“Sylas—”
“And we’re not enough. You, me, Velra, Lazriel—his parents. Nor Ketheron, Remnant, Rhyza. His family. He needs more. I thought we could give him that and he’d be okay, that he could be kept safe.”
“I understand all too well, believe me. But if you’re moving toward locking him down here again, that cannot come to pass.It will destroy him. Even in your current state, Iknowyou see that.”
“We’ll keep him here tonight and that’s it,” a lovely voice sounded.
Velra rounded the corner in that delectable purple wrap dress of hers and appeared in the doorway.
Cassius eased to the side so she could shift beside him. “Little shadow,” he crooned, wrapping his arm around her and tucking her into his side, her stunning ombre hair brushing his face and shirt.
The urge to do the same was intense. To touch her, to touch him, to sink into them.
But I couldn’t allow myself to be comforted yet.
I had work to do. Namely, researching a way to render those necromancers Ruxnoth was working with incapacitated. It might technically be possible for me to siphon them. But the consequences… they could prove fatal.
“Sylas, do you hear me?” Velra asked in her gentle-but-firm tone.
“My hearing is just fine, Dark Beauty. But you know we can’t protect him fully if he’s not—”
“We knew this day could come.”
I grimaced and turned my head away.
I heard the clack of those normally incredibly distracting thigh-high boots of hers.
And then I was sucking in a breath as her fingers brushed my cheek, and she eased my head back her way, Cassius standing there with his arms folded across his chest now.
“Didn’t we?” she pressed. “We knew there was a strong possibility of someone or something trying to use our son purely because of what he is.”
“Yes,” I ground out.
“It’s been twenty years. Twenty years he’s been kept so very safe. But now it’s here. What matters is what we do now to resolve it, and to make it better for Winter, to get him through this. But we also can’t do all the heavy lifting for him.”
I grimaced again.
A rush of wind whipped through the lab, and then Lazriel was standing on my other side. Actually, pushing up against me in those tight blue jeans and his forest-green hoodie.
“The fuck we can’t,” he burst out with, shaking his head at Velra and Cassius. “He’s our son. Ours to protect at all costs. We’ll tear that shithead warped Celestial to shreds for him.”
Velra dropped her hand from me and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Cassius,” she called over her shoulder.
Cassius’ lips quirked at Lazriel. “Impeccable timing, wild one.”
“Wow. Sarcasm, Cas. You’ve clearly got some shit to let out, too. Wanna head outside and decimate the surrounding area? Nobody’s gonna feel it in the outside world with it being a Rifted Cradle and all, so you can go all out.”
“Perhaps later,” Cassius said, striding into the room. “However, for now, heed my words. Winter needs to be empowered.”
Velra nodded and went on, “If we do this for him, shield him from it all, and lock him down here, take care of the threat, he’ll interpret the world as a place that he can’t be a part of. Completely. He’ll internalize it all the way. Sylas, you told us that he said the world doesn’t want him. We all know that’s not true. Things don’t work in absolutes, but because of us shielding Winter so much, he doesn’t understand that.”
“Fuck,” I grunted, giving a nod. “Yeah, when he wakes up, we’ll take his lead. With the intent being to bolster him, but not to… you know.”
“Bulldoze over him and decimate the threat and any other issue he may have in his life going forward?” Cassius said.
“You joke, but if I could, I would.”
“We’re all well aware,” he said, amusement dancing in his eyes.
