CHAPTER 4
SETH SPUN, POINTING TO THE LOCK ON THE WINDOW. “OPEN,” HE mouthed.
I planted my hands on my hips. “Why?”
His stare became dangerous. “Now.”
Against my better judgment, I unlocked the window and pushed it up. I had about a second to step back before he jumped through the window like a damn alley cat. My room was dark, but I could make out the eerie glow to his eyes.
“What do you want? Hey! Don’t shut that window. You’re not staying.”
“Do you want me to leave it open so the next Guard who makes his rounds looks in here and sees me in your bedroom?” He shut the window and pulled the rope on the blinds. They clattered against the windowsill.
“I’ll tell them you forced your way in here.” I walked over to the lamp and switched it on. Hanging out in a dark bedroom with Seth wasn’t on my list of things to do at the moment.
Seth smiled. “I wanted to apologize for not being at training today.”
I watched him with a general sense of wariness. He tossed a few loose strands out of his eyes as he surveyed me with almost the same look. “Apology accepted. You can now leave.”
“Do something to your arm?”
“Huh?”
He leaned over, brushing his fingers over the elbow I’d just cracked. “This.”
There was a small, barely visible red spot. “How in the world can you see that? I hit it on the door a few minutes ago.”
A grin slipped over Seth’s lips. “You’re so unbelievably graceful. Should I kiss it and make it better for you?”
I could tell he was only half joking. His presence around the Covenant had created quite the stir. So had his… extracurricular activities. If bed-hopping ever became a major sport, Seth would go pro. Or so I’d heard. I stepped around him. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
He followed me around the edge of the bed. “I’ve been told my lips can make a girl forget just about anything. You should try it out.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Anyway, why were you with Lucian instead of at practice?”
“Alex, that’s none of your business.”
Somehow I’d cornered myself between the wall and the bed. “He’s my stepfather. It’s my business.”
“What crazy logic you have.”
My hands curled into fists. “Look, you can leave now. You apologized. Bye.”
His smile increased as he looked around my room. “I think I’ll stay. I kind of like it here.”
“What?” I sputtered. “You can’t stay. It’s against the rules.”
Seth laughed deeply. “Since when do you care about rules?”
“I’m a changed person.”
“When did you change? Just right now? ‘Cuz I heard about your smackdown in the cafeteria yesterday.” A mischievous grin played across his lips. “By the way, that was made of awesome.”
“Really? No one else thinks it was awesome. They said I was being… irrational.” I pushed away from the wall and dropped on the bed. “Do you think I’m irrational?”
Seth sat down beside me, his left leg pressing against mine. “Is that a trick question?”
I scooted to the top of the bed. “So I’m irrational?”
He twisted at the waist and stretched out on his side. “You’re a bit crazy. You throw apples in people’s faces when you’re angry. You go off half-cocked half the time. It entertains me to no end. So if you are irrational, I hope you stay that way. I love it.”
I frowned. “All of that sounds really good. Thanks.”
“Rational is mundane and uninteresting. Why would you want to be that?” He reached out, tugging lightly on the hem of my PJ bottoms. “You don’t even have it in you.”
“Have what in me?” I pushed his hand away. Of course Seth would be drawn to the unstable part of my personality. He was a bit crazy himself. I wasn’t sure if it was all the aether in him that made him that way, or if he was just plain old crazy.
“You’re too wild to be balanced and normal. Or logical,” he added as an afterthought.
“I’m completely logical—totally. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He sent me a knowing look before rolling onto his back. “I think I’ll stay here tonight.”
“What?” I shot to my knees. “Absolutely not, Seth. You aren’t staying here.”
He chuckled, resting his hands on his flat stomach. “I haven’t been sleeping well. Have you?”
“I’ve been sleeping great.” I pushed at his shoulders, but he didn’t budge. “Seth, you’re not staying here, so don’t change the subject.”
He rolled slightly, catching my hands with his. “Look, we didn’t have training tonight. I’m owed an hour of your time.”
I tried to pull my arms free. “That’s ridiculous.”
Seth sat up in one clean motion. “And it starts now.”
“What?” My fingers curled helplessly. “It’s late. I have class tomorrow.”
He grinned, letting go of my arms. “You’d still be up even if I wasn’t here.”
Scooting back once more, I kicked him in the thigh. “You’re a pain in my—”
“I think we’ll work on how to control your anger.”
I moved to kick him again, but he caught my calf. “Let go.”
Seth leaned over, voice low. “Don’t kick me again.”
Our eyes locked. “Let. Go.”
Slowly, he released his grip and sat back. “I want all of your attention for a moment.” He paused, brows lowering. “That is, if you’re capable.”
“Whatever.”
“What do you think about the daimon attack?”
I glanced at him. Everything about him had changed in an instant. “Honestly? I think it’s just the beginning. I mean, for all we know, this could have been going on long before.”
Seth swiveled around and sat beside me. Once situated, he nodded approvingly. “There’s something you don’t know, but I don’t think it would hurt if you did.”
I shot forward. “What?”
“The Council has been tracking incidents that look like daimon half attacks. They’ve been picking up over the last three weeks, discovering two to three attacks a week. And it’s happening all over.”
“But… they haven’t said anything.” Mainly, Aiden hadn’t said anything, and I’d thought he told me everything. “How do you know about this?”
“I have my ways. The Ministers don’t want the pures or halfs knowing right now. They’re afraid it would cause a panic.”
“So that’s why you were with Lucian? He’s feeding you this information?”
Seth just raised his brows.
I fell back against the headboard, sighing. “But not knowing is stupid. People need to know what’s happening. Look at what my mother told me. It’s happening.”
“I know.” He tipped his chin toward me, but his heavy lashes concealed his eyes. “I don’t think the Council wants to believe that.”
“That’s so stupid, Seth. They need to focus on that instead of trying to control us.”
“I agree. These rules are wrong.” He lifted his eyes, meeting mine. “But you won’t have to submit to them.”
“Uh… it doesn’t sound like I have a choice.”
“The half-bloods won’t have a choice, but you’re different.”
I stared at him in amazement. “I’m not any different, Seth.”
He held my stare. “Yes, you are. You will become an Apollyon, which makes you very different from the other half-bloods. You won’t submit to those exams.”
“Is that what you and Lucian were arguing about after the assembly?”
His stare was intense, calculating. “Among other things, but it’s not anything for you to worry about.”
“It’s not? That’s pretty ballsy of you to argue with the Minister, Seth.”
The look on his face faded, replaced once again with the smug amusement. “Lucian has promised me that you… will not be searched.”
I slouched to the side, eyeing him suspiciously. “I didn’t know you had the kind of influence to make Lucian promise anything.”
“You don’t need to worry about the exams. So don’t.”
“What about the other halfs? They shouldn’t have to go through that.”
He looked away, letting out a soft breath. “Can I ask you a question— a serious question?”
“Sure.” I stared down at my scuffed hands. I doubted Lucian cared enough to honor that promise.
“Why do you want to become a Sentinel? Is it a sense of obligation or…?”
That question took me a few moments to respond to. “It’s not about protecting pures, if that’s what you’re getting at. That’s what the Guards are for.”
“Of course you wouldn’t settle on being a Guard,” Seth said mostly to himself.
“Daimons kill for no reason—even mortals. What kind of creature just kills for the fun of it? Anyway, I’d rather do something about it than sit around and wait for them to attack.”
“What if you had a different choice?”
“Servitude?” I stared at him. “Are you serious?”
He rolled his eyes. “I mean, what if you had other choices not given to half-bloods? To live a normal life?”
“I already did that,” I reminded him, “for three years.”
“Would you do it again?”
Why he was asking this? “Would you?”
Seth snorted. “I wouldn’t give up being a Sentinel for the world. Or being the Apollyon. I rock.”
Laughing, I rolled my eyes. “Wow. You’re so humble.”
“Why should I be humble? I’m great.”
I didn’t even bother responding, because I felt confident he was being serious. We sat in silence for a little while. I knew he caught I hadn’t answered his question, but in not-so-typical Seth fashion, he didn’t push it. “Did you see the furies in the lobby?”
He nodded.
“Aiden said they’re here because the gods feel the Council isn’t doing an adequate job.” I toyed with the hem of my shirt. “Do you think… we need to be worried about them?”
“Ah… if they get loose, then it could be a… potential problem.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what made me say the next thing that came out of mouth. “I yelled at Aiden in training.”
Seth nudged my arm with his shoulder. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“He agrees with the new rules.” I yawned. “So I yelled at him.”
“And he said you were being irrational, huh?”
“Yeah, so I yelled at him some more. I told him he was just like all the other pures.”
“Well, he is like other pures.”
I shifted down, trying to ease the ache in my side. “Not really.”
Seth frowned down at me. “Alex, he’s a pure-blood. Just because he chose to become a Sentinel doesn’t make him any different. Ultimately, Aiden will always side with the gods. Not us.”
“You mean the pures, not the gods.” Weary, I lay my head down on the pillow and closed my eyes. Our hour was almost up. Maybe I’d get some sleep tonight. “You don’t know him, Seth.”
“I don’t need to know him to know what he’s capable of.”
My brows rose, but I ignored that. “I need to apologize to him.”
“You don’t need to apologize to him.” He bent down, brushing my hair off my cheek. “I’m being serious. You’ll be the next Apollyon, Alex. You won’t apologize to him, to any pure, or even to a god.”
After a few moments of silence I said, “You know you need to leave, right? Even if I fall asleep, you’re going to leave?”
“Of course.” I couldn’t see him, but I heard the smile in his voice. Seth kept talking, bombarding me with questions, but I gave up answering them as sleep pawed at me, the kind of sleep I was almost sure I wouldn’t wake up from in an hour or two. I finally gave into it, confident that when I awoke in the morning, Seth would be gone.
It felt like someone had trapped me face down on the bed. I thought I was having one of those dream paralysis things I’d read about once, but then I realized what pinned me to the bed was an arm.
And that arm belonged to Seth.
He hadn’t left, and apparently, Seth was a cuddler.
His arm curled around my back, fingers balled into the comforter. His steady breath blew across my neck, almost as if he had moved my hair out of the way. Under a different circumstance, I would have enjoyed the feeling of having someone wrapped around me so closely. Because the warmth Seth exuded was nice—very nice. It was Seth, yet for a moment—a really tiny moment—I closed my eyes and drank in the warmth.
Then I wriggled out from underneath him, beat him on the chest until he woke up, and yelled at him for staying. All of this made me late for my first class, and the whole episode left me in a weird funk, which wasn’t helped when I passed Lea in the hallway.
Even with the black eye and bandaged nose, Lea looked good. No one could sneer like her. I ignored her for the most part, feeling ambivalent for doing so.
In Technical Truth and Legends, which was a cross between history and English, I usually sat beside Thea, a quiet pure I’d met over the summer, but today Deacon St. Delphi slid into the seat beside me.
I liked Deacon for a lot of reasons—none of them being the fact he was Aiden’s younger brother. He tended to drink a bit too much, but he was fun—lots of it.
“Hey there.” Deacon dropped his book on the desk.
“Why isn’t Thea sitting here?”
He shrugged and several blond curls fell across his gray eyes, the only physical trait he and his brother shared. “Some of the pures are scared of you. Thea knows we’re friends. She asked to switch.”
“Thea’s scared of me? Since when? What did I do to her?”
“It’s not you personally. A lot of us are freaked out right now.”
“That’s nice to know.” I focused on the chalkboard. Our teacher hadn’t showed yet.
“You asked.”
“I did.”
“Besides, you should be nice to me.”
I cracked a half smile for him. “I’m always nice to you, Deacon.”
“Yeah, but you need to be nicer. I’m losing a lot of cool points being seen talking to you.”
I glared at him.
Deacon grinned. One dimple in his right cheek appeared. “Not just you, but any half at this moment. We pures don’t trust a single one of you. Every half is suspect. We’re just waiting for one of you to pounce on us and suck away at our aether.”
“Then why are you talking to me?”
“Have I ever cared for what the other pures think?” His voice was loud enough for several of the pures seated around us to hear. I cringed inwardly. “Anyway, my brother thinks I need a babysitter while he goes to Council. Probably thinks I’m going to overdose or something without him being up my ass.”
“That’s not what he thinks. He’s probably worried someone will suck up all your aether.”
Deacon arched an eyebrow at me. “Defensive, aren’t you, when it comes to my brother?”
Looking away, I felt my cheeks flush. “No. You give him a hard time when all he does is care about you.”
“I don’t know. He just thinks I’m a drunk little shit, which I am.” He grinned, but it rang sort of false. “Anyway, his birthday is coming up. He’s going to be twenty-one, yet he acts like he’s thirty.”
“‘Cuz thirty is real old,” I said. Of course I hadn’t forgotten Aiden’s birthday. It was the day before Halloween, and a week or so before we left for the Council.
“Anyway, I thought about throwing him a party. You should come.”
I shook my head, grinning. “Deacon, I’m not allowed to go anywhere. None of the halfs are.” I also doubted Aiden would be down with a party, but I didn’t say that. I think Deacon was serious in wanting to do something for Aiden, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
“So you excited about going to Council? I hear they know how to party up there.”
Edginess turned my tummy upside down. “Excited isn’t the word I’d use.”
Our teacher finally showed up and launched into a long-winded, dry lecture about archetypes and the first creation of the Council. Other than wanting to bang my head against the desk, the class was a breeze. So was the rest of the morning, once I got used to the suspicious looks. They weren’t directed just at me, but at any and all half-bloods.
The pures were a paranoid bunch.
Halfway through Silat training, several Guards entered the room, bringing everyone to a halt. I sent Caleb and Luke a nervous look as the first Guard started reading out names in a flat, emotionless tone. My name was among the ten called out.
My stomach turned over as I grabbed my bag and followed the other halfs out. Their faces were pale, eyes sharp with distrust. Quietly, we trailed behind the three Guards to the med center. The sickening feeling expanded when I saw we were going to the same room Kain had been kept in. That alone was enough to make me want to flee.
One of the male nurses, a pure with salt and pepper hair, faced our group. Part of me hoped Lucian really had promised Seth that I wouldn’t have to go through with the exams, but I should’ve known better. There was no bond between us, nothing to make him care about me.
The pure smiled, showing off a row of straight teeth. Something about his smile clenched my lungs. There were three female halfs in the group, and his mouth twisted into a greasy grin. Nausea rose sharply.
“We will take you in one at a time. We will make this as fast as possible for you,” the pure said. “Any questions?”
I raised my hand, heart tumbling over itself.
“Yes?” He sounded surprised.
“What if we don’t agree to this?”
The pure’s gaze darted to the Guards behind me, and then bounced back to me. “There’s nothing to be worried about. It will be over within a couple of minutes.”
I nodded slowly, feeling the eyes of the other halfs on me and the Guards shifting uncomfortably. “Yeah, I’m not down with this.”
“But… you have no choice,” he said slowly.
“But I do and I’m choosing no. And if you don’t like that, then I’d like to see you try to make me do this.”
That was pretty much when the Guards behind me decided they were going to try to make me do this. And that is when I decided I was going to be hitting someone again.