they didn’t need to know about the few lies he’d told himself.
“You said yourself that he was slipping,” Kody reminded him.
“True, but we could go back before Ambrose goes nuts and kills everyone. Right?”
Jaden hesitated before he answered. “That’s one unstable theory.”
And still the only thing they had to go on. Nick glanced around at them and at the destruction that told them nothing about whatever power or entity they were up against. “Fine, I’ll go alone. Risk only me. The rest of you can stay here until I return.”
“No!” they all shouted at once.
Jaden cast his gaze around at them. “Take it you’ve all had a bad experience?”
“You don’t want to know,” Caleb said bitterly. “He’s the only one I know who could find trouble waiting for him at the bottom of a Rice Krispies box.”
Nick would be offended if it wasn’t true.
Xev stepped forward. “I’ll go with him. I’m the least likely to screw something up.”
The look on Kody’s face said she wanted to argue, but after a few minutes, she relented. With an irritated glare, she turned toward Nick. “Are you set on this?”
Nick nodded. “I have to see it through.”
She glanced at Jaden. “Can they get back here?”
“Returning’s not the issue. They just have to make sure not to bring anything back with them.”
Nick held his hands up. “Not a problem.”
“See that it isn’t.” With that warning spoken, Jaden let out a long, tired breath. “We’ll work on the dramonks outside. I trust you know how to return?” he asked Xev.
Xev nodded. “So long as my curse doesn’t prohibit it.”
For the first time, Nick saw guilt in Jaden’s eyes. “Let me see your arm.”
With an emotionless stare, Xev loosened his sleeve and rolled it back to expose the ancient words that bound him to eternal slavery, and limited his powers.
Jaden examined it for several seconds. “Now your side.”
Xev hesitated as his gaze went to Kody.
“I won’t look.” She turned around to give him privacy.
Still, there was shame in his hazel eyes as he dropped his gaze to the floor and lifted his shirt for Jaden to see where the rest of the curse had been brutally seared into his flesh on the day they’d ripped his wings from his back and condemned him to this existence. His muscles were absolutely taut from the rigidness of his stance.
Nick wanted to comfort him, but how could anything do that? He’d lost his wife, his son. His wings. His freedom. All he’d done was try to help and they’d coldly taken everything from him for the effort.
Yet in that moment, Nick understood why Jaden didn’t trust him.
He saw Xev as a young teenager. Probably no more than sixteen or seventeen—his age.
While Jaden had slept, Xev had crept into his room and swapped amulets on him. Not the green one he currently wore, but another that had drained his powers and left him at the mercy of Xev’s mother and her demon horde.
The moment he’d discovered his son’s treachery, Jaden had declared his hatred and enmity. “I welcomed you into my home! Why would you do this to me?”
Xev had returned his glower without flinching or shirking. “For all the years you didn’t welcome me, Father. For every lash and insult I’ve been given in your name, and for all the years I was forced to serve them as an animal because you refused to acknowledge me as your son. I do this for her, and I go free. You owe me this!”
“I owe you nothing save my hatred.”
“Then we are even, after all.”
Worse? It’d been a trick. Azura had still refused to release Xev even after he’d handed Jaden over to her. Instead, she’d laughed in his face and slapped him for being stupid and gullible enough to believe her lies.
So as a final act of defiance, he’d freed his father two days later. Rather than return the favor, Jaden had left him behind, locked in his cell as punishment, even while Xev had begged his father for mercy and forgiveness. Even while he’d begged his father for death.
“You can’t leave me here … you can’t conceive what she’ll do to me for it!”
“Like I care? Rot here with your mother and her demons. I never want to lay eyes on you again, you treacherous bastard! You are no son of mine!”
And so Xev had been left to face his mother’s unreasoning wrath.
Nick flinched as he felt the nightmare Xev had barely survived.
Jaden had no idea what he’d condemned