“So is denial.” I scoff at him but he uses his shoulders to push off the wall and becomes serious. “Speaking of – “
I wave my hand to silence him as I turn around and head towards my desk. I can feel him following and his own glare burning a hole straight through the back of my head.
“You can be in denial aboutthat,” he roughs, “but not the rest. She is not a vampire, Varian.”
I shake my head and rest my hands on my desk tonotthink. “She burns in the sun and needs blood to survive.”
“She used a fractured blood art,” he says as he comes up behind me. Lowering his body so his head becomes level with where mine is bent down. “Her blood didn’t dissipate after using. A blood art user isn’t able to reuse their blood once it’s been spent. They shouldn’t be able to expand it to the extent that she did.”
My chest rumbles with unreleased frustration. “I can’t, Percius.”
He snarls at me. “Shedominatedyou. She got you to sub – ”
“NO!”
My face becomes before his with my aura pulsing in the room. Despite us being twins and his true form resting on his surface obediently, my aura is still more powerful than his. I am more dominant than he. I became more dominant than our father right before Percius ripped his heart out.
But he does not submit before me. Just as he never has. A lack of self-preservation instead of because his instincts are telling him to challenge me.
“Why haven’t you learned anything?”
He tilts his head up a fraction but steps back first when I don’t immediately answer. Blowing out a breath while rolling his eyes. He’s also never cared about primitive hierarchies and never had that possessive and dominate nature to be on top. He simply exists, which is probably why he has the control over his true form that no other devil or angel does. They are aligned, going against every base instinct we have, and simply exist.
“I said I would stay out of her business.” Frustration scalding within. Percius’s eyes flicker with understanding as he turns away and hums. The bloodsucker had been correct in her presumption that devils are known for their promise and word keeping. Not that we always follow it, but in the situation I was in with Mavyn outside of my office, it would grate on my conscious if I didn’t keep my word. Even though it’s currently grating on my conscious right nownotknowing her business and secrets.
“A clever one,” he chuckles. Even though there is nothing funny about this situation. “And Thorne said she was Callahan’s fated?” He blows out a breath and shakes his head. Looking upto me there’s amusement in his eyes. “Is she Darian, Thorne, and Castiel’s as well?”
I narrow my eyes at his smirk and shake my head. “I don’t think so. Definitely not Castiel’s. She had bit and drank from him several weeks ago and while her mark stayed for longer than normal, he said there was no tie or knot or bond between them. He thinks he only craves her because there’s blue belladon in her blood.”
I look off to the side to think about the other two.
“I doubt there will be anything between her and Thorne either. He would have realized in the same moment as Callahan did a couple days ago. Darian hasn’t had enough contact with her so I can’t be sure, but it’s unlikely they’ll be fated.”
Percius hums and bores his eyes into me. “But you are. You and her.”
His words hang in the air between us as I look back at my twin. The reason I was punished and have been forced to teach the same four classes for the same nearly hundred years since he killed our father and joined the rebellion.
A fucking idiot.
“Have you seen her soul, yet?” he asks on a breath.
His body stills as I answer. Even his true devil within freezes and shrinks back.
“She doesn’t have one.”
Which is impossible. All living things have souls. Only some primordials and select monsters are without souls. And she has aura so shehasto have a soul, but when I was truth-pulling I looked into her eyes,pasther eyes, and had seen nothing.
“Or if she does,” I continue, “it’s pitch black. Because all I saw was an abyss. Nothingness behind her eyes.”
His exhale of breath shutters as he looks down and away. A flicker of remembrance and fear in his eyes as he replays a memory. Then he nods and clenches and un-clenches his hands.
“I’ll have to profusely thank Thorne,” he whispers. “If he didn’t halt her blood and given you a chance to create your shield Rovan and I would be dead. I could feel it. Even my death element was resigned because it knew. We were supposed to die. And there should have been nothing that stopped it.”
I release a breath through my nose and hang my head. I’ll have to thank Thorne as well. I have never felt the type of terror as I did when I realized my twin, my brother, was going to die.Aboutto die. Because he’s standing right here in front of me. Safe – for the moment – and alive.
He sighs and shakes off the negative energy as he always does. He is a terrifying force nearly everyone runs from in battle but in truth he has a similar personality to Castiel with their charming, nonchalant, party-boy energy.
It reminds me of when the three of us were in school. Back before all the bullshit.
