25. Darius

25

DARIUS

M y fist sat an inch from the thick wooden door of Mer's cabin, but I couldn't bring myself to knock.

"Fuck it." I'd come back later.

When I turned around, the tight knot in my stomach loosened a bit. But when the sharp creak of the door opening sounded, any looseness disappeared.

"I've been watching you pace in front of my house for the last twenty minutes."

Busted.

Squinting, I turned around to find Mer leaning against the frame, her eyes sparkling with equal parts amusement and anger.

"I'm famously bad at apology tours, I fear," I said, trying to keep my tone light, teasing. That was always familiar ground for me, but it felt flat this time.

She grunted, disgust lining the set of her mouth. "Clearly. Didn't think you were going to actually knock, so figured I'd save you the trouble." She lifted her eyebrows. "Now that I have, give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you for nearly killing my best friend. "

"You're human," I supplied automatically. "You wouldn't be able to."

Mer was tough, but she had nothing on a vampire. I winced at the look on her face, knowing as soon as the words left my mouth that they were the wrong ones to say.

"I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult for me to convince Tex to hold you down while I carved your heart out of your chest." She grunted. "Come to think of it, it'd probably be more difficult for me to convince him to keep you alive than to help me kill you."

I nodded, knowing I deserved it.

I ran my hand over my face, massaging the throbbing ache in my temple.

When I woke up, my memories of returning from our trip came back, but only fragments and hard-to-decipher blurs.

One that stood out—nearly killing Charlie.

"What do you want, Darius?"

"Is she okay?"

Mer took a step closer to me, shutting the door behind me. "Her husband—and the father of her soon-to-be-born baby just died. What do you think?"

I nodded. "Right."

Bishop wasn't my favorite person in the world, but I knew that Charlie loved him—and over the last few weeks, I'd even found myself not entirely despising my time spent in his company.

"I went by her apartment?—"

"She didn't want to stay there." Mer dropped her eyes, some of her animosity towards me draining. "Can't say I blame her. Every inch of that place reminds her of him." Her eyes met mine. "She's staying with me, for as long as she wants."

"Makes sense. You're a good friend."

A heavy silence fell between us.

I felt Mer's eyes on me, but I couldn't bring myself to meet her gaze. Shame hung like a heavy boulder in my throat, and it took me a few minutes to work my voice around it.

"Max healed her though, right. She's—" Clearing my throat, I glanced at her briefly before setting my focus back down on the weather-worn basketball that sat on her small porch. "She's okay? Alive, I mean?"

"She'll survive, yes. No lasting effects." She grunted, "physically, I mean. I imagine that being attacked by someone you considered a friend takes a toll on your mental and emotional wellbeing."

"Right." I swallowed. "I'm glad she's alive. Thanks."

I turned around and took a few steps away from her, my heart thumping loud and heavy in my chest.

I could have killed her.

I could have killed Max?—

Panic clouded my vision as the memory of their blood mingled on my tongue, a ghost of the almost-massacre.

My fists clenched at my side, and I fought with all of my willpower not to claw my heart out myself, save Mer the trouble. The power existed inside of me, infecting me—a darkness that could take over in the blink of an eye.

It had happened before, but I hadn't cared as much when I'd finally returned to myself. I hadn't had people that I cared about then, people I loved.

My chest was tight, resisting every breath of air I tried to squeeze into it.

"That's it?" Mer called after me. Her feet crunched through the gravel as she walked towards me. "You're not going to see her? You're not going to apologize?"

I shook my head. "Not right now."

"Why?"

"Because I don't deserve her forgiveness until I've earned it. And I know Charlie. I don't want to burden her with feeling like she needs to give it to me. Not now, not when she's already going through so much—" I spun around and jumped, finding Mer only a few inches away from me, her wide, doll-like eyes sharp on my face as she studied me, "pain."

I knew when people were afraid of me, I could usually smell the tangy scent of their fear with a single inhale.

Mer wasn't.

I wasn't sure if that made her brave or reckless.

"I never understood why she always vouched for you." She tilted her head, her arms crossed over her chest. "Over the years, they'd occasionally fight about you—Bishop and her, I mean. Dani too, whenever she was around for a visit and that night came up in conversation. But Charlie always swore you were good, that you saved her that day. Sacrificed your freedom for her life."

My throat tightened, and as much as I wanted to walk away from this conversation, as much as I wanted to sink myself into a problem that I could actually solve, I couldn't. It was like my body had suddenly decided it wasn't mine to control.

"Is it true what your friends said—Max, your brother, the others?" When I didn't respond, she continued. "That there's a power inside of you that you sometimes can't control? One that comes from the barrier between realms that are fracturing. The same magic that everyone is terrified will one day destroy us all?"

My tongue was sandpaper in my mouth, dry and rough, incapable of creating speech.

"And that instead of letting it consume you, instead of letting it out to hurt people, you devote all of your strength to fighting it back, to keeping it locked in?" She narrowed her eyes. "That you've done this for years? Even while in captivity? When sinking into it might have provided you some semblance of reprieve or protection?"

"It's hardly so noble—" my jaw was stiff as I spoke.

"Hardly." She arched a brow, her sharp stare sinking into me, like she could see and understand things about me even I had no grasp of. "You're right. Charlie would accept your apology and try to ease your guilt if you saw her right now. She already doesn't blame you, hasn't even thought of the bite since the moment he—" for the first time, her voice wavered, "since they brought him back. But I think giving her time to grieve Bishop's loss is wise right now, it's the right move. Besides, while Charlie might be ready to forgive you now, I'm not sure you're ready to hear it."

I swallowed, then turned around, annoyed by this human girl's shrewdness. I felt naked under her perusal, and not in a good way.

"Darius," she called, when I'd made it only a few steps away from her. I didn't turn back around, but I didn't keep moving either. Once again, my body seemed to have a mind of its own, one that didn't belong to me. "While you're on this apology tour of yours, might I add a suggested stop?" I said nothing in her pause, waiting—and hating myself for this girl's strange power over me. "You. I'm no expert in vampire psychology, but even to me—years and years of holding that in, of holding it together and hating yourself for the brief occasions you couldn't," her voice trailed through the wind around me. "I don't know, seems like a good enough penance, doesn't it?"

Claude stood, his feet clothed in shoes that looked obnoxiously expensive, pressed boldly into the shore less than an inch from where the water curled against the rocks. He was still, staring out at the place where he'd materialized when I brought them here.

"Have you seen the ripple again?"

When I'd spoken to him earlier, he mentioned seeing the gentle ripple of a portal, like an iridescent flap over the skyline, a few times. Each time he'd approached, his hand would go straight through. Almost like a permanent tear, but one that didn't seem to lead anywhere.

He didn't turn back to answer, but I noticed the tension in his shoulders. I bit back my smug grin, knowing that I'd snuck up on him—a rare thing to do to a vampire, especially one as powerful as he was.

"Once or twice," he answered, whatever daze his thoughts had wrapped him in, coming slowly undone at my approach. "There's something strange about this place, unsettling. I can't put my finger on it."

I shrugged, staring out into the deceptively calm water.

"That, or it's just the unbalance of having all four of us here," he said, more to himself than to me.

"Speaking of, where's Nash?" I scanned the grounds, half expecting him to jump out and decapitate me at any moment. "Maybe I didn't close the portal properly."

Not that I exactly understood how I opened it up in the first place.

He turned to me, considering for a moment. "You're doing better."

I didn't say anything to that. There was nothing to add. I was better.

As the day bled into night, I felt more like myself than I could remember feeling in years. The burden I'd carried for so many years had lost most of its weight overnight.

I'd carry it all again, tenfold, if it meant that I could keep Max safe.

As usual, whenever I thought I was saving her, she was the one saving me.

Maybe I needed to stop chronically underestimating her strength.

Or overestimating mine.

"Nash is in the medical building." Claude's eyes narrowed slightly as he turned back to the lake. He was stiff here, somehow even more uptight than usual. He wasn't used to not being the one in control of things, and he didn't do well with trusting strangers. "He's looking over the notes here, apparently one of the boys," his face scrunched in thought, "Arnell, I think his name was?" At my nod, he continued. "Right, well apparently a recent security breach has helped him break into some database. He's pulled up a ton of Guild research on those tainted with shadow magic, on their experiments. Nash doesn't understand much of it?—"

"But he's hoping that he might find something to help Nika?" I finished for him. My chest tightened at my friend's name. I hadn't been to see her yet, not that it would make much of a difference. She was unconscious, and every time she came to, she had to be knocked out again. She was much stronger than Eli's father, the werewolf, so Nash was in charge of keeping her under control here so that she didn't lash out and kill anyone.

Claude nodded. "While he isn't versed in the way of medicine or machinery in this realm, apparently he's been fighting for a way to cure her for years. Perhaps combining both sets of knowledge will point to a lead." He shrugged. "That's his hope anyway. Not much else for him to do here in the meantime. We're both just sort of—" he paused, searching for the word, "waiting. Nash has it in his head that the four of us here together might somehow help balance her out, restore her. He swears he's noticed an improvement in her temperament since being here. Can't imagine what that says about her temperament before." He exhaled, exhaustion evident in every line of his expression. "But you pulled us here for a reason. Maybe there's something to his theory about balance. He's clinging to that possibility anyway, and I agreed to stay for a little while longer, to satisfy my own curiosities."

"You don't think it will work? "

"What?" He grunted. "Do I think that existing in the same space will just magically heal her somehow after years of being trapped in her own mind? No." His fists were clenched at his sides. "You weren't there, when the magic tore her apart. It's not something that can just be—undone."

I knew that the ‘her' he was referring to wasn't Nika.

He meant our sister. Nessa.

The sister I'd effectively killed when I abandoned my post.

But Nika and Nessa were not the same.

Nika survived because she was a true mirror—a twin and appointed portal guardian.

Maybe she could be saved, restored—like I'd been.

Of course, it was equally likely that Claude was right. The prick did have an obnoxious habit of rarely being wrong. Perhaps, like Nessa, Nika was simply too far gone. For all we knew, the four of us together in the same spot could push her faster towards her doom.

"Then again," he said, pulling me from my thought spiral, "you've come back from that very edge—a thing I would have said was impossible yesterday. Maybe it's possible that Nash really will find a way to get her back. Who am I to destroy his pipe dreams, particularly when the world might very well be collapsing around us as we speak?"

We were quiet for a moment, the silence heavy and uncomfortable.

"Odds he'll trust me enough to work with me?"

"Work with?" Claude snorted, but in a way that was somehow still dignified. "No. But I think he'll be okay with using you."

I sniffed, staring aimlessly at the water, resisting the urge to glance at my brother, to read if the grudge he held against me was as strong as Nash's.

"You abandoned them both in hell, when they thought they'd found a ticket out. Instead, our freedom led to their imprisonment." Claude's lip curled, though his stare didn't waiver from the lake. "It was never quite that neat. You and I merely traded one prison for another, I suppose. Of course, then you abandoned your post here, which directly led to his twin's demise."

The truth screamed against my lips, but I wasn't ready to release it. To tell him why I left. That at the time, I thought I was saving Ness. I thought I was saving him.

"Sometimes I let myself wonder what our lives would have been if we were never given our posts. If we'd simply stayed in hell and found another way to protect her—if we weren't attached to a magic that is slowly eating us alive, beholden to its volatile greed and violent whims. Perhaps she'd be alive. Perhaps we'd—" he shook his head, abandoning the thought. "Of course, what ifs are useless in the grand scheme of things, especially now."

Silence fell between us, thick with all of the unsaid bullshit.

Claude sighed. "No, brother, if you want to procure Nash's help with anything, I think you'll have to offer him something too tempting for him to resist.

Claude spoke for more than just Nash, and we both knew it.

I owed them both apologies. But I also knew I owed them more than that, that right now, apologies were meaningless. My brief tour was going on hiatus.

"How about revenge?"