just how strong is he?” Ryana asked in concern.
“Damian was born a dragon. He would win,” Max said, sounding certain. “If he wanted to,” he amended. “Which he’d better.” Max’s tone changed to the stern whipcrack of Damian’s youth, when the bear-shifter had put him through his paces in the Realms.
“I would,” Damian agreed. “But what then?” His jaw clenched and he stared at the grain of the wooden table, thinking hard. Why wasn’t there an easy solution? How could he thread this needle, survive, and still keep Andi’s gentle heart?
Zach cleared his throat. “Okay, so, what’s with the crazy desk toy?” he asked, gesturing at the thing Damian had brought with his chin.
Damian took a deep inhale and tried to focus. “You heard Lee’s talk of the Joining in the car, yes?”
Austin grunted. “It sounded pretty made up, like he just wanted an excuse to kill people.”
Damian looked over at his sister. “Do you think a Joining and a Conjunction could be the same thing?”
Max’s head snapped toward her too. “Why is he asking?”
“Because that’s why I’m here. The prognosticators said one was coming. It instigated the war in the Realms that I escaped,” Ryana told him.
“What the fuck’s a prognosticator?” Stella asked.
“Good question,” Austin said, looking to Damian for translation.
“This is my orrery,” he said as answer, pushing the thing forward and flicking one of the hovering crystal globes. It made a melodious sound as it flew out of orbit on its chain, and then swung back into its original path. “I brought it with me from the Realms, and each of these represents a different Realm,” he said, pointing at them in turn. “I can’t claim to understand all their interactions with one another, largely because they’re practically random. But there are people of the Realms who stare at these all day long—crazy people, called prognosticators—who claim to make predictions of future movement based on prior movement.”
“That’s not an incalculable amount of objects and motion, Damian,” Jamison mused, rapping his metal fingers on the table thoughtfully. “I wish you’d shared it sooner. We could’ve—”
“Been charting it all this time? Why? It has no bearing on earth. Or it didn’t until now, perhaps,” Damian said with a shake of his head. “But with Lee’s talk of a Joining, I’m worried it’s the same as what we call a Conjunction.” He used his hands and forearms to press the line of hovering globes into a chiming line. “It’s an alignment of the Realms creating a rift on each one, allowing anything that wants entrance through, up, or down to whichever Realm it seeks.”
“That seems bad,” Stella murmured.
“The strong will survive and the weak will perish,” Max intoned.
“Kind of like the Book of Revelation? Where all those old guys had wild end-of-the-world visions?” Jamison asked.
“If believable people had actually experienced it once before and then written books about it afterward, then yes,” Ryana stated.
“Fuck,” Austin cursed.
“Pretty much,” Max agreed.
“And this happens in the Realms every few centuries?” Stella asked.
Damian nodded.
Zach frowned. “But we’re not part of the Realms, right?”
“Earth is more like here,” Damian said, making a fist beside his orrery, releasing the globes to float back to their paths. “It has more periodicity than the Realms do, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be part of a Conjunction. And you all already know there’s bleed through when Realms touch Earth, via rifts. Plus, a Conjunction-level event doesn’t always have to come out in monsters. It can be releases of raw energy—volcanos, tidal waves, that sort of thing.”
“Earthquakes?” Austin guessed, remembering Lee’s story.
“Quite likely.”
“What can we do about a Conjunction though?” Jamison asked. “If it happening is just a mathematical probability?”
Damian leaned back to consider and met Ryana and Max’s eyes in turn before speaking again. “Harden Earth’s defenses. We’ll let the other wardens know—prime them, prepare them—and give them as much access to tech and magic as we can in the interim. We’ll have to buy new warehouses to create, store, and ship warded weapons and ammunitions.”
“Your shareholders won’t like that much,” Zach said with an ironic snort.
“My shareholders can go fuck themselves,” Damian said. “But, no, really, that’s why you’re in charge of them, not me. You’re better at making things palatable.”
“Or hiding them from the books entirely,” Zach said.
“That, too,” Damian agreed. Zach gave Damian a mock salute.
“Back to the Hunters, then,” Austin prompted, looking to Mills.
“Damian,” Mills said, laying a soft hand on his arm, “I’ve made a decision. And it’s not going to make me popular.”
One of his eyebrows rose as he sighed. “Why should anything tonight get any easier for me?”
She patted his arm twice before addressing the group. “Austin, Zach, Stella, you’re all going out. Max will run the fire brigade, just in case. Jamison and I will observe and run assistance from here, and Damian, you and Ryana will stay home.”
It took him a moment to parse what she’d said. “Me? Home? That’s unthinkable. Why?”
Mills pointed at the handprints he’d clutched into the hardwood in front of him earlier, with each of his fingers clearly visible. “That’s why. You’ve had a bad day, Damian. You said so yourself. And your dragon right now…his aura reads a little untrustworthy.” She waved a hand at his body, indicating the magical energies he had that only she could see. “We need to keep you inside.”
Damian would’ve fought her, only he knew she could only tell the truth.
“Stand down, brother. Stay home with me,” Ryana said from his other side, pressing her hand atop his.
If he hadn’t already been bitten by two werewolves tonight he might’ve fought harder, but as it was…. “All right,” he reluctantly agreed.
There was a soft knock on Andi’s door around six p.m. She blinked to life inside her darkened room. She’d had a long night—or day, really—of nightmares, running from the stupid angry rotting dog-thing again, and waking to reality brought no relief. Her memories caught up to her in an instant, everything from the night before: Danny, her uncle, Stella…and Damian.
“Andi?” Sammy asked quietly from the hall. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Andi lied. “Come in.” She pushed herself up in bed and yanked on the chain for her reading light.
Sammy entered and looked around. “Oh, wow.”
“What’s up?” Andi asked, her voice thick with sleep.
“You didn’t answer when I knocked. Why are you wearing all your clothes? And…those clothes?” Sammy had actually driven her to her mom’s funeral; she recognized the outfit Andi had fallen asleep in last night. Then she saw Sammy looking at all the walls, where all her family photos were gone and her shelves missing mementos, like her very own personalized tornado had ripped through. “What happened?”
Andi blew air through pursed lips. “Ambien side effects.”
Sammy’s eyes widened. “Maybe it’s a good thing you don’t know how to drive then.” She walked over to the reversed Fast and the Furious poster on the floor. “What’d Vin and The Rock do now?”
“Wrong room, wrong night,” Andi said, hauling up sheets to cover her dressed oddness as Sammy rehung the poster. She prayed Sammy wouldn’t ask about Damian. If she did, there’d be no way for her to lie. “Not the mirror,” she said, as Sammy reached for it next.
Sammy gestured at her vaguely. “Yeah, you kinda don’t want to see this right now, trust me.” Andi snorted, as Sammy snickered. “Do you want some help? Or some dinner?”
“Nah, I’m not hungry. I’ll grab something from the cafeteria on my way in.”
“Your loss…I ordered ramen. I’ll put some in the fridge for you, though…just in case.” Sammy gave her a sweet smile. “Anything you want to talk about?”
Andi shook her head quickly. “No. I just really need a shower.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but….” Sammy said, and Andi laughed.
“Get out already,” she said, waving her roommate off.
Her phone buzzed. Andi sat down on her penguin-sheeted bed and reached for her phone, knowing that hope was foolish and disappointment was inevitable.
Wanna hang? Danny asked.
Like that was a feasible thing. Ditching Damian only to spend time with her brother—especially when all this was at least his fault. New number, who’s this? she texted back.
Very funny. But he knew her well enough to know that her sarcastic joke was still a “no” and didn’t reply.
Andi stripped out of her funeral attire and stuck it in the back of her closet to be forgotten too. She was never wearing that outfit again if she could help it—right down to the flats—so the only thing she wore into her bathroom was the necklace Damian had given her.
She took it off for inspection, cupping the stone in her palm. It wasn’t anything she could identify. It looked like smoky quartz or a blurry diamond, but with a tiny spark of light inside. Like the hot head of a pin—or a very small trapped genie. She gave her imagination a wistful smile. Technically, she probably should’ve given it back because what if some hunter-person saw it on her and then traced it back to a jewelry shop and found out he’d bought it for her? But she wasn’t willing to give everything up just yet. Ninety-nine-point nine-nine percent of their relationship had been swept away last night. Couldn’t she keep just one thing? Some proof of their having been a them, to survive the next however long she had to last without him? She put the necklace back on, stepped into the shower, and let cold water hit her like a slap.
Just like when he’d thrown her into the pool beneath his castle, when he’d been worried about her being scarred by unearthly blood. How safe she’d felt in his strong arms—even as she’d yelled at him—and how she’d known then, standing in the chest high water, feeling his gaze on her: intense, angry, and interested—that she’d wanted something more. She knew if she looked at herself in the mirror again she’d see the small scar the acidic blood had left beneath her breast.
It was nothing compared to the scar she now had inside her heart. She set her forehead against the cool tile and cried.
“It won’t be so bad, brother.” Ryana had joined him in his bedroom and redecorated the place as she liked. She had Lyka disappear his bed and replaced where it’d been with bench-like couches and a low side table full of all sorts of food he barely remembered from their childhood.
“I do live here, you know,” Damian said, sitting down, noting that all the couches faced his wall of mirrors.
“Grimalkin can change it back when we’re through,” she said, sweeping her wings out behind her as she sat down, with Lyka taking a perch on her shoulder. Ryana waved a hand at the wall of mirrors and assorted images of the rest of his team started showing, via whatever was reflective of them nearby. They saw Zach and Austin from the SUV’s side-views, while what was clearly a rearview mirror showed both the men up front and Stella in the SUV’s back seat.
“Ryana, no.” He paced over to the mirrors, waving a hand to turn them off.
“Why?”
He shook his head quickly. “Mills and Jamison are monitoring them. They don’t need us watching too.”
“But why can’t we?”
Largely because Damian had never considered doing it, he’d never been sidelined before. “Because it’s rude.”
“You mean you don’t have a mirror making sure your woman is safe at all times?” Ryana asked, her head tilting sideways. Lyka, sitting on her shoulder, mimicked the motion, twisting her beak.
“No. Andi doesn’t want that, and neither do I.”
Speak for yourself, human, his dragon muttered. He pushed it back.
“But we’re royalty,” Ryana said, completely sincere. “How do you monitor your servants, without spying?”
He laughed. “That’s easy. I don’t have any.”
Ryana’s eyes went wide as she clutched a hand to her chest. “No. Say you’re kidding. You’re a prince, Damian—”
“And I manage just fine, with Grim’s help. And the others.” He sat back beside her. “They can deliver a lot of things these days, not everything’s bespoke. The castle cleans itself, and we make do.”
She shuddered, sending ripples down her wings and disturbing Lyka, who went to fly in lazy circles near the ceiling. “How…odd.” He watched her stare into space, considering her servant-less future, and he realized he’d been unkind.
“I’m sorry, Ryana. I know you just got here, and I’ve hardly taken any time to teach you.”
Her green eyes focused on him again, as she got a sly smile. “Yes, well, I hear being mated to a traitor takes up a lot of time.”
“Ryana,” he warned, but he knew from his childhood it was already too late.
“You do realize you could’ve stayed home, killed my mother, and already had two or three cursed children of your own by now? And then I would be at home, surrounded by a fleet of servants, and I’d have access to all my old books, with the opportunity to be an amazing aunt?”
He snorted. “You don’t like children, I haven’t forgotten.”
“I don’t have to like things to make a point,” she said, grinning.
“And just who would’ve suited me better, in your imaginary future?” He could hardly remember any of the women he’d been with before Andi.
“Ceraliea,” Ryana said, without hesitation. “She was heartbroken when you left, you know. Cried for weeks, or so I was told.”
“Our nanny’s daughter?” Damian struggled to put the name to a face, and then frowned, remembering. “Ryana, she was half-horse.”
“So?” Ryana sank near him and pretended to swoon. “Where your love was concerned, she was all woman!” She broke into peals of laughter, as he groaned. “Oh, it’s just as easy to rile you as it’s ever been, so there’s that,” she said, dabbing the corners of her eyes daintily.
He inhaled and exhaled deeply. “Give me time regarding Andi. The wound’s still fresh.”
Ryana snorted. “What kind of sister would I be to you if I waited long enough to be kind? Truly, have you been away so long?” She rolled her eyes, and then coquettishly turned her head, focusing her attention on him again. “Be honest brother, did you miss me?”
“Up until about five minutes ago, yes,” he said, and she chortled. “But really, you were the only thing about the Realms I missed. Not the servants or the spying or the one woman who magically chose to have a horse’s head for some reason.”
“Half-horse makes more sense than entirely-human,” Ryana said, still snide, then sighed. “I am glad to rank slightly higher than Ceraliea on that list.” Her hands played with her skirt, a nervous habit he remembered from their youth, and Damian realized the gulf of differences now between them. While the fire their childhood had forged them in had made them close, they’d still been apart for two decades. “I always understood why you had to go,” she said, smoothing her skirt back down. “I just didn’t like it.”
“It was your mother or me, Ryana. She was interested in ruling; I was not. If I’d taken you then, your mother would’ve skinned me…or I’d have been trapped on a throne after I strangled her.”
“I know,” she said, subtly nodding. “It’s just that it was hard without you.”
He could only imagine. “I am sorry for that.”
“Me too.” She straightened herself again, taking back some of the regal bearing she’d lost to taunt him. “In any case, if you don’t spy on people, what do you do to pass the time?”
“Train.” Damian shrugged.
One of her eyebrows arched high. “Let me rephrase: what do people who aren’t you do to pass the time? Normal people of this planet?”
Damian thought quickly. “Grim, a TV, please.”
Several of the mirrors on his wall disappeared, replaced by a large flat screen TV that showed both of them in reflection.
“Oooh! Is that a different kind of mirror?” Ryana got up and walked over to it, placing a hand upon the screen.
“Of a sort.” The only television he’d seen recently were the murder reenactments that Andi found so fascinating. He didn’t want to show those to Ryana though. “Hang on, I’ll be right back,” he told her, escaping to the bathroom so that she couldn’t see him ‘spying.’ Once there, he waved at the mirror over the sinks and Austin’s face, still in the SUV’s rearview mirror, showed. “Austin!” he hissed quietly.
Austin jumped sideways in the car, as the car veered. “Fuck, Damian, I nearly pissed myself.” Stella cackled in the back seat as Zach, driving, cursed.
“Sorry, what’s that film you like? The holidays one?” Austin made them watch it every Christmas.
“Die Hard. Why?”
“No reason,” he said, cutting the connection and returning to his sister. “I have a treat for you. A traditional earthly holiday film.”
In the beginning, it took twice as long to watch as it normally did, because Damian kept having to stop it to explain what things were to Ryana, although she got the underlying story immediately.
“This is a romance, Damian!” she squealed. “You’re so soft now!”
“No, it isn’t,” he growled. “There’s explosions. And deaths. And a holiday celebration.”
Ryana reached over to pull a bucket of something crunchy onto her lap to eat, sharing it with Lyka, feeding the bird by hand every other bite. “Most good romances include death, or hadn’t you noticed?” she said and he snorted. It seemed like his would, so he couldn’t deny it. “They don’t have to, though,” she went on quickly, as if reading his mind.
Shortly thereafter she gave into the story and stopped asking questions, completely absorbed. Damian watched along with half his attention, while the other half was still on his phone’s empty screen in his hand, trying to decide what to do. He wanted Andi to know that he thought of her—continually—but he also wanted to give her space to decide. It was a horrible position to be in, and he found himself envying the certainty of John McClane on screen. He was thinking he would’ve paid all of Blackwoods Industry’s fortunes to just have a problem he could fight his way through rather than one that required patience of him, when three things happened at once:
Grim appeared, hackles raised, tail like a fat white pinecone, shouting his name; Mills and Jamison burst through the door behind them; and Jamison’s dragon fighting apparatus dropped from the ceiling to land on the ground. Jamison ran over to it and started pulling it on.
“What’s going on?” Damian shoved up and off the couch, putting himself in front of his sister protectively.
“They’re fighting a dragon! You need to send Jamison there!” Mills exclaimed. “Grim! Show him!”
One of Damian’s remaining mirrors showed Zach, Stella, and Austin looking harried in some kind of office complex via a window’s reflection. They were fighting on short brown carpeting, surrounded by desks, with even more windows at their back.
“It’s just like the film!” Ryana shouted with glee.
“I need to get over there,” Jamison told him, having strapped on the weapon.
Damian took everything in in a second. “Nothing personal, but fuck that,” he said, transporting only himself through the glass.