But that didn’t alleviate the ache in his chest. He turned toward Xev. “I feel like we need to do something. We left them under fire. Charity was hurt. Can’t we send some kind of help?”
His eyes sad, Jaden shook his head. “Sorry. Doesn’t work that way. Their future is their own.”
“It doesn’t seem right.”
Jaden glanced at each of his sons. “Life isn’t about fair. It’s about survival training. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Caleb let out a sigh of disgust. “There are some people who should never procreate.”
“Amen, brother. Sing it to the choir.” Xev did some kind of odd hand gesture with him that must be the demon equivalent of a fist bump.
“So, Captains?” Nick asked in his best Star Trek Bones McCoy impression. “How do we fix the space-time continuum?”
“Ambrose said that the Eye of Ananke was the key.” Kody gestured to where Nick had left it on the floor. “We should start there.”
“Wow!” Jaden cut Nick’s path off. “What exactly did the Malachai tell you?”
“That he’d screwed everything up by trying to stop it. He told me to use the Eye as my guide and do everything the way it was supposed to happen to make sure that nothing else got screwed up.”
Caleb curled his lip. “Oh I know that expression.”
“Yeah.” Xev breathed. “It makes me sick to my stomach.”
Nick arched his brows. “What? Clue us in.”
“He knows something vital, Nick, that he’s not sharing.” Caleb cut a look of absolute contempt at Xev. “Remember that battle we went into where he conveniently forgot to tell us that our powers weren’t going to work?”
“And that our enemies would be twice as strong? Yes, I remember. I still limp from it.”
“That’s the look, Nick. Memorize it for future warnings.”
Jaden gave both of his children a droll, irritated stare. “I’m thinking how best to explain it, since you two jackals neglected to tell the child what the Eye was.”
“It’s a Fate stone.”
He rolled his eyes at Caleb. “It’s more than a Fate stone.” He took a deep, annoyed breath, then went to the Eye and picked it up. “Nick? Do you know who Ananke is?”
“Primordial goddess of fate. Roughly the same as Tiamet.”
That answer appeared to give Jaden an ulcer judging by the grimace he made. It was nice to know his stupidity didn’t just annoy and offend his mom and teachers.
Jaden set the Eye down on a broken shelf. “Ananke is compulsion. She’s the goddess of inevitability.” He placed three more stones beside the Eye. “Think of her as a fixed point.”
“He knows what pith points are,” Xev said from between clenched teeth. He’s not an…” He glanced at Nick. “Well, he can be an idiot, but he’s a highly intelligent, high-functioning moron.”
“Thanks. Please, don’t attempt to bolster my ego. I can’t afford the therapy.”
Jaden cleared his throat to get their attention. “Again, not just a pith point. She is the formless, unseen force that pulls you to your inevitability.”
“So she’s like gravity for fate.”
“Exactly. She holds the time sequence together. She’s the order to the chaos.”
“But…” Nick paused as he considered what Jaden was saying. “Gravity has an escape velocity.”
“And so does Ananke.”
Nick’s jaw went slack. “Are you saying what I’m hearing? Or am I hearing what I want to because I want to believe it?”
“With the right application of force and counterbalance, even a pith point can be altered. Everything, and I do mean everything is subject to free will. But shifting a pith point can have devastating, unimaginable consequences.”
“As in unravel the fabric of the universe,” Kody said from behind him. “It’s what the zeitj?gers guard against.”
“She’s right.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to do that. I unraveled my sheets once. My butt still stings from the beating my mother gave me. That taught me about messing with things I need to leave alone.”
Pressing his hand to his head, Xev groaned. “Tirade aside … it sounds to me like Ambrose came to that conclusion and screwed up something he couldn’t fix.”
“Maybe that’s what gave us this Cyprian?” Caleb scratched at his chin.
“Or maybe the Cyprian was always there.” Jaden jerked his chin at Kody. “Think about what an Arel is. What they do.”
Kody screwed her face up at him. “They track and record human history.”
“And?”
“They’re the powers who defend and dispense justice.”
Jaden nodded and rolled his hand as if they were all following along, but Nick felt as off-the-tracks as Kody appeared.