To destabilize a fool who thought himself a god.
To bring Winter home.
Our gentle sweetheart.
15
~Zayn~
These were some sweet-ass digs.
The ensuite bathroom I’d just finished taking a shower in after Velra had taught Evira and me a really cool approach to using our Ecliptic Convergence was super luxurious and cozy. The décor was all gold leaf and emerald tones with a waterfall shower and even a white marble sunken tub. And the towels, one I had tied low on my hips now, were a really soft white cotton.
The bedroom off this had high arched ceilings reinforced by hardcore metal beams, but it somehow worked with the sleek dark walls, the dark carved king bed with the emerald and sapphire sheets, the navy velvet thickly upholstered seating area.
Under other circumstances, coming here to the Shadow Tunnels would’ve been so fucking cool.
I sighed as I shook some excess water out of my hair.
But they weren’tother circumstances,were they?
Fuck,seeing Win earlier had been both amazing and painful. The state he was in… he wasn’t right.
All because of that motherfucker, Ruxnoth.
He’d caused some deep trauma to Win, but he’d also forced Win into a situation where he’d needed to play the game. AndWin… he didn’t even like lying. Yet he’d had to do so much of that to survive all of this. Hell, even before being pulled into Sanctus, because he’d also done it with hiding his research and all that. It didn’t sit well with him, and it wasn’t good for him.
Vax had said that we needed to focus on the operation tomorrow and not any of that, because we couldn’t do anything until Win was back with us. And pulling him back was the key to putting an end to the messed-up situation he was dealing with all alone down in Sanctus right now. Once Win was with us again, then we’d be there doing every fucking thing we possibly could to soothe him.
And I’d been able to shove the rest down when Evira and me had worked with Velra earlier for several hours until we’d gotten things down pat.
But now as everything had wound down, and bedtime was here, and quiet was here… the thoughts, the worries, the sick feeling in my gut for Win… it was all leaking out.
It was why I’d taken an actual physical shower instead of just refreshing myself magically after that training. It was something to do, an act or action, whatever the fuck.
Or so I’d thought until about three minutes into it when the showering had become automatic and not the distraction to occupy my mind like I’d hoped. Then it had basically been me stuck in a room alone with my own thoughts.
I mean…shit.
And now I was lingering, because I didn’t want to walk out of here and into the bedroom where Vax and Evira were finishing up some Exalt business—Evira outlining the Charter to him and asking for input, or… something like that—and be a ball of anxious intensity polluting their immediate environment. We were all struggling with this and I didn’t want my struggle to worsen things for them.
I eyed my reflection in the mirror, the crease across my brow, the strain in my eyes. All twisted up, basically.
And I—no.
This wasn’t… I was doing it again.
Worrying I was too much, that it would be a problem to my loves. And I was even getting in that headspace of toning myself down, like kind of putting on a show Ithoughtwould only be seen as acceptable—not all of me.
But I knew better now.
I did.
Just… when heavy things happened like what’d gone down earlier, I veered back to all that.
I recalled Evira’s words to me a few weeks ago.
“Everything’s okay now. You can let go and just be. I promise. I’m here. We’re all here, and we adore you.”
