Page 3 of The Last Aether

“Stop!” I couldn’t take the fighting. Not because of me.

Atlas nuzzled my neck, trying to soothe me. “It’s okay. They’re both worried. They just show it in idiotic ways sometimes.”

I swallowed hard, my chest aching. There was that same phantom pulse, as if strands of energy sprouted from my chest. “They said I’d never live to rule.”

The entire room went still.

Kai’s grip on my thigh tightened as though if he didn’t hold on to me, I might disappear before his eyes. “One of The Network assassins.”

“It has to be,” Phoenix muttered.

“I thought they’d mostly gone to ground,” Atlas argued.

Kai shook his head. “Not all of them. You still hear of those with aethers in their family history being killed now and again.”

Atlas ground his back molars together. “I thought that was an old wives’ tale.”

“It’s not.” Riven stared at a spot on the wall as if he were watching something we couldn’t see play out. “There are those who still very much believe aethers are a threat. Who would do anything to control them or end them altogether.”

Phoenix’s eyes narrowed on Riven. “What do you know?”

Riven’s head snapped in his direction. “I pay attention. I watch and I listen. The whispers have never stopped.”

My fingers tightened around the blanket. “So, what you’re saying is that a network of assassins wants to kill me?”

No one said a word. That was my answer.

The pain in my chest wove together with panic. It created a staccato rhythm that squeezed and twisted. My breaths came quicker.

“She’s panicking,” Atlas said softly.

Phoenix was in front of me in a flash, his callused hands framing my face. “We aren’t going to let anything happen to you. Never again.”

The panic only worsened. Because if the assassins came for me and Phoenix, Kai, and Atlas stood in their way? I shook my head back and forth, each flare of movement sending bursts of pain through my chest. “You can’t.”

Smoky shadows swirled around Phoenix. “I can and I will.”

“I won’t be the reason you’re in danger. I’ll go back to the human realm. I’ll hide there.” Just saying the words hurt worse than anything else I’d experienced since my shooting. I didn’t want to leave these men. Not even Riven who was currently scowling at me like I’d put salt in his coffee instead of sugar.

They had all come to mean something to me. More than I wanted to admit to in this moment. A kind of meaning that would truly shred everything inside my chest when I walked away.

Kai’s fingers massaged my thigh, kneading into the tense muscles there. “Pip, we’ve had assassins after us since we were born. This is nothing new.”

“He’s right,” Atlas assured me.

I couldn’t help but notice that Riven was carefully silent.

I looked around at each one of them, so much swirling within me. “I won’t be able to live with myself if I’m the reason anything happens to one of you.”

Something flashed in Riven’s eyes, but his expression quickly shuttered.

Kai leaned down, forcing Phoenix out of the way. He brushed a tender kiss over my lips. “Nothing is going to happen to any of us.”

“We’re stronger together,” Atlas added.

I bit the inside of my cheek. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Phoenix growled.