“You can go back to your home, Nyssa. You are stable now. Have a bath, eat something, and get some rest. Alone. We can’t retrieve the Crown if you’re wallowing in our mess.”
Dreven glowers at me, but I ignore him. We need to do what’s best for Nyssa now, not ourselves.
Nyssa blinks, looking between the three of us as if trying to decipher a particularly difficult rune.
“It’s not dismissal, Nyssa. It’s mercy.”
She accepts that with a brisk nod. She is terrified we are going to use her and abandon her, but she doesn’t know thelengths we will go to keep her by our side. Anyone touches her, they will die a painful and prolonged death.
Dreven creates a low, rumbling growl in his chest, vibrating through the floorboards. He hates this plan. Frankly, I hate it too, but we can’t have her imploding before we even reach the Pantheon realm. With a snap of Dastian’s fingers, she is dressed and ready to move out, her blade with her as it should be.
“Tomorrow night. Meet us at the crypt. Bring your blade, leave the attitude.”
“I make no promises.” She pauses at the door, glancing back at the three of us. Her gaze lingers on Dreven, then Dastian, finally settling on me. There’s a question there she doesn’t voice, a hesitation that almost breaks my resolve.
“Go, Nyssa,” I order. “Before I change my mind and chain you to the bedpost.”
She turns and flees. The moment the front door slams, the silence in the room becomes suffocating.
“I despise you,” Dreven mutters, staring at the empty doorway.
“I know,” I reply, collapsing back onto the mattress that still smells of her. “I despise me too.”
Dastian rolls off the bed, stretching his arms high above his head, utterly shameless in his nudity. “Well, that was bracing. I haven’t felt a connection snap into place like that, since ever.”
Dreven’s shadows in the corners of the room lengthen, stretching towards the door Nyssa just exited as if trying to drag her back. “She is exposed,” he growls, turning his silver gaze on me. “If the Order sniffs out what she is now...”
“They won’t,” I say, forcing myself to stand and ignoring the protest in my own muscles. “They are blind to true divinity. They see what they want to see—a tired slayer who did her job. Besides, her aura is stabilised. She won’t leak chaos unless provoked.”
“She isalwaysprovoked,” Dastian counters, snapping his fingers to conjure a pair of joggers. He pulls them on, looking far too cheerful for a man facing the apocalypse. “That’s her charm.”
I walk to the window, watching the small figure of Nyssa retreating down the hill towards the village lights. The rain has started again, a miserable drizzle that suits my mood perfectly. Letting her walk out of here felt like tearing off a limb, but keeping her would have been a mistake. She needs to choose us, not just endure us.
“We gave her the truth, Dreven. Now we have to trust her to carry it until tomorrow.”
“I’ll watch the house. From a distance,” Dreven mutters, the shadows finally retreating to wrap around him like a cloak.
I don’t argue. I know better. “Just don’t let her see you. She’s liable to stab you on principle.”
“I’m counting on it,” he replies, and then he dissolves into the dark, leaving Dastian and me in the silence of the empty room.
“So,” Dastian says. “Do you think she’ll change her mind?”
I’ve never heard the God of Chaos sound so serious before.
“No,” I say, although it lacks confidence. “She knows what she has to do.”
“Her job,” he says so bitterly, I frown.
“You have fallen in love with her,” I state.
His gaze snaps up to mine. “And you haven’t?”
“Oh, I have. The second she threw herself at me. But this is about you. Chaos doesn’t do positive emotion.”
“Says you.”
“Don’t hurt her,” I say quietly. “I will stand between her and anything. Even you. Even Dreven.”
