things I don’t have in common with my angel-mom pile.
“You should have told me what you were,” Tazreel snarls at her.
“Oh, please. You told me your name was Sophocles and you were a Duo,” she tells him. “Let’s not pretend that you weren’t just as cagey as I was that night.”
“Sophocles? Really?” I ask, unable to pass up the opportunity to bust Tazreel’s balls.
“Now is not the time, Delta!” he snaps at me, and Nefta’s eyes widen slightly at my name and then narrow at Tazreel’s censure.
“How did you find her?” she growls out again, like that is the most important thing to know in this scenario.
“I shouldn’t have had to find her!” Taz yells back. “If you didn’t want her, then she should have been turned over to me. You left her in the mortal world, for Christ’s sake!”
“Oh, don’t try and bring him into this. I know exactly what I did,” Nefta answers evenly. “As soon as I found out who you really were, I knew the last place she should ever be is in your care,” she spits out. “Now, are you going to tell me how you found her, or am I going to have to make you?”
I watch the two of them, knowing I need to intervene before they come to blows.
“You know...you could just ask me,” I tell her, mostly because I want to force her to acknowledge me and talk to me directly.
Nefta’s eyes snap to mine, and she considers my words like it’s not something she realized was an option. “Did he find you?” she finally asks me, her tone pragmatic and lacking any softness or emotion. She’s all tactical soldier right now, and I’m not sure if that’s just who she is or if she’s purposely keeping me at arm’s length.
“No,” I answer. “I found him.”
My words seem to confuse her for a beat. I can almost see her dissecting them in her mind and putting them back together to make sense of them.
She might be cataloguing my words, but I’m cataloguing her appearance. We have the same nose. My lips are fuller than hers, and I clearly have Tazreel to thank for my gray eyes, but Nefta and I look alike. I trace her gracefully arched eyebrows and long black lashes with my gaze. The slope of her nose is so familiar, and I don’t know what to think about staring at someone who looks so much like me.
She looks like she could be my sister—not in a creepy that’s what guys tell the mom to get in her good graces kind of way—but legitimately, she only looks like she’s a handful of years older than me.
“I don’t understand,” she finally admits after a couple of seconds.
“Oh, sorry, allow me to explain,” I say, trying to take on the same detached tone as her. “So it all started with a Help Wanted ad. That job led to a Hellgate and me being told that I was a demon by these four Guardians here. Then add in a couple trips to Hell, almost getting killed and/or kidnapped by some Ophidian dude’s minions who attacked us, accidentally falling into the Nihil Ring, and meeting this douche and finding out he’s my biological father. Then he took some hump blood, and we all followed my magical scythe to find you. That about sums it up,” I finish.
She just continues to stare at me.
“Your turn,” I chirp. “Go ahead, and if you could start with: why you had me, left me in the Mortal Realm with no intention of ever telling me what I was, and thus leaving me ultimately defenseless when the blocks you put on me failed, that’d be great,” I say with a mock-smile. “Oh, and also, what’s the deal with this scythe, and how the hell does it work?” I ask, holding the scythe out and noticing that it’s once again gone dormant.
Fickle little fucker.
“The Ophidian?” she balks. “How in Hell—”
“Ah, ah, ah,” I tell her, cutting her off. “That’s not what I asked.”
Her eyes flash with authority, clearly not liking my tone or line of questioning. But fuck it. Despite wanting not to care, her immediate brush-off hurts me.
“Don’t try to pull that call me Colonel shit with me like you did him,” I tell her, jutting my chin toward where Louquin is still standing at attention. “I’m not in your fucking Legion, and you owe me some answers,” I warn her coldly.