ASHER
I’m losing it.
I’m losing everything, and as much as I claw and scrape and grab, time is slipping through my fingers. John is fading away.
Mena.
She is the one thing I never had ahold of. The one thing I wanted the most. But she isn’t a thing. She isn’t a toy I can’t play with, some inanimate object I just can’t grasp. She is a person, a woman, probably the strongest person I have ever met. And the one person I will never, ever have.
As soon as Evan dragged me from the gym, I went to my quarters and systematically destroyed every breakable object I could get my hands on. Lamps, tables, mirrors… I even ripped apart the books and smashed my favorite reading chair. I needed to release all my helpless anger, my righteous indignation at the unfairness of this whole mess. I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t take her pain away. I couldn’t rip her tormentor to shreds. I couldn’t do anything.
I need to let her go.
But as much as I have to release her from my heart and mind, my selfish heart refuses to let her go. I gave up on my destruction, and went to the King’s chambers, looking for a reason to not crawl in a hole and die, maybe. Looking for a reason to matter. Looking for anything that will keep me from staring death in the face.
I caught John trying to travel – the smoke swirling around him in great churning arches, but never taking him anywhere. A piece of my heart withered at that moment, and I had to grit my teeth against the burn. In the beginning, traveling is difficult – almost unbearable for a young one to achieve. It takes so much out of us, but the pain eventually goes away. At the end of our lives… it becomes impossible.
John is at the end.
I knew where he wanted to go, so against my better judgment, I called Cam – who now seems to have a permanent crook to his nose – and we took him to Olivia.
And here we sit, Cam and I, perched on dainty chintz chairs in the sitting room outside the royal suite. Cam looks ravaged, pain stark on his face, and I realize - like me – he is losing a father figure, a mentor, a friend. It is so easy for me to discount Cam, to take the fact that he’s a flaming asshole most of the time for granted. But he is losing his life – just like me.
I can’t take the silence anymore, and I gingerly rise from the fragile chair and go to the sideboard to partake of the bourbon stash. I’m even nice and pour Cam a healthy measure, and hand him the glass without a word. His eyes are almost grateful as he accepts the tumbler. He doesn’t sip the amber liquid, though. He gently rolls the glass in his hands, staring into the mouth of the tumbler as if it holds the secrets we’ve all been searching for.
I study him for a moment before I realize he has rivulets of tears running down his face. He is silent, his face void of emotion.
“Cam?”
“I don’t know if you ever realized this, but my mother was a horrible woman,” he begins; his voice sounding like it has been run over broken glass. I am so shocked that Cam is speaking about his mother that I can’t say another word. Cam has always hated talking about his parents. Struck dumb, I simply nod for him to continue.
“She was violent and mean, and I’ve never met someone who could be so evil and not be a Revenant at the same time. She drilled it into our heads that Phoenixes were a blight on this world, and it only got worse after your parents turned. Father tried so hard to temper her, but… It is the hardest thing in the world to hate someone who is already dead. To have to send your mother to hell because she was just that evil. To know my father stuck by her even though she was such an awful woman. And I am so angry that Olivia is none of that, and I can’t figure out what is killing her. Olivia has been nicer to me than my own mother. She has loved me and treated me like I was special even though I am probably the biggest asshole in the known universe. I know we won’t live much longer after they go, but it’s going to be worse than losing a limb for me. I wanted to tell you I’m sorry for how I’ve treated you before it’s too late. You are my family, and I have been no better to you than the woman who bore me. I am sorry, cousin,” he ends on a whisper, the poison he’s been holding onto finally pouring out of him.
I say the only thing I can.
“I forgive you,” I tell him, amazed he has divulged this much about himself. Cam has always been almost one-dimensional to me, but now I can see he is more than the foul-tempered jerk he presents himself as. This hurts my heart more. I have discounted him as nothing more than a nuisance, and I am soundly ashamed to know he has endured probably more than he will ever say.
“We should have been like brothers, Cam,” I murmur. “Better late than never, yeah?”
He nods and sips his bourbon for a moment. We lapse into a comfortable silence for a while before John opens the double doors to the bedroom. His face is destroyed – there is no better word for it.
“I need both of you to get Aurelia for me,” he rasps, and Cam and I spring to our feet.
“She’s not—” Cam starts but his voice catches.
“No. Not yet. But I haven’t even asked for her help. If she can see what’s hurting her, if she can help… we need to utilize her gifts. I have kept this under wraps too long,” John explains.
Why didn’t we think of this earlier?
“Is West still with you and Evan?” I ask, making sure John is covered while we are gone, my Guardian instincts kicking in even at the end.
“Evan is sacked out on the chaise, and West is passed out on the floor beside her. I’ll wake him up if that’ll make you feel better.”
“If you wish, Sir,” Cam concedes.
“Oh, please. I’ve been putting you boys through hell for these last few months. The least I can do is make sure I’m covered.”
“Come on, we knew you were an asshole before we signed up. Comes with the job,” Cam fires back.
John nods with a wan smile and turns, heading back into the bedroom. I look at Cam and we both nod, blackness surrounding us as we travel back to the house in Grand Lake. I have traveled this path so many times over the last few months; I don’t need to concentrate on getting there. In just a few moments, we appear in the middle of the game room next to John’s favorite chair.
“Are you going to be cool?” I ask Cam. He grimaces in chagrin and nods with a grumbled “yeah.” Since the game room is empty, we search the rest of the house, looking for Aurelia. Well, Cam is searching for Aurelia. I am thoroughly failing in my endeavor to keep away from Mena, and I can’t help but search for her instead. My body’s pull - the clawing need – to find her courses through my veins, overriding every other thought.
My resolve to leave her alone lasted all of two hours.
I am a fucking pillar of strength.
It’s instinct that helps me find her. Like an ironclad fist wrapped around my heart, it pulls me, tugs me through the house to the pale wooden door of a bedroom. I know she’s there. It takes all my strength not to travel to her side, not to break this door in, to calm myself down and politely knock on the rough pine boards that make the handsomely crafted door. I rest my forehead on the cool wood.
My first knock is faint; no one would hear it even in the stillness of the house. My second one a minute later is only marginally louder, but the door opens and I am unbalanced for a moment. Not just from the door moving from in front of me, but the sight of Mena upright and walking nearly slays me.
She stands tall, only three or so inches shorter than me. Her board-straight, dark mahogany hair is down and long, almost brushing her elbows. Her slender limbs are covered in a thin, open-weave, emerald green sweater with sleeves so long they cover the heels of her palms, and with a collar so wide, it falls off one shoulder, exposing two thin, delicate black straps and a scar on her neck I hadn’t noticed before. It’s a silvery almost blue that looks the most organic of all her scars. It spans the length of the slim column of her throat and has the eerie resemblance to a lightning strike – a single jagged bolt stretching to her collarbone and the forked tines reaching into her hair like fingers.
It takes a minute for my eyes to move from that beautiful, yet haunting scar and take in the rest of her. She is wearing jeans that flatter the gentle swell of her hips and flat open-toed sandals on her feet. She looks casual and relaxed, an ease to her I haven’t seen before. It shocks me still how fast Phoenixes heal. Half a day ago, she couldn’t even walk, and now she stands tall and proud, and so beautiful it blanks my mind and stills my breath.
“Is there something you need, Asher?” she asks me softly, her face worried, but also open and searching. She’s happy to see me, I think, and my heart does a nice little double bass tap against my ribs.
“Uh… are those new clothes?” I ask lamely. Considering she’s worn nothing but a hospital gown in my presence, I sound like a fucking moron.
She gives me a look that tells me she agrees and says, “Yes. Evan got them for me in Oregon, evidently. Somehow, she knew my sizes,” she ends with a slightly uncomfortable shrug.
“Good, good. Do you know where your sister is? John needs her help,” I blurt.
Her face falls, looking hurt for a moment before wiping clean. When she speaks, her tone holds just a hint of pain, and I feel like a douche. She can’t think I don’t want her. Not when my default mode around her toggles between stalker and possessive asshole.
“She’s training with Aidan in the gym,” she says, her voice flat.
Jesus. She seriously must think I don’t want her. I have to fix this. I have to. I can’t let her think… I have to make her see it. I know it is the bond that draws me to her, but it isn’t what keeps me here. It is her silent strength, her worry for a stranger whom she might have hurt, it is the way she seems to have picked herself up and dusted herself off from nearly a lifetime of adversity. It is her that keeps me.
So much for staying away from her.
“I guess he’s trying to get her back for smacking him on the head with that bokken.”
“She hit him in the head? A Wraith? Aren’t you guys supposed to be harder to fight?” she asks, the worry for her sister stealing across her face, puckering her brow.
“We are. Your sister is deadlier than any Wraith I’ve ever met. She put our King on his ass the last time they sparred. I’m not worried about your sister,” I say, reassuring her.
“I didn’t realize she was so… adept. The Aurelia I knew so long ago couldn’t hurt a fly. Well, she could slay one with her sharp tongue, but a fly could kick her ass.”
“Yeah… not so much now. Do you want to come with me to get her?” I ask even though I think she’ll say no. I’m shocked when she nods and steps from the room like she’s jumping off a cliff.
“We’re just going to walk, right? None of that swirly black smoke stuff. Because that was unpleasant,” she says, her nose scrunching into a wince.
“Yeah. Traveling takes some getting used to. We can walk if you want,” I concede as I grab her hand. I don’t hesitate. I don’t flinch. I touch her as I would anyone else, except I don’t want to hold anyone else. I don’t want to love anyone else. And I’m certain however long I have left on this earth, I’ll never love anyone else as much as I love this woman.