by N. M. Howell
When it became clear he wasn’t going to offer any further explanation, she added, “I mean, how did you guys find me here? My home. My city. Me. How did you guys know I would be here?”
Arry chuckled suddenly then, a loud booming sound that sent the rest of the guys into their own fits of laughter. When they noticed Rhea wasn’t also laughing, silence quickly filled the room once more.
Grayson leaned against the far wall, his arms still crossed and his expression still dark. “We’ve always known you were here.” He spoke as if it were the simplest, most logical thing in the world.
Rhea sputtered. She had spent months planning her escape and was sure her whereabouts were untraceable and her appearance unrecognizable. She used every ounce of magic she could get her hands on, and then some. She had even managed to spell every portal within one hundred miles of Detroit to ensure whoever came through would instantly forget her existence, no simple feat for a twelve-year-old at the time. She was beyond livid. They must have been playing at some really damn awful joke if they thought she was going to believe that her magic hadn’t worked on them.
“Excuse me? How the hell—” She paused. Turning back to Grayson, her eyes grew wide. “Wait, what did you say?”
Grayson’s eyebrows shot up as he stared down at her. “I said we’ve always known you were here.”
“No, not that.” Rhea was exasperated. This was the last thing she wanted to deal with. Growing older in the human world was enough of a burden on a girl. This was not how she had expected to be spending the day. She knew she must have heard him wrong. “The part about my father.”
An eerie stillness filled the room as she waited for someone to speak, for anyone to speak. Her guardians all looked from one another, a quiet hesitation evident on their faces.
“What did you say about my father?” she repeated, her voice loud and commanding. She hadn’t had to use that voice since she was a child, speaking to her subjects under the watchful and disapproving eye of her father. She hated using that voice. It was one of the thousand things she had run away from. The fact that she had just slipped back into her former self, even if for the briefest moment, made her heart ache with rage. Eyes narrowing, she glared up at Grayson.
Grayson ran his hand through his hair, the charcoal tendrils returning immediately to his face. He shook them away, his hand resting on his head, holding back his unruly hair. “King Aeris is dead.”
Rhea couldn’t take a breath. Her entire body felt paralyzed, her heartbeat raging within her ears in such thunderous rhythm, for a moment she couldn’t even hear the buzz of traffic below.
“My father is dead,” she repeated. “Impossible.”
Another hesitant silence passed through the space. The five guardians all held their breaths, as if unsure how to respond or whether to console her. Arry pushed himself from the bed and began pacing, glancing back to Rhea every time he turned. As emotional as he was, he always found it hard to be around any sort of tension.
Roan finally broke the silence. “I’m so sorry, Rhea.”
She blinked up at him, her body and mind so full of conflicting emotion that she felt like she was going to explode. She then took in a deep, shuddering breath and burst out into hysterical laughter.
Arry froze in place and turned toward her, his massive smile returning to him, laughter bubbling to the surface. The rest stood awkwardly, some smiling, some beginning to laugh, then pausing.
Rhea couldn’t contain herself. Her body convulsed in a fit of laughter as years of built-up tension made its way out of her. Her eyes streamed with tears and she rubbed them away with her patchwork quilt.
Finally, after a solid few minutes of her outrageous outburst, she pushed herself up from her bed, blushing wildly and awkwardly wrapping a thin sheet around her waist in the process, blatantly aware that she wasn’t actually wearing any pants. Then she faced her guardians.
“Wow,” she said as she wiped away another tear. “I have to admit, that’s the last thing I was expecting to hear today. And you are certainly the last people I expected to see.”
Taelor stepped forward, his eyes lighting up as he smiled. “You look so much like your mother when you laugh, Rhea.”
Rhea paused. Her laughter stopped and she stood there staring at the elf for a long moment. Her lips twitched up momentarily, then dropped.
She had thought about her mother a lot lately, though she had tried desperately over the past few years to forget her. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, but she eventually managed to repress many those amazing memories of her mother along with the terrible ones of her father. It pained her too much to think about her. Even the smallest memory of her made Rhea’s heart ache so much she wanted to die. She had worked very hard to try and forget. It was the only way she could move on.
Grayson elbowed him in the ribs, causing Taelor to wince. He then nodded and stepped back, his head hung low but his eyes never looking away from Rhea.
“So,” Arry flopped back down on the foot of the bed, his legs crossed and knees bouncing with excitement. “Whatsup, R?”
Grayson kicked him in the back.
“Ow, seriously man, you’ve got to stop doing that.” Arry rubbed his back as he waved Grayson away with his hand. He then turned back to Rhea and smiled that ridiculously large leprechaun grin of his. “Tell us about Detroit.”
Rhea watched him for a long moment as she continued her pacing of the small room. She ignored his question.
“How did he die?” she finally asked, turning back to Grayson. He always seemed to be the one with answers, if she remembered correctly. Truth was, she didn’t remember much at all, having spent the majority of her life doing everything she could so that she wouldn’t have anything to do with the five of them. “I really can’t believe he’s gone. After all this time.”
Grayson glanced around the room, the briefest hint of curiosity flashing behind his dark eyes. “Why don’t we go somewhere else to talk about this. Perhaps somewhere a little less…” he paused, trying to think of the correct word.
“Less shit?” Arry suggested, laughing.
Rhea frowned.
“Dude, don’t insult her. This is actually a pretty cool spot. Looks like you’ve made yourself a home,” Keaven said, glancing around the room. He then turned to Rhea and smiled, but disappointment quickly filled his eyes. “Although, there’s no television.”
“You’ve seriously got to stop with your weird obsession with human technology,” Roan said with a laugh, reaching his massive arm around Keaven’s much smaller frame and pulling him in tight. Rhea could tell from Keaven’s expression that he wasn’t all that thrilled to be tugged around by the larger man in her presence.
“Not my fault we don’t have televisions back home,” Keaven grunted as he pushed Roan away. “They have some seriously cool things here in the human realm.”
Arry burst out laughing, spun himself around and lay back on her bed with his arms folded behind his head. “Oh man, I haven’t seen an episode of Law and Order in over a decade. Could do with some serious daytime TV right about now.” His eyes sparkled at the memory.
Rhea rubbed her eyes and let out a slow breath, suddenly exhausted and confused. The news of her father had momentarily made her forget about just how hard she had worked to pretend these people didn’t exist. “I think I’ve had just about enough of you and your laughing,” she said to Arry. “All right boys, time to leave.” She motioned toward her makeshift front door and waited, scowling at each of them in turn.
“Don’t you want to find out about Aeris?” Keaven asked, a deep crease set into his forehead.
“I’ve spent years trying to forget about my father,” Rhea said with a sigh. “And I’m going to go back to forgetting again as soon as you guys leave.”
“You realize that if you stay, we stay too, right?” Taelor mentioned casually as he picked at his nail.
The rest nodded their agreement, which made Rhea even angrier. She crossed her arms
and glared, too livid to even speak.
“You can pout all you want, Rhea,” Roan said, sliding down against the back wall, stretching his arms overhead and arching his back like a sleepy cat as he yawned. “We’re here to stay this time. No scary father to protect you, now.”
Rhea blinked, her jaw dropping in sheer astonishment. “You seriously think my father was capable of protecting anyone?” She laughed suddenly, then pressed her lips together.
“Well, no, not really,” Roan admitted.
“Definitely not the Otherworld,” Taelor said.
“But you, sure,” Arry added.
Grayson nodded. “He was a despicable man, not worthy of being called a god. But he kept you alive.”
“You obviously have no idea what the hell it was like being his daughter if you thought that was living,” Rhea said. She began pacing the room again. Her mind raged at the memories of her father. She could feel herself breaking all over again just from the memory of him. She couldn’t bear to imagine what horrors everyone else had to endure being in the same world as him after she left.
“And whose fault is that?” Keaven asked.
Rhea paused and looked at him, her expression softening as soon as she met his sad eyes. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she closed her eyes tightly shut and sucked in a slow, steadying breath. She then let it out and repeated the gesture until her heart stopped thundering in her chest.
“You guys have no idea what it was like,” she finally whispered, her eyes still closed.
“We knew.” Grayson stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder.
She flinched back at his touch and he pulled away, but she shot him an apologetic gesture.
He continued, “We could see. We were there. We can be here now if you let us.”
Rhea blinked up at him, her chest tightening as she held his gaze. “What did you mean when you said you knew where I was this whole time?”
“We’re your guardians, Rhea,” he said softly. “We all share a part of you. We’ve known where you’ve been this whole time.”
Tightening the muscles around her eyes, she shook her head disbelieving. “Then why now? Why didn’t you come to find me earlier?”
Grayson pressed his lips together as he softened his eyes. “Because we knew you were safe here.”
“And from all the insane blocking spells and wards and curses and other shit you put up,” Arry added, “we knew you really didn’t want us following you.”
Rhea chewed her lower lip, considering. “My magic really didn’t keep you away?”
Roan shook his head and laughed. “Of course not. But it’s cute that you thought so.” He winked at her and she frowned before turning back to Grayson.
“If you knew I was safe, then why come now? I haven’t removed any of the wards, lowered any of my magic or my glamor. What made you come find me today?”
Grayson simply stared at her, his eyes narrowing. Taelor pushed himself from the far wall and stepped forward, nudging Grayson with his shoulder. Grayson frowned down at him then turned back to Rhea.
Rhea blinked at him in confusion, then turned to Taelor when comprehension dawned on her. “You no longer think I’m safe.”
Taelor nodded. “You’re no longer safe.”
Rhea ran her fingers through her hair as she began pacing the room again. “I don’t get it. My father is dead. He can’t hurt me anymore. Who am I no longer safe from?”
There was a long pause in the room, Rhea’s heartbeat deafening in the small space once again as she waited for an answer.
Grayson absently cracked his knuckles, his eyes suddenly looking tired, more pained than they had before. “Everybody else.”
Rhea’s head spun. “Why would anyone else be a threat to me? No one knows that I’m here or even that I’m still alive.”
“If we knew you were here, chances are others have figured it out, too,” Keaven said.
“Besides,” Arry added as he pushed himself up from the bed yet again and skipped past her, pressing his index finger into her temple as he passed. “Your magic leaves a pretty distinct signature. You are the daughter of the most powerful God King the Otherworld has ever seen.”
“Was,” Taelor corrected. “And you’re not helping, Arry.”
Arry shrugged and busied himself inspecting one of the tattered rugs on the wall, tracing his finger along the intricate pattern as he bounced on the balls of his feet.
“I don’t understand,” Rhea said. “Why would anyone else be after me?”
Glancing back at Rhea with his eyebrows raised, Arry began to whistle an innocent tune. Grayson narrowed his eyes at him, then turned to Rhea. “Because of exactly what Arry said. Think about who you are, Rhea.”
“I’m nobody.”
“You are not nobody,” Taelor said, his voice sharp. “You are Rhea Greystone, only daughter of Aeris.”
“So?”
Taelor frowned and added, “The only true heir to the Otherworld throne.”
Rhea rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. “I’m not. I’m a stupid street kid in Detroit with no ties to that Otherworld you speak of.”
“You are not,” Arry sang.
“I am. I disappeared. I don’t exist,” Rhea argued.
“We found you,” Grayson said.
Rhea frowned. “Yeah, but you’re my guardians. We share that stupid soul bullshit my mother always harped on about.”
“There are others far more powerful than we are,” Keaven said.
“Why do they give a shit about me?” Rhea asked, her tone exasperated. “I want nothing to do with it, with any of it. I refuse to acknowledge that I’m related in any way to that narcissistic, murderous asshole.”
“You can’t deny your heritage, Rhea.”
She groaned at Grayson and flopped down on her bed, her face tense with frustration. “If what you claim is true,” Rhea began, her eyes narrowed and arms crossed, “and I’m under threat somehow from all these mysterious people, then why haven’t they come to find me sooner?”
“You weren’t a threat to them then,” Taelor said, brushing his fingers through his midnight hair. He was calm, his level-headedness enraging to Rhea who sat there, glaring at him. She never remembered him to be so grumpy, so serious. She wondered what had happened to him to make him change so much.
“I’m not a threat to them now,” Rhea countered.
Keaven frowned. “You are.”
“I’m not.”
“You are,” Taelor said.
“I’m not.” Rhea raised her voice, practically shouting at them. She stared daggers at each of them in turn, daring them to speak.
Grayson knelt down in front of her and looked her level in the eye. “You are,” he said firmly, placing his hands on Rhea’s knees. She glanced down at them then back up to his raging eyes. “You have to be.”
Rhea shook her head, her eyes nearly brimming with tears of rage. She whispered, “I’m not.”
“Please,” Keaven implored. “You have to be.”
She glanced up at him and pressed her lips together.
“You don’t know what it was like,” Roan began, adjusting his position on the floor so that he leaned in toward Rhea. “Things were bad when you were there…”
“I…” Rhea began. She knew full-well how bad things were. She had been right in the thick of it. It was why she left, why she ran away and never looked back.
“They’re worse now,” Taelor finished.
Rhea widened her eyes at him, not fully understanding the weight to his words. “And what am I supposed to do about it?”
Grayson waited a moment, the room filling with an overwhelming silence. Rhea stared desperately into his eyes. He held her gaze, his own expression pleading.
“You have to rule.”
4
Rhea burst out laughing so hard she nearly peed. “That’s hilarious,” she cried through tears. “Funniest thing I’ve heard all day. Thanks for the laugh, guys. Mission accomplished, y
ou can leave now. Thanks for stopping by.”
The men stared at her as if she were some foreign creature they’d never seen before.
“We’re not making a joke,” Grayson said.
Arry perked up. “You want a joke? I’ve got some good—”
Grayson elbowed him in the ribs.
“Ow, come on, man,” Arry groaned, rubbing his left side with both hands. “You’ve gotta stop doing that.”
“Stop being an idiot and be serious for a second,” Grayson commanded. His fiery expression made even Rhea step back.
“I need to start wearing armor around you,” Arry muttered darkly.
“You guys really aren’t leaving, are you?” Rhea asked, rubbing circles into her temples with her thumbs.
Keaven shook his head. “Nope, sorry Rhea. Here to stay.”
Rhea bit her lip, considering. “All right, fine,” she said. “But I haven’t eaten yet and I’m starving. Let me run down and pick up some Chinese food and then we can talk about this further over breakfast, okay?”
“Chinese?” Taelor asked, his nose scrunching. “Sounds different.”
Keaven beamed. “You don’t spend enough time in this realm to really appreciate the finer things, man. Chinese food is the bomb!”
Rhea couldn’t help but laugh. Most things weren’t shared between realms, cuisine included. It was one of her greatest joys of living in the city, experiencing strange new cuisine from restaurants around town. She had no money and had to steal most of her meals, of course, but that just made the reward that much sweeter.
“Let me go get us some food,” she said. “Stay here, I’ll be right back. It’s just downstairs.”
The men all nodded apart from Grayson, who frowned. “I’m coming with you,” he said, stepping in front of her.
