Page 44 of Harbinger

The shield had levitated the entire crowd and dumped them some two hundred feet from the building. The whine of the news helicopters attempting to draw close enough to film the apartment reached his ears faintly as the otherworldly energy Theo and Eden had projected pushed them away.

“What the—?!” Adrianne gasped in Cassius’s ear. “Was that Eden? Did that brat just kick us out?!”

“I can feel Theo’s power in this too,” Julia observed mildly close to the sorceress.

Cassius pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes briefly. “We should meet up somewhere else.”

Adrianne conferred with the rest of Morgan’s team.

“How about Bostrof’s place?” the sorceress suggested.

Guilt tightened Cassius’s belly. He’d had several missed calls from Lilaia and Bostrof yesterday. He’d messaged briefly to say he’d talk to them later but had never gotten around to it, what with waiting for Morgan to wake up and everything that had followed.

“I’ll text him. Make sure you’re not tailed on the way there.”

The terrace doors opened.

Theo entered the apartment and met Cassius’s cool stare with an innocent expression. “What?”

Victor maintained a diplomatic silence.

“No, you can’t blast them to smithereens,” Eden was grumbling at the devilwood staff behind them. “Because it’s wrong, Woody! Just because they’re getting on our nerves isn’t a good enough reason to kill them.” The mage scowled as she listened to her weapon’s response. “That’s it. No more video games for you.”

21

“Goddesses,it is truly an honor to have you here,” Lilaia uttered reverently, bowing on one knee.

“Rise, child of Nephele,” Atropos ordered.

Lilaia stood up, her demeanor still humble before the four Goddesses. She flashed Cassius a narrow-eyed, sidelong glance that clearly broadcasted he should have told her the deities the whole world was currently talking about would be part of the party he was bringing to Bostrof’s fight club.

Bostrof slowly straightened beside his wife, his beefy body towering over all of them.

Atropos smiled at the Lucifugous demon. “It is good to see you again, King of the Shadow Empire.”

“Former king,” Bostrof murmured demurely.

Brightness flashed in Atropos’s eyes.

“We shall see about that,” the Moira said mysteriously.

Lilaia and Bostrof exchanged a startled look.

Tisiphone pursed her lips. “You should stop teasing people, Attie.”

Lilaia’s eyes rounded at the affectionate nickname. Atropos’s expression turned mischievous.

Cassius’s chest loosened a little. The tight lines in the Moira’s face had faded, as had the permanent tension knotting Kes, Orena, and Tisiphone’s shoulders. They looked relaxed for the first time since they’d come to Earth.

He could only imagine how they’d survived these past five hundred years. Always on the run from Elios, and Clotho and Lachesis’s piercing gazes. Constantly living with the fear that he would capture them again and make them his slaves before they could free their sisters.

It must have been a horrible existence.

The look Atropos gave him told him she’d divined his thoughts.

“It was no worse than your fate, Awakener,”the Goddess murmured with a sad smile.

Victor arched an eyebrow. “This place sure looks different.”

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