Her smile disappeared the moment she fled the room, her feet near stomping as she follows Caiden's scent.
The way Michael's expression seemed to just . . . drop. The way his eyes filled with hopelessness, at Caiden's doing.
She follows his scent to his rooms – because he is very uncreative like that – and burst through the door in time to find him in the middle of changing his pants. He doesn't so much as flinch at her entry, almost as if he expected it. he merely continues on slipping one leg into a pant leg, then the other.
She decides to skip an attempt at pleasantry. "You know, you could've been a little more understanding."
"I prefer to be realistic."
Danika stomps her foot as she places her hands on her hips. "Michael has a chance to have his mother back, and you're willing to just dash that hope?"
"She could be too far gone," Caiden argues as she walks over to the dresser holding his various swords. "If the possession – as he claims – has been going on for years now, her own soul could've deteriorated a long time ago, leaving only her husk of a body for the demon to inhabit."
"Wouldn't it just rot into mush?" Danika cringes at the image she put in her own mind.
"Not with the demon's presence still inside. If we were able to cleanse it somehow, then the body would soon begin to age, and quickly."
"Oh, like that story of that witch that used a flower to stay young, and when the power was gone, she turned to ash?"
Danika folds her arms and leans her shoulder against the wall as she crosses her ankles.
"Basically."
"So you're not even going to try?" she snipes.
"I never said. I'm willing to try anything, but I don't want Michael getting his hopes up on something that could end in disaster."
Danika shrugs one shoulder: fair enough. After what she'd gone through in the darkness, she'd be lying if she said she wanted to help that woman, too.
It was worse than a nightmare. It was like a nightmare come to life – able to touch her, to scratch her, to do real damage when before all it was able to do was shock her awake before anything really happened.
She could still smell the perfume of the long-forgotten brothel she abandoned. Still feel the hands of the man who tried to have his way with her after hours.
"If you want my honest opinion, I'd rather just decapitate her and call it." Caiden says, making Danika snap her attention to him.
She'd lowered her chin, no doubt her fear at the memory had been plastered on her face.
Loyalty is one of Caiden's strongest features. He'd go to the ends of the earth to eliminate whatever threat haunts her – old or new. He'd do anything to rid her of that fear, Michael too.
It was one of the things that made them such a strong, unbreakable unit back in the war. Back in the service.
"So let's say we try everything, and nothing works. What then?" she asks.
"Then we have to kill her."
So nonchalant. It makes her grind her teeth.
But then Caiden adds, "If anyone's going to do it, it'll either be Michael, or Elsa."
Danika snorts at the Snow Queen's name. She couldn't help it; not after she and Michael both walked in this morning and smelled of each other with a hint of magnolia. Not to mention Elsa's arousal was so potent, Danika nearly said something about it was conflicting with her breakfast muffins.
She was happy for them, though. Michael deserved that happiness, and Elsa did too – even if Danika only knew the Snow Queen for less than a week.
But she hadn't forgotten about the queen's gesture when they'd gotten back to the castle. that gentle hand on her shoulder, the icy chill of her magic actually became Danika's tether, a light to follow back to herself; to let her know that this is the real life.
Besides, there is plenty of time for Danika to corner the queen and make her talk about how good Michael was over tea and sweets.
She suddenly blurts, "Don't make him choose between Elsa, or his mother."
Caiden's lifted brows are the only sign of his surprise.
"It won't end well," she adds.
"I wasn't planning on it. It seems like his decision is already made."
That was putting it mildly.
"I've never seen him so happy; and yet, so afraid," Danika mutters, knowing her eyes are growing distant again. She blinks up at Caiden, who has now paused strapping his various weapons about his torso. "You know he ran all the way from the temple."
Another blink, only this time, Caiden has gone unnervingly still.
"He gave me his horse because I was too weak to even walk. I could only recall a wet warmth from me pissing myself, the sting of my own nails scratching across my arms. But when she made that threat against Elsa, when he thought there was a chance he would lose her . . ."
Danika folds her lips in, shaking her head. A chill snaking up her spine at the memory.
There's a tremble in her voice as she says, "He gave me the horse, I pushed that thing into a full gallop, yet he still outran me. Who can do that?"
Caiden's silence is enough of an answer. He gives a couple of steadying blinks and says, "We'll have to keep an eye on his magic."
"No shit. If what they said about that incident at the temple is true . . ."
The radius that the fire had burned, had reached.
"I'll start my research tonight, but I'll need to gather some books and of the like."
Danika forces herself to chuckle as she pushes off the wall, Caiden now finished with his weapons. "I hope the sisters have a spare library."
She went to the hallway not long after hearing what had happened while she and Michael were away. It was nice to know they weren't the only one suffering, in a weird way.
It always baffled Danika to know and to see what kind of damage Caiden could take. That burst through the wall would've instantly killed any human.
But Caiden isn't an ordinary human.
A Cambion.
"I'll see what I can gather."
"Okay, but just promise me," – she steps into his path, staring into those crimson eyes – "you'll do everything you can for his mother first."
"I won't make promises fueled by false hope. And I won't give him the hope and have it crush him, again."
Danika pauses at the word. Again.
She angles her head – a predator assessing prey, even if Caiden towers over her – and asks with deadly quiet. "Is that what this is about?"
"So what if it is. I'm just looking out for him."
"You don't get to decide for him," she snarls. "You don't know what's best for him."
"Oh, and you do?"
"I never said I did, but I know better than to bud into people's business."
Caiden's eyes glow with that merciless, ancient magic. Danika throws every ounce of defiance she can into facing that power, even as is made her knees want to bend. She hated that part of her magic that bowed to such things. "The last time we did that, the last time we let him make his own choices, we nearly lost him!" He snarls.
"You don't think he's learned?"
"Clearly not, because he's here.
"And he's happy, Caiden." That seems to bank the writhing power in the shadow weaver's veins. She can't help the tears that line her eyes, nor can she help the tremble in her voice as she says, "He's the happiest we've ever seen him, Caiden. If he didn't come here, he'd still be –"
"Don't."
"He's still broken, Caiden, we all are. But he's found someone; someone who can give him the life he deserves. You really think he'd throw that all away?"
The doubt etching on his features hurts her heart.
"He's made stupid decisions before."
"Like you haven't?" Those crimson eyes flick to her. "Let him walk away at his own time, as his own choice. And have a little faith that he'll keep walking towards, Elsa. I don't think he'd throw away a future with her. Not now."
Caiden sighs, turning and thumping his back against the wall. "I hope you're right." He runs his fingers through his golden hair. "I hope you're right. He's just, such a good guy deep down."
Danika arcs a brow. "And deep down, you're not?"
He looks to her with furrowed brows. "If you truly believed you weren't a good person – Cambion or not – you wouldn't be here." She jabs his shoulder. "And we wouldn't have become friends."
Caiden gives a contemplative expression, as if really debating the alternative.
Danika delivers a harder jab to his shoulder. "You fucking asshole."
As his lips finally stretch into a smile, Danika loops her arm with his.
"Now come on, we can't be gone much longer, or they might suspect something."