21
Impasse
“Are you all right?” Nero asked me as we stepped into my apartment.
Angel ran past us and curled up in front of the fireplace. Lucy always made sure there was a warm, crackling fire waiting for me when I got home.
“I’m fine,” I assured him. My smile faded when he turned to leave. “You’re going?”
“I have matters to attend to.”
“Attend to them later,” I said boldly, closing the door. “I want you to stay.”
“This is not a good idea.”
Nero stayed anyway.
I spent the next fifteen minutes talking him through everything I knew about the curse, including the recent contributions from Gypsy and Jinx. The sirens we’d found tonight had also gotten the curse from the vampires, and the fairies had gotten it from the sirens. Nero and I read a few reports on the west coast incidents and learned that those supernaturals had caught it from another escaped prisoner from Purgatory’s ill-fated vampire nest.
“We need to get to the source of the problem,” I finished.
“Spellsword.”
“Yes. He created this curse. He must know how to stop it,” I said. “Alec has tried to track his movements, but none of it makes sense. The dark angel seems to be able to exist in several places at once.”
“Perhaps your data is wrong,” Nero suggested.
I sighed. “There are a lot of things about this curse that are wrong.”
Thunder roared outside. Apparently, the elements agreed with me. Since we’d left the alley, the weather outside had turned decidedly hostile. Lightning was flashing every few seconds, thunder was drumming out a steady beat on the sky, and it was pouring so hard that I could hardly see past my windows.
In my living room, though, the air was warm and the furniture comfy. Angel was napping in front of the crackling fireplace. She hadn’t hissed at Nero since we’d arrived home. In fact, she was curled around his feet right now, purring contently.
“Your phone is calling for your attention,” Nero commented, watching my phone buzz across the coffee table.
“It’s just more alerts from all across the continent, and I can’t do anything in this wild weather. I don’t think an airship can withstand these winds, and I’m not keen to test out if my wings can.” I folded my arms across my chest. “And you know what the worst part is? Half of those reports are supernaturals battling each other or people rioting in the streets.”
“I ordered all supernaturals to stop using their magic immediately. There was bound to be some pushback,” Nero said with complete serenity. Whenever things were really bad, he always got really calm. “Their magic is precious to them. Without it, they feel frightened and helpless.”
I remembered how frightened and helpless I’d felt when Nero and I had drunk the magic-nullifying potion during his archangel trials. I’d felt like a part of myself had been ripped away. It must have been even worse for the Earth’s supernaturals. I’d only gained my magic later in life, whereas most of them had been born with it. They’d never had a time they’d been without it. Until now.
“What does Nyx say about all of this?” I asked Nero.
“I haven’t spoken to the First Angel in days.”
“Don’t you think she’d want to know that the Earth is tearing itself apart?”
“Undoubtedly,” he replied. “But she is out of contact at the moment. That makes it my responsibility to see this through.”
“I wish she were here to worry about ruling humanity, so you could stay with me.” I rested my head on his shoulder.
He didn’t move. “I am here, Leda.”
“I mean, stay with me the whole time. I’m supposed to put a stop to this curse, but I don’t even know where to start. What do I do, Nero?”
“Leda, you’ve never needed anyone to tell you what to do.”
His words cut me deep. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was referring to how I’d made a decision about our future without consulting him first.
“Sometimes I do need help.” I looked into his eyes. “Tell me, Nero. Tell me what I should do. Because I just don’t know.”
“You can’t change what’s already happened,” he replied. “You have to make the best out of what is happening now, and try to safeguard the future.”
Translation: I’d hurt him, and try as I might, I might not be able to mend the rift between us.
I swallowed my pain and choked back my tears. They wouldn’t help me now. I was heartbroken that I’d hurt him so much, and yet unwavering in my resolution that I’d done the right thing. I would do it all again for the good of our daughter, so she wouldn’t be born into a world torn apart by unrest and conflict. What was happening on Earth right now, it only proved my point that things wouldn’t be safe for her. And one curse was nothing compared to the devastation that deities would set upon this world in order to enslave our baby daughter and mold her into their weapon.
“I want to fix us, Nero,” I said. “I don’t want my secret—what I did—to stand between us anymore.”
He didn’t answer.
“Everything I did was to keep our child safe,” I said. “I have that right.”
“Yes, Leda, you do.” His voice was frosted over. “But I have the right to feel upset over it. That’s how freewill works. I want children with you. I want it more than you can possibly imagine, but I would have understood if you’d come to me. You should have told me what you were going to do.”
“People were watching me, watching you, watching our every move, Nero. There wasn’t time.”
“You would have found a way to come talk to me. But you didn’t. Because you were afraid of how I’d react.”
I slouched against the back of the sofa. “You’re right. I guess I was afraid.”
He didn’t smile or shout or say anything at all.
“But I would do it again to keep our daughter from Faris, Grace, and everyone else. This world isn’t safe for her.”
“Nothing is ever certain, not even in a world that is supposedly safe. Except for the two of us. We were the one real thing, the one true, undeniable fact in this whole universe, Leda. We were always there for each other. We would tell each other everything, trust each other with anything. Until you broke that trust. Until you created a rift between us. We were supposed to do everything together.”
Nero took my hands, his words soft, his touch gentle.
I would have preferred for him to yell at me. It would have hurt less.
We sat there, the silence consuming us, eating away at us, filling the space between us until we might as well have had all the universe between us.
“I guess we’re at an impasse,” I said.
“So it would seem.”
I was hurting. He was hurting too, and I’d been the one to hurt him. I hadn’t meant to cause him pain, but I had. And worse yet, I knew I’d do it all over again. Because I would do anything to safeguard our daughter’s future.
And now our daughter might never exist. Nero had once told me that he wanted to have many children, and I’d prevented that from happening. His brain might have been able to accept my reasons, but clearly his heart could not. And now…well, now maybe he didn’t want to be with me at all anymore.