Page 24 of Destinies of Diamond
I leaned against the seat of the Sphinx and stared up at the cockpit. I was such a fool. How could I expect her to ever love me, in a human way, when I wasn’t human?
I shook off my morose musings and focused on what mattered more right now, her conversation with Vincent. My cousin seemed to believe her, but that didn’t mean he was pleased. “So what exactly did you do? Did you lead him on and decide against pursuing a relationship with him after hooking up with the members of your unit?”
“What in Gaia’s name are you talking about?” Selene let out an exasperated breath. “You’re not making any sense and I don’t have time for this.”
“My cousin went to his death, Selene Renard, and I want to find out why. You owe me an explanation.”
He made a grab for her wrist, clearly intending to force the answers out of Selene. My immediate impulse was to run to her defense and I almost did just that. Sphinx snapped the seat belts around me, keeping me trapped inside.
I could have burned through the material with ease, but the delay earned Selene enough time to handle the matter herself. A bright purplish glow appeared at their point of contact and Vincent let out a sharp, lost gasp. He dropped to his knees, unable to remain standing.
Selene watched him dispassionately, her aura still flaring with hostile power. “I owe you nothing. Your cousin’s reasons for his actions were his own and I advise you to make your peace with them. If he committed suicide, I assume he had mental health issues. Unfortunately, no one found out about it in time. But that doesn’t give you the right to blame me for what happened.”
“Liar. I could see him looking at you. He tried to hide it, but he always wanted you.”
Selene laughed. “That changes nothing. And at the end of the day, what he wanted doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is whatIwant.”
Tachyons flared at her fingertips and I knew exactly what she intended to do. Aello screeched and tried to rush to her tamer’s defense. But the purple waves of power encased her in an unbreakable cage, very similar to what I’d once created to contain Sphinx and Cerberus.
This was bad. At this rate, Selene would destroy her own life because of Vincent. “Sphinx!” I shouted at the chimera. “Stop her!”
I didn’t hold too much affection for my human family. I cared about them, in a way, but they’d stopped being my priority when I’d dedicated my life to Helios. Even so, I knew Selene would never forgive herself if she hurt or killed someone.
This was so out of character for her. The baby must be affecting her more than I’d realized.
Mercifully, Sphinx intervened. The Tartarus diamond core pulsed, absorbing the wild energy Selene had summoned to her aid. As her power dissipated at her fingertips, Selene looked at us and frowned in confusion. “Sphinx? What are you doing?”
“Helping you,” the chimera replied. She picked Selene up in a paw and slid her into the cockpit, in my lap. “Aello, take your tamer to New Washington, to receive a medical examination. And in the future, make sure he keeps his nose out of other people’s business.”
“It’s his right to find out what happened to his cousin,” the Harpy replied. “You can’t deny him that.”
“He can keep looking if he wants to, but that quest has nothing to do with us. He’s only blaming Selene because of how bad things are between our two units. You and I both know that. So make sure he and the others see sense, before you make things worse than they already are.”
By the time Sphinx finished the sentence, Selene was already accommodated inside. It was a little awkward, because chimeras were usually built for a single tamer, so she ended up having to sit in my lap. But Selene didn’t protest. Now that Sphinx had taken her out of range of her target, she seemed unfocused and lost, as if she couldn’t understand what had just happened.
I ached for her and, not for the first time, cursed myself for being such a fuck up. If not for me, Selene wouldn’t have ended up in this situation in the first place. And the worst thing of all was the fact that I couldn’t honestly say I regretted her pregnancy either. On some level, the idea that she carried my child stirred a new blaze inside me, one that had nothing to do with Helios’s gifts.
If only that new life hadn’t come at such a high cost. Maybe I should have tried to convince her to give the child up anyway, instead of reveling in the fact that she hadn’t done so.
But I’d already taken the decision out of her hands once. I couldn’t do it again. And so, I wrapped an arm around her and gently guided her to lean against me. “I’m here. I won’t leave you. I promise.”
I couldn’t in good conscience tell her that everything was going to be okay, because I had no such certainties. If anything, the time I’d spent on Terra since my separation from Selene had left me even more convinced that something bad was coming. Selene might not have been able to feel it when she touched the ground, but I’d sensed it in the palpable tension that permeated the air in New Washington.
The Unblessed Terran men might have very little to do with The Grand Judiciary, but they weren’t idiots, and the priestesses of Gaia weren’t always discreet. All of them felt it, this strange restlessness that made my skin crawl. I’d have suspected they’d noticed my presence, but no, this was unrelated, and it bothered me more and more.
Come to think of it, Selene and Vincent had both said there had been an incident at Chimera Academy, something Selene had been sent to investigate. As Selene leaned against me, I gently caressed her hair and decided to ask her chimera about it.
“Sphinx, what exactly is going on here?”
“You mean other than the fact that the spawn you put inside my tamer is making her lose control of her powers?” Sphinx asked bitingly. “The generators at Tartarus Base collapsed earlier today and there was some interference in communications. Dean Chimera thought there might have been some kind of attack and he sent us to look into it. I take it you don’t know anything about it.”
“Nothing in particular, no,” I replied. “I’ve sensed some odd energies as of late, but I can’t tell where they’re coming from. One thing I can say for sure is that it’s not a Heliad issue.”
Our brief exchange snapped Selene out of her trance. “Odd energies? What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure how to explain it. It reminds me of Helios’s power, but at the same time, it’s different. I wanted to ask your mother about it, since she couldn’t have missed it.”
“She didn’t mention anything like that,” Selene murmured. “Why?”
