Page 100 of Guardian of Exile

He and Griff had not followed her downstairs when she’d left them. Apparently, they’d been asleep when Kaliaris had woken Griff to tell him that Nyx was awake. After her fathers had verified she was all right, they had gone back to sleep.

Jevryn wasn’t in nearly as good of a humor as he’d been earlier, so either too much sleep made him cranky or—more likely—he was champing at the bit to have Griff freed from the Station. Nyx was honestly surprised he hadn’t just gone to Tristen’s room and banged on the door until the Shaman woke up. She was guessing the only reason he hadn’t was because Griff was acting like this was the most ordinary of ordinary days, which meant he was nervous, and Jevryn was trying to avoid making him more nervous.

“Not unless you want him cranky and unrested before he performs the very delicate, never-before-attempted surgery of untangling the love of your nine-hundred-years-long life from two other living beings, one of whom happens to be your daughter. Let him sleep as long as he wants.”

Okay, so maybe Nyx was nervous too. This was a no-turning-back moment. Either this worked, or it didn’t. And if it did, her entire life was going to change. She wouldn’t have the Station anymore. Wouldn’t be tied to its senses. Would not have the friend she had begun to think of Kaliaris as.

She wouldn’t have her home. She had found this place—had found Kaliaris—when she’d had nothing. They had sheltered her and protected her and made her feel like she had somewhere to belong. The thought of them sucked into the Harvester, even if only for a temporary span, made her stomach clench.

She didn’t know what worried her more—that Tristen couldn’t do this, or that he could. She didn’t think he had ever managed to cut Loclyn’s tie to the Station before Nyx had killed the councilor, and she was starting to wonder if the Congregation had been wrong and what had been done in the past could not be undone.

Given her fears, she would happily wait as long as it took for Tristen to wake up on his own schedule. It gave her plenty of time to worry about everything else. Like whether or not Loclyn had told anyone he was coming to Earth. The councilors knew whenever one of them died, because they felt that councilor’s tether die at the Stations. They did not, fortunately, have any supernatural way of knowing how or where he’d died, so the only thing that would point to Nyx would be if Loclyn had told anyone where he was going prior to his departure.

She didn’t think he would have. The matter had been personal to him, and Nyx—being a councilor’s daughter—would be a high profile target to any other councilor. Even if the others didn’t want to kill her, they would want to control her, because controlling her would give them leverage over Jevryn. So the odds were good that Loclyn wouldn’t have told anyone else about her, because he wouldn’t have wanted them interfering.

Unfortunately, the odds were not good that Jevryn wouldn’t be implicated for Loclyn’s murder. The lack of a body in Koral’s death had thrown immediate suspicion on Jevryn or Kiev, and while Jevryn had—apparently—planted evidence in Kiev’s home to implicate his brother for that death, there would be very little doubt in anyone’s mind that Jevryn had been the one to kill Kiev. And if two councilors had been killed by an A-Morridahn and a third suddenly wound up dead—body once again conveniently missing—what were the odds the other councilors wouldn’t think Jevryn had done this one too?

She’d asked him point blank about it this morning, and he’d told her not to worry about it. She didn’t want to be told not to worry about it, she wanted him to be honest with her. Because what she and Tristen were going to do would have very real consequences, and suddenly those consequences were moving from nebulous to concrete much sooner than she’d anticipated.

He didn’t get to brush her off. Not this time. “Jevryn, could I⁠—”

Griff bolted upright, “He is awake.”

Nyx sighed, tapping into Kaliaris’s senses to find Tristen had indeed exited his room. He had the worst timing. “Let me talk to him,” Nyx said, rising to cut off Jevryn. Her father had already talked to Tristen once while she’d been asleep, and while Evra had informed her it hadn’t gone horribly, it hadn’t gone well, either. Tristen had said he wasn’t doing anything without Nyx, so she was going to go get him.

She exited the library, slamming the doors firmly behind her to prevent Jevryn from following, and met Tristen in the cafe. “Hey,” she said, aiming for casual.

It must not have worked, because he grimaced. “Am I even going to get to have coffee before everyone demands I perform miracles?"

“Yes!” she said, her voice sounding too bright even to her own ears. “Have coffee. Have breakfast. We need to talk first anyway.”

He groaned and started pulling espresso shots. “Your dad doesn’t want to talk. I get the weird sense he wants to both strangle me and also wrap me in bubble wrap in a windowless room so I can’t die before I liberate his boyfriend.”

“He’s a complex individual.”

“Sure. That’s one way to put it.” Tristen finished making his coffee. “I still can’t believe your dad is a fucking councilor.”

“You know you can’t tell anyone, right?”

“He made that abundantly clear to me.” Tristen took a sip of his coffee. “Abundantly clear,” he repeated. “Thoroughly explained. Lots of details on the consequences of noncompliance.”

“I’m sorry. He’s⁠—”

“A complex individual?” Tristen finished for her.

She sighed. “Yeah.”

“I don’t like that he’s involved.” He didn’t pause for her to respond, which was fortunate, because she didn’t know what she would have said. “He’s a councilor, and it’s right under the Council’s nose that there’s a blackmarket Shaman trafficking ring going on. But he said he would ‘look into it’ and I actually believe him.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure if that makes me stupid.”

“If he said he’ll do it, he will.”

“I think he’d say anything right now to get what he wants.”

“Correction: he would do anything right now to get what he wants, such as ending a Shaman trafficking ring. But he doesn’t have to do anything for what he wants. You made a bargain with me to free an Avatar, and I’m sure Griff has already told him that. Given that, if he wasn’t going to do anything, he would have just told you it isn’t his concern.”

“I think you might be biased on account of parental affection.”

She laughed. “My relationship with him is very new. I love him, but I’m not wearing rose-colored glasses regarding who he is. He’ll fix it. Not only because he said he will, but because Griff and I will make sure that he does.” Jevryn had probably agreed to it in the first place simply because he knew Griff and Nyx would badger him about it anyway.