As soon as the vehicle came to a stop, Cyrus opened the door and hopped out. But he only managed to take a few steps before Severo confronted him like a raging bull. “DID YOU KNOW?!”
Staring down into the man’s enraged face, Cyrus felt the confession on the tip of his tongue, but held it back. His self-righteous fucking principles may have already been shot to hell, but he couldn’t tell them…not here, not with all the people running around.
“I—” Cyrus’ words cut off, his eyes widening when Seri shoved Severo out of the way and launched himself at him.
The short man gripped the front of his shirt as he screamed, his voice filled with pain. “ANSWER US!? WHAT DO YOU KNOW?!”
Staring down into his teary golden gaze, the devastation on the Nymph’s face was clear. As the man’s hands trembled where they grasped him tightly, Cyrus finally forced himself to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t see anything. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Seri let out a despair-filled sob, his hands dropping to his sides. The Water Nymph sagged where he stood, and as he appeared to break down further, Severo tugged the man into his arms.
Meeting the Shadow Dweller’s gaze over Seri’s head, Cyrus flinched at the suspicion he saw there—the doubt, the hurt, and the fear. Worse, it was all deserved. Severo had no reason to trust him. Hell, Cyrus didn’t even trust himself anymore.
Their relationship, their friendship, had barely recovered, if it even had, and once Severo knew what he had done, it likely never would.
Cyrus almost sighed in relief when Severo’s accusing gaze flicked away, the man turning his full focus on comforting the small Nymph.
Not wanting to disturb them further, he stood there silent and unmoving, not even commenting when the Cryptid who drove him there deposited his bags by his side. But he was eventually forced to when the Loading Foreman gave the signal that it was nearing launch time. “We need to go.”
Severo didn’t even glance his way, the Dweller just murmured something softly to Seri, before the two finally parted.
“We will do everything we can to get Skya back, I promise you,” Cyrus rasped, before turning away from the distraught couple, and heading towards the craft.
He didn’t need to look back to see if Severo had followed, because he could feel the Shadow Dweller’s gaze trying to burn a hole into his back.
Severo triedhis best to pay attention to the meeting that was going on around him, but he couldn’t seem to get himself to look away from Cyrus. The man knew something! His voice had shaken as he’d replied to Seri earlier.
What was the point in even talking now?! They had a path, they knew what the others were doing!? WHY FUCKING DELAY?!
He felt so angry. Poor Seri. It hurt to walk away…but one of them had to go… He HAD to be there doing something! Skya…
The bastards had taken his gummy bear. His precious baby. His sweet, innocent child. And here he was, expected to fucking listen to them go on and on about the trafficker they believed they were going after, a trafficker they should have shut down years ago. Butno, the Grimms didn’t think it warranted the time, money, and efforts it would take to track and accurately predict where these fuckers would go, so now his child, and a lifelong friend, had been taken, to have the void knows what done to them. And his friend KNEW something… Severo just wasn’t sure he’d be able to get past it once he finally found out.
The second the meeting ended, he was up on his feet, following after Cyrus, through the purple trimmed, chrome halls. When the man walked into what was clearly his private quarters, based on the fact that there was a bed, he shoved his friend forward, growling, “What are you hiding?!”
The door sealed behind him as he walked fully into the room. Cyrus almost hesitantly straightened and looked back. Severo’s stomach dropped when he saw the fear there…the guilt. Yet, at the same time, he didn’t think he had ever seen the man look so lost.
He struggled to form words as he stared at the Fate, his chest aching. Cyrus was his friend, his best friend…and dammit, part of him wanted to comfort the man. Killian had been taken, for fuck’s sake! Cyrus loved the Siren with all his heart, always had, and they were all friends… But he couldn’t, not with Skya gone too… Severo couldn’t risk trusting the man right now, and it killed part of him to even think that.
“What is it? Tell me!” he snapped, as tears started to form in his eyes. Much more softly, he begged, “Please, just tell me you had nothing to do with this…”
Cyrus’ face pinched, but before he could say something, they both were looking up as the speakers clicked, alerting them to an upcoming announcement.
“This is Captain Adam Bricker speaking. Make sure all of your belongings are secure, and at this time, buckle up in either a seated or fully reclined position. Launch will commence in five minutes. Remember to remain buckled until we have left the earth’s atmosphere, and the gravity stabilizers have activated.”
They glanced at each other before looking around the room. With curved chrome walls and black metal floors, the room was decorated in a mix of greens, purples, and black, which was the common coloring for most Bureau-owned shit. It was an open floored space, aside from the doorway that likely led to a bathroom. There was a living room with purple couches as you entered, a kitchenette to the right, and a bedroom taking up the back half. The curved wall behind the bed had a shuttered window that ran the width of it.
In the kitchen area, there were four chairs with harnesses attached, and it looked like there was possibly a table beneath the floor that would fold up between them. They remained quiet as they sat down across from each other and strapped themselves in.
The silence continued for a bit longer, but when the ship started to launch upward, Cyrus slowly started to talk. “I don’t know…what is going to happen. And I didn’t know Skya would be taken, but the fact that she was—” The man swallowed hard. “—is undoubtedly my fault.”
His anger tried to boil over at the admission, but he held it back because he still had too many questions. “Explain,” Severo demanded stiffly.
The man swallowed again, his eyes going glossy. “A little over four months ago, I walked into Killian’s office, and before even reaching his desk, instead of seeing his face, I suddenly saw…a skull with a bullet hole. The thread coming directly from his heart was black where it connected… I saw it, and I…” Cyrusconfessed, his voice becoming shakier with each word, before finally trailing off.
Severo stared wide-eyed now, his anger having been replaced by shock. “You changed it…his fate.”
The man nodded. The tears in the Fate’s eyes broke free, right before Cyrus blurted, “I swear, I didn’t know about Skya. I looked and looked, and tried to see anything I could about what was going to happen, about what would have happened if I had done nothing! But…I couldn’t see anything.
