“Sylas has not been erased after all. And that will continue to be the case if cooler heads prevail and you allow me to concentrate,” I spoke calmly, despite the strain I was feeling.
I saw Remnant discreetly scent me. “Hades, old friend. Unbelievable.” He shook his head. “And unfathomably reckless for you.” His gaze flicked to Ketheron, before returning to mine. “These days, anyway, with promises made to your treasure.”
“Well, circumstances being what they were…”
“He had to,” Ketheron growled at him, all too fiercely, as he was already struggling as it was to remain calm while seeing me in this stateandknowing the true dangers of it.
“Had to what, Keth?” Lazriel asked. “Sylas isn’t… erased? So he will be in the Valley, then? We just have to wait until we find Win and bring him back to us, then we can retrieve him?” He glared at me, but it lacked ferocity. He looked more worried than anything. “I know your whole maintain-the-balance-at-all-costs thing, but this is Sylas. Okay? It’s Sylas. Do you hear me?”
“I don’t think he’s in the Valley either,” Kai spoke, eyeing me and Ketheron curiously.
Nyx smiled up at him. “Everything is gonna be okay.”
“If my gorgeous isn’t bombarded any longer,” Ketheron ground out. And then he was shoving past everyone while wrapped around me, essentially shielding me with his body, while he used his own as a battering ram to take us to the guest room in question.
I felt a roll of Cassius and Velra’s magic just as we reached the threshold.
Perfect timing. I turned and addressed them both. “Velra, I need you to erect a powerful illusion around this Rifted Cradle with Cassius. Kai, boost its potency. What I’m about to do can’t be felt, or the world will know that Sylas was technically dead, the world without a necromancer for hours on end. That, combined with the Winter uproar, could very well push things over the edge—people storming your home, Temperance using it as an opportunity to snatch him in a bid to hurt Winter through their necromantic link.”
“They won’t get through us,” Cassius rumbled.
“They have the means to stop an unkillable being in Winter. Your family consists of their target’s greatest and most powerful protectors. Do you really think they wouldn’t have the means to see to that if it came down to it? Which it has with Ruxnoth publicizing all of that to the entire supernatural world.”
“The only thing offering resistance to an attack of that nature is Risen Reckoning being invoked on the living—Sylas.If they sense weakness, tactically that’s an opening they never believed possible before,” Remnant added, thankfully. “Ryker, Kai, and Ariana have shielded Sylas’ death from being felt, but any change to that will dissolve that falsity and be felt by those closely monitoring him and things of this nature.”
“Stop. Hold up,” Lazriel spoke. “Go back a couple of panic levels.”
“Yes,” Velra agreed, frowning at the state of me. “You spoke about Sylas ‘being dead’ in the past tense. Kai’s saying he’s not in the Valley, but he’s not actually erased either. Are you saying that—”
“I’m saying that I have the means to bring Sylas back.”
Startlement didn’t even cover it as they all stared at me.
Shock? Awe? Disbelief? Cautious hope?
All of the above, certainly.
“You warped the effect of the Spiral Thorn,” Kai surmised.
“Essentially, I was able to prevent a kill-condition from fully firing.”
“What about the True Celestial aspect imbued in it?” Cassius queried.
Ketheron ran his hand in front of me. “Hence the pained and struggling state of him, Cassius.”
“My goodness,” Cassius exclaimed. “Remarkable.”
“Yes,” I sighed. “Now, let’s see to it, shall we?”
I turned then, with Ketheron’s help, and stepped across the threshold into the guest room.
Here goes a miracle.
It wasdifficult to reconcile seeing him this way.
Prone.
Unconscious.
