Ascended (War of the Covens 3)

“Caia.” Lyla hurried over, sweat glistening on her forehead suggesting she’d been working out for longer than she should’ve been. “Come take over for Phoebe.” She gestured to the lykan who was scowling at one of the vampyres and shaking her head at whatever he was suggesting. “She’s killing me. I could use some light relief.” She winked, and Caia snorted. Lyla was only teasing her, but what she said was true. Compared to these people, she was relief when it came to sparring. They trounced her good. She was covered in bruises. Caia inwardly groaned at the thought of fighting Lyla, who was only marginally less aggressive than Phoebe.

“I, uh—”

“She can’t,” a familiar voice interrupted, and Caia smiled at the sound. Saffron. The faerie had come to save her. Thank you, Hemera.

Lyla raised an eyebrow—the kind of eyebrow raise that suggested interest—as she gazed over Caia’s shoulder. Ah … so Reuben was with Saffron. Caia turned and rolled her eyes. She was right. Jeez, the females at the Center were really wound up about Reuben. Desi and Ophelia had been blah-blah-blahing about him for the last few days. What was so special about him? Ha, she wondered if they’d be so into him if they knew how old he was.

“Hi, guys.” She gave them a wide-eyed, “thank you for rescuing me” look that Lyla couldn’t see.

“Hey, Reuben.” Lyla ran her tongue along her upper teeth. “How’s it going?”

“Better for seeing you, Lyla, better for seeing you.” He smirked.

Ugh, gag me.

“Oh, please,” Saffron grunted, not as polite as Caia to keep the thought to herself.

Reuben ignored her and threw Lyla another flirtatious grin. “If you don’t mind, we need to steal the little one away for a while.”

Uh, what? “Uh, the little one—”

“Of course,” Lyla cut off her protest. “She’s all yours.” As am I, her eyes conveyed.

Caia sighed. She’d never understand her sex. With a nod of acknowledgment to Lyla, Caia ushered Saffron and Reuben out of the gymnasium.

“What do you want to talk to me about?”

But Saffron was still stuck on Reuben’s behavior with the lykan. “Do you have to be so disgustingly juvenile with the women here?” she huffed as they got into an elevator.

He grinned wickedly at her. “Jealous, Saffron?”

“Guys—”

“Jealous! Puhlease, our day in the sun has been over for a long time, Kirios. I just don’t want to have to listen to you have verbal sex with everything that has breasts. I am stuck here beside you for now while we see this through, so please refrain from the mundane, and try to engage in some intellectual conversation with these people, rather than trying to decide which one’s pants you want to get into as if you were choosing between chocolate or vanilla ice cream!”

Caia hid the face she made. Jealous much was right. Apparently even seven hundred years of Reuben’s presence hadn’t put Saffron off. If Caia had to guess, the faerie was perhaps just a wee bit in love with her vampyre friend. Saffron’s diatribe had apparently struck Reuben dumb. Under the growing silence, Caia looked up to see him staring at Saffron with an inscrutable expression on his face. As for the faerie, she stared straight ahead, her beautiful face pinched with tension as if she knew she had revealed more than she’d meant to.

Caia felt bad. She knew what it was like to care about someone and not know if they felt that way about you. And Reuben flirted with everyone. Come on, he’d even flirted with Caia.

The elevator doors binged open, and she realized they were on her floor.

“Guys, you wanted to talk to me about something, remember?”

Saffron sniffed. “Of course. Let’s go to your suite.”

And so she walked behind them to her bedroom suite, not speaking or intruding upon their private business, even though she was impatient to know what they wanted. Just as they neared her door, Reuben leaned over to Saffron and hissed, “We’ll talk about this later.”

Saffron shrugged and then spun around, holding her hand out to Caia. “Key.”

“I am quite capable of opening my own door, thank you.” Caia nudged her aside and swiped the key card and the door popped open. It was the same room she’d stayed in before Marita had gone bat-shit crazy. Her eyes took in the magnificent panoramic view of Paris. She sighed, wishing life were as uncomplicatedly beautiful as the city.

When the door swung shut behind them, Caia spun around. “OK, what’s going on? Why the secrecy?”

Reuben exhaled and shared an anxious look with Saffron. “Maybe you should sit.”

Wow, there were just never enough of these heart-pounding, nauseating, “what now?” moments in her life.

“Okaaay.” She slowly lowered herself onto a sofa.

With that, the vampyre stepped back, gesturing Saffron forward. The faerie gave a militant nod and then took a step toward her. “Caia, we have something that we haven’t told you. We kept it back from you—for a good reason—with the intention of telling you once you killed the Septum. That’s all changed now, of course. You see …” She trailed off, a strange look entering her eyes. “Marita has always had a weakness. The biggest threat to her, if you like. And that was Marion. Marion knew Marita better than anyone, could anticipate her moves better than anyone, knew the family’s past haunts and private hideouts. We had every intention of telling you this when the trace was gone, but, well …”