Daimon (Guardians of Hades #6) - Felicity Heaton Page 0,26
should have been the older brother.
Now she could see how wrong she had been.
Daimon needed his older brother as deeply as Esher needed him, possibly even more so. He was falling apart without him, gradually succumbing to whatever dark things plagued him and stole pieces of his strength each day.
Each hour that Esher was missing.
She reached a fork in the road and stopped, her eyes fixed on the illuminated white concrete, glass and steel building at the end of the route in front of her. The city lights reflected off the thick glass that acted as a railing around the terrace.
And shone on the man standing at those railings, his profile to her, wind tousling his white hair.
She slowly lifted her hand and lightly pressed her fist to her chest, fighting the need to go to him, to show him that he wasn’t alone and lift that sombre look from his face, shattering the hopelessness that she could see in his eyes.
He would hate her for it.
He was hurting, and he would lash out at her.
And then he would hate himself.
She had been caught up in that cycle with him several times since Esher had disappeared, seemed as bound by some cruel master of their fates as he was, feeling as if someone behind the scenes was pulling strings to make her do these reckless and foolish things.
Things she knew would only end in the same way.
With him lashing out.
With her hating herself.
With him hating himself.
And then a brief truce, a point where they were calm around each other, able to enjoy the others company without inflicting pain.
Daimon stepped.
As she stared at the black vapour trail of his teleport, her heart whispered at her to follow.
She knew where he was going.
She summoned the spell, even though it taxed her to do it, had her legs wobbly beneath her when she landed near the water.
She stared across the narrow stretch of it to the Star Ferry dock, watched him boarding one as he often did, making the journey from the island to the Kowloon district. She couldn’t understand why he did this ritual. He avoided contact with others, especially with humans, yet he always chose to cross the water in this manner—on a rickety green and white double-decker boat that was always packed with humans.
And he always took the same route when he reached the other side, walking the Avenue of the Stars for a short distance before he stopped to stare back across the water at the Hong Kong island skyline, taking it in.
Or did he see something else?
She had done her research and knew that if the brothers focused they could see the future of this world in all its morbid fiery horror, and sometimes even when they weren’t trying.
She muttered the spell again, risking it, and transported herself to the other side of the water, landing near a group of tourists. They would provide her cover.
As predicted, Daimon walked to the same spot he always did and stopped, gazing across the water that rippled with colour from the neon on the buildings on the opposite bank.
His handsome face hardened.
She suspected he wasn’t viewing the here and now, but rather what was to come.
She fell into studying him, as she always did whenever he wasn’t aware of her, whenever he came to this spot, trying to piece together a clearer picture of him.
He idly touched the roll-neck of the top he wore beneath his long black coat, stroking his gloved fingers along it, his eyes still locked on the skyline. His shoulders trembled, a brief shudder she would have missed if she hadn’t been watching him so closely. His power was acting up.
Did it hurt him when it did that? Did he hate the cold that wracked him? Was it the reason he kept his distance from everyone?
She couldn’t imagine what it was like to live as he did, unable to touch anyone, fearing he might kill them by mistake if he let them get too close to him.
Hades was an unsympathetic bastard to force Daimon to remain in this world when he was suffering because of it.
Daimon masked it well, but she could see it, especially when his brothers and their women were around. He often singled out Ares, secretly watching him interact with Megan. She wanted to know why he watched Ares more than the others. Because Ares shared his problem? Because Megan was immune to the heat that constantly shimmered over his skin?