25 - Personal Daemons

Two days passed. Caia was growing increasingly more irritable. Two nights now and she hadn’t been able to connect to Ethan in her dreams, and she was beginning to worry what that meant for Jaeden. On top of that, Lucien was thundering around the house like a lion with a thorn in his paw, refusing to look at her or to acknowledge her existence.

Jeez, you would think he was the one who had been deceived.

In fact, everyone was being pretty lousy to her, except Sebastian, and it might have had something to do with Marion and Saffron’s return. They had shown up the day after Lucien had stormed out of her room. That morning had been her first edgy, downing coffee, snapping at burnt toast in frustration, morning, because she hadn’t dreamt of Jaeden. It did her nerves no good to have to be sociable to her mentor, who had wandered into the quiet kitchen with a warm smile.

“Morning, Caia.”

“Mmmff,” she’d mumbled, chewing angrily.

“Where is everyone?” Marion had queried gently, sitting across from her, while Saffron wandered around the kitchen looking bored.

“Bed,” she’d snapped.

“Oh my, we are in a good mood,” Saffron had drawled behind her, but Marion held her hand up to shush her, sensing Caia’s mood.

“I guess we are a little early.”

Caia hadn’t said anything. She just kept chewing and frowning and wondering what on earth she had done wrong last night not to have been able to connect to Ethan.

“I can feel an awful lot of tension in the house, Caia. And you smell... different... Oh.” Caia had glanced up to find Marion’s eyes had widened. “You and Lucien... he told you.”

“You knew!” Little bits of toast and coffee had projected out with the accusation.

Marion had ahem-ed and wiped delicately at her face. “Yes, I knew.”

“Always the last to know, huh? Don’t know why I’m surprised. I suppose the tree knew too.” She’d thumbed behind her at Saffron.

“Oh, dear Gaia, no.” Saffron had appeared in front of her, her slender hands sitting defiantly on her narrow hips. “Please do not even think of imitating that idiot.”

“Ryder’s my friend, watch your mouth.”

“Oh my.” Marion had exhaled. “You’re really not taking this well. I don’t remember you having this much attitude.”

“It’s called being lied to too many damn times to count.”

Marion had shooed Saffron away again and had leaned across the table, gripping one of Caia’s hands comfortingly. “I know you must be upset, but it doesn’t take away your choices, Caia. You’re too important for that.”

She had her interest. “What do you mean?”

“Yes, what do you mean?”

They had looked up as Lucien sauntered into the kitchen, his body language had said casual while his expression had yelled ‘warning, warning!’ Ella and Magnus had trailed at his back. Caia hadn’t even known Magnus had stayed over. He’d smiled weakly at her but she’d looked away. She was mad at everyone.

Marion’s smile hadn’t faltered. “Perhaps you should all take a seat.”

Hmm, Caia had thought, this was going to be interesting.

When they had all been seated Lucien, just as mad at Caia, had thankfully sat as far away from her as possible.

“I spoke with my sister and her husband,” Marion had begun.

“And?” Ella had asked, pouring her and Magnus some coffee.

“Well.” Caia might have been seeing things but Marion’s smile had looked a little nervous. “Marita and Vanne are impressed with what I had to tell them about Caia, and of course very anxious that she remain safe.”

“Of course.” Magnus had nodded.

“They are aware of the situation with Jaeden and understand that Caia would like to stay here until its conclusion.”

Lucien had drawn in a sharp breath. “I don’t like the sound of where this is going.”

“Caia.” Marion had ignored him and Caia had happily followed suit. “Marita would like to offer you a home within our Center, where you can train with the very best in magik. Where you can train to be a soldier for Daylight but most importantly where you can really put your tracing magik to good use and help us to prevent anymore Midnight attacks.”

No one had breathed. Caia hadn’t been able to look at anyone but Marion - Marion who had come back and with her brought a huge gust of air, allowing Caia to breathe again.

“Really?” she’d asked, trying not to sound so excited.

“Over my dead body.”

She’d closed her eyes and slumped in her chair, refusing to look at the big oaf.

What had ensued was one of those seething, quiet controlled arguments fired back and forth between Marion and Lucien, but as it had stretched and heightened their voices had started to rise, and with that Ella and Magnus joined in trying to smooth the situation over. Caia had sat there listening to the argument but not really processing the words, all she had been able to think about was how she was being given the opportunity to be somewhere where they really accepted her, and where they really needed her. Wouldn’t her father have wanted her to do everything in her power to stop the Midnights after all they had done to him and the people he loved?

“...don’t care. You are not dragging my mate off to be used as a weapon-”

Caia had cut him off by standing so abruptly her chair clattered hard against the island behind her. “Marion,” she’d said evenly, feeling everyone’s eyes on her, “You would be right that I’m not going anywhere until I get Jaeden back, so my answer right now is that I will think about it. I will really, really think about it.” She’d smiled a real smile for the first time in days. “And thank you.”

She had thought Lucien would start yelling and railing at her, but when she was met with only silence Caia had dared to look at him. And he had looked back at her as if he had never seen her before. A hurt, a deep hurt, had burned his eyes and swelled out of him to gnaw angrily at her heart. She hadn’t had to look at Ella and Magnus to see their reaction because she’d felt their hurt and astonishment, too.

They all thought she was betraying them.

And so that was why everyone was treating her with icy disdain.

Sebastian had been different. He swore he just wanted her to be happy, going on and on about how even if she did go it didn’t mean he couldn’t come visit her. He had heard the Center was full of lykans and vampyres. Hey, maybe he could even train to be a soldier, too. Yeah. He was surprisingly chipper about the whole thing and Caia suspected it had more to do with it meaning she wouldn’t be with Lucien than anything else. So now it was just the two of them against the world, and two days gone and no such luck on her mission to rescue Jaeden.

“Ignore them,” Sebastian said as they sat alone in the cafeteria. He was referring to the way she kept guiltily glancing over at the others who refused to acknowledge her. She found it especially weird being confronted with Mal’s actual anger. He had never been serious about anything in his life, but there he was glaring at her. “You know they’re just being loyal to Lucien.”

“I can’t believe it made the rounds with the whole pack so quickly.”

“Gossip travels fast among wolves.”

Caia snorted and played with her food, her expression grim. “What if I can’t reach her again?”

Sebastian didn’t even mention her change of topic. “You will. Keep faith.”

“I swear to Gaia if this has anything to do with me stressing over other things, I will be supremely pissed.”

“Caia.”

She looked up at him to be met with his strange, focused, tawny gaze. “I believe in you.”

Those words struck her so hard they knocked the breath out of her and she had to stop herself from reaching over to touch him like she wanted to. He really had become her rock. Her frown melted into a smile and the tension eased from her body. “Then I guess I better find her quick.”

Magik was exhausting.

“I think you’ve killed me,” Caia wheezed, flopping onto the ground.

She heard Marion’s soft chuckle and resisted the urge to flip her off.

After she had gotten home from school (to an empty house for the third night running) Marion had pushed Caia right back into her training, and this time it was all squadrons go. The backyard was now a battle zone where plants were either drowning or dying in ashes. For the last two hours Marion had chased Caia around the yard, throwing fire at her while she had to douse them with water or duck. The strain on her focus, and not to mention the non-stop running out of lykan form, had reduced her ribs to a tapestry of stitches.

“Was that really necessary? Ella’s going to kill you for destroying her yard.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the yard.”

“Are you kidding me?” Caia sat up and shut up just as she was about to gesture at the war zone. There was no war zone. Everything appeared just as neat and alive as it had two hours ago. She turned wide-eyed to the witch. “You did this?”

Marion nodded and strolled gracefully over to her. “Of course.”

“Wow.”

“You’ll learn soon enough how to do it. It’s called glamour.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t, but you will. I’m starting off with the hard stuff. We’ll get to the easy stuff later.”

“Glamour is easy?” Caia asked incredulously.

“Believe me, in comparison to what we’ve been doing for the last few hours it is.”

Caia didn’t reply, just gazed around in wonder at the yard as Marion folded herself in sitting position beside her.

“You know, Caia, normally I would never do an exercise such as what we’ve been doing this afternoon with someone so early in to their training. The fact that you not only rose to the challenge but doused ninety percent of my fire is...” She chuckled sounding amazed. “Impressive.”