Page 34 of The Guardian (Dark-Hunter 20)
Chapter 12
The look on Jaden's face was heartbreaking. "I have no way to leave this place. Ever. To protect what I loved, I damned myself completely. But Seth wasn't so stupid. He can be freed. It won't be easy, but it can be done."
That sent the first bit of happiness through Lydia that she'd had in a while. Seth didn't deserve to be condemned to this place.
If I can free him ...
"How?"
"You'd have to teleport him out, and then hide and guard him until his powers recharged to their full level. Until they do, Noir could summon him back if he located him."
"How long would it take?"
Jaden took a minute to think about it. "A month ... maybe a little longer or even a little less. It would depend on how low his powers were when he left here."
But he could be freed.
That gave her hope.
Jaden leaned down to speak low into her ear. "And to answer the question you're too afraid to ask, yes. I think he can be saved. But it won't be easy. He has no reason to believe in or trust anyone. We've all betrayed him. Bitterly and repeatedly. We traded his innocence for our own selfishness and hung him out to dry over and over again."
Tears choked her as she thought back to what little she'd seen. How many more and worse stories were there? She was also too afraid to ask that question.
Jaden had been right. It was a miracle Seth was still sane. How he could show any form of compassion to her or any semblance of kindness to someone else was a testament to his strength.
She had to get him out of here.
"Just don't lie to him," Jaden warned. "He would never forgive you for it."
"Then I should tell him I'm a jackal and-"
"He will eat you for lunch." Jaden cut her words off angrily. "Listen to me, Lydia. He has centered all of his hatred on the family who lied to him and sold him. He hasn't forgiven me, but he never loved me or thought that much of me, so he doesn't hate me for what I've done. In his mind, a jackal is the symbol of treachery and ultimate betrayal. He will never trust you if he knows you're one of them. Since he doesn't know what you are, he has no reason to ask you about it. So, for the sake of the gods and yourself, don't tell him."
If only it were that easy. But her morals were different from Jaden's. "Omission is a lie in and of itself."
Jaden growled in frustration. "That's your decision. However..." This time, he projected Seth's past to her without touching her.
She saw Seth on his knees in the desert sand, clinging to his adoptive father's hand as he begged for mercy. "Please, It," the Egyptian word for father. "Please don't sell me. I'll do anything you ask. Have I not always been a dutiful son to you in every way?" He held his hands up to show the cuts and calluses on his palms and fingers from where he'd helped his family with chores. "Never once have I asked for anything. Never have I gone to bed and not told you how grateful I am to have all of you as my family. I don't understand why you would sell me."
His father sneered at him as he cruelly wrung his arm out of Seth's grasp. "You're pathetic, boy. No wonder your mother left you to die and your father couldn't be bothered to claim you." He kicked Seth back, into the arms of the demons who were there to take him.
Seth's tears flowed down his cheeks. "How can you do this to me? You told me that you loved me. That I was your son."
His father sneered at him. "You were never really one of us." Then his father turned into a jackal and ran off, leaving him to the demons.
The one on the right grabbed Seth by the hair and leered at him. "We're going to have a lot of fun with you, boy. Don't worry. As pretty as you are, you'll have all the love you could ever want."
"Stop," she said, holding her hand to Jaden. "Please. I don't want to see any more."
"Don't you know, Seth feels the same way about it. But he had no choice except to endure it, and then to be damned to an eternity of remembering every demeaning, brutal detail. The slightest word or phrase. Sometimes it's nothing more than a fleeting smell or sound, and all of that floods right back to him with a clarity that leaves him ravaged and aching all over again as if it just happened to him. Just like your memory of the night your mother died. No amount of time fully eases that pain, does it?"
No, it didn't. As he'd said, one sound or the darkness and she remembered every detail of that night. No matter how hard she tried to forget, it never went away.
It was always there, stalking her and hitting her when she least wanted it to. There was no escape.
Not ever.
Only times of happiness between those memories. At first those times had been so brief as to not matter. But Solin had made her laugh and learn to live so that those moments would be longer and longer, until they finally outnumbered the bad memories.
For that, she owed him everything.
Seth had no one to make him smile. No one to comfort him and tell him that he would learn to live again.
Not that he'd ever had a real life to begin with. He would have to start from scratch to even have a single decent memory to build from.
My poor demon ...
All of a sudden, someone was at Jaden's door.
He stepped away from her as it opened. Prepared to fight, she held her breath, half afraid it was Noir or one of his other minions.
It was Seth.
She started to go to him, but there was an air of such rage and hostility around him that she was afraid he might hurt her if she did.
His armor and lips coated in blood, he had several new wounds and bruises on his face. But as always, he didn't seem to notice them. A tic beat a fierce rhythm in his jaw as his nostrils flared. He appeared to be one step away from going on a homicidal rampage.
The last thing she wanted to do was be the one who pushed him into it.
His icy glare went past her and straight to Jaden. "I'm being sent to guard the Nether Wall. Can you watch her until I return?"
Jaden gaped at his disclosure. At first she thought it was because he was asking Jaden to keep her longer.
It wasn't.
