Page 63 of Chaos Unleashed

It takes a long time before my tears calm down, and I fall into an exhausted sleep, surrounded by my men, all of them even H. My creatures are standing guard over all of us, and I know that I'm safer than I have been, maybe ever.

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I don’t know how long we were all asleep, but I wake up surrounded by creatures and the sounds of the men bustling about the cabin.

“Morning, Love,” Loki says as he hands me some jerky, a hunk of bread, and coffee.

“You have coffee?” I ask.

“Of course,” he grins as he bends forward and kisses me softly on my cheek.

“Thank you,” I reply. I watch as everyone moves about, and it's obvious just from their interactions with each other that they’ve gotten to know each other really well recently.

I am surprised to see how well H, or Khaos, is fitting in with them. It's like he’s been with them for years. He keeps shooting me concerned looks and soft smiles, just like the rest of them.

“Farren,” Grey says, coming to sit in front of me with his own drink.

“Yes?” I ask, with a smile when he doesn’t immediately reply.

“Are you feeling okay today?”

I nod, aware that I’m now the centre of everyone’s attention, “Yes, I think crying it out was more therapeutic than I realised it could be. Thank you for letting me do what I needed to in order to prove that you were real.”

“No need to thank us,” Storm replies, coming to sit down too and quickly followed by the others.

“He’s right; you should know by now that whatever you need, we’ve got you,” Zev adds.

Grey smirks at me, clearly sensing that I’m beginning to want to change the subject; I’m hoping he’s not planning on bringing up the G-word thing again because I am in no way ready to deal with that and whatever it entails, not to mention that I think that it's impossible at best.

“Yesterday, you mentioned a couple of things that I was hoping that you could clarify?” he asks.

I nod, trying to remember what I could have said, “Sure.”

“You mentioned that you liked my wings more, and that you’d seen me fight with my swords so that’s why you picked them up, how did you know about them both?” he questions.

I frown, I was sure that I told them that part, “Oh, the story got all mixed up because you guys kept asking questions and so I ended up skipping bits.”

Mayhem frowns, “So, something happened before you got to the vault?”

I nod, but I’m interrupted by Grey, “It didn’t click yesterday, but in order for you to get to my vault, you had to go through the throne room.”

“Yeah, they’re all still there. On the floor where they fell,” I reply, a wave of sadness flowing over me.

Grey swallows thickly, “They deserved so much better.”

“I saw what happened to them,” I reply, and he looks at me curiously; I save him from asking the question and explain all about the vision that I was shown and how I saw what happened. I also tell him about the gemstones that a god gave to the Princes. When it gets to telling them about how Azreal broke his stone, I tell them everything apart from how I helped destroy it; something stops me, although I don’t know why.

“So, that’s how they were keeping my power level low,” Grey mutters as he thinks it over. "And why I suddenly got some back as we escaped the first time."

“Yes, so once I’d gotten the key fragment, I went back through the castle to check the princes and break the gems so that you’d get your magic back. They were all already broken; I thought it might be because they were dead, but knowing that you were in the Underworld all this time makes me think that they broke for a different reason.”

“Yes, I’d imagine that they broke when I set my magic free,” he replies thoughtfully, “You went back for me instead of just leaving?”

“Of course I did. I didn’t know if I had really broken them or not, and I also didn’t want to risk the god coming back and being able to restart the link to drain your magic. That’s why I made sure that I picked them all up,” I say as I move to where I dumped my stuff yesterday and pull the bracelets out of my trouser pocket. I then open up the pocket in the Void and pull out Hiromu’s hand, “Of course, Hiromu had to go one step further, and he stitched the bracelet into his arm, so I had to take the whole thing.”

“That’s gross,” Rival mutters as he looks down at the hand.

“Tell me about it,” I say, “but as you can see, they’re all broken.”

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