CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Avis stirred, drawing in a deep breath which he released in a happy, stretching sigh. His hand automatically reached for Clarise, and he came awake instantly when he realised there was nothing on her side of the bed but pillows. “Tilu!” he shouted, sitting straight up in bed. Both sisters appeared in the doorway, bowing. “Where’s my wife?” He was already sliding his feet to the floor in anticipation of going to find her.

“Lady Clarise is dealing with a Highborn Hellion matter, Milord,” Frash replied, before Tilu could answer. Tilu cast a sidewards glance at her sister, then closed her mouth and stared at the ground somewhere between the door and the bed.

Avis couldn’t believe how much he despised the dominant female. “Did I ask you?” he snarled.

Frash formally bowed again; either missing his animosity or ignoring it completely. Avis was willing to bet his realm on the latter. “I was more informed than that of my sister, Milord,” she answered primly.

“I don’t care,” Avis shot back. “When I want you to answer, I’ll tell you.” He sat on the edge of the bed, his mind going over his options. If it was Highborn Hellion affairs that Clarise was attending, he had no right to butt in. That then raised the question, what was he supposed to do in the meantime? He was well enough to move around unaided, but he still didn’t like the idea of leaving the apartment and intermingling with the Highborn demons outside. What was he supposed to say to them?

Then it occurred to him. This was the perfect opportunity to get to the bottom of his family issues with Cora, without Clarise hovering nearby. For the last two days, he’d bided his time—an act his family back home would attest to being nigh on impossible for him—to see if his elder, wayward daughter would come to him of her own volition. Columbine spent every moment she could in his company and Avis loved her for it, but Cora never came anywhere near him. With Clarise busy elsewhere, now it was time to reel that girl in and see for himself if everything he’d heard about her was true.

He looked at Frash and said, “Bring Lady Cora to me.”

Frash bowed obediently and left the room. Avis’ eyes then moved to Tilu. “And I’ll get you to give me a hand to get dressed before they get back, beautiful,” he said with a wink and a half smile.

Tilu bowed, but not before he saw her smiling shyly as she went into his dressing room and returned moments later with his uniform. Avis stood up and piece by piece, he was helped into the clothing. The last thing he wanted was for Cora to get a view only her mother and a select few servants were entitled to.

Once he was dressed, Tilu bowed again and withdrew from the room, silently closing the doors behind her. Avis chuckled to himself as he tilted a pillow sidewards and levered himself to sit up. He knew he could stand now and even walk across the room and back unaided, but he also knew if he towered over Cora while she harboured so much hatred for him, she’d respond by going on the offensive and he was nowhere near ready for that conflict—yet.

The average attack of a competent mind bender destroyed ten years of memory. It was an insignificant benchmark. Even mortals foolish enough to flex their pitiful muscles at the gods who controlled them could withstand that loss. But Cora wasn’t ten. She was barely five, and if Avis, in a single moment of lost concentration, destroyed a decade of her memories, there’d be nothing left of her mind to build on. She’d be a shell; a mindless entity without the knowledge she’d been born with to know how to grow and evolve as a person. He could never do that to one of his own. Not even his father crossed that line, though he’d certainly taken Avis and his siblings right to that edge—a lot.

Avis didn’t even want to know how many times he’d had to reacquaint himself with his siblings, building memories from scratch after his father had destroyed almost all that came before. Theodrick would leave him with just enough memory to recognise his parents and his twin. The rest was constantly reset.

Yet the children of the Nexus had learned to play an elaborate shell game with their father. As the eldest two, Avis and Amaro started the process by staying well apart. They always knew when the other was being attacked and sought each other out long after the coast was clear. Physically, there was nothing either could do but wait for the injured one to semi-recover.

If Avis was the safe one, he would push his memories into Amaro’s mind. If he was the broken one, Amaro would open his mind for Avis to absorb at his own pace. It wasn’t the same as personally experiencing them, but it was close enough that the recovery took less and less time.

It had taken a very long time for Avis and Amaro to risk their little safety pact with their siblings, but once they had, they all began to piece together their own destroyed memories with the segments they found inside each other. From there, the children of the Nexus grew strong. Adaptation was the key. So was the need to not rely on each other for protection. Nothing could stop Theodrick once he had picked a target. Nothing. It only got worse when they grew to breeding age.

Avis clamped his eyes shut, desperately trying not to go there. It was the secret shame that ate at almost every child of the Nexus. Theodrick was an evil bastard who easily matched Belial in all the opposite ways. He’d entertained himself by sexually pairing his children against their wills or doing the deed himself, and not necessarily male with female. It had been eons since those dark days broached Avis’ forethoughts and he was intensely grateful that the Hellions had no idea of it. What Theodrick had insisted upon—maintaining the sanctity of the bloodline at all costs—the Hellions couldn’t bring themselves to even contemplate.

In Chaos, the bloodlines needed to be diverse to make them stronger. The Chaotic nature of the place insisted upon it. So, family didn’t mate with family. Not even distant cousins. If a bloodline could be found, it didn’t happen. Ironically, remembering those vile times made Avis realise that even in the worst parts of his two-year torture, they still hadn’t come close to replicating the most horrific time of his life. He’d endured worse at his own father’s hands and survived. They all had.

A few years before Chance was born, Avis sought out Amaro and told him of his desire to escape the Nexus. He was tired of living in constant fear and degradation. He was tired of everything. He wanted out, even if it got him killed. Amaro agreed, and of course, Theodrick swooped in at that moment and wiped out both their minds.

But as they hadn’t been alone, the shell game began again in earnest and the attack had only delayed the inevitable. Chance had been born while Avis and Amaro recovered and the runt was forced through the same dance of the early years that they all had. It couldn’t be avoided, though their mother had intervened on Chance’s behalf more often than she did for any of them. That was to be expected. He was, after all, the lucky baby.

Regrettably, as Avis and Amaro recovered, Chance reached puberty. He became sexually curious and unfortunately for him, Theodrick had also noticed his coming of age. Avis hadn’t been able to save himself or any of their other siblings, but after looking at the predatory way their father eyed his youngest son, Avis swore there and then that Chance was not going to end up like them. A plaything of their perverted father. Within hours, Avis and Amaro secretly gathered up their siblings and made their run for the crystalline wall that surrounded the Nexus. Once they leapt clear, none of them ever saw their mother again.

Avis sucked in a painfully deep breath and pushed those memories back into the darkest recess of his mind, then covered them over and placed a dozen mental Do Not Enter signs across the opening. Hopefully, it would be another few eons before he thought of them again.

With the exception of his mother, nothing good ever came of remembering those times.

He heard a scuffle and a heavy-handed slap echo from the doorway and immediately snapped his attention to the commotion. Frash, he had expected. The presence of his older daughter was just as anticipated. But when he saw a young Mystallian girl with mid-length, ginger hair and a face full of freckles being manhandled by his wife’s demonic servant, the Mystallian patriarch surged against his pillows. This was not Cora’s natural form, but one that someone had forced her into. Her right arm was missing at the shoulder and Frash held her by her upper left arm. Cora stared up at the female in shock and disbelief as her left hand gently touched the red mark on her face where Frash had obviously struck her.

“Behave yourself,” the servant commanded, giving the girl a small shake to emphasise the order.

Avis flew across the room, and before his head could catch up, his fist smashed into the servant’s face with enough force to kill anything but a shifter. No one—no one outside the House of Mystal touched a Mystallian pantheon member like that! No matter the age of the Mystallian in question! No one!

The irony that he wouldn’t have needed to defend her, had she not looked like one of his own, was not lost on him. He then caught the woman by the throat and slammed her into the wall with enough force to imprint her outline against the stone. Shapeshifting around the problem would have been the easy way to escape and she probably would have taken it, had she not been so stunned by his assault. Still holding her throat, Avis leaned his face into hers so there could be no misunderstanding between them.

“Don’t you ever … ever touch one of my girls like that again,” Avis warned with absolute lethality. He couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t getting a little personal satisfaction from this. He’d wanted to do it for days for entirely different reasons. But no one outside the family, raised a hand to a Mystallian pantheon member like that.

The Mystallians may have fought and bickered amongst themselves as any family did, but the second an outsider even thought about touching any one of them without permission, that individual would suffer the combined might of the entire family. Mystal always had been and always would be a unified front.

He held her until he saw in her eyes that she had remembered that he couldn’t mentally harm her and physically all she had to do was shapeshift her way to freedom. “Let’s get one thing straight, woman, because I’m only going to say this once,” he snarled. “I’m about two seconds from having Clarise remove whatever seclusion ring she’s got you hiding behind and spending the next decade destroying you one memory at a time. My wife’s continued reliance on your service is the only reason I haven’t already, but this is the only warning you’re going to get. Touch what’s mine again, and I’ll rip you to pieces and make you forget how to put yourself back together again. Do you hear me?”

“I am not yours!”

Avis glanced down at the young girl who stamped her foot at him with her fist shoved into her hip, and barely suppressed his chuckle. That was the part of his spiel she took offence to? Oh, yes, you are, you little imp. You just don’t know it yet.

He released the servant with a shove that sent her stumbling towards the doors, his full attention now on his strong-willed child as he crossed the room to the two-seater lounge beside the false balcony window. With the excitement over, he felt himself teeter a little and realised with an inner grimace that he probably shouldn’t have gotten up that fast.

But damn, it felt good to hammer that shapeshifting witch. He slid his weight into the chair with one elbow on the arm and ran his gaze over Cora’s Mystallian shape, frowning a little in confusion. Wasn’t she supposed to be locked into her demonic form by tefsla? “Who chose that form for you?”

Cora’s chin lifted in defiance. “What makes you think anyone did?”

Her rebelliousness was so cute: like a baby pygmy monkey beating on its chest and insisting it was a silverback gorilla. Avis arched an eyebrow and smirked at her. “For starters, rug rat, there’s no redheads in my family that you could draw from naturally. Plus, last I heard, you were in your demonic form up to your eyeballs in tefsla poison. Doesn’t that stuff stop you from shifting, period?”

He’d expected her to say something snarky in return. A bit of harmless back and forth to get things going before he went for the crux of their problem. But instead of engaging, the harmless barb seemed to strike home … hard. Cora’s shoulders slumped in defeat and she looked down and away. “Grandfather said Mystallians with hair of red were trouble and that it suited me,” she murmured softly.

Belial. Avis dragged his fingernails through his eyebrows and growled in exasperation. That explained everything. Belial didn’t play by anyone’s rules except his own. Avis then thought about what Cora had been told about his kind and ran his tongue in a tight circle around his cheek until he tsked through the gap in his lips.

That statement wasn’t entirely true. He knew of a lot of redheads amongst the common population and even a few within the pantheon that could trace their bloodlines to other realms, and while most of them were quick tempered, that didn’t automatically make them trouble. “Tell you what,” he said, twisting into the corner of the chair for added support and laying his left arm across his chest.

He placed his right elbow against the top of his left hand and supported his chin with his right hand, tapping his lips with his thumb. “You tell me what you did to warrant being called a troublemaker, and I’ll talk to your mother about returning you to your demonic form if that’s the one you want to be in.” Of course, he already knew what she’d done. He’d heard it from several points of view. But he wanted to hear her take on it. “Deal?”

Cora’s gaze narrowed hatefully. “Because of you, I am constantly harassed by my mother’s people and I am never given the chance to do anything! No matter what I do, everything about me is wrong! It is not fair …”

“Boo-hoo.” Avis couldn’t help himself. That kind of self-pity would get her nowhere in life.

Cora gasped and jerked to a halt mid-rant. “What?” she snarled.

Not “I beg your pardon” or “Excuse me” or “I’m sorry” or any one of a hundred other types of snivelling Highborn Hellion apologies that would have lessened her standing with him. Oh, no. She wasn’t snivelling at all. She was outraged! Avis looked at her face that brightened with fury and almost grinned. Much better. He liked this side of her already.

“Boo,” he repeated, his eyes flaring mockingly as he paused between the two words for emphasis. “Hoo.” He gave her another few seconds to toy with the phrase, then lifted his left foot to the edge of the sofa and rested an elbow casually against his knee. “Or, as my people would say, suck it up and get on with it, young lady. You’re not the first one to be dealt a bad hand from the beginning, and you won’t be the last. The only one who can make your situation any different is you.”

“I am not permitted to change my situation.”

Something about the girl struck Avis as odd and he found himself pulling back and tilting his head slightly at her; his eyes once again scanning her from head to toe and back again. He was by no means an expert where little kids were concerned, but he was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to talk like that. So … grown-up. “You’re not permitted to change your situation?” he repeated, to see if she really understood the wording.

Cora curled her upper lip in an all-out sneer. “Congratulations, your hearing has made an excellent recovery. May I go now?”

Avis gnashed his teeth. Her bravery was welcome, but the bad attitude was going to get her murdered in short order—by him if no one else. If they were back home, he’d have flattened any member of his pantheon who showed him so little respect. But Cora had earned the right to be angry and it was something he had to deal with—now. “No,” he said, forcing aside his ire and replacing it with a patronising smile. He curled one finger for her to come to him. “Come here.”

Her shoe edged fractionally forward.

Avis inhaled deeply and released it as a slow hiss through his gritted teeth. Don’t push me too far, girl. “I have all day, you little shit,” he lied, pointing at the ground directly in front of him. He wanted to hash out these issues with Cora before her mother returned—Mystallian to Mystallian, but he wasn’t prepared to force her compliance, yet.

That would be replacing one set of obligatory restrictions with another, and Cora was a pressurised time bomb waiting to go off. He’d seen Tal work himself to this point many times before, and he knew if he couldn’t get her to blow while he was still in control of the situation, she’d hurt herself and a lot of people around her when it finally happened. Not if. A long time ago, his family had learned how to defuse Tal from the worst of his rages, though that had been a serious case of trial and error. A lot of Mystallian mortals perished in those early years. Whole galaxies at a time in fact. Fortunately, Mystal was large enough that the loss of a few mortal galaxies was neither here nor there to them.

Cora hmphed and stomped forward, stopping just outside his reach. Her belief that the distance kept her safe from him was adorable; clearly no one had explained to her the fundamental basics of ranged control. “What do you want now?” she asked, as if she’d scraped him off her boot and didn’t appreciate the smell.

Avis grinned lazily at her. “You really hate me, don’t you?”

“YES!” The savagery of that hiss was almost reptilian.

Oh yeah. If anything, you’re years past the point of ‘about to blow’.

Without explaining himself, Avis rose to his feet and poked her softly in the shoulder with his fingers as he strode past her. “Stay,” he ordered, and went on towards the doors, ignoring the way she flexed and rolled her shoulder away from him, rubbing the point of contact in disgust. Frash had left the double doors open in her haste to get away and through the gap Avis found the Highborn Hellion Guard standing at attention outside. The sight of it still made him whimper inwardly, but all the Nine Levels would freeze over twice before he ever showed such cowardice in front of his child.

“Guard,” he said, not quite able to bark his orders at it. The guard remained as lifeless as a statue with its great golden wings flared intimidatingly, though Avis knew better than to think it hadn’t heard. “I require complete privacy with Lady Cora and it’s going to get … destructive. Ignore it all. No matter what you hear, I want no one to come in until I come out, including you. Inform my wife of this upon her return and let her know I’d appreciate it if she too gave us some privacy.”

He didn’t bother to list the multiple exceptions to that request. As Clarise’s husband, his order would only be followed by those beneath her status. Likewise, he didn’t wait for an acknowledgement he knew wouldn’t be forthcoming either. Instead, he stepped back into the bedroom and closed both doors himself, then turned to face Cora. She hadn’t moved from when he was on the couch. Her back was to him with enough tension rippling through her tiny frame to snap one or both of Armina’s great claymores.

She needed to vent … so very badly. To get the ball rolling, Avis released a snippet of his own rising temper—if only to show her how it was done. “Alright, you little shit. You and I haven’t had a whole lot to do with each other since I woke up the other day, but I think it’s time we got a few things sorted out, don’t you?” Cora refused to even look at him, let alone answer him. A little more ire slipped its leash and Avis’ gaze narrowed. “I believe I asked you a question, girl.”

“If you say so.”

Avis’ eyes flared and his hands clenched at his sides. Child … Child … with every right to be pissy, he forced himself to remember as he slowly released the breath he’d sucked in in outrage, shaking his fists loose in the process. “I do,” he growled darkly. “And I really wouldn’t push me too far if I were you, girl, or you’re liable to wind up in—” He stopped abruptly when he realised Cora still hadn’t moved. “Dammit, Cora! I’m talking to you, and I refuse to speak to the back of your arrogant little, fucking head! Now turn around!”

Cora whirled on her heel, snapping, “With absolutely no due respect, just what in the realms do you think I should say to the likes of you!”

Good. If that’s all it took, stirring her up wasn’t going to be as hard as he thought. “I want you to let out every realm-damned thing you’ve ever been forced to bottle up inside that stubborn little head of yours. All of it. Every curse. Every angry thought. The whole lot of it!” He stabbed a finger towards the ground in front of him. “Right now! This is your one and only opportunity to empty your spleen at me.” He raised that hand and waved his fingers beckoningly. “So, let’s see what you’ve got, little girl. I’m right here!”

Rather than respond, Cora smashed her teeth together so hard that the muscles under her eyes twitched and she dropped her gaze to the ground between them.

Avis swore viciously at her. He couldn’t help himself. He was so tired of that Hellion trait and he was not putting up with it in her. Unlike Columbine, Cora was every bit as Mystallian as he was and to see one of his own forced into that fucking subservient pose through no fault of her own made him want to kill something. A whole lot of somethings.

It had been bad enough when he’d done plenty to deserve it. This kid had done absolutely nothing! Only by remembering they had yet to escape the confines of Hell where they were both still severely outnumbered, was he able to rein in his genocidal thoughts. “Look at me, Cora.” He watched her lips and jaw grind on words she clearly longed to hurl at him instead. He strode over to her and caught her by the chin, forcing her head up to stare him in the eye. “I said, look at me!”

Cora gasped in shock of the man-handling and tried to swat his hand away; then wrapped her arm around his wrist and heaved, all to no avail. He merely tightened his grip on her chin just long enough to prove it was his choice to let her go, before he shoved her backwards a pace or two.

Cora stumbled, then righted herself with a screech of indignation. “If you touch me again …!” she screamed, shuddering with fury.

Avis had no intention of letting her finish that sentence. Drawing out that rage was what he wanted—what she needed—and now that they were finally on the right path, he had to keep her unbalanced. “You’ll what?” he jeered rudely. “Cry?”

Cora lunged at him, slugging him across the jaw with enough strength to drive him across the room and into the double doors.

Just as fast as it happened, Avis was back on his feet again. He could taste a very thin trail of blood from his front teeth, but by the time he licked the surface, the tooth was locked back into place and the bleeding had naturally healed. All that was left was to spit out the offending droplets, which he did. “I think I almost felt that,” he sneered with a smug grin. “Is that really the best you’ve got, little girl? Because I would have expected someone with my blood to have a little more—”

“There is nothing of you in me!” Unable to fly, Cora ran alongside the bed and threw one foot into the corner of the mattress, pushing herself into the air for a height advantage as her fist came up to her shoulder in an overhead pile-driver. Unlike her last blow, this one was going to have significantly more oomph and Avis eyed the move that should have been far too advanced for this little, five-year-old girl. How is she pulling these adult concepts out of her ass? He made a mental note to find out just as soon as this was all over.

Avis had no intention of allowing that punch to land and as she began her descent, he caught her arm by the elbow and twisted with her, helping her slam into the double doors he had only just peeled himself off. Cora’s clenched fist went through the door up to the shoulder and for a few seconds she dangled from the timber like a hooked coat.

Then her head went back and she howled at the top of her lungs, but as Avis watched the myriad of expressions that flashed across her face, he had the strong suspicion her outburst was due more to surprise than pain. That thought was confirmed when the screeching abruptly stopped and she twisted to level a filthy glare at him. Her feet flipped up to the door and she heaved her arm free, the momentum of which cartwheeled her through the air and landed her squarely on her feet a short distance away. Again, not the move of a child.

Determined to stay the course, Avis looked across at her with a snort of contempt and pursed his lips in a mocking air-kiss. He hated himself for it, but there was too much rage still inside her and he needed to keep her off-balance. “Wow, that almost looked like it hurt.”

If only it was this easy to wind up Tal, he thought to himself as a full-bodied shudder of fury swept through her. While the Highborn Hellions may have preferred to pretend their temper didn’t exist, to the Mystallians, it was better to blow up and move on–bloody nose and all. Bottling things up never helped anyone.

“Why, you son of a scallye!” In her rage, Cora launched herself at him and raked her tiny, Mystallian fingernails across his face; a far cry from the claws she would have ideally used. Avis let her have that one, especially when the scratch barely broke the surface and would be gone in a few seconds anyway. But his hands caught her around the waist and he thrust her away from him, landing her with a bounce in the middle of the master bed. She was immediately back on her feet, now almost at eye level with him. “You do not deserve to be out of the Nine Levels!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “You should—”

“Who told you I was in the Nine Levels?”

Cora’s upper lip rolled into a disgusted sneer. “The shorter list would be to ask who did not,” she shot back savagely. “It was all the males ever talked about and if you ask me, it is right where you belong.”

Avis slowly ran his tongue around his lips, finally understanding where at least part of her rage originated from. He’d greatly feared what would happen to his relationship with Columbine if anyone informed her of the circumstances surrounding her conception, and here it was in black and white with Cora. “So, you were told what I did to your mother?”

“I WAS THERE!” she screamed, jumping onto the foot of the bed and balancing herself with her hand on the bedpost to be on equal height with him. “I was barely six hours old when you raped her right in front of me, you animal!”

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

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