With her, he did.
How could this be?
"There can never be anything between us, Danger."
"I know." He heard the pain in her voice. "I'm a big girl, Ias, and I can take care of myself. But you... you need to can the destroyer act around me. I don't like it."
He frowned at her words. "Why did you call me Ias?"
"Because Ias is the man who considers a demon his daughter and it was Ias who woke me up tonight with a rose tickling my cheek."
"But I'm also the Alexion."
She offered him a smile that melted the iciness of his entire existence. "There's a tough side to all of us. Be grateful; it was my tough side that nailed you with the dagger a few minutes ago."
He laughed at that, then sobered. "I don't know what to feel when I'm around you."
"Yeah, I'm confused too. I can't believe that I'm about to help you hang my friends."
"I'm not trying to hang anyone, Danger."
"No? Then what's with the list of hopeless you have over there?"
He glanced to the paper where he'd been writing. "That's not a list of names. It's a list of rules for Keller so that the demon doesn't eat him."
She laughed at him. Leave it to Alexion to think of that one. "I knew I should have studied Greek in school."
Grateful that he was almost back to "normal," she took his hand in hers. It was still warm. "Are we friends again?"
"Yeah, I think we are."
"Akri!"
Ash rolled over in his bed as he heard Simi running down the hallway outside his room in Katoteros. She burst through the door, then launched herself at his bed.
He woofed as she landed on him then sat heavily on his chest. "I was sleeping, Sim."
"I know, but I heard Alexion calling out again. The Simi wants to go see him, akri. Lemme go! Please."
Ash felt the all too familiar knot in his gut as he fought himself not to allow her that wish. But he couldn't.
The last two times he'd let Simi out without him had been disastrous. In Alaska, she'd almost died, and in New Orleans...
That was something he still couldn't think about without his temper erupting.
"I can't, Simi."
"Why not?"
He sighed heavily. "I can't tamper with his fate. You know that. This is his time and if I answer him I will probably do whatever it is he asks. So for all our sakes, I've turned his voice off in my head and I would advise you to do the same."
She pouted as she pulled the sfora out of her pink coffin-shaped purse. "At least make this work so's I can see him."
"No."
She growled at him. "But what if he gets hurt? What if he dies?" Her face blanched. "You can't let him die, akri. You can't. The Simi loves her Alexion."
He reached up to brush her long black hair back from her face. "I know, edera," he said, using the Atlantean endearment for "precious baby." "But his fate is in his hands, not mine. I won't alter it."