Strong adult themes and distressing content || Court Of Amaeris || Book One ||
Solar Flare - Demon hunting guild and the new permanent residence for Astola's Tri-bloods.
Four years is a long time to be hunting demons on military orders, but...
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The next few weeks built up a routine I found to enjoy; early morning training sessions with everyone, watching as Seth cracked jokes at Aries, who either completely ignore them, or if Seth found the right way of saying them, had his face lighting up like an iron kettle. After training I'd head back to my room to relax by myself for half hour before making my way to breakfast with the other tri-blood's.
I would spend my mornings with them, talking about the things we could look forward to living here, ensuring they were settling in nicely and setting some goals for themselves, while Lillian, Seth and Kieran ran many classes throughout the day for the other long-term residents.
Not only did I find out Aries had taken to the library almost every day since being here, reading as much as he could whether he understood the words within or not, but he, along with the other two, had searched this place up and down. In hopes of finding those they knew within these walls. I had seen a few faces, girls from my days before Kieran, but those were far off memories now.
"Not a sign of them, though if she was here, she would have rushed you the second word of you being here got out." Aries had told me only last week, his hair wet with rain as he caught up with us for breakfast.
No sign of Mira or Harlow he meant; the two adults of our original group before Amos and Adonis. I hated how I was happy to hear that; that Mira wasn't here.
My heart broke for Aries though. Just as I had Kieran growing up, he had Harlow, and our spilt from them mid-way during deployment tore the brothers apart. Aries has never caught wind of him since, even here.
I also learnt that Amos and Adonis were taking their training seriously, hoping to prove themselves once we could undertake missions, which we all took too pretty quickly. Small, local missions, casual hordes or sightings to deal with. It seemed as though Adonis had some serious respect for my sister, and would drag Amos to every session he could.
Alice and Adele were mixed about that, knowing they could live pretty normal teenage lives for the most part. I suppose still getting used to not having to fight for their lives each and every day was going to take time. Ascott was the one who surprised me the most, going from the nervous twelve-year-old he was when he first got here, to a rather expressive young man in a few weeks. Guess Ricard has that effect on the younger ones, encouraging themselves to be just that; themselves.
By lunch time; I'd be rushing to my father's office.
I relished that time of the day, my first time walking through his office, he had offered me the opportunity to read all of his old work. And since then, with my own four years of deployment and up-close encounters with over three cultures worth of demons, I often found my father asking for my opinion on many of his own papers and research.
The bookish demonologist within me didn't know whether to laugh or cry. We spent hours that day discussing everything we both knew, and I managed to avoid the conversation about shades; I couldn't talk about it yet, not with the festering shame that I had bubbling away within me.
