Chapter 37

THIRTY-SEVEN

Paris and pain were officially broken up.

His wounds were healed, his soul intact, his bond with Mac stronger than ever, singing whenever he paused to listen to it, all the chords of his favorite jazz tune the background music of a life—a forever—he couldn't have imagined a month ago. Aside from missing his ocean when he wasn't at the condo in YB, he was happy here under the Talahalusi sun, soaking up its warmth and inspiration. Free from his own painful past, committed to freeing from pain the others who'd suffered under his father, and working with Mac and Liam to free souls from the pain that kept them lingering here on this plane.

Which was what brought him here today, Mary at his side. "This is where it happened?" he asked.

She kneeled and put a hand to the earth, digging her fingers into the ground and mixing up the layers of clay, silt, and ash. A clearing in the forest, ten years after a devastating magical fire. A myriad of colors he'd have to paint when he got back home, once he helped the lingering soul here find his way.

Mary stood and saplings sprouted in the divots she left in the ground. She brushed the dirt off on her jeans and nodded. "This is it."

As if the coyote shifter sitting on the ground, back leaned against a charred mess of wood at the edge of the clearing, didn't give it away. "What are you doing here?" Robin rumbled as they approached.

He looked like hell, his golden eyes dull, his rusty-blond hair matted and overlong, his right ear scarred, the days-old dust on his sunken cheeks crisscrossed with dried tear tracks.

Paris lowered to the ground in front of him, sitting with his legs crossed, then offered Mary a hand down as well. "Do you actually stay with the pack, or are you out here every night?" she asked Robin.

"What difference does it make?"

"Because none of us should exist alone," Paris said. "Especially not someone whose aura is as wrecked as yours. And I thought Mac's when I met him was bad." He whistled low, and the coyote cracked a smirk.

"You sound like him."

"Mac?"

"Icarus."

Paris shrugged, taking it as a compliment to be compared to his sassy friend. "Maybe we're both just people who will give it to you honest."

"And what are you here to give me honest, medium?"

"For starters, forgiveness."

He snarled. "I don't need?—"

"Bullshit," Paris snarled right back. "You do, and I give it to you, because you were right. We were ready; I was ready." There'd been a time when Robin had made him doubt himself, but when it had mattered most, he'd believed in him. "And now the giants are gone."

His golden gaze drifted over Paris's shoulder, the direction he and Mary had come, back toward Monte Corvo. "Do they forgive me?"

"No, and they won't for a while."

"And you're no closer to finding Atlas, are you?" Mary asked.

"What's it matter to you? You gonna 'fess up finally?"

When she didn't reply, Paris reached out and laid a hand on Robin's knee, drawing the coyote's attention back to him. "That's the other thing I'm here to give you."

His eyes grew wide. "Atlas?"

"No. The truth about the day your sister died, if you want it."

Robin's gulp was audible in the otherwise quiet clearing, only the buzz of late harvest bees zipping from one plot to the next breaking the silence. Until eventually Robin stuttered out a shaky "Yes."

Paris closed his eyes and felt for the souls connected to the tragedy that had occurred here ten years ago. He could call Deborah or David across the plane, anyone else who'd been here that day, but where he could help it, he didn't disrupt souls from their final resting place. And besides, he'd sensed another lingering soul here, other than Robin's living one, as soon as they'd neared the clearing—a shifter who'd been pressed into service for the other side, who'd known something they'd waited all this time to share.

Contact made, the vision shifted, Paris in his shoes on the edge of a green-tinged battle in the same clearing, only there were more trees then and a wooden structure where Robin sat.

Deborah and David were easy to spot among the other combatants, she the largest coyote on the field, he a human with orange and red magic rippling across his skin. On one knee, he was desperate to save his family but struggling to keep the phoenix in check.

A bolt of yellow magic zipped their direction, and Paris swung his gaze in the direction it had come. A suited Atlas stood wielding globes of magic, sending one after another Deborah and David's direction. Until someone grabbed his arm, sending a bolt off-kilter. Paris followed its trajectory, afraid it was the one that killed Deborah, but it missed, just barely, and he turned his attention back to Atlas.

And gasped. There were two of them. The suited one from before and another one in a kilt and leather gauntlets. Side by side, Paris noticed the differences he'd missed the other night on the altar when he'd been consumed by pain and betrayal. The suited one's blond hair a shade darker, his green eyes shot through with yellow, a mole at the corner of his right eye that Paris knew Atlas didn't have.

"Don't do this," the kilted Atlas argued. "I can't bring you back from this."

"First, it was Canton. Now, it's you. Is Cole here too?"

"Listen to me."

"No," the stranger barked, because that was who he was to Paris—a stranger, not Atlas. "I'm done listening. I'm done falling in line. I'm done pretending we're not as powerful as we are."

"Chaos will use you."

"You'd know," the stranger sneered. "It's my turn now." Yellow and gray swirled in his eyes, blotting out the green, and he conjured two sizzling yellow globes of magic.

And Paris knew with heartbreaking certainty what came next.

"Evan, no!" Atlas shouted, but he was too late.

With one hand, Evan flung a globe at him. Atlas barely managed a magical green shield before getting slammed back into a tree, his magic no match for Evan's, which disappeared Atlas from the scene before he could throw the green globe he'd had in hand.

Before Evan, with his other hand, hurled the other yellow globe directly at Deborah.

Paris ripped himself out of the vision, nearly losing his stomach as he gasped for breath, his own fingers digging into the earth, reconnecting to this plane, waiting for the ringing in his ears to give way to the jazz notes of the bond that anchored him here. He'd come back with Liam for the lingering soul, give him the peace he deserved, but Paris had needed to get out of there, to plant his soul firmly back here before it got sucked further into tragedy and pain.

"It wasn't him, was it?" Mary asked once he finally righted himself with Robin's help. At some point during his vision, the coyote had moved to his side, a steadying hand wrapped around his biceps.

"It wasn't," Paris said, and Robin yanked back his hand like he'd been burned. "What do you mean it wasn't him?"

"It wasn't him," he repeated. "He's after the same thing you are. The person who killed your sister. Evan."

Mary gasped.

"You didn't know?" Robin said.

"Not all of it." Sadness flashed across her hazel eyes before she shoved to her feet. "Well, we're going to find him first." She kicked Robin in the knee with her booted foot. "Let's go. We have a new mission."

"We?" Robin rose, almost as quickly as his bushy blond brows. "They'll think I took you."

"They already think you're a traitor. What's one more betrayal?"

As Paris rose, he worried how many more barbs like that Robin could take. Yes, he was a selfish ass, but beneath that front was a man ravaged by guilt, by a heart that was too big for the tragedies that continued to pummel it, by the death he doled out for a living. Darkness soaked his aura, and Paris feared he'd never escape it, that no one would ever be able to crack through his walls and find the heart that had so much to offer. So much potential for joy and good.

For love.

If he'd just believe he deserved it. Paris stepped closer and lifted a hand, cupping his dusty cheek. "They may not trust you, but I do. I see your aura. I know what haunts you, why you need to fix this. And on behalf of all of them, I'm trusting you with her."

A flicker of light in his golden eyes. "He was lucky to find you."

"I'm the lucky one," Paris said with a smile, remembering Mac's soft sleepy one as he'd left that morning. The same one he got to wake up to for the rest of their lives. Anyone with a heart as big as Robin's deserved that kind of happiness too. "We both got what we deserved. And you will too."

Are you ready for Atlas and Robin's steamy enemies-to-lovers romance?

Their story, Atlas and the Traitor , lands next year. You can preorder now and turn the page for a sneak peek!

In the meantime, don't miss Icarus and Adam's romance, Icarus and the Devil , and Jason and Kai's free story, Jason and the Storm .

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