Lincoln's P.O.V

"Kalem, where are we?"

I'd thought about how to start this particular conversation for the last five minutes, and this was the best I'd come to.

When Kalem and I had eventually found the strength to tear our lips away from one another, I'd been shocked to find myself immediately ushered back to the massive mattress within the cave by my very insistent angel.

I felt fine – better than I felt in all my years in fact – but no reassurances on my end could get Kalem to budge on his demands for me to rest and get better.

There was a panic that overtook him every time his eyes were away from me and the weight of it on him worried me. It was like he thought someone would snatch me away from him, or I'd drop dead if his attention left me for a moment.

I had no idea what Kalem had been through when I'd been unconscious, but it couldn't have been easy. I only hoped that as he saw me moving around, as usual, that fear would lessen.

For now, I was playing the role of an obedient patient, which left my mind to wander to all that still waited for us outside these desolate lands, such as where exactly these lands were.

The question makes Kalem stop the fussing he'd been doing with the numerous blankets he'd wrapped around me and look at me with a hesitant gaze.

"I don't know," Kalem replies carefully, his cheeks pinkening while his fingers find each other.

I blink at him, "You don't know?"

"I needed to get you safe, so I flew away," he answers as if it were the most normal thing in the world. "I saw all these sunflowers here, so I knew it had to be a good place!"

I find myself smiling because while the news was slightly troubling, I'd sorely missed Kalem's way of thinking.

"And the mattress?" I question with a glance down.

"I stole it," Kalem whispers before he covers his mouth as if that would put the words back away.

I hardly cared if Kalem stole someone's mattress, but it was amusing to know that my love had done something that was so scandalous in his eyes.

"You did?" I question, raising a brow and amping up my intrigue.

Kalem nods his head quickly, "I flew it here," he mumbles, hands still covering his mouth, "I stole the blankets too!"

Laughter bubbles up from my throat as Kalem confesses his sins to me as if I were some priest and this was a confessional. That laughter only grows as his entire body sags with relief, suggesting that his thievery must've been really weighing on him for some time.

"Gods, I've missed you," I groan as I offer him my hand.

He takes it immediately, hurriedly climbing onto the mattress so that he could cuddle within my arms, his wings tucking tightly behind him so that they wouldn't get in the way.

"But love, why did you come here and not the castle?"

Kalem stiffens before he slowly looks up at me, "Not safe."

I frown, not understanding how what was literally the safest place on the planet for us, could not be safe to him.

"P-People lie," he continues so quietly I almost miss the words, "people l-like friends, a-and I don't w-want any m-more bad things h-happening to you, Master."

I tighten my hold on my love, cursing myself again for not being as vigilant.

A closer look at Thén would've revealed him to be a snake in the grass. Similarly, if I'd taken a single glance around the desert, I could've saved my boy so much pain and agony. But I hadn't, and now he harboured this newly rooted fear that he might lose me.

"It takes far more than a spear to kill me, Kalem," I say as gently as I can, "I was hurt so badly because I was weak and lacking blood, but I'm okay now."

Kalem makes a keening sound as he burrows closer, his large hand settling over my chest, "Y-You didn't move for a week."

It's my turn to still as the words settle over me. A week? I couldn't recall an injury ever being so bad that it put me down for so long.

Apparently, I'd been far weaker than I'd realised to require a full week of healing.

"I'm sorry, my love," I whisper. "I'm sorry I left you alone for so long."

"I should've protected y-you," he argues, melodic voice turning hard. "I didn't protect you."

I keep my mouth shut, hating that Kalem even thought he had to protect me whilst simultaneously loving the prospect that he loved me enough to try.

"Alright, how about we go back home when you're ready," I offer with a kiss, "when you feel sure that I'm strong enough, so that we can protect each other."

Kalem doesn't answer immediately, but he allows for a tiny nod which was a step in the right direction.

If a week had already passed, then odds were the clan was in shambles following all that had happened. Malcolm could do only so much, especially when there was supposed to be new leadership for an entire species, and the leader wasn't there.

The urge to return was ever-present, but I'd be damned if I put my love's needs second to anything again. If Kalem needed more security before we went home, then we wouldn't leave until I helped him find it.

For now, I'd work on bringing that beautiful smile back to my boy's face.

"In the meantime," I start while I pass my finds over the length of one of his wings, "would you mind telling me about how this happened?"

Jumping to his feet as if he'd just been waiting for a moment to talk about his wings, Kalem squeals loud enough for all the realms to hear while he excitedly jumps up and down.

Twirling for me, he shows me the sleek beauties that spread wide and flutter to show off as well.

"I have wings!" Kalem screams when he twists back to me, his smile so massive it made my heart swell. "Wingssssss!!!"

"Beautiful wings," I praise with a chuckle, "they're better than pixie wings."

Cue Kalem erupting in three, two, one...

Kalem disappears. Popping away from his excitement, he leaves me alone in the cave, but I could tell he hadn't gotten too far from the continuous screaming I heard outside.

I saw little flashes of him as he popped and flew all over the place, returning to the cave in little bouts to share his sunshine with me.

Gods, my love was stunning...

Returning after a few minutes of freaking out, Kalem pins me with a serious look.

"You can't say that again, Lincoln!" Kalem says between pants, now slightly out of breath. "It gets me too excited!"

I chuckle as I make a show of zipping my lips, "I promise to keep those dangerous words under lock and key."

He nods his head firmly before he pulls himself to his knees beside me, "They were there all along, Master, just waiting for me! Zhoron helped me reach them. I had to break my form from before," he explains excitedly, "I'm a light Nyphilim, so I just had to let all the light in."

I nod at Kalem, pretending to understand that last part so that I didn't have to put an end to his contagious joy, but I couldn't help but ask a question about this Zhoron.

"Zhoron," I repeat slowly. "You said he was your brother?"

Kalem stiffens as if a gun had been shot. A sprinkle of fear crosss over his features before he nods, "Yes," he replies carefully, his fingers retaking his attention. "His name is Zhoron."

Good heaven, I loved this man.

"So I gathered," I reply, fighting hard to bite back my smile. "He doesn't seem to like me."

"Zhoron doesn't like anyone," Kalem replies with a giggle, as if he'd known this person forever.

I wait for Kalem to fill in the rest, but he just blinks at me.

"And he's the Nyphilim who brought you here, yes?" I question, hoping to prompt him into the tale of how he'd gone from kidnapped to finding his long-lost brother.

Kalem nods his head quickly before he stops and tilts his head, "Kind of. We escaped together."

My eyes narrow as Kalem stays pointedly quiet after that, going no further into detail.

Kalem had never been a quiet boy. Shy, yes at first, nervous around new people, certainly, but within minutes he always turned into the bubble of happiness that he was, and then there was hardly a thing he wouldn't tell people.

Now he was quiet as a mouse, and it was strangely off-putting.

"Kalem," I reach over so I can lock our fingers together, "I don't want to push you, and you don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, but I'm in the lost here, love. Someone took you away from me, and then you appeared like this," I gesture to his body, "with someone you've never known being your brother?"

Kalem nibbles on his lips, his eyes darting away for a moment.

"You know I love you no matter what, right?" I question, and he nods his head quickly. "So help me understand, sweetheart."

White eyes softening, Kalem leans over for a kiss before he takes a deep breath and tries to find a way to start this tale.

"When T-Thén-" he stops himself immediately. The air in him left on just the name. "He didn't take me to be bad; he did it to save his sister. Diablos took Echo, and Thén just wanted to save her. He was nice to me the whole time."

I keep my face pointedly blank while I listen, only allowing a nod. I knew better than to express the thoughts in my head with Kalem. He wouldn't like to hear that if Thén weren't dead already, he would be the moment I found him.

Kalem appeared to still have some love towards the man who betrayed us all, but I didn't care what the threat was; no life excused taking my love from me.

"The first night with him, I used my magic to get out of the chains without him knowing," he reveals, not possibly knowing that the words were like taking another spread to my heart.

Malcolm and Wequie had tried to tell me as much, that Kalem had been gone for so long not because he couldn't return home, but until now, I didn't want to accept the words as true.

"I-I was scared to come home," he explains shakily, "after I m-made everyone so upset. I-I was so scared."

I close my eyes, the pain of those words like nothing else in this world.

"I'm so sorry, Kalem," I croak once I find my voice again. "I was too caught up with the war and the clan. I wasn't paying you the attention I should've, I wasn't loving you the way you deserved, and when you came that day, I'd been so stressed-"

I stop myself, hearing my own excuses loud and clear. Opening my eyes, I take both my hands in his and duck my head so that our eyes meet, "I am eternally sorry for hurting you the way I did, Kalem, and ever making you feel like you couldn't come home."

Kalem nods his head, trying for a smile even as he has to bite his lip to stop it from wobbling.

"It's okay to be angry with me," I promise him, "It's okay to be hurt and sad."

Kalem shakes his head hard, as if he were fighting the very idea of such a thing despite the pain I could see etched onto his beautiful face.

"I was wrong, Kalem," I tell him, knowing the words would come harder to him. "I didn't listen to you. I didn't trust you, and that was wrong."

Kalem blinks at me, pushing back the tears before he sucks in a deep breath, "I-It was."

He lifts his chin slightly, almost daring me or anyone else to deny it, but he carries on quickly when I don't. "I know what I did was dangerous and scary, but I knew in my heart that w-who waited was good, and y-you didn't trust me."

"I didn't," I admit regretfully, and he nods again. "I could apologize for the rest of my life for hurting you and not trusting you, and it still wouldn't be enough."

"It would, Master," Kalem allows with a small smile, "after three years."

My laugh escapes me before I have any mind that it's coming, loud and uncontrolled in the way only he could bring out of me. Kalem grins widely in response, diving into my arms so that he could steal all the cuddles and kisses he said he needed to survive.

I happily surrender it all to him.

"Can you tell me the rest?" I ask when we part, my fingers stroking his cheek gently. "What happened after?"

"Well, at first, I was going to go straight to Zhoron, but when I found out about Echo, I knew I had to try and save them," Kalem explains firmly.

I knew my love had a heart too big for his chest, it was one of the things I loved most about him, but sometimes, I wish that heart picked who to care about a little better.

"I had a plan," Kalem continues, his expression turning solemn as he stares blankly at our hands. "We had a signal, I-I taught him one so that when he got Echo, I'd pop us all away, so we could be safe."

From the look on Kalem's face, it was obvious that nothing had gone to plan.

I pull my boy towards me, and he immediately curls as best as he can under my arm, his fingers clinging desperately to mine as he tries for a breath, "Diablos said h-he'd reunite them, but when he did they..."

I kiss his head gently, squeezing him so he knew I'd understand whether or not he explained.

Diablos had never been a giving man at any point in his life. I had no doubt that when he reunited them, it was in the most painful method he could imagine.

"I-I got so angry and sad, Master," Kalem explains shakily, "they were h-hanging there," Dear Gods, "and he was smiling like it was a good thing... he looked so happy, they all did... so I hurt the ones who hurt them."

Kalem's voice dropped a few octaves, turning from sweet to sickly so quickly it made the hairs on my arms rise.

Zhoron's threat rings in my head again with the ominous suggestion that if Kalem took a life, it wouldn't end well. Like a trigger, the last moments before I'd succumb to my wounds replay themselves in my mind, reminding me of how Zhoron himself had fled while yelling for others to do the same.

Somehow, the thought of that demon being terrified was chilling in itself.

"I didn't know what else to do or where to go, and I was so confused and hurt, so I-I went to where I felt Zhoron," Kalem continues, reminding me of how eagerly he'd come to my office that day, with a map of Thailand.

My soul broke to know how much he'd endured on his own just because I hadn't bothered to listen to him. If I had, we could've done it together, perhaps, he wouldn't have witnessed his friend's brutal end, and all of this could've played out in a different way.

I hardly wished to go back and fix things in my life, believing that things always happened the way they intended, but at this moment, I wanted to go back and drain the life from myself for ever putting Kalem under anything else.

"You went to Thailand," It was hard to imagine Kalem so far away.

He nods his head with a frown, "It hurt a lot, Master. I never popped so far, and it was the worse."

"I'm sorry, love," I kiss him gently, wishing to make the whole ordeal better in any way I could. Kalem hums, happily soaking up my affections, so I don't dare stop. "But you found Zhoron there? Was he waiting for you?"

We'd always guessed the other Nyphilim had deposited Kalem on Earth, but after witnessing Zhoron's unflinching protectiveness over Kalem, even if brief, I couldn't imagine him ever parting from Kalem's side willingly.

"Kind of," Kalem replies, sounding unusually guilty. "I didn't know then, but I remember now cause I got my memories back, but I kind of...maybe... locked Zhoron away."

My mind was still stuck on the memories part, so the case of Zhoron's imprisonment was lost to me as I sat up and took Kalem with me, forcing him to look at me directly.

"Memories?" I question, unaware up to this moment that Kalem had any memories to regain. "From before the slave house?"

"I'm still working through it all," he says while scrubbing at his head with a pout, "but Zhoron didn't abandon me. After we left Ythene's Realm, we realised that one of us wasn't going to make it to our new home. I wanted Zhoron to be the one who lived. But I was little, I didn't even have my wings yet! I didn't really understand what I was doing. I just wanted to save him since he always saved me."

Kalem glances at me, and whatever expression I had on must've looked as lost as I felt cause he groaned, "I'm not explaining this well," he whines, burying his face in his hands.

"Let's try this with small steps," I say, reminding him of how he'd conquered reading on his own. "Start with the basics."

Kalem peers up at me, hopeful again with something he knew well, "O-Okay. The basics." He nods to himself, "well, we thought that Nyphilims were both angels and demons, but they're not really. They're pairs; one is the good and the other the bad, life and death."

"So you are the life side of things, and Zhoron the death?" I question, and Kalem nods his head eagerly.

"We can both use the other side, but we're not supposed to. It's not the way we were made."

"Alright," I say with a nod, the pieces not looking quite as crazy anymore. "So you were together when you left your realm?"

"They were killing all the Nyphilims, and Zhoron wanted me to live," Kalem explains with a sad smile, "he always put me first, always."

Whether or not Zhoron liked me, it was nice to know that there was someone else in this world who saw just how precious Kalem was, even if he couldn't see it himself.

"But we have a purpose," Kalem continues, "we give life and take it, we help living things work, like a cycle. Without that, without the realm and the life we knew, we were slowly dying."

In the back of my mind, I recall the conversation Aias and I had shared in my office where he'd said so clearly that he believed Kalem could find his place with the clan, that he could do good the way he was meant to.

Was this what he'd meant?

"I knew Zhoron would give his life for me, but I couldn't let him do that," Kalem explains quietly, "there was no life around us for me to draw from, so I used the side of things I wasn't supposed to, to preserve his life and there were consequences."

"Consequences?"

"It affected me," he whispers as a deep shudder ripples through him. "We're not supposed to cross that line for a reason. It's how the other Nyphilims went so evil. It can make you all wrong in the head. Make you think bad, evil thoughts all the time and make you work wrong.

"It was doing that to me when we got here. It felt like someone was trying to claw my mind apart, and make it new with things that weren't supposed to be there. I felt like I was going insane.

"I couldn't risk Zhoron being locked away forever because of me. So I did the only thing I could to save my mind," he glances up at me, "I made it go blank. If there was nothing there, then there was nothing to tear me apart..."

I blink at Kalem, trying to understand if the words he was using really matched the reality of what he wanted to say. Because if they did, then that meant that the one to leave Kalem alone in this world... was Kalem.

Kalem had been the reason he'd started in this world in such unthinkable ways, suffering unimaginable horrors that he took so long to heal from.

"And this is something he told you?" I question, eyebrows dipping slightly with mistrust. It was so easy to wave a lie, especially with someone as trusting as Kalem, he yearned to see the good in people.

"No," he promises, sensing my doubt. "We're a pair. There's a connection between us that will always be there. He helped me see everything I lost. It's all true."

The bite in those last words make my eyes widen slightly. Kalem only ever got defensive for me and Aias, which made it strange to hear him stand so firmly for someone he'd only just found. But by the look in Kalem's eye, it was clear to see that he cared very deeply for his brother.

"Okay," I allow with raised palms, "I'm sure I'll understand it all better when I speak to Zhoron myself."

Kalem made a face as if the idea of Zhoron and I meeting was both the very best thing in the world and the worst. But he didn't argue, allowing another quick nod and sweet smile that warmed my heart.

"Where is Zhoron now?" I ask, finding it strange the protective demon wasn't glaring at me from some corner. "Is he glaring at us somewhere in this distance?"

"Um," Kalem shakes his head, his smile wavering, "no. It's just us here."

"Alright," It was no skin off my back to have the brother far away. "But I suppose he knows where we are? Along with the others?"

Kalem stays quiet this time, his fingers drawing away from mine as his wings begin to curl around him.

"Kalem?"

Eyes darting up to mine, I catch a glimmer of that panic again, that raw fear that was haunting him, except this time it didn't look like it was for more, but because of me.

"Kalem," I start very, very slowly. "What exactly happened after I fell unconscious?"

Tearing himself away from me, Kalem scuttles off the mattress, putting distance between us as he fakes a smile, "You need to rest."

"No, I do not," I reply, eyes narrowing, "Kalem, I'm fine. I want to know what happened af-"

"You need blood and sleep and rest," Kalem lists quickly, his eyes pinned on my shoulders as he pushes me back down. "We can talk more when you're okay."

"Kalem," I start, but my love disappears before I can finish.

I blink at the space he'd filled, waiting for him to come back even though I knew he wouldn't.

I didn't want to assume the worse, didn't want to think it or even entertain it, but left alone in the cave, a single worrying thought encompassed my mind.

By the Gods, what had Kalem done...

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I DID IT GUYS! I DID IT!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS NOT A CLIFFHANGER!

Thoughts???????????????????

Thoughts on Kalem's adorable fricking reaction to his wingsssss?!!!?!?! UGHHHHHH

What about his little freak out at the end?

I know this chapter might seem repetitive since it went over information we already had, but it's a way to understand the finer details a little better and also bring Lincoln up to date.

But let me tell you, seeing Kalem being so scared of what he's done ughh I CAN NOT WAIT TO REVEAL IT. It's like a secret we already know, but without all the juicy details lol.

Next up will be a Patreon Extra for me, along with an AM chapter I think.

I hope you all enjoyed this double update!!! 

Thank you all for the love and support, please comment and vote any and all thoughts as we make our way down to the end of the book SOBS

Until next time,
Byeeeeeeeeeeee Humanssssssssssss