by Jenn Burke
In the two-plus hours since they left the ball field, returned to Nassim’s apartment to get dressed for an audience with a king, and then drove the not quite two hundred kilometers to Montreal, Nassim had barely said a dozen words to him. Nassim’s anger seemed to have iced over, leaving frigid indifference in its wake. And Aidan still didn’t know why.
It should have bothered him, and on some level it did, but he was mostly numb inside and out. When he was getting dressed in his room, he’d eyed his notebook of Aidan-isms, but he hadn’t opened it. He’d written that list with the intention of referring to it when the world didn’t feel quite so conquerable, like today, but he couldn’t help but wonder if all of those traits were actually real if he wasn’t even human. Thinking about what he did on the ball field made his hands shake and his insides feel as though they would rattle themselves into pieces, so he pushed it aside. He kept his mind blank. Unengaged.
That lasted for all of an hour, and then he started to get angry.
Angry at the world, for not knowing how to distinguish a mythos in human form from a human. Angry at his doctors—shouldn’t Dr. Beausoleil have clued in that his reaction to the hypnosis was weird? Angry at whatever had happened to him to steal his memories. But mostly angry at Nassim, at Nassim’s reaction.
Aidan didn’t deserve to be treated like a—like a criminal. It wasn’t as though he kept the information from Nassim purposely. But Nassim was acting like Aidan had done something specifically to… to hurt him. And that wasn’t fair.
Nassim stopped the car in front of a large staircase. When they got out, a couple of people materialized, someone to grab their two bags and someone else to take Nassim’s keys. They followed the servant who’d taken their bags into the house, where they were greeted by a short man with… horns?
“Lord Kader, it is wonderful to see you again,” the man said with a bow of his head.
Lord?
“Always a pleasure, Ivo.” Unlike the spare words he’d shared with Aidan since the ball field, Nassim’s greeting for Ivo was warm and genuine.
Of course it was.
Ivo turned to Aidan. “Welcome to the royal estate, Mr. Bishop. King Luca, Prince Eirian, and Duke Rudel are in the king’s study. Could I bring you refreshments once you’re settled?”
Nassim grunted something about coffee as Ivo started down the hall, and Aidan trailed behind them.
Luca, Eirian, Rudel. The names meant nothing to Aidan, and neither did the titles, with the exception of king. Even his swiss-cheese memory retained some information about the Gryphon King—more about the position than the mythos being who held it. The Gryphon King ruled the Mythos Kingdom, which wasn’t actually a kingdom in the land-based sense that human countries were. The Mythos Kingdom was more an association of beings, with governance and territories that overlapped human land holdings. It was a setup that shouldn’t have worked, but it had since the treaty ended the war.
Aidan tried to find some emotion other than pissed off at the prospect of meeting royalty, but his brain seemed to be stuck on that one setting. He didn’t want to be there. He certainly didn’t want to be standing next to Nassim at the moment, but he had the feeling that if he tried to walk out the door they’d entered through, someone would stop him. One didn’t blow off an appointment with a king.
Ivo opened the door to a stately room filled with pieces of aged wood furniture and books… so many books. They were all old, leather- and fabric-bound, and worn enough that Aidan deduced they were opened frequently. Paintings in various styles hung at strategic points in the room, almost all of them depicting some sort of mythos creature. The largest, behind the massive and ornately carved desk, featured a fully shifted gryphon with its beak opened wide in a scream.
Aidan wondered if that was a depiction of the king, but there was no indication on the painting itself.
As Ivo announced Nassim and Aidan, three men rose from their seats on the comfortable-looking leather couch and chairs in front of a broad stone fireplace. Ivo introduced them. The Gryphon King, Luca, had long dark brown hair and ears that seemed a little too prominent. Prince Eirian, his husband, looked younger than the king, with dark gold hair, glasses, and a short, well-groomed beard. He wore a bright, welcoming smile. The third man was Rudel MacEachern, Duke of the Dragons. He was bigger than the other two and doing a good impression of a lumberjack, with his massive build covered in raggedy jeans and a red flannel shirt over a skin-tight black T-shirt. His short auburn hair, a few shades darker than Aidan’s bright red mop, was messy, as though he’d spent the last hour in a convertible.
None of them looked like royalty, nobility, or even executives.
“Hi.” Should he bow? Nope. Fuck it.
Prince Eirian shared a look with his husband and then waved at the chair nearest Aidan. “Come, sit down. Is anyone fetching you something to—” A soft tap on the door interrupted him, and two servants popped inside with a coffee carafe and plate of snacks on a cart.
King Luca settled back onto the couch, his posture casual and unconcerned. “Leave the cart, Ivo. We’ll serve ourselves.”
“Certainly, Your Majesty,” Ivo said with a nod. He and the other two servants left the room.
Aidan followed the prince’s instruction to sit. Nassim remained standing at the side of the conversation space since there was nowhere left to sit. Aidan could feel him hovering, which wouldn’t have bothered him a few hours ago. But now it set his teeth on edge.
“Merry gods, Nassim, you don’t need to hover over him like a hen.” Duke Rudel got up from his chair. “Here, sit. Don’t argue. Just sit your ass down.”
Without a fuss, Nassim acquiesced to Rudel’s demand. It was the first time Aidan had seen Nassim let himself be directed.
Rudel settled onto the couch beside Luca and draped an arm over the king’s shoulders. That… had to breach protocol, didn’t it? Luca simply chuckled and shook his head, unperturbed.
“So….” Rudel waggled his brows. “You had some excitement tonight, I hear.”
“He’s mythos,” Nassim said. “And I don’t know what kind.”
Aidan straightened in his chair. “You never asked.”
Nassim squinted at him. “You said you didn’t know.”
“I don’t. But we could have maybe tried to figure it out for ourselves, you think?”
“I’m not a walking encyclopedia of mythos knowledge.”
“There’s this neat thing called the internet—”
“Okay. Whoa. Time out.” Rudel held up his hands in a T symbol. “Ding ding. Separate corners, please.”
Aidan slouched into his chair and turned his gaze away from Nassim. As though it weren’t bad enough that they were taking up the king’s time, now they had to argue in front of royalty?
“Hey.”
At the soft tone, Aidan looked up to discover Prince Eirian had taken up a seat on the edge of the coffee table directly in front of him. His smile had diminished somewhat—it was still welcoming, but at a lower wattage. Behind the lenses of his glasses, his eyes were a whiskey brown.
“Let me guess. Nassim dragged you here without much explanation, didn’t he?”
Aidan glanced at Nassim and turned his gaze back to Eirian. “Pretty much.”
“I thought as much. King Luca—my husband—” Eirian shot a look full of love at Luca. “He has a connection to every mythos in the kingdom. He’ll be able to determine what sort of mythos you are—something we’re all dying to know, but no one more so than you, I imagine.”
Aidan shrugged. “To be honest, I… I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Understandable. Still, it’s always better to know than to be left in the dark.” Eirian tilted his head. “You want to tell me what happened?”
Not really, but Aidan figured there wasn’t any point in trying to hide from it. He told them about the amnesia—and by their nods, they already knew about it—and then shared what had happened from his perspective, which was far less impressive than wha
t everyone else had seen. By the time he was done recounting it, Rudel had lost some of his jovial nature, and Luca had scooted forward on the couch.
“I didn’t know,” Aidan said quietly. Forcefully. “I swear it.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Eirian said.
“He knew.” At the rumbled contradiction, everyone turned to look at Nassim. “Before his disappearance. He had to have known.”
The king narrowed his eyes. “Every mythos’s experience is different.”
“Someone who is half-mythos, or a minor, less powerful mythos species? Yes, sure, they might reach adulthood without knowing they have another side to themselves. But Luca—Your Majesty—there is no way that’s the case here. The power rolling off him….”
“What are you talking about?” Aidan demanded. “What power?”
“On the ball field. It made my hair stand on end.”
“That was the electricity. The lightning. It wasn’t—”
“It was you!”
Luca clapped his hands, preventing Aidan from snapping back at Nassim. “Children,” he said, his humor lightening the tense atmosphere. “Rather than jump to conclusions, let me have a look, hm?”
He regarded Aidan for a long moment, and the silence stretched out, growing tense and heavy. It felt a lot like the air when Aidan was reveling in the storm. Aidan could feel the power wrapping around him, investigating, exploring, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It actually reminded him of that feeling he had upon waking in Nassim’s bed that morning—a lifetime ago—in that space before Aidan realized what Nassim was doing and before Nassim freaked out.
Nassim had been holding him so tightly, so carefully, as though he were a precious thing. For that instant, Aidan belonged. He had a place.
“You’re an anemoi.” Luca’s voice roused Aidan from the warm memories. “A spirit of the wind, but given what you did this afternoon, I think it’s more accurate to say you’re a storm spirit.”
“Storm… spirit?” Aidan breathed.
“It’s exceedingly rare to find one in human form. They prefer to remain incorporeal and ride on the wind.” Luca gave Nassim a nod. “And yes, the chances of you not knowing this before your disappearance are slim. Spirits are, by their nature, incredibly powerful, since they take their energy directly from the elements, from Earth—which is an eminently massive power source.”
Nassim shot to his feet and glared at Aidan as he began to pace. “So you knew. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Aidan ignored him for the moment. “I’m sorry, King Luca, but you have to be wrong. If I’d known, why would I have pretended to be human? It makes no sense.”
“Do you think the king is lying?” Nassim demanded.
“No! But he can’t know for sure—”
“He just said—”
Aidan jolted to his feet, hard enough to send the chair scooting backward into the coffee cart Ivo had left, making the porcelain cups tinkle together. Thunder rumbled in the distance. “Why is it so important? Even if I knew, even if I chose to hide it, what does it matter?”
“It matters because you lied!”
“And I don’t know why I would have! I’m not the same—”
“That’s bullshit. You’re the same man I’ve known for half a year,” Nassim said, his voice low. “How you act, your mannerisms, your morals—they haven’t changed.”
Eirian stepped into Aidan’s view as lightning lit up the study’s window. “Maybe we should take a break, huh? Just—”
Aidan pushed past the prince and strode up to Nassim. “Then why did I lie, Nassim?”
Nassim’s dark eyes glittered. “I don’t know.”
Aidan threw his hands up, exasperated. “Why the hell are you so angry at me?”
“Because you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t know!”
“Before!” Nassim shouted. “You didn’t tell me before.”
The heat in the room edged upward as dragonfire flared—burned—in Nassim’s eyes. The sight of two coal-red points in the dark should have terrified Aidan, but it didn’t. Nassim didn’t scare him. Never had.
Another crack of thunder made the windows rattle.
Rudel stood and slowly moved around the couch. Aidan had almost forgotten about the other people in the room. They seemed content to stay on the sidelines after Eirian’s initial attempt at diffusion. But clearly the rise in temperature and Nassim’s glowing eyes were a signal that tempers were too hot—literally.
Aidan didn’t care. “Even if I knew, I don’t think it’s something I’m legally required to—”
“Merry gods. It’s not a matter of legality,” Nassim snarled.
“Then why are you so fucking offended? Are you mad because one of your hoard had a secret? Or are you just pissed off that you didn’t know? Is your ego so big—”
“We were mates,” Nassim roared. Then he froze, and the fire in his eyes snuffed out. “Shit. No. Aidan—”
Aidan stumbled back. “What?”
Hands were suddenly at Aidan’s shoulders. He struggled for a few seconds, halfheartedly, and then allowed them—allowed Eirian—to guide him to the couch. “Sit,” Eirian ordered, a thread of steel in his voice that hadn’t been there previously.
Nassim continued to stare at Aidan, wide-eyed. “That’s—I didn’t mean—”
Rudel stepped in front of Nassim and placed his hands on Nassim’s shoulders. “Breathe.”
“I didn’t—I didn’t mean to—”
“I know. Just breathe. Okay?”
“We were what?” Aidan managed. He barely noticed the thunder receding into nothingness.
“Mates.” Luca sighed. “That explains a lot.”
“Doesn’t it?” Eirian agreed softly.
Silence descended, and the air of the study was filled only with harsh, aggravated breaths. Aidan’s heart was pounding so fast, so hard, he felt light-headed, but he refused to back down and let Nassim wriggle away from an explanation.
“We were mates,” Nassim finally said, so low Aidan almost couldn’t hear him. Nassim looked up at Rudel, who still held him by the shoulders. “After all this time, I’d found….”
“Like Riladi?” Rudel asked quietly.
Nassim nodded.
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Eirian pressed Aidan’s head down between his knees, and he let it happen. His entire body quavered, and he was suddenly glad he hadn’t had any coffee yet.
Mates.
“But why—” With a quick shake of his head, Aidan denied the tears that wanted to fall. He straightened. “Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
“All of the doctors warned me that you needed space. You might not feel the same way, they said. You might not ever want me in that way again.” Nassim pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes and then cast his hands back down almost angrily. “I thought this was a sign that I wasn’t meant to have a mate. That we’d acted too quickly, too rashly, and here was a chance to start fresh, for both of us.”
Aidan shook his head. He didn’t know much in this world, but he knew Nassim—knew him, with a bone-deep certainty so clear, so strong, that it was a wonder he hadn’t recognized the bond for what it was earlier. But how could he have, when Nassim was determined to keep that knowledge from him? “You were scared.”
Nassim said nothing, but that didn’t deter Aidan.
“I disappeared, and you—you thought it was Riladi all over again. Didn’t you?”
The way that Nassim’s head drooped said enough.
“So you’re a liar and a coward,” Aidan said. “Good to know.”
Rudel bristled. “Hey. Let’s leave the name-calling out of this.”
Nassim lifted his head to glare at Aidan again and made to step past Rudel, but the duke held him back. “You’re one to talk. Those marks on your chest, over your heart? Each of them signifies a step in our mating ritual. There are three steps, carried out at various phases of the moon. The idea behind it is to ensure the dragons who wish to mate have tim
e to consider it—consider all of the ramifications and all of the consequences—and also the ability to bow out of the ritual at any time. So those marks, Aidan?” He clenched his jaw for a moment. “They represent a month—from our decision to mate to each of those two steps. A month where you could have told me you were mythos. And you didn’t.”
That cast a whole new light on his lie of omission. It was one thing not to share that info with his boss, but his mate? Why wouldn’t he have told Nassim? It made no sense.
Luca stood. “Rudy, you’re good to take Nassim back to Ottawa?”
Aidan jerked his gaze to the king. “What?”
“I think everyone could use some cooling off.” Luca glanced at Eirian, who nodded slightly. “Aidan will stay here for a few days.”
“Don’t I get a say in this?” Aidan demanded.
“No, I’m afraid not.” Eirian’s words were firm, unyielding, but the tone was conciliatory.
“I have my own apartment.” It was cold, lonely, and empty, but it was his. “I don’t have to go back to Nassim’s.”
Nassim flinched. Aidan tried to ignore how it made his heart ache.
“You may have known you were mythos before and could control it, but without your memories, we have no way of knowing the extent of your mastery over your abilities,” Eirian said. “You’ll need training, which would normally be provided by someone close to you, but in this case….” He looked at Nassim and back to Aidan. “In this case I think it’s best for everyone involved to have some space. I’ll show you what I can over the next few days.”
Aidan met Nassim’s gaze. The dragonfire was gone, as though it had never been, and he looked… old. For the first time, Aidan saw the weight of age in Nassim’s eyes, in the dull black, in the lines etched at their corners.
He gritted his teeth, but he couldn’t have stopped the words if he wanted to. “Make yourself an appointment with Dr. Kira. Please.”
