Chapter 37

37

K illian teleports them shockingly close to the Frisse base, only a few hundred yards away from the large tree, and Chloe’s once more shockingly homesick.

True to his word, underneath the large tree, the giant looming spruce with dead blackberry brambles and needles so dark they’re almost black against the grey sky, Gurlien stands in his giant woolen coat, Ambra shuffling next to him.

Seanna tugs herself back at the sight of them, half hiding behind Killian, but he strides forward with a confidence that’s only belied by the stress across his shoulders.

He’s also scared of leaving Seanna with them.

Ambra glowers at him, but Killian ignores that. “You can keep her safe?” he asks, the moment they’re in speaking distance.

Even his voice is wrecked, and Ambra raises her eyebrows at him.

“You’re injured,” she accuses him, and it’s nothing new to Chloe. “What the hell did you do?”

“Got Chloe and I out alive,” he replies tersely.

“Barely, it looks like,” Ambra challenges, and Chloe’s eyes drift over to Gurlien.

Who’s scowling, the expression on his face lost, too lost, the same sense of drifting as it was when Chloe first found him, still recovering from the college and the blast from the ley line.

And her heart turns over once again, cause this time the loss in her brother is from her.

Killian and Ambra shoot barbed words back to each other, but it fades in a background of posturing and negotiating. Cause this hurt and confusion, it’s from Chloe.

“Oh my god,” Chloe mumbles, her words still too loud to her ears, but Killian and Ambra don’t stop. Gurlien looks at her, his brows furrowed. “Okay, no, Gurlien…”

And despite that everything’s still too loud, everything’s still achy, Chloe all but stumbles over to Gurlien, grabbing him and pulling him into a hug.

Both demons fall silent at her actions, and Seanna cringes away more, but Gurlien freezes, before slowly bringing his arms up to hug her back.

“I’m so sorry,” Chloe breathes, and he grips her tighter. “I’m so sorry, I put you through that, I shouldn’t have, I’m so sorry…”

His words from before, of telling her she’s too selfish, of all the hurt and fear and terror he had. Of all the risks she took, of the natural anger he had, all crash into her.

He fists his hands into the back of her jacket, just like he did when she first told him that there is a way he could be accepted, even without his powers and his abilities and everything he did.

Behind them, Killian and Ambra resume deliberations, lower than before, some presumption of privacy.

Cause she had died. She had made her best friend, practically a brother, watch. Out of a selfish reason she could’ve found another way around.

Because even though it benefited her. Even though it brought her to Killian, even though they’re so close to finding the spirit fox, it still hurt him.

“Can you hear me now?” Gurlien mumbles.

“Yeah, it…it faded,” Chloe says, and to her horror, she’s almost tearing up. “I’m okay, I’m…I’m okay.”

“Your ribs are still messed up,” Seanna mutters behind them, and Gurlien pulls away from Chloe enough to give the pre-teen a critical look. “And your glasses are fixed but your face is still scarring.”

“When this is all done, you owe me an explanation on how you stumbled into dealing with that situation,” Gurlien mutters, and he’s frowning again, but this one’s familiar. The frown he puts on when he doesn’t want to broadcast all his emotions.

“Apparently, when this is done I owe a bunch of Wights to break into a bunch of bases for them and free people still in captivity,” Chloe says, half wincing, and Gurlien claps her on her back. “Remember Stella?”

Ambra cuts off mid-word, before shaking herself loose and continuing whatever whispered conversation with Killian.

“Hard to forget,” Gurlien says dryly.

“I got dumped at the cabin and had to run away and her mom helped me escape,” Chloe says, and it feels like so long ago that it happened. “So I’ll probably be doing that…”

Finally, Gurlien grips her by the shoulders, giving her just about the strictest of looks he could possibly summon up, only belied by the lightness in his eyes, the sheer relief in the micro expressions of his face.

“Don’t do that again,” he says, and his voice breaks, just a bit. “Don’t you ever take a risk like that again.”

Behind them, with Ambra and Killian now hissing conversation back and forth in a language that Chloe absolutely doesn’t recognize, Seanna makes a small sound, like she wants to ask a question but desperately doesn’t want to interrupt.

So Chloe breaks the contact and gestures her over, and Seanna favors her with the dirtiest of looks a pre-teen can summon up before stepping close.

“Why are they arguing?” she asks, dipping her voice lower than probably necessary. “You said they’d help, they said they’d help, now they’re upset.”

Chloe glances at Gurlien, who glances right back.

“How much does she understand about demons?” Gurlien asks, right over her head.

“More than you!” Seanna immediately shoots back.

Once Killian is satisfied with whatever terms Ambra gives him and swears to do whatever Ambra tells him to do, he gives a rather tearful Seanna a hug before whisking Chloe away.

This time, back to the threadbare shack in the desert—the one with no door, where the wind blows harshly through the cracks in the boarded-up window.

Chloe stumbles on the sand-smoothed wooden slates of the floor, and the band aid she tried to transform is still tucked between the bare cot and the wall.

Before letting her go, Killian stills, his eyes flashing red, his power flexing until every nook and cranny is flooded with him, obviously testing his wards.

He finds what he wants and gentles his hand on her arm. “The only thing that’s been here is a curious Wight,” he says, a tremor running under his tone. “And they backed off the moment they realized this was a demon spot.”

Chloe grabs his hand—even after a few weeks, the new callouses still startle her every time—and pulls him to sit on the bare cot with her.

He puts up far less of a fight than she thought he would, blinking up at her, the shifting double face slack, his shoulders slumped.

“She’s safe,” Chloe says, and he nods, obviously giving in and leaning his head against her shoulder. “She’s safe, probably in the safest place in the world from them right now.”

“Wish you could be there, too,” he responds wistfully, and Chloe’s heart jumps, just a bit, at that. “Wish I could put you somewhere safe and not worry.”

“I’m not sure you’re physically capable of not worrying,” Chloe says, turning her head to him and lifting his chin off her shoulder. “And don’t you dare.”

His smile is tired, a hand coming up to cradle her cheek, before he presses a kiss to her.

It’s chaste, but anything but gentle, a hard demand of contact and of reassurance. That she’s there, that she’s with him, that she’s not disappearing on him.

She lifts her hand to his hair, kissing him right back. “You need to rest,” she mumbles against his lips, his exhaustion bleeding out of him, his breathing still uneven. “We can’t hit that base, we can’t…not like this.”

She does too, her ribs still aching and her head still pounding, now that the anxiety and adrenaline have faded.

“You have proximity alarms set up here, right?” she whispers, as he leans his forehead against hers, his lashes casting shadows on his cheekbones. “Seanna’s safe, she’s safe, you can rest.”

“If we can’t find the spirit fox, she might never be truly safe,” he whispers back, not breaking the touch.

On a better day, Chloe would transform something into luxurious bedding, would alchemy up some beautiful pillows and a better mattress, but as it is, just about everything inside her spent, she just lets Killian guide her down next to him on the bare mattress, her head in the crook of his shoulder and his arm tight around her waist.

And if they can’t get to the spirit fox before that man does, before they move her, she might never be able to get another lead.