1. ~Talon~

1

~Talon~

The melancholy melody coming from the string quartet on the expansive patio melded with the mood of the last few days.

And in particular, this day now.

Abigail Rose’s memorial.

Shit. Two weeks had passed and I could still picture it as though I was experiencing it again right in the awful, fucked-up moment.

“Mom! Stop! You can’t do this! It will destroy you!”

“It’s the only way.”

An angel dying right before my eyes.

Alena’s mother dying right before our eyes.

A sea of black filled the area.

A whole lot of suits too.

I was donning all black, even down to my shirt and tie.

Orpheus was in black leather pants and one of his out-there fashion blazers, this one black with silver studs.

Even X was in a suit, despite how much he hated that, black like mine, but with a cobalt-blue tie.

Alena had on a black lace dress and knee-high boots, a floppy hat that covered her eyes and cast shadow over most of her face.

She was standing over with Elliot now, the guy in a tailored three-piece suit, looking as suave as ever. He’d given a speech a half hour ago and he’d barely been able to get through it, he’d been so emotional over losing the closest person to him in the world.

The whole of Exemplar was here, along with the Light Fae King, his six daughters, and key members of his court.

The Dragon Emperor had also shown up, touching down in dragon form, then shifting to his human form in a golden suit with a whole lot of jewelry all over him, even wearing an actual crown with rubies set into the gold.

Even Saryan had come to pay his respects. He had his arm looped in Edgar Marlowe’s and he was over with his son, him and Orpheus dressed in pretty much the same outfit, except for Saryan’s shirt being silver and not black.

The dean was also here mingling with some other key guests, those whose lives Abigail had touched in a positive way, aiding them, or saving them in some way over the years.

It had taken a while for this memorial to come about.

Things had been tumultuous to say the least since that night.

Exemplar had been without a joint leader, for one, everything falling to Elliot Sabre, who also had Sabre Tech to take care of on top of the rest.

All the acolytes and escaped prisoners that Orpheus and his army had defeated that night were being processed and tried, then sent to Valmont. Some had escaped when they’d realized the battle had been going south and Exemplar had been tracking them and rounding them up. Those they could find, anyway. Many were still in the wind.

The same went for Constantine and Lenora.

There’d been no sign of them whatsoever.

The dean and the faculty were trying to return things to normal at Electi Academy.

All the magic that Abigail had in place had fallen upon her death, so all of that needed to be replaced by Elliot or other Exemplar members. Saryan had also stepped up and offered his own power too.

There’d been unrest in the supernatural world when word had been leaked of how close Constantine and his followers had come to putting all magic-wielders under his control. People were not happy at all about that, with good reason. It’d had their faith in Exemplar wavering, or even going to hell completely.

Shit, it had been a lot.

And now even with that still going on, here we were in the grounds surrounding the Exemplar compound, all white stone interspersed with trees and a whole lot of peonies, those apparently being Abigail’s favorite flowers.

I turned to X who was right beside me and laser-focused on his dad and Alena talking in front of a majestic willow tree. Obviously using his vamp-hearing.

“What have they been saying?”

“You could find out yourself. Phoenix hearing?”

“And come in halfway through their conversation? What use is that?”

He sighed and half-turned toward me, while still clearly listening in. “So far they’ve been giving each other their sympathies over Abigail’s death. My dad told her he’s here for her with whatever she may need. And now they’re talking about me.”

“You? In what way?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Just my dad checking in on me through her. You know how he is.”

“Judging by how you’re trying to play it off, it’s more than that.”

He looked away from them and scrubbed his hand over his face. “I need a drink. You?”

I hesitated. He’d been going that route a lot since that night.

Off my reaction, he held up a hand. “Just one for me. Promise.”

“All right.” I looked over at the open bar, a few people milling about there. “Looks like there’s just wine and shit.”

He wiggled his fingers, his cobalt-blue magic sparking briefly. “Don’t worry, I can fix that for you, firebird. One spelled Hurricane coming up.”

I chuckled and we made our way over there.

As soon as we reached the bar, I saw X’s hand blur as he reached for one of the long stemmed glasses.

“Hey, did you just drink one already with your vamp speed?”

“I don’t know, did I?”

“X, what about your promise?”

“I had my fingers of my other hand crossed.”

“Shit, what the—”

He shoved a glass into my hand and then he brushed his fingers around the rim, his magic sparking.

The drink changed right before my eyes to my favored Hurricane.

“Thanks.”

“No worries,” he said, snatching up a glass of the spelled wine and downing it in two big gulps. Two, big desperate gulps.

This wasn’t good.

It wasn’t good at all.

Ore had told me that X had felt so guilty for pushing us through the ward wherein Constantine had then snatched me and Alena away.

It hadn’t been his fault at all, though, and nobody blamed him. But he must’ve seen it differently and maybe that’s what this was, him not letting go of it.

Whenever anyone brought it up, he just shut down or changed the subject, though.

Even with Alena.

And we were all in closer quarters than ever right now. With Electi Academy currently shut down for a few weeks to recover after that battle and everything, we were staying together at Abigail’s house. Usually I’d go with Xavier and so would Ore, because of the estrangement that had been going on with Ore and his father and the DFR. But Alena had wanted to stay in her mother’s house, to say goodbye and be close to memories of her while she worked through her grief, and she’d invited us to stay with her.

It had to be weird for X as well as Alena, because the last time he’d stayed there he’d tried to burn himself to ashes in the sun. It had been a dark time.

He hadn’t said a word about it so far.

And today clearly wasn’t the time to get into it either.

“So we haven’t really talked about it with everything else, but it must feel amazing to have your magic back, right?” I asked him, hoping to inject something more lighthearted into all this shit.

“It is, yeah,” he said. “I feel like myself again.” He shook his head to himself. “After all that effort of trying to be okay without it, huh?”

“I know. But it wasn’t just about that. It was about you learning to become comfortable with your vampire side. And you’ve made major strides there when it was taken from you.”

“That’s true. Good point, firebird.”

“I thought so.”

His brief spark of humor faded all too quickly though.

“What?” I pushed.

“It’s tainted. Having it back came at a price.”

“X—”

“It’s true, though, isn’t it? I mean, he must have given it back to me for a reason. And that reason definitely wasn’t out of the goodness of his own heart. It’s part of some plan, some awful plan to use me through the sire bond again, something that needs me to have my magic this time.”

“His plans were destroyed when Abigail stopped him from ever performing that spell and taking his black magic.”

“He’s a Machiavellian puppet master, he’ll pivot and construct a whole other strategy, this one a lot worse than the last in all likelihood with how pissed he must be that something he’d been planning for that long was ripped to shreds.”

I laid my hand on his shoulder. “Look, even if he did do that, Elliot said that without black magic, he can’t control you to the extent that he did before.” I touched the indigo bracelet around his left wrist. “And with this, we’ll all be able to tell if he did try to invoke the sire bond in any way and Elliot would be alerted and teleport in to stop anything from happening.”

“Yeah,” he murmured, pulling away. He downed the rest of his drink. “Once again, my dad needs to save my ass. Once again, I’m a problem, not an asset.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself.”

He scrubbed his hand over his face with his free hand that wasn’t currently clutching his now empty glass in a death grip. And then he plastered on a smile that I knew him well enough to identify as fake. “You’re right. I should focus on the positive of having my magic back.”

“X—”

“How are you doing?”

“We weren’t done talking about you.”

“Yeah, we are,” he said, firmly.

Dammit. He was closing himself off.

“Tal,” he pushed.

I blew out a breath. “I’ll be all right. Yeah, what happened did bring up some issues for me, namely, what happened with my parents.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m handling it this time, not to worry. No rage burst is forthcoming. I’m not bottling it up. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“I’m not bottling my issues up either. We just discussed it, didn’t we?”

“We scratched the surface.”

“Alena said that you held onto your control really well that night.”

There he was changing the subject again. And none too smoothly either. That was a dead giveaway that he was off-kilter.

“I had to. I would’ve burned her otherwise. I only let my phoenix fire out because she begged me to.”

“That’s a huge thing, Tal. You did it for her. You found a way to keep control even under the worst of circumstances.”

“Yeah,” I uttered, taking his words in. “Shit, I did.”

I was smiling then as I recalled the rest and I confessed, “I also told her that I loved her.”

His eyes shot wide. “What? You did?”

I grinned. “Yeah, I did. And she reciprocated.”

“That’s incredible. Look at you, no longer stifled emotionally. You’re putting it all out there, letting her in all the way, feeling positive sentiment and everything.”

“I know. It’s… it feels amazing.”

He gave my shoulder a brotherly squeeze. “I’m really proud of you, firebird. Hey, we’ve got to tell Ore about this. He’s going to love it.”

We looked around, no longer seeing him standing with his father and Marlowe.

“There,” X said, zeroing in on him heading into the compound.

A few feet behind Alena.

“What’s going on there?” I wondered aloud.

“Probably just him keeping an eye on her.”

“Maybe they’re gonna talk about them becoming a part of Exemplar, ” I proposed.

“Right,” he said. “The two heirs with magnificent legacies. Especially Ore with the DFR too.”

I looked away as both Alena and Ore disappeared into the compound out of sight and found another drink in X’s hand. He must’ve vamp-speeded over there while I was distracted. “Cheers to that, right?” he said, rather bitterly, raising his glass to me.

His legacy had been cut off when he’d been forcibly turned.

Even though he’d been able to access more of his magic before Constantine had taken it for a while there, it could never even come close to what he’d been able to wield before becoming a vampire. So he could never walk in his father’s footsteps.

Before I could speak to it, he was downing the entire glass, then striding over to the bar away from me and ordering another.

I shot a look over in Elliot’s direction.

Fortunately, he was distracted, his back even turned our way, as he talked with the Dragon Emperor and the Light Fae King.

He wasn’t bearing witness to X hitting the spelled booze hard.

I might need to call in backup to keep it that way.