Voren and I step back, exchanging a look that screams neither of us knows what in the seven hells is happening to her.
“Well, this is new,” Dastian says from the doorway. “I go out for a bite to eat and come back to find you’ve broken her.”
“We didn’t break her,” I snap, waving a hand to disperse the cloud of plaster dust settling over my leathers. “We attempted a recalibration that went... awry.”
Dastian wanders further into the room, steppingdelicately over a splintered piece of the canopy frame. He’s holding a greasy paper bag that reeks of vinegar and fried potatoes. “Recalibration? Is that what we’re calling it? Because from the doorway, it looked like you tried to launch her into orbit. Impressive trajectory, though.”
Nyssa groans, a low, vibrating sound that makes the shadows in the corners of the room recoil. She pushes herself up from the ruins of the mattress, hair wild and static-charged, standing on end like a dandelion clock in a gale. Her eyes are wide, glowing with a faint, pulsing luminescence that isn’t the cold blue of Voren’s death magic, nor the dark tint of mine. It’s raw. Volatile.
“I feel...” she starts, her voice echoing strangely, as if she’s speaking from the bottom of a well. She blinks, and a spark of literal electricity arcs from her eyelashes to her cheek. “Like I just licked a car battery.”
“She’s leaking,” Dastian observes, popping a chip into his mouth and chewing thoughtfully. “Chaos. Pure, unadulterated entropy mixed with something I have never encountered before.”
“Well, that’s fucking helpful,” I growl and move closer to Nyssa. I place my hand on her forehead and knock her unconscious with a single thought. She slumps to the bed, her eyes closing, her face going peaceful. Leaning over her, I study her. “She isn’t who she says she is.”
“Meaning?” Dastian asks.
“Meaning,” I say, straightening up and wiping the plaster dust from my hands, “that no mortal, slayer or otherwise, should be able to take a cocktail of death and shadow and turn it into a kinetic explosion without turning into a pile of wet meat.”
I look down at her. She looks deceptively peaceful now, though the air around her still hums like a high-tensionwire. A stray spark snaps from her fingertip to the ruined sheet, leaving a tiny scorch mark.
“She didn’t reject the energy,” Voren notes, leaning closer, his pale eyes narrowing as he studies the phenomenon.
“Oh, she did,” I say, looking over my shoulder at him. “At least, whatever is already inside her did.”
“You are saying she isn’t mortal?” Dastian asks, coming closer and throwing his pile of chips on the ancient bedside table. He also leans over her to study her face. “So, what is she?”
“Who knows?”
Voren reaches out, his finger hovering over the spark arcing from her shoulder. “It reacted to my cold and your shadows by creating heat and kinetic force. That’s alchemy, Dreven. Biological alchemy.”
“It’s chaos,” Dastian corrects around a mouthful of chips, bits of salt falling onto the ruined duvet. “Or at least, chaos-adjacent. I like it. She’s like a human firework.”
“She is a danger to herself,” I mutter, brushing a strand of hair from her face. The static stings my fingertips, a sharp bite that travels up my arm. My shadows recoil in confusion. They don’t know how to consume this light she’s generating.
“So, we defuse her somehow?” Voren suggests.
“We contain her,” I correct. Straightening up, I fix her torn and sodden clothes and let the shadows form a protective, suffocating circle around the bed.
“For how long?” Voren asks warily.
“Until she wakes up and blasts the fuck out of you for imprisoning her,” Dastian murmurs, his gaze never leaving her.
“Her lineage is old. The blood of the Firsts is potent, butthis? This feels like she unlocked a reserve she shouldn’t have access to. Probably after that abomination earlier infected her, and then Voren cured her.”
“So, this wasn’t me?”
I shake my head. “No, when you cured her, you didn’t leave your mark on her as I suspected. It felt like you, it wasn’t you. It was traces of your godly power that was clinging to whatever is inside her, trying to consume it. It’s a clash, though. Not compatible.”
“Felt compatible enough to me while she was riding my dick.”
Dastian chokes on a chip. “You two are pathetic. I’m the one supposed to be thinking with my dick, and yet it’s the two of you who are falling under her spell.”
Falling under her spell.The words hit me like a blast of icy water.
That would explain my behaviour in her house earlier. I haven’t had sex in centuries. I haven’t touched or been touched in just as long. The mere thought of hands on me makes my skin crawl, and yet I couldn’t keep mine off her.
“You are not compromised by her?” I ask, seriously enough that he looks up and frowns.
