Choosing to say out of the Alliance, the Cinders are isolated in their own conflicts, and when Helia Cinder reaches to the void for answers, she inadvertently draws a creature out. Expecting to be eaten alive, she is instead left with a man with no...
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****Warning. Content in these two chapters will steam glasses and offend your parents****
"Are you sure they won't need you for something?" Helia asked as Vice walked down to a new wing of the Sol castle.
Though few Sols wandered the halls after their daylight scuffle with the Cinders and Songs to see him, Ghost had donned some mage attire so she was embarrassed to walk with him in spandex. With a mage half cloak over a pitch, long-sleeved mage shirt she was used to seeing on Stone, he looked stylish for a change. Though rude to say considering Stone hadn't had an memories, Ghost just wore the clothes better, confident in his stride and posture as well as silent as he kept his eyes on everything around them.
They'd both passed out for nearly twelve hours straight, Ghost cuddled at her side protectively while Stone went about whatever it was he did. There hadn't been much time for Helia to ask about Vice's position within the Sols, though she knew he was very close to Talamayas. That made him important, but he was apparently onlya Sol in name and not blood.
Vampire politics were too hard for her to figure out.
"While I normally accompany my master, it's best I give him and Wren space," Vice said, Ghost's voice so soft and calm compared to Stone's chipper tone. "Without his memories, Wren is warry of our kind, and it would not sit well if he found me stalking him. It would make Wren feel as if Talamayas didn't trust him and had me watching him for any misstep."
"I guess I can see that." Helia sighed as they headed to her new room.
After the exhausting fight with Riff, they'd collapsed in the first open room they'd found, but it had been a cluttered bedroom that hadn't been cleaned in ages. Inappropriate for Helia, though she wouldn't have minded going through the odds and ends left there generations ago. Exploring was a secret hobby of hers, and she wouldn't mind spelunking through relics of a house as old as the Sols.
"Shouldn't someone be watching Riff though? Even though you managed to shackle him, that man is freaky as hell. I've never seen a mage that strong, and it's honestly a real pity that he's hung up on revenge from a century ago. Without that holding him back, he could climb ranks and do some real good."
It was a common loss, war generals unable to integrate back into society, a problem both human and mage soldiers suffered from. There was no place for him in the battlegrounds when the mages were trying to keep the peace, and a man with such violent urges would never fit in with society. Riff might not be shell-shocked, but he stood outside of the circles they'd all settled into. A fallen warrior. An outsider.
"Adagio Song is watching Riff until Wren regains his memories," Vice said, like one guy would be enough. Another Song though? How was that not a huge risk of him escaping?
"I thought all the other Songs were dead. Except for the ones I've seen of course."
"They are," Vice said only that, and she rolled her eyes. Vice was one person, so to speak, but their vessels varied at point of contact enough that she could easily tell them apart. Stone was chatty where Ghost only spoke if he couldn't avoid it.
