Page 93 of Living Legend

Nicholas peeked over at me as his father wiped his hands on a cloth. I crossed my arms over my chest and bit down another laugh. Nicholas let out an exhaustive groan. “Dad! Can I have a minute to, I don’t know, pull myself together?”

“Alright. You have a minute,” his father said pointedly. He grabbed the first aid kit and the clothes soaked with blood and walked towards the kitchen.

“Thank you,” Nicholas replied, getting ayeah, yeahfrom his father in return.

I took Mr. Cassial’s spot in front of Nicholas and placed my elbow on the table. “You brought me home?”

He squinted his eyes at me, but his shoulders slumped down in an exhaustive stance. “Looks that way.”

“May I ask why?” I questioned.

He scrubbed one of his hands down his face. “I wish I knew. I just wanted somewhere I knew we would be safe. I’m not super familiar with how portal magic works.”

I peered around the room, around the home that wrapped around you like a warm hug. “I can see that.” I reached over and tilted his chin up to look at me directly. “You told your dad?”

He shrugged, removing my fingers from his face. His fingers seemed to glide off mine, like he wanted me to be severely burned by the heat I felt from them.

“Like everything? From the beginning everything?” I asked, shaking my hand.

“Pretty much. You’ll find he is probably the most understanding yet annoying father in any realm.”

“If you didn’t pull stunts like this--” His father strutted over to us after he cut the water off at the kitchen sink, wiping his hands with a clean cloth, pointing to where blood still lay on the floor. “I wouldn’t have to be so annoying.”

Nicholas tilted his head back. “I get it, okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do. It was a shit show back there.”

His dad arched an eyebrow.

“The Skies, it—” Nicholas started, fumbling over his words. I abruptly finished for him.

“We got ambushed, Mr. Cassial. Like your son said, it was a shit show.”

His father pulled out a chair and sat down. “An ambush? Was it demons?”

“Sort of. I mean, I’m pretty sure they were.” He chewed on his bottom lip. “They seemed dead set on killing all of us, like it was their mission.” Nicholas looked down and pressed his fingertips to his gauze-covered wound.

Mr. Cassial looked between me and his son, doing a mental calculation that we were obviously missing the rest of theushis son was referring to. I eased his mind. “Natalia took Elise and Reese with her somewhere. I’m sure they are fine under her care. I trust her.”

“Jonah and the others?” he pressed.

Nicholas rapped his knuckles on the table. “I don’t know. All of this was meant to be kept severely under wraps and now…” He let the rest of the sentence hang in the air.

I knew what we had left behind and how it probably gutted him to have left without continuing to fight. I also knew he wouldn’t have lasted in that fight.

“Jonah…always underestimating things. Did that man really think these girls were going to fix this problem? He put everyone’s life at stake,” his father spat out, mutteringtypicalunder his breath.

“Dad—”

“And look at you! I’m not saying that fighting doesn’t lead to wounds and bloodshed, but dammit Nicholas, this was out of nowhere. I wanted you to ease into this stuff. I don’t know, practice battles like we used to do, small missions that gave you experience. This…thiswas likely preventable and what does that man do? He throws you to the damn wolves!”

Nicholas lifted his hands up in a surrender. “I get it, alright! You wanted me to do more and so I did, I am. I didn’t know that it would come back to fuck me over. I have a lot of issues with Jonah, but for right now, neither one of us can do a thing about it.”

I blinked. “You want to lay low? Do nothing?” I could understand the gravity of the situation, but that didn’t mean I wanted to just give up.

He slid his tongue across his top row of teeth. “It’s the best option. Who knows what The Skies even looks like right now. Besides, we need to hear from Natalia first and foremost. We didn’t exactly end on the best of terms with Jonah, so going back there now wouldn’t do anyone any good, especially you.”

I leaned back into the chair and gave one solid nod as a response. I was stuck in that room in The Skies, waiting for instructions, so to have to do it again was pinching at an annoyed nerve. I knew he was right, though. Ariel thought I was an issue, that I had something to do with those things that ambushed us. I didn’t, but they had seemed to eye me like I was a calling card. He would want my head on a spike pronto, and I wouldn’t let that happen until I figured out why I was Lilith’s final piece in this web of confusion and lies.

Cullen had said I would be the one to ruin it all, but Lilith couldn’t honestly believe I would be able to deconstruct Heaven's Gate? I was powerful, but I didn’t possess that kind of power and she of all people knew that. I was Lilith’s pawn, I understood that, but was I the kind where others could seek their glory while I shielded them or the type that showed no signs of disruption but then rattled everyone’s world when they least expected it? If I knew anything about Lilith, I had an inclination that she would use me as both interchangeably. Nicholas wanted to know how I fit into all of this and unsurprisingly, I wanted to know how he fit as well.

---