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“I am hateful! I’m hateful because he is gone, and your soul pair is to blame!” he screamed.
“My soul pair is an innocent caught up in this confusing situation because you cannot control your temper or your magic. It is no wonder since you walked away from the teaching of your people,” Zaide growled.
Daithi’s expression crumbled even more so, and I didn’t think that was possible. He placed his hand out and shut his eyes. “Don’t. Don’t, Zaide,” he whispered. My curiosity peaked at the mention of Daithi’s past and his reaction to it, but I didn’t think it was the right time to ask questions.
Zaide approached him slowly, his voice low and angry. “I warned you once already today to leave her alone. Yet you tried to kill her.” He shook his head slowly, fury holding his body stiff. “And I have already fought to defend her once today. Shall I ensure you are bloodied and unconscious as her attempted kidnappers were for attempting to hurt my soul pair?”
Ooooooo, nice.
I didn’t know Zaide had it in him. He towered over Daithi, looked down on him with a sneer on his face. His arms relaxed at his side, but I could tell he was ready. He said he was a slave, but now I wondered what they made him to do.
Manual labor? He has the strength for it. Security? He has the glare down perfect. I can’t imagine him as a docile captive serving his master. Underground fighter?
I almost brushed it off as my overactive imagination. But as I stared at him, I saw the shadow of a darkness cross his face. A shadow I’d seen on many men capable of many horrific things. As the finder of all things, I knew I’d hit the nail on the head. I wondered then just how much he was hiding beneath his calm, religious exterior.
Daithi started at Zaide, his eyes glowing and his hair bristling under the exhales of Zaide’s flaring nostrils, not intimidated at all. Daithi scoffed, “You are welcome to try. My magic is faster than your fists, and you wouldn’t get to touch me before I suffocate you like I did your soul pair.”
Zaide’s purple scars and eyes flashed dangerously, and I knew he was about to strike. I interrupted them before they came to blows. “Whoa! Guys, what the fuck did I say about friendship?”
I jumped between them, pushing them apart and hoping I didn’t get a walloping in Daithi’s place. They separated easily, and I knew deep down they didn’t want to fight. They did care about each other. “You want to lose each other as well as your loves? Then fucking carry on.”
Daithi moved backward and collapsed on a dining table chair. Zaide moved backward to lean his hulking mass against the back of the sofa, his arms crossed.
I continued, “If you want a plan to fix all of this, then let’s talk, but I won’t hang around watching you tear emotional chunks out of each other. Or real chunks either.”
Tear emotional chunks. I’m a fucking poet.
Daithi’s hands muffled his words as he moaned, “He isn’t gone. I’d know. The witch might have delivered his fire, but it has not been extinguished.”
I softened my voice. “That might be true, but we can’t know for sure. What we do know is that Clawdia is Zaide’s soul pair, and they should be together.”
She should be with me. I saw her first. She was mine first.
But jealousy, like Daithi’s anger, wouldn’t get us anywhere, so I turned my attention back to the argument.
“I can’t give up on him.” Daithi sat back in his chair, folding his arms stubbornly, the hint of a pout forming on his lips.
I sighed. “I’m not saying you have to, but for fuck’s sake, listen to logic. We have no clue who the witches delivered the fire to. There hasn’t been a payment into their account for it. Nothing shows they are leaving soon, so I can only assume their job here isn’t done. We need to get more information from them, and we need to get Clawdia back.”
He shouted, “She is not the priority!” I almost expected him to stomp his foot like a fucking child, but he saw my glare and wisely stopped talking.
My temper, which was usually calm, flared to life. “She is while we have no information on Savida’s fire!” I shouted back. I was suddenly angry at his selfishness, the single-minded arrogance. “You don’t get to call the fucking shots around here when you don’t have the first clue about how to get your demon back. Unless you’re going to fall into a vision that tells us exactly where his fire is, you can shut the fuck up.”
As soon as I popped thepon “up,” Daithi dropped. His eyes rolled back in his head, and the sound of his body hitting the floor was like the bang of a drum punctuating my last sentence.
I stared at my hands in wonder. “Zaide? Mate? Did you just see that? I’m a fucking superhero.”
Zaide sighed and began rearranging Daithi’s prone limbs to a more comfortable position. “You are not a superhero, Charlie. It is by coincidence that he has fallen into a vision. I was too furious to see the signs, the anxiousness and the twitching. And I was too late to catch him.” He sighed heavily as he straightened. “What is becoming of us?”
“Well, I can’t say I expected that, but it stopped you guys fighting, so that’s a plus.”
Zaide crossed his arms and huffed. “If we were fighting, he would be dead.”
I laughed. “Big talk from the muscled, religious otherworlder. I’d have put my money on the magic elf ruining relationships left, right, and center so he can’t get hurt like this again.”
He eyed me curiously. “You are a very astute human. I don’t believe it’s a common trait of your kind.”
“Are you saying I’m special? Because I might blush.” I walked to the kitchen table.
