Page 132 of Sidhe
Nathan stepped carefully around the sleeping sex demons, even if he was fairly certain they wouldn’t feel his step, andapproached the pair as they began talking. He could see Charis asleep not far away, close to Cam and the twins.
Lindsey’s expression was solid, almost cold, appearing human before his grandfather who in contrast had not left his true form. “Of course I have faith in them,” Lindsey said.
“Them,” Aloysha sneered. “What’s them? I mean Nathan specifically. I may have led our people here, I see the good in this, but I want to be certain. Do you think there is a chance he would betray us again?”
Nathan almost punched the guy on principle.
What stopped him—besides the lack of impact a punch in this state would have—was how honestly affronted Lindsey looked on Nathan’s behalf.
“I doubted him as well, and he came back having planned everything perfectly to ensure no one lost their life, to hold off the battle until our side was ready. Now we have a chance to fight this war at our best. Because ofNathan,” Lindsey stressed. “Sasha has every—”
“Sasha,” Aloysha sneered even more prominently than before. “We may have agreed to lift his banishment, but Sasha Kelly is a kinslayer and a deserter. He is hardly a character reference I trust.”
Nathan cheered to see how Lindsey’s hands tightened into fists, blackening, ready to defend Sasha the way he should have years ago. “You think he would have left back then if he believed he had another choice? You think he would have killed his own family if it hadn’t been the only way? You know nothing about him.”
“Mind your tone,” Aloysha warned, tall and menacing in his true form when Lindsey appeared only human, something Nathan thought the white-haired incubus was maintaining purely to piss his grandfather off. “Now is not the time for this. I merely asked your opinion about Nathan. I have your answer.We shall see the truth revealed tomorrow. To think,” Aloysha huffed, “that you would trust him so easily. We will watch our backs as much as we watch the dark fae in front of us. We’ll see tomorrow how trustworthy thesealsand Nathan Grier really are. Go to sleep, Lindsey. You are not only responsible for your own life, remember? Watch over the one who was promised to you.”
With that, something cold and disapproving lingering in the way Aloysha turned to walk back through the camp, he left Lindsey alone.
Nathan was allowed only another moment to watch Lindsey staring after his grandfather’s retreating back. He heard the brief, angry growl of “Fool” that Lindsey spoke before moving to join his sleeping wife, and then Nathan was taken up again, pulled farther along the troops to the seal camp.
Nathan was not surprised to find a handful of them still awake, probably never having slept or rested as they were instructed. That young couple was dozing by the fire in the center, curled together and listening in to the conversation of those fully awake, which included a crotchety old seal Nathan really should have learned the name of by now. He was playing poker in the dirt with several others.
There was a bottle of blue-label Johnny Walker whiskey next to them, half gone. Nathan caught the end of something one of them said about worrying that their great leader, Nathan Grier, might be leading them into a trap.
So good to know everyone was behind him, Nathan thought with a grimace.
“You watch it now, Jackson.” The crotchety seal waggled a finger over the top of his cards that Nathan could see were crap. “Just because I’m technically retired doesn’t mean I wouldn’t still school you in proper manners. Grier’s on the level. No doubt in my mind. Got plenty of backers.” He slowly arranged his cardsas if building something substantial, while Nathan could see that it was purely random. “Even Oberon and Titania themselves. You want to try taking them on?”
A couple other older seals chuckled low and hoarse.
The younger seal, Jackson, shifted nervously then threw down his cards, folding. “I was just sayin’,” he grumbled. One of the other men was already out. The last folded too. The older seal won with a few sharp looks and a handful of nothing.
“Deklin was always a wild card,” he raised the whiskey bottle to his lips for a slow pull, “and Sasha is even wilder. You forget I was part of the men who took ol’ McPherson out after he killed the poor bastard and his wife. No sense in slaughtering fae who ain’t done nothin’.”
Nathan stumbled back. Sasha had been right all along about the man who killed his parents—retribution had indeed come calling, and from Deklin Kelly’s fellow seals.
“Now Nathan’s gone and pulled one over on the Devil himself. And I’m just fine with that. Deal ‘em again, Jackson.” He tossed away his winning hand.
Nathan couldn’t help noticing that the seals weren’t playing for anything but company.
Then he was off again, one last flyby of the assembled masses, right back through the doors of the Gatehouse, before landing a little off-kilter beside the makeshift beds where all those he cared about most slumbered. He realized then that Walter was perched on top of the bar the way he used to so often perch in windowsills when only Nathan could see him, watching over them with a fond look on his face like he could stay that way all night.
It made Nathan want to get up,wake upso he could talk with Walter, with the others too. There hadn’t been enough time for everything he wanted to tell them. There hadn’t been enough time for anything.
“Prrp?” Wally called from Nathan’s feet.
He looked down. She hadn’t chirped loud enough for Walter to hear, but had stirred from her slumber and was looking right up at Nathan’s dream self.
“Walter can’t even see me, or Malak…but you can, huh, girl?”
She tilted her head at him. She looked briefly to Walter at the bar, but he seemed too lost in thought to notice her. When she looked back, she stood up on her two feet—she only walked on all fours when she was a cat. She raised one of her human hands palm up, and as Nathan watched, mesmerized, it started to glow a faint green. The light focused into her pointer finger, and she bent over, writing carefully on the floor and leaving green marks in her wake. When she was done, she’d spelled out the Gaelic word for Faith.
“Why do I get the feeling that before long you’re going to be able to talk too?” Nathan said, not even surprised that there was some wild magic in their mascot.
With an obvious smile on her furry face, Wally chirped at him before turning to snuggle back in by his and Sasha’s heads on the floor, as if to say…time to come back to bed, Nathan.
Standing there, Nathan thought of everyone he had been shown tonight. There were so many more people and agendas out there than he had seen. He thought of Ula and her friends. He thought of the people right here around him, and for a moment he fell prey to real panic, real terror, because this was happening. He was leading a whole damn army against Malak. If he failed, it would mean the end of everything.
