My eyes travel over all of them, every single one of their expressions shows that they really do understand what I’m concerned about, and they really wouldn’t blame me or hold it against me if I didn’t agree to it.
I look down at Farren again.
She lets out the most enormous snore, and the contrast of the sound with the seriousness of our realisation has a shocked laugh bursting free it only takes moments before the others are all laughing along with me.
“I think it’s safe to say that Farren is recharging after she expended a lot of energy to bring Nico back, and that she should wake up when she’s back to full strength,” Hades says. There’s uncertainty in his tone though, that we all feel.
She'd better fucking wake up.
My eyebrows rise in reaction to my own thoughts. That was a shockingly strong reaction to have for someone who I hardly know.
Once the laughter has died down again, I look at Mayhem. “Alright, let’s see if I was supposed to die or not. I want to know if she’s going to be okay, and this is the best way to do it.”
Mayhem nods, “Okay. It should only take a few moments, and you probably won’t even realise what I’m doing.”
“Wait,” I say. “If that’s the case, then you could have just checked without me even knowing, so why would you ask now?”
Mayhem smirks, “Farren likes you, and she put in a hell of a lot of effort, risking her life in order to save you. That means that you’remost likely going to be sticking around for a while. I like you. My instincts tell me that already. Plus, your Rast’s best friend. I would never soul search someone without their permission if I actually care about how they feel about me.”
“Aw, you like me,” Rast teases, flipping the script back at Mayhem and making him chuckle.
“Thank you,” I say to Mayhem.
He nods, “Ready?”
“Yes.”
I try not to tense, but it’s pretty impossible when I know that someone is looking at my fucking soul. That’s all kinds of crazy, and I thought I was getting pretty used to crazy by now.
Turns out I’m not.
“Your soul died before you were supposed to,” Mayhem says after a couple of moments. “Farren fixed the imbalance by bringing you back.”
Everyone stares at Farren and me in shock.
After a couple of moments, Loki shakes his head and throws his hands up in the air. “What the hell? Mayhem dude, you’re insane, it’s impressive, and Farren. Well, I suppose Farren is being Farren and doing things that she shouldn’t be able to do again.” He looks at Hades, “Can you bring people back from the dead?”
Hades shakes his head, “No. Not even if they died too soon, there was nothing that I could do to fix it.”
“Huh,” Zev says. “Well, at least we have an answer to something, although I have no idea how Farren managed to do it, or what it means.”
“Is anyone else having a hard time processing this?” Rast asks as he stares at me.
“Probably not as much as you, but I think it’s safe to say that none of us know how to handle this newest development,” Khaos agrees.
Rast nods, “That’s actually really reassuring.”
“Before we move on, I need to explain a couple of things,” I say, the urgency to finally tell someone flooding me.
Storm nods, “Okay, one second.” He raises his voice and calls for Laikynn, who quickly appears again. Storm asks, “Laikynn, are we safe to stay here for a little bit longer?”
Laikynn nods, “Yes, we can keep you safe. We haven’t run into anything too concerning yet, anyway.”
“The important word in that sentence is yet,” Loki mutters drily.
Laikynn chooses to ignore him and starts to disappear into the darkness surrounding us.
Before he can go completely, I ask, “Can you warn us if anyone is in hearing distance of us? I don’t want what I have to say being overheard.”
