Page 90 of Storm

A lush, luring voice comes from behind Nix. “I’m Seraphina.”

He’s quick to turn towards the voice, pushing off the table and extending his arm towards the glowing, iridescent pink fae. “I know exactly who you are, Seraphina.”

“You do?” She looks aghast, and I notice Ren shaking his tawny braids from side to side as we witness Sera put her moves on my long-lost, not-so-dead brother.

“Of course. Everyone knows of the best healer in all of ‌Willow.”

Pulling me into his side, resting his hand on his baby, Melek checks in. “Are you okay? That was a lot. I was almost ready to take him out until I remembered how you described Nix to Sunny one time.” Not surprising. The commander probably had microphones hidden around the house to keep tabs on me.

“I don’t know,” I respond, leaning into him further.

We’re silent, contemplative, as we watch the interactions before us. If I had never been taken to wed a Halo keeper, I would’ve spent my life climbing up and down rods, collecting strikes until I ended up in an early grave. My heart belonged to Mam and Nix back then. Now, three new people have taken up residence within. Sunny, the baby, and Melek.

I hate him, yet I love him so ravenously it gives me whiplash. I’ve lived a life of lies. Our relationship was built on them. All we have ever known is a messy kind of love, a tangle of voracious thorny crawlers, and I have no idea where he begins and I end.

Just like the poem says, love is our common denominator. Our guiding light. I only hope it’s enough to keep us together because I can’t imagine this life without him now.

My brother plops down next to my son, already sharing secrets with him, the small boy giggling, his whole body shaking. Nix seeks me out, finding me in awe. And without warning, Sera’s words pop into my head. “Leave Sunny with Phoenix.”

CHAPTER 27

OWNED WITH A CAPITAL O

The rest of the day, I walk around in some weird sort of lucid fantasy state. This cannot be my life. No one is this lucky. I’m definitely not this lucky. Sunny is safe and happy. Melek didn’t blow his top and go on a killing spree when he found out I had unintentionally dragged him into the Fairy Lands. In reality, he hates the hollow as much as I do.

And Phoenix.

My brother is back. He’s alive. When we had a quiet moment in the afternoon, ‌he told me of his daring escape a day after I’d been taken to Halo. To my utter astonishment, the other lightning farmers revolted and charged the keepers, ‌cutting his bindings. A handful of them managed to steal guns, and they held everyone at gunpoint, took an idling truck, and drove the small distance to the tree line, with Mam in tow, Noah and his band of misfits leading the suicide mission. Here, I thought he was going to grow up to be another lecherous man. How wrong I was. He and his friends carried Mam all the way to safety, and Nix, a few of them lost along the way.

When Nix spoke of her, it was in the past tense, and I knew my grief over losing my mother was warranted. She was too sick for too long, and he recalled how she died in his arms, sunlight shining down on her alabaster skin as he recited poem after poem to her under the canopy of trees. Mam had made it, too, if only for a few hours.

I’d listened in utter rapture to his story, each second more chilling than the next. They weren’t stopped from driving away, drones taking a pound of flesh out of a few of them. Nix said he took a bullet to the leg. What he didn’t mention was the consequences that would have followed. Too dire to comprehend. People don’t leave the factories without consequences. No doubt, a lot of innocent people were hurt or killed that day because of what those few people did to save my brother and mother, and that is the sort of thing that grates on the soul.

Nix also asked about Melek. I told him he was a lowly keeper in The Academy who didn’t believe in Halo ideals, and we fell in love and escaped together. It was all very tame. I didn’t have the energy to deal with what my brother would do if I had told him the truth. I didn’t need my husband and brother fighting to the death in some sick, twisted sense of honour.

There was so much to unpack, and I barely had the wherewithal to keep my eyes open.

By the late afternoon, I was so exhausted that I had to go lie down back at Ren’s. Whatever solence Melek gave me the previous night had worn off, and when I woke, Seraphina had her hands on my dress-clad stomach.

“Oh, god. Sera, you scared me.”

“Oops, sorry. I was just checking on you and the baby.” Her dark pink-tipped fingers rub at my side, pressing down on a particular sore spot, making me fidget. “Hmm. I think we should finish healing you.”

“And what does that entail this time?”

She moves to my back and starts rubbing spots that begin to magically pop into place. I could cry with relief. “I’ve already made the tonic I need you to drink. It’s a pretty basic pregnancy concoction, with a dash of my blood to help heal any pesky lingering internal wounds.”

Stilling her hands, she gives me space to rest on my back, a stack of pillows propping me up. I stare unblinking at mischievous green eyes almost as big as saucers, with an all-seeing quality. “And?”

“And I know your mate won’t like it, but I will need to do a skin-on-skin examination. Standard stuff,” she adds, waving a hand over my taut skin. “It’s easier for me to get a read on your body if I can place my hands directly on the area enclosing the baby.”

I squint at her, weary. “Will your mouth be involved this time?”

Her eyes sparkle in delight, that sweet chiming laughter washing over me, relaxing my muscles instantly. “Gosh, I think you’re my favourite human yet. And maybe your brother. He’s quite charming.”

“I don’t want to know how charming you think my brother is, Sera.” I could, in fact, throw up at the thought. Nix just came back into my life. I’d like to keep him for a little longer before Sera gets her talons into him.

“Alright, alright. No mouths involved.” A hand goes on her heart—serious business. “Some light touching, I promise, to make sure I get a closer connection to the baby and how your womb space might handle the birth.”