Page 99 of Guardian of Exile

“Appreciated. So what happened after I sent you guys outside?” She wasn’t worried about anyone, because Griff wouldn’t have been cracking jokes if someone had been seriously injured.

“We fought,” Kaden said, in that succinct way he had that most people took for sarcasm of an asshole nature, but just meant he didn’t think it warranted further elaboration. “Then everyone bad died. Your doing?”

“In a roundabout way, I guess.” She ground the espresso to fill two portafilters, tamped the grounds in both, slid them into place, and started the shots pulling. “Loclyn reached for them after I stabbed him.” She hesitated, not sure if she wanted the answer to the question on her mind. “The rest of his Devoted. Did he kill them all?” Alihana had said he was tied to them.

Kaden was quiet for a moment, thinking. “How long did Loclyn live, after you stabbed him?”

“I don't know, exactly.” She dumped two of the shots into a mug and filled it with hot water, then poured milk into a pitcher and started it steaming. “A couple minutes, maybe? I wasn’t very lucid.”

“I can’t say for certain.”

“But you think they’re all dead,” she said flatly. She dumped the other two shots into a new mug and poured the steamed milk over them.

“Most likely.”

She’d suspected. There had been so much energy pulsing into Loclyn at the end. But she hadn’t had much experience with energy mages, so she hadn’t really known.

“Can Maruca…?” She didn’t finish the question. She and Maruca had a turbulent history, and she didn’t want him to think she was asking because she didn’t like her.

“One or two people? Possibly. It depends on the situation and the people. That many? No. They were called his Devoted for a reason. They don’t fight him when he pulls from them. Even unto death.”

Nyx chewed on that as she handed him the Americano she’d made and took her latte to the counter. She was grateful he didn't tell her it wasn't her fault. There was a time, she was certain, when he would have. A time he would have thought she needed to be, if not coddled, exactly, then at least reassured.

She didn’t. She didn’t blame herself for the deaths of Loclyn’s people. But she didn’t feel easy about it either. She hoped she never would. Because death wasn’t easy, even when it was deserved. No matter how terrible a person was, their absence created a ripple effect in the world. And this one might end up being a net positive, but it didn’t mean the negatives weren’t there too. It didn’t mean that people hadn’t been hurt.

“What are you thinking?” Kaden had taken the seat one down from her, his hands wrapped around his mug.

“I’m thinking,” she said slowly, “that if Tristen agrees to help us and everything goes the way we need it to, there will be a lot more moments like this. And in the end it won't matter to most people whether what I've done is right or not. I will be a person that most people hate.”

Pathbreaker, the being from the pocket of Earth Between whispered in her memory. She didn’t like the title any better now than she had then.

“But you’re going to do it anyway.” He said it as a statement, not a question.

“I am.” Because it was the right thing to do. Because she had made a promise. Because no one should wield as much power as the councilors did, and that included her father.

“Do you want my help?”

She thought about it. Thought back to the conversation they’d had on his boat on Raveras. Knew that if she told him no, he would go. There was something freeing in that. Something that made her feel like he finally saw her as an equal and not simply some naive girl he’d used once and now needed to protect from the universe because she couldn’t be expected to understand its dangers on her own.

She thought Kaden Moor might finally being seeing her, and not the person he’d thought she was. “I do, actually. If you don’t mind giving it.”

He shrugged. “I don’t have anywhere better to be.”

She snorted. “Given what’s coming? I think you could argue that anywhere is better to be than with me.”

“Yeah.” He took a drink of his Americano. “You could argue that.”

But he didn’t.

Five hours later, everyone except Tristen was awake and gathered in the library over coffee.

“Finally,” Nyx said, feeling vindicated by his absence. “I’m not the only late riser around here.”

“You are awake now,” Evra pointed out.

“Only because my sleep schedule is off and apparently sixteen hours is my limit. I won’t be awake at five in the morning tomorrow unless a crisis is occurring.” She glared at everyone in turn. “No one have a crisis.”

“Can you not simply wake him?” Jevryn demanded.