Page 36 of Guardian of Exile

Surprise showed in Morgen’s eyes. “You did?”

“I know that being a soldier can fuck a person up even when their duties are considered routine for that job. I’m sure you and Maruca have your own share of that. There are things about the way Kaden was when we were together—little things—that make sense in that context now.

“And I know that when people are exposed to things that are not as routine, sometimes it fucks them up so bad they don’t come back from it. Kiev was…I don’t know that there are words to describe how awful he was, and I don’t even know most of what he did. And Kaden worked for him for months.

“I don’t want to know the things he saw.” She definitely didn’t want to know the things he’d been made to do. “So I know what happened in Calista had nothing to do with me. It would have happened to anyone who’d been in that room. I blame Kaden for a lot of things he deserves, but I don’t blame him for that.”

“Thank you. It…means a lot to me.”

Valerie and her friends darted across a street to the blaring of several angry car horns. Nyx would have worried they knew they were being followed, despite her Hiding, and were trying to evade them, if she hadn’t seen by now that ignoring a crosswalk’s don’t-walk status was apparently how this city operated. She and Morgen had to wait to cross safely, since drivers couldn’t see them, and then jog a little to close some of the distance between them and Valerie.

Where was this woman going? They must have passed at least three other coffee shops since the one Nyx had met her in, but as a fourth came into view, Valerie and the others went into it.

“You know you don’t have to thank me, right?” Nyx said, as they paused outside the shop, waiting. “And you know Kaden isn’t your responsibility? You’re a good friend, but he can handle his own life.”

“I know he can. But…I wasn’t always. A good friend. So I suppose sometimes I feel like I still have a lot to make up for.”

Nyx couldn’t hide her incredulity. “What could you possibly have to make up for? You are the nicest person I know.”

“Yeah. The thing about that you have to understand? I try hard. Because I was a spoiled little shit as a kid.”

Nyx gaped at him. “You?”

He nodded.

“Explain.”

“My mother essentially raised me by herself. My father didn’t care about being a dad, but he’d show up every few months or years when I was little and act like we were going to be a real family, and I’d buy it. So would Mom. It was hard not to.

“You think I’m charming? You should meet a full-blooded Siren. My father could sell you sand in the desert. I though he was the greatest person in the universe. Every time he was home, I was so happy. But he was only ever there for a few weeks. Sometimes only a few days.

“And every time he left, he made sure to slip in some comment that made me understand it was my mother’s fault he was leaving. So he’d be gone and I’d be heartbroken, and she’d be there to blame. We didn’t have much at that point, but she still always made sure I had everything I needed, no matter what it cost her.

“The last time I saw my father was when I was seven. When he left, he told me I wouldn’t see him again, because my mother had told him to never come back. I screamed and screamed at her and she just…took it. Tried to make up for the fact my father wasn’t there, and I didn’t appreciate it.”

“You were just a kid,” Nyx pointed out.

“Yeah, but I was still an asshole. Especially after Mom brought Kaden and Maruca home. I think she took them in for a lot of reasons. For one, no one else was going to. The Moors lived on the outskirts of our community. They’d shown up a few years prior, when Kaden and Maruca were toddlers, and they never integrated. They never even tried. Nobody knew why they were there, and when people tried to include them in things, they rejected it, so eventually people quit trying.

“It’s why when the adults went missing, no one knew. Not until Maruca got caught stealing food at the market, and the vendor dragged her home to have a word with her parents, only to discover it was pretty obvious there hadn’t been any parents for a long time. Long story short, Mom took them in temporarily, and when it turned out no one could find any relatives and they were going to go into the interplanetary adoption system, Mom just said that if no one else wanted them, she did, and that was that.

“I think she hoped my having siblings would fill the void my father left, but I also think she needed kids who appreciated her, because I certainly didn’t at that age. Maruca didn’t talk much at first, but she followed Mom everywhere, wanted to do whatever she was doing. Kaden would do things for her—clean and help her with the house, that kind of thing—but he didn’t talk at all. For the first five years.”

Nyx looked at him. “Five years?”

Morgen nodded. “I hated him. I disliked Maruca on principle, but Kaden was the one I suddenly had to share half my room and things with, and I couldn’t even argue with him because he wouldn’t talk, and if I tried to pick a physical fight with him, he wouldn’t fight back.

“I was very popular. I had a lot of friends and I complained about Kaden constantly. I made fun of him, so everyone else did too. One day, some of the older kids—” Morgen broke off for a moment, the expression in his eyes haunted. “I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what happened. No one involved would talk about it, including Kaden, but…they beat the shit out of him. Fractured six of his ribs, broke his collarbone. His left eye was swollen shut. He lost partial vision in it that could only be fixed by a Shaman, so it didn’t get fixed until we went into the Enforcers.”

Morgen shook his head. “It was a hell of a shock for him when we joined the Enforcers and people suddenly gravitated toward him. He didn’t fit in growing up, but put him in a combat situation where everyone’s lives depend on the most competent person in the room and he’s pretty much always the most competent person in the room? Yeah. People gravitate to him. I think he hated that more than he hated growing up.

“Anyway, when he got hurt so bad…that was when Uncle Beau got involved. Took me to lunch, sat me down and told me if I kept going like this, I was going to end up just like my father. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I must have defended my father, which was when Uncle Beau realized my mother never told me the truth about him. Which was that Dad only ever showed up when he needed money, and the reason he quit coming back was because Mom finally told him he wouldn’t be getting any more. She told him he was welcome to be a father, but she was done with him and he wouldn’t be getting anything else out of her.

“I didn’t believe Uncle Beau, so he proved it. Tracked my father down and took me to see what he got up to when he wasn’t weighed down by family.” Morgen’s expression was disgusted. “Let’s just say it shattered my twelve-year-old world view. But Uncle Beau wasn’t stopping there. Once Kaden was recovered enough to be mobile, Beau told Mom he was taking us both camping and carted us off to the other side of the planet. Dropped us in the middle of a forest with a week’s worth of supplies and told us to ‘Figure out your shit’.

“I thought for sure he was watching us and kept waiting for him to pull us out, but that crazy son of a bitch actually left us there. By the third day, I was so bored I went wandering off from camp. A storm came up and I got washed down a ravine in a mudslide. Got jammed in between a couple boulders and couldn’t get free.

“I thought Uncle Beau would come get me out. Wasn’t until night fell that I realized he wasn’t coming, that he’d really left us. But once the sun went down and I wasn’t there, Kaden realized something must have happened. Didn’t take him long to find me once he decided to, given what he is.