Page 16 of Loving Nightmares
Slater cursed, and Keres shrank in on herself in shame. Once again, I understood why it was so easy to be mad at her—she seemed to constantly put herself in these situations. But I also could tell she genuinely regretted her actions.
“Can it be reverted back to a standard, fixed structure?”
Keres nodded. “Yes, but I’ll have to do it on an individual level with each person who is affected by it.”
“Are you willing to do that?” I could only imagine how much magic and effort it would take, but at the same time, my abilities weren’t guaranteed to fix it—I had a connection with Damian that I didn’t have with these others, and realistically,, I needed to save my energy for handling War.
“Yes,” she said adamantly. “I’m willing. I will shift the structure back, and then you should be able to create an antidote. I’ll have to manually adjust the structure for anyone else who is affected by it, but once I do the antidote will be good for all of them.”
Reaching forward, I squeezed her arm. “Thank you. Really.”
Keres’s gaze filled with emotion as she raised a shoulder. “Least I could do. Plus, maybe my brother will fuck off then.”
Slater shook his head but didn’t say anything, probably scared that if he did she might change her mind. I think he was underestimating his sister, but I also knew that their relationship was absolutely none of my business.
“Alright, I’m going to go handle the warded areas,” I told her. “Do you want anyone to stay here with you?”
“No.” She sighed. “I’m fine. I know you need everyone out there.”
We did.
I squeezed her arm once more and turned to leave the healing center, but before I made it a few feet, Keres called my name. I turned and offered her a questioning look.
“Thank you for letting me come here. I promise I’ll keep them safe.”
I smiled, hearing the sincerity in her voice. “I believe you.”
“You do actually believe her, don’t you?” Eros said lazily, walking at the back of the group with Razar and me. The others ahead were talking about the shields being distributed, but I couldn’t hear the full details. Instead I was focused on the curious look on Eros’s face.
“One thing I’ve learned about god terrors,” I drew out, “is that you don’t really lie—you may not say exactly the full extent of the story, but you’re all fairly blunt.”
“It’s true,” he murmured, his gaze going to Drive. “But sometimes that’s worse than lying, pink-haired human.”
Lowering my voice, I decided that this was probably the moment, if ever, to say anything. “Like how you and Drive are mates? You don’t really admit to it…but you mention little things about him a lot.”
Eros froze mid-step. Razar walked ahead, attempting to give us privacy, although I didn’t expect for him to ever be any more than a foot away, if that.
The god terror turned to look down at me in confusion, but there was also a sense of vulnerability I wouldn’t have expected. “Put that together?”
“God terrors can’t feel desire unless it’s their mate, and you talk about being with him…a lot. He mentions it too.”
“He does? He’s admitted we’ve slept together to you?”
Wracking my brain, I remembered the time he’d traveled to California to find us and nodded.
Eros frowned, then heaved a sigh. “You’re right that we’re mates, but it’s not as simple as that.”
I decided to be bold. “Why not?”
“He doesn’t trust me,” Eros murmured, nodding for us to walk ahead since the others had gotten a fair distance ahead of us. “It’s the nature of my power. He believes he isn’t enough since I feed off the love from others, and that’s led to resentment. One I don’t know how to fix.”
I didn’t know how to fix that either, truth be told, because I could relate to Drive’s insecurity since sometimes I got upset that Saint fed off of others’ deaths. I suppose it did make it better knowing that Love didn’t participate in anything, so there was no cheating, just observing…
“Do you have to watch everything that goes on at your hotel? Can’t you feed off of it from afar?”
Eros seemed to consider my words before nodding. “I can…I don’t know if that would help, though.”
“Have you asked him what would help?”
