Page 102 of Guardian of Exile

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Nyx knew her eyes had to be bloodshot when she went to get Tristen, but he tactfully didn’t mention it. Now that they stood in the Arrival Room, at the edge of the portal bay, staring down into the abyss of the Station’s Heart, he looked a little green.

He pointed into the impenetrable darkness. “You want me to go down there?”

“I do it all the time,” Nyx offered.

“It has a vested interest in keeping you alive.”

“They have a vested interest, and they have it in you, too.”

Tristen did not look convinced. “I can do a lot of things, but I can’t make my body survive without oxygen.”

“There’s oxygen,” she reassured him. In truth, she wasn’t sure exactly what she ended up breathing in the Stations’ Hearts, but she’d never died or suffered brain damage, so… “Do you need me to hold your hand?”

He glared at her. “No, I do not need—” Whatever else he might have said was cut short when two enormous vines slithered out of the opening. One wrapped around Nyx, the other around Tristen, and unceremoniously dragged them down.

On the Heart’s floor, Kaliaris released them so gently that neither so much as stumbled. Even so, Tristen shot Nyx a look of pure venom.

She lifted her hands. “I had nothing to do with it. They got tired of waiting.”

Kaliaris agreed.

When Tristen took a startled step back, tripping over some of the vines running across the floor and crashing down, she knew Kaliaris had spoken into his mind as well as hers.

Kaliaris said, clearing the ground around Tristen as he righted himself.

“No problem,” Tristen muttered.

Kaliaris’s attention turned to Nyx.

“No. I figured you might want to talk to Tristen first, since he’s the one who will be physically altering you.” Kaliaris would have heard their conversation in the cafe, so they would know roughly how things were going to go, but it stood to reason they might have questions.

“And I wanted to tell you that I’m going to need a few days before Tristen cuts the councilors’ tethers. I think Calista will let us stay with them once you’re gone”—she forced her voice to remain steady—“but we’ll need time to move our belongings.” She said it all matter-of-factly, but there was a small part of her that intentionally threw Calista’s name into the explanation, hoping to make Kaliaris jealous. As if the soul of a planet would get jealous of its unchosen Guardian packing up to live in the space created by another soul of a planet.

The vines rustled throughout the room.

Tristen cast a hesitant glance Nyx’s way. “Sure?”

A moment later, Tristen was lost in an enclosure of vines. Nyx waited. And waited. And waited. What the hell were they talking about for this long? Did Kaliaris trust her so little they were trying to strike a separate deal with Tristen to ensure he did what they wanted? Another stab of hurt lanced through her. It was fine, she lied to herself. It was fucking fine.

The vines fell away, revealing Tristen once more. Neither he nor Kaliaris said anything.

“Should I send for Griff and Jevryn?” she finally asked.

Kaliaris said.

She nodded, and soon she was inside her own enclosure of vines. “Look, if this is about the couple of days I asked for, I’m sorry, but I need them.”

“I know you don’t want me to need them, but that doesn’t change the fact that⁠—”

Relief wanted to cascade through her, but she wasn’t quite buying it. “You’re going to stay,” she repeated.