Page 52 of Custodian

As if sensing a trap, Ryker looked around at his fellow knights, “Ah, can you?”

Max shrugged, fiddling with buttons that didn’t really need to be fiddled with. But she was nervous and the disbelieving looks of her Order was making it worse. There was one future she had seen a long time ago that she was trying to bring to fruition. If she could make one future happen, then maybe she could do it again.

“You hate singing, Max,” Dex pointed out, gently.

Max raised her lips in derision at her old stalker-slash-friend, “No. I hate karaoke. It is the leading cause of the bastardisation of every classic song ever written. I swear, I felt Louis Armstrong roll over in his grave when you mangledWhat a Wonderful Worldearlier.”

The look of affronted outrage on Dex’s face was satisfying to see, as well as Cali’s head bopping up and down in agreement. “Okay. You’re all crimping my style. Get lost.”

Max gave them all a not-so-gentle shove and pressed play before she could think any more about what she was doing. Still, she spared a look in Ivy’s direction, giving the woman a small nod. She saw Ivy frown at her for a moment before she glanced down. Max saw the moment realisation struck, just as the first bars of the song loaded on the screen.

***

Ivy didn’t need to look down to examine the hand holding hers. Nor did she need to look up to know it would be emerald eyes peering down at her, shining nothing but love in her direction. Months and months ago, Max had shown her this. Had shown her a potential future where someone cherished her – cranky, repressed, and stoic, her. Max had shown her a large, outdated and poorly kept room with dirty glass doors that housed dozens of bodies who were men once more. Ivy looked around, taking in all the men who were once wardens, then chades, and were now chadens, made whole and well by the odd creature singing in front of them. This was the culmination of Ivy’s life’s work. She had always believed in the redemption of the chades. And now their redemption – and hers – was here. Ivy shook her head, hand squeezing Lark’s as she listened with shocked awe to her Goddess.

‘I’ll be, I’ll be your family,

When your times get hard.

And I’ll see, I’ll see you next to me.

When the road gets dark.’

Max was singing Boyce Avenue’sFamilyand Ivy couldn’t think of a more fitting song. “Did you know she could sing?” Ivy asked no-one in particular.

All she received were gaping mouths, blank looks, and shaking heads. “Well, she sings like an angel,” Ivy admitted, softly.

“No,” the male voice corrected her. “She sings like a Goddess.”

Ivy listened, entranced as Max sang about broken roads, beating hearts, and promises, and couldn’t help thinking that Mordecai was right.

TWENTY-FIVE

“Actually, Darius man-scapes,” Diana volunteered from where she sat, watching some of the partygoers play cards.

“What? No way!” Cali choked on the mouthful of juice she had been drinking, causing Axel to reach out and pat the mother-to-be on the back.

Although Axel was one of the people playing cards, he had been keeping a sharp ear on the conversation going on between the women. Their ‘girl talks’ were things legends were made of and he was proud of the way he had integrated himself into their secret, but not-so-secret conversation, due to the volume of their cackles.

“It’s true,” Diana was saying, nodding her head and sending her loose curls bouncing everywhere. “Seriously, his balls are as smooth as bowling balls.”

Unrestrained laughter came from Max, Cali, Ivy, Fawn, and – unbelievably – Cinder. The women had manoeuvred chairs in a horseshoe arrangement around the huge table where several games of poker were being played. A mixture of twenty wardens, paladins, chadens, and one lone hairy human, were bucking the party-poopers who had already retired to their rooms.It’s only four a.m.Axel thought in derision.

Diana leaned forward, “In fact, I think he’s probably drunk enough to tell you all why.”

Axel glanced at the air paladin only to find him studying his cards carefully as if they held all the answers to the universe. He looked as serious and as stoic as ever, but Axel knew now from personal experience that what Sir Darius portrayed on the outside was not always an accurate representation of what was going on the inside.

Diana tapped Darius the shoulder, “Hey babe, tell me why you insist on man-scaping again.”

“It’s so you don’t get sac-rash, sweetheart,” was Darius’s casual reply. Completely oblivious to the absolute silence in the room, he threw a card down onto the pile. “Ha! Pick up four! Take that!” he crowed to the shell-shocked table.

“I got this,” Axel insisted, holding up a hand for silence. Not that he needed to – the whole damn lot of them had apparently been rendered mute by Sir Darius’s calm announcement. “I’m going to try to address all the things wrong with this conversation in order. Firstly, pick up four? Four what? Dude! We’re playing Texas Hold ‘Em, not Uno!”

Darius’s dark brows furrowed as he once again stared at his cards and Axel saw a stubborn look come into his friend’s hazel eyes. Axel decided to leave the man to his delusions for now, “Secondly, I’m going to have to insist you say the word sac again.”

Darius raised his head and gave him a droll look, pointedly ignoring the snickers around him as he threw out two aces face-up onto the pile of cards in the centre of the table. Axel covered his mouth so as not to laugh at the man. A drunk Darius was a true spectacle to behold. Outwardly, nothing much changed. His back was still ram-rod straight in the chair, his eyes weren’t glassy, pupils weren’t blown. His close-cropped hair remained perfectly styled as if the strands didn’t dare disobey gravity. Darius didn’t slur his words and Axel would bet he could even yodel the alphabet in reverse while hand-stitching a button back on to his shirt at the same time.

But on the inside? Now, that was a whole different kettle of fish. What Axel wouldn’t give to be able to see inside that complicated and regimented mind. He knew from experience that Darius’s internal dialogue when he was drunk was entirely different to his outside voice.Darius’s inside voice must be a real fun dude,Axel contemplated.

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