His features turned to stone as he glanced away from them. “After what he and Caleb did to me, I have loyalty to nothing and no one. We have a mutual understanding. Verlyn never wanted to be my father. I never wanted to be his son.” But Nick didn’t miss the pain that lay beneath the dry delivery of those words. Their rejection had hurt Xev so deeply that he’d been left with the same choice Nick had faced with his own father.
Deny any want of love. It was easier that way. To pretend you didn’t care. That you didn’t need or want your father. But deep down in places you didn’t want to own up to, you knew the truth. It always cut and bled. An open wound that wanted what they would never give.
A single damn about you.
And that was why Nick couldn’t turn his back on Xev. Why he’d kept him here when everyone else told him he was an idiot for it. He knew that same pain too intimately to dole it out to someone else.
He and Xev were brothers in pain.
Brothers in heart.
Nick couldn’t throw Xev aside like everyone else had done him and leave him to rot alone. It just wasn’t in him to be that cold. His mother had taught him better than that.
Xev locked gazes with Nick. There was so much agony and need inside those hazel eyes that it was hard for Nick to see what he, himself, kept hidden from the world reflected back at him. “I told you when you brought me here, Malachai, that I have no understanding of kindness or love. You should have left me in my prison like all the Malachais before you. It’s where I belong. It’s all I understand.”
Nick heard those words that sent a chill down his spine. They were so similar to what his father had told him from the cradle. Put no one at your back unless you want them to plant a knife in your spine.
And yet…
He sensed something more inside Xev. His instincts told him that Xev wasn’t quite the badass he pretended to be. That there was a vulnerability deep inside him he denied. A need for acceptance that Nick related to. Maybe he was wrong. But every part of himself told him that Xev wasn’t quite as evil as the ancient wanted him to believe.
Even if he was the son of Azura.
Of course that was easy for him to say, being the son of the Malachai. He didn’t want to be judged for his parentage, either. He wanted to believe they were both better than their genetics.
Besides, Xev wouldn’t have fought to save them if he really didn’t care. Wouldn’t have been wounded protecting them. Nor would he have gone back to save Kody when he could have left her trapped between worlds, forever.
Xev could deny it all he wanted, but he had a heart and he understood decency and kindness both.
Not to mention, he was older than anyone Nick knew, even Acheron, who was over eleven thousand years old. Right now, they needed that advantage. If Xev had known the first Malachai, then maybe, just maybe he would know some way to keep Nick from turning into the monster Ambrose.
It was worth a shot.
And at this point, sadly, it was the only chance they really had.
Nick nudged him toward the closet. “Go on and get dressed, Xev,” he said, gently. “We’ve had a bad morning and my mom’s missing. Caleb’s sick and —”
“What do you mean sick?” Xev asked, interrupting him.
“He has some kind of cold.”
Xev’s jaw dropped. “No. It’s not possible.”
Nick exchanged a frown with Kody as he caught the underlying tone of Xev’s voice. “You know what’s wrong with him?”
“Are any other gods infected?”
Nick shook his head. “Caleb’s a demon, not a god.” As soon as he said that, he remembered that wasn’t entirely true.
“Malphas is a demigod. We have the same father… Verlyn. And while a demon can’t get sick, there was an illness my mother crafted that can strike down the ancient gods, including Caleb, should he come into contact with it.”
Nick struggled with that concept. “That doesn’t even make sense. How could something make a god sick and not a demon?”
“When it’s strictly targeted to them. It was biological warfare, designed to take down an entire pantheon at my mother’s command. She was rather bitchy that way, back in her time.”
Kody gasped in alarm. “Does that include you?”
Xev laughed. “You honestly think my mother would spare me any pain?” He pointed to the words of his curse on his torso that showed exactly how little his mother had cared whether or not her son was left to wallow in eternal misery.
She winced visibly at his coldly stated answer. “What about Nick? Can it hurt him?”
Xev studied Nick like some science experiment that had been badly mutated. “He might have some immunity now that he’s generations removed from the goddess who birthed the first Malachai. That part, I don’t know. I’m not even sure it’s the same illness as the one I saw on the ancient battlefields. But it’s the only thing I can think of that would make Caleb ill. He should be immune from any other known disease.”
That at least made sense. Finally. “What of my mother’s kidnapping?”
“I know nothing of her being taken. I swear. She was in the kitchen, getting ready for work, when I came in here to sleep. That’s all I know of her whereabouts. Had I heard anything, I would have protected her with my life.”