I shook my head internally, pocketing my phone. The battery was about to die, anyway.
Willow and Mia were alive and well. Willow had tried to call me several times and then sent a slew of messages with live updates of the aftermath.
Levi laughed loudly at something Zephyr said, and I winced slightly. Zephyr gave me another apologetic look, but I dropped my gaze again.
Another form of guilt was nudging at me.
When Levi was hurt, my entire world was flipped upside down. I’d gone from a little girl to an adult overnight. Zephyr couldn’t heal him, and my telekinesis could only do so much to help…which was next to nothing. I’d only been able to get us to safety and I’d been able to perform CPR, and that was about it. It’d taken us a few months of using Levi’s credit card before we were able to get all the equipment we needed just to keep him alive.
I’d missed him so badly. I’d cried myself to sleep every night for over a year. So many of my nights were spent in Zephyr’s bed, the two of us unable to be apart in the dark. We didn’t have our own rooms for years, choosing to sleep on the couches together. Being alone in a bedroom was too scary.
That’d changed once Zephyr bought the café and attached apartment. It’d taken him months to find the right place, something with a basement where we could keep Levi. The massacre trial wrapped up too quickly, the King wanting to get it out of the papers so the people wouldn’t revolt.
It was a lifetime ago for me, and yet…Levi just began speaking again like nothing had changed.
I’d missed him so much. I’d missed him every night. Every day after school. Every holiday, every birthday. And yet…
Now that I could speak to him again…I was missing when he was silent.
Had Levi always been this critical toward me? Rifling through memories from over a decade ago wasn’t easy. My view of things in the past was warped by my child mind. Everything I remembered about Levi was through the lens of a little girl who’s dad was her hero. Little Skye didn’t see Levi as critical.
I saw myself as impulsive. I didn’t think things through. I made mistakes frequently. My affinities were dangerous, and they needed to be treated as such. I needed to master my control so I couldn’t unintentionally hurt anyone.
In my memory, Levi was stern. He got after me plenty, especially where my affinities were concerned. I hadn’t considered him to be overly critical, but as an adult looking back…
And now that he was talking again, he’d scarcely said anything positive to me. Even when Zephyr had explained how I’d done all the research at the academy, copying down the books by hand so I could send them to Zephyr, Levi had only smiled indulgently, like I was a kid showing him my favorite toy.
I felt icky.
But I felt even ickier for thinking Levi was being rude. He’d spentyears in this bed, never seeing beyond this room. He’d grown tired of me before, whenever he got into his moods and shut down.
I couldn’t blame him, either. I’d been a wreck after mom and Ben died. I wouldn’t have wanted to be around me then, either.
He’d spent years trying to teach me the importance of paying attention to my affinity, and yet, when the moment came…I ignored it.
I’d ignored the prickle of awareness that day. I’d ignored the feeling in my gut that something was wrong. I’d been an anxious child –no surprise there– and my parents had been trying to teach me to keep my cool.
So I had. I’d kept my cool.
And then my mom and Ben died, and so did a lot of other people, and I was left mostly unharmed.
I could have saved a lot of people. Or at the very least, my parents.
I didn’t blame Levi for being disappointed in me.Iwas in disappointed in me.
But it was still stifling.
I hadn’t been offered a lot of grace growing up, but as an adult, I was beginning to think I’d deserved even a little. Especially from my parents.
“Her head isn’t in the clouds, it’s on her Link.” Zephyr said carefully. “His momdidtry to kill him several hours ago.”
Levi breathed out slowly. “Hell of a start to a family Chain you got there, baby girl.”
As if I had any control over that.
As if my hidden, paraplegic father wasn’t also ahell of a start to a family Chainfor my Links.
I clenched my jaw, squeezing my hands so that my nails cut into my palms, because that thought was shitty. I bit back my equally shitty retort, and it took a lot out of me. Zephyr and I had grown up to be sarcastic and snappy. Keeping it in check wasn’t easy.
