“Sorry. I’m not being rude, but you’re not giving me time to think. I need that in order to consent, and the potshots distract me.” My smile is sheepish, but it makes their spiky emotions recede almost immediately. That lets me breathe more easily and I let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks. I needed that.”
“Did us being calmer actually help you?” Salem asks curiously.
“Yep. My chest got looser and I can breathe better,” I answer immediately. “I could sort of feel your emotions pressing in with my anxiety and it was… a lot.”
Anton’s gaze narrows on me. “Feel us, you say?”
“Mmm hmm.” I breathe out again, shaking my limbs one by one to dispel the sparkling sensation in them that often precludes a panic episode. “Now I can do my things to help keep on an even keel. But thinking you were going to really fight over me was definitely not good.”
Slash snorts, shaking his head at me. “Little demon, we will never truly fight over you. That would be ridiculous. You are one of us, and that means you belong to all of us.”
“Even those who don’t have a clue yet,” Salem mutters to himself. Oriel’s eyes sparkle and he raises a fist to bump it with my roommate’s.
Surprisingly, I let out a hiss at them, and my hands fly to my mouth to cover it. I mumble behind them, “What the hell was that?”
Xerxes throws their head back and laughs, but the others just stare at them. Once they’re done, they grin. “KK, you just hissed at those two goobers like a cat. I fuckingloveit. I don’t knowwhy,obviously, but damn, that was funny as fuck.”
My face turns beet red, and I shrug. “I don’t know why, either. But… take it as a warning, I guess.”
“That would be in line with how it sounded.” Anton smirks as he tilts his head. “We should get moving, so we’re not late. Kit, if you’re going to allow Oriel to provide his estimation of help, then say it now.”
I look at all of them, biting my lip nervously for a moment. Finally, I nod. “Okay. Do it, O. But you and Salem better not fucking let me trip on something or I’ll skin you alive.”
“Nowthatis something I enjoy seeing,” Slash says mildly. “And an excellent demonic threat, little demon. Very good.”
His praise makes everything light up within me as the crow brings the blindfold to my eyes again.
I havegotto find time to talk to Dank about this shit before I get into trouble with these guys.
We walkedfor about twenty minutes, though I felt the atmosphere change at one point, and I don’t know why. It was odd, and I felt like I was in the Arctic because of the chill in the air. When we actually stop, I wait for Oriel to remove the blindfold, but he doesn’t.
“Hey, when do I get to see? And what was that weird… vibe… in the middle of the trip?” I frown, rubbing my hands on my biceps. “It was freezing for like three minutes.”
“Don’t freak out, okay?”
Oh, that helps a lot, thanks… said no one with anxiety disorders ever.
“Telling me not to panic is neverevergoing to keep me from freaking out, Salem.” I aim a stern expression in the direction his voice came from, hoping it’s effective. “That’s like saying ‘don’t think about it’ when you have to piss.”
“Huh. I didn’t think about it that way. Good metaphor, KK,” X chirps as they come closer. “But to answer your question—since everyone else is too chickenshit to do it—Oriel shadow traveled us, so the trip was shorter. For those of uswithoutthose powers, it feels weird. Though, I can’t saycoldis what it felt like to me.”
“It feels like that to me.”
My entire body goes rigid as Jasper’s amused tone comes from a few feet away. The cloth over my eyes now feels like a binding, and I make a soft sound of panic as I reach up to claw it off. I didn’t know that he was coming, nor that I’d react quite so keenly to him if he showed up while I was that vulnerable. My eyes dart around the circle of demons, noting Zav has arrived as well, and when I get to the prince, he looks strangely upset.
Why the fuck is he upset? I’m the one who was shadow traveled, blindfolded, and snuck up on.
“Uh… yeah. So um…” I fumble my words as I mentally run through every mantra I know to get myself under control. “Not to be a pain in the ass or anything, but where is here? And why did we have to shadow travel? Oh, and why the fuck didn’t anyonetellme?”
Anger floods me, and I know it’s just trying to combat the panic about Jasper being here while I could not see him. Logically, I’m totally aware that the prince could have hurt memanytimes before now if he actually intended to. And Idon’tthink he’d do something like my past trauma at all—I really don’t. But I don’t feel entirely safe around him yet because we can’t seem to find stable ground, so my brain is running through emergency protocols.
“Don’t be mad, KK,” Oriel says as he steps closer to untie the blindfold with gentle hands. “I didn’t want to scare you. But we needed to move more quickly once we covered your eyes. The terrain would have been dangerous in that state.”
“Just…tell me,” I grit out. “I know you probably had good intentions, and maybe didn’t even think I’d notice.” His sheepish expression tells me that’s spot on. “But I did, so that should be a lesson about assuming things when we don’t know what the fuck I am or what powers are still developing.”
“He’s right, actually,” Jasper says and I whip around to gape at the typically dickish royal. “We shouldn’t assume anything about his abilities until he’s fully emerged. He could be any combination of things; we’ve all agreed on that. That means anythingwedo might not affect him like us, but like the others, or even things we have no experience with.”
“I… I…” That very smart statement, said with zero snark, has me speechless.
