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The swirl of chaos in my chest doubled in size.
Johnny didn’t try to argue, simply clapping a hand on my shoulder on his way out. Aria squeezed my hand again before she sat on our bed heavily.
“What do you need from me?” she asked.
My angel immediately settled at the question. I wished he would share some of that peace because I, on the other hand, started to pace the room,
“I can’t believe he’s alive.” The words left me in a rush. “I watched him die, Aria. I saw him.”
She nodded, hands clasping in her lap.
“And he let me think that— foryears. Would he have ever told me? I was walking around blaming myself for his death, and he was never even dead, to begin with.”
My fingers ran through my hair, tempted to pull at the strands.
“He had good reasons,” Aria said softly, but I barked out a laugh.
“They’re excuses.”
She was quiet, and my angel was annoyed that I’d managed to push her away again. It wasn’t her fault that my life had been a mess since before she’d even entered the equation, yet she always ended up in the crossfire.
“Sariel, think about it,” she continued. “He was just a kid, and his father almost got him killed in an attempt to killyou.”
“But what about when he was older?” I sniped back. “He’s making enough money to fund the entire Resistance and then some. So why didn’t he reach out to me?”
Aria bit her lower lip at my tone.
I took a steadying breath, willing myself to calm down; it didn’t really help, but when I looked over at her on the bed, her eyes downcast, I huffed and said, “I’m going to shower.”
It was easier to strip down and step into the stream than it was to try and force myself to come to terms with everything. The sick feeling in my stomach didn’t fade even when I turned the temperature to nearly scalding, but by the time I got out, everything had stopped pressing in on me so tightly.
Aria was gone by the time I stepped back into the bedroom and dressed; my angel was pissy about it, insisting that we should go find her, but I couldn’t bring myself to.
Instead, I stretched out on the bed and got comfortable, still exhausted from the last few days. It wasn’t long before I drifted off, grateful for the reprieve.
I woke to the feeling of someone crawling into bed with me, and when Aria tucked herself against me, I pulled her close.
Just like that, everything felt right in the world.
When I buried my face into her hair and breathed her in, I felt a soft brush of her lips to my collarbone.
“Goodnight, Sariel.” Her voice was hushed, and I smiled a bit when her fingers slipped under the hem of my shirt, tracing patterns into my skin.
“Goodnight, Aria.”
2
A BREWING STORM
ARIA
Sariel was not himself.
At first, I’d thought it was obviously because his brother—who he’d thought was dead for years—had suddenly returned to life, but it wasn’t just that. He hadn’t been able to look at any of our friends since then, and I wasn’t entirely sure if I should even be the one addressing something like this with them. Johnny wasn’t exactly forthcoming either, though, which left it up to me to explain why my mate was moodier than usual.
“So…” Marilyn paused, considering the best way to phrase her statement. “The Leader is his dead brother, and instead of being overjoyed that he’s alive, he’s… pissed off?”
“It’s more complicated than that.” Reese sighed, ever the empathetic one. “It’s been years, and he never told him the truth? I’d be upset, too.”
