Page 61 of Indecent

Nicolas offered him a lopsided smile. “He’s getting better, isn’t he?”

“Yes. Impressively so.”

Nicolas paused, his jaw working from side to side, and Chaol squinted at him. What was happening?

Finally, Nicolas spoke. “If I asked you to tell me what happened in Hell…”

Chaol shrugged. “I would. So would he, though, so I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just ask him.”

Nicolas ducked his head, smiling wistfully. “Danny and I, we were all we had for a long time. We lost our parents when we were young, and we leaned on each other for a lot. If the situation were reversed, I could see myself trying to shield Danny from the bad stuff—glossing over it or downright omitting it, if I thought it might cause him pain.”

“Ah. You worry he’d do that to you, and you’d wind up with only part of the story.”

Nicolas shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah, I guess.”

He was certain Daniel could hear them, even though they were sparring about thirty feet away. If he didn’t want Chaol to tell Nicolas something, he was perfectly capable of interrupting them.

“Well,” Chaol said thoughtfully. “It was Hell, really. We didn’t go through the Pit, where the damned souls are tortured, so he probably didn’t see the most traumatic parts of it. I wouldn’t have taken him there. His soul would have been in danger, even if he didn’t belong there. Most demons down there haven’t seen a good soul, and they were drawn to him like moths to a flame. But they also liked to prey on his guilt. It was too dangerous for me to leave him alone at any time.”

“Guilt?” Nicolas asked.

“Yes. When night would fall—yes, there is technically a day and night even in Hell—wraiths would come out of the darkness to try and hypnotize him away from the light of our fire. I stood watch and made sure he was safe, but there was a time when he was ensnared by one. One of them appeared as a human man who accused him of murdering him. Someone named Casey.”

Nicolas looked stricken. “I feel like that was more my fault than Danny’s. Was he okay?”

“Yes. I protected him. Many of the monsters in Hell feed on the humans’ fear and guilt for the sins they committed while they were alive. Even though Daniel was a good soul bound for Heaven, they found his weaknesses and exploited them. The easiest way to protect him was to stay close, keep a light burning at night, and never let him out of my sight.”

“That must have been hard,” Nicolas remarked.

Chaol shrugged. “It was worth it. He was worth it.”

“How did he wind up going to Hell, anyway? You said his soul was bound for Heaven. Shouldn’t he have gone there automatically?”

Chaol shook his head. “I found him in Purgatory. All of the gates to Hell had been shut because, as it turned out, Ramiel had slipped inside. I was locked out of Hell, because I’d been on my way to the surface, and I was in Purgatory when I heard Danny’s voice. He was talking to a reaper who looked like your mother.”

Nicolas’s honey brown eyes widened. “Our m-mother?”

“Yep. It was a temptation. The reaper wanted him to leave Purgatory. That’s their job, essentially. By appearing as someone he would want to go with, it hoped to tempt him to accept his fate. I gave him another option. He could come with me. We could go through Hell together, turn him into a demon, and then come back to Earth. It was the only way I could leave Purgatory with all the gates locked down, and it was the only way he could return to Earth.”

Nicolas turned away, watching Daniel spar for a few breaths. “What was it like, turning him into a demon? Did it hurt?”

For the first time, Daniel turned to look at them, his expression conflicted.

Nicolas expected Chaol to tell the truth, and the truth was, “Yes, it hurt, but only for a little while. And now he’ll never have to feel like that again. He’ll be with us for eternity.”

The tension in Daniel’s face eased—and then Draego sucker-punched him and drew his attention back into the fight.

Nicolas relaxed, nodding to himself. “You’re right. I’m glad he’s here, even though I do hate that it caused him pain. I don’t ever want him to feel—” He choked, shaking himself. “Sorry. It’s just—I watched him die. I held him in my arms, covered in blood.”

Chaol didn’t want to imagine what that would have felt like. He’d rather die than lose Daniel.

Impulsively, he reached out and rested a hand on Nicolas’s shoulder. “Don’t apologize. That must have been awful. Just because he’s here again doesn’t erase what happened. It’s okay to…” He paused, searching for the right words. He didn’t know how to do this. People didn’t come to him for comfort. “It’s okay to grieve for that loss and celebrate his return at the same time. One doesn’t negate the other.”

Nicolas turned his head to meet his eyes. They were darker than Daniel’s had been, a more woodsy brown that Daniel’s whiskey brown had been. He was a little taller, a little broader, but Chaol could easily see Daniel in the shape of his jaw and the line of his nose.

“Thank you,” he said. “It’s weird to feel sad about that moment when he’s back. But you’re right, it was a rough time, and I’m still dealing with it. It’s easier now that he’s back, at least.” He smiled wanly, and Chaol let his hand fall away, returning his gaze to the fight.

“Is he different, now that he’s a demon?” Nicolas asked.