I slammed my door against the void of chaos a second later, but not before Nik saw enough to make him stagger. “What was that?” he asked in a shaky voice, his eyes darting around my apartment as if he’d never seen it before. “What is any of this? What did you do?”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to him,” my father said, crossing his smoke arms over his smoke chest. “He probably isn’t educated enough to understand.”
I rolled my eyes and proceeded to ignore him, turning my attention to Nik instead. “You can put Dad down in here,” I said, opening the door to my bedroom. “He should be fine after he rests.”
Nik did as he was told, setting my father’s body down on top of the blanket that covered my mattress on the floor. I’m sure his sharp eyes didn’t miss the bloodstains or the crate of empty liquor bottles or the wooden boards I’d nailed over the window to hide the maddening void outside, but he’d clearly gotten over his uncharacteristic outbursts, because he didn’t say a word. Only when we were back out in the living room and the bedroom door was closed did he turn to me, his face pale and bewildered.
“Opal, what is going on?”
I sighed and sank down to my overstuffed couch, patting the faux-velvet mauve cushion beside me. This was going to take a lot of explaining, but if there was anyone who deserved my effort, it was Nik. I’d treated him the worst through all of this, but no matter what I did or how badly I messed up, he’d never abandoned me. Even when I’d screamed at him and vanished into the city on a dragon, he’d steadfastly searched for me. He’d never given up, and that mattered. It mattered a lot, and I was determined to pay him back. So when he sat down beside me, I told him everything.
That was not hyperbole, either. I meant I told him everything, the complete narration of my life from the moment I stormed out of his apartment to just now. I told him about my dad and White Snake. I told him about the DFZ and how I’d become a priest to save my father. I told him about my work and Dr. Kowalski and learning to be a Shaman. I told him about the Spirit of Dragons and my dad’s condition and why we had to stay secret. I dumped all the information on Nik that he could ever want to know, stopping only to answer his questions. My father had a surprising number of questions as well, which made sense seeing how he’d been unconscious for most of it, but I only told Yong enough to get him to stop interrupting. This was Nik’s time, and I focused exclusively on him.
By the time the whole story was out, it was after midnight. I felt like I’d been talking forever. Nik certainly looked exhausted, but neither of us said anything about sleep. We just sat there together on my couch, letting the dip in the middle lean us into each other until, at last, Nik sat back with a sigh.
“Well,” he said, dragging a gloved hand through his ruffled hair. “At least I understand why you didn’t call me.”
“I’m really sorry about that,” I said for the millionth time. “I wanted to, and I would have if I could, but I couldn’t risk anyone finding out where we were hiding, and not just for my dad’s sake. I didn’t want some stupid dragon torturing you for information, and the only way to avoid that was to make sure you knew nothing.”
“Knowing nothing doesn’t stop you from getting tortured,” Nik said in a voice that gave me the horrible feeling he spoke from experience. “I just wish you’d said something. I didn’t need details, but if you’d told me you were lying low, I would have made different choices.”
He sounded super frustrated, and I winced. “Sorry,” I said again.
“Done is done,” he said, waving his hand as if he were pushing the whole situation away. Then his eyes went back to mine. “So you’re a priestess now?” When I nodded, he added, “Does that mean you’re like Peter?”
I shook my head. “Peter serves the Empty Wind. I’m with the DFZ. Totally different spirits.”
“I get that part,” Nik said. “I meant are you under the same rules?”
He stared at me like that was super important, but I still didn’t understand. “What rules are you talking about?”
A faint red blush spread over his face. “Do you have to be…you know…celibate?”
“Oh,” I said, my own face heating to roughly the surface of the sun. It was a stupid reaction. We weren’t teenagers. I was a grown woman who’d happily pounced on Nik the moment I got a chance. But there was something about the shy way he asked that melted my brain into a gooey puddle. To him, me being celibate was clearly the most horrible thing in the world. Knowing he felt that way made me stupidly happy, especially since it wasn’t the case. I’d already asked Dr. Kowalski this exact question before I’d taken the DFZ’s offer, and she’d said the city god didn’t care about that stuff. I was about to tell Nik the good news when I remembered the second part of that conversation. The DFZ might not care about sex, but she did demand to be put first.
That was going to be a problem. Nik and I hadn’t officially discussed what we were to each other yet, but he definitely ranked at the top of my priorities, and I didn’t know how my god would feel about that. She was in my head all the time,
