Primous Rising [Book 1 of The Unravelling series]

11. Celestiana

They walked towards Nikolus' car in silence. With a side glance, Celest noted his clenched jaw and hard gaze fixed ahead.

"What's wrong?" she questioned, her curiosity getting the best of her.

To her surprise, Nikolus ignored her. She frowned but kept quiet and diverted her focus to withdraw the knot around her wrists.

The tie disappeared, followed by sharp pinching senses all over her body. They reached the vehicle. With a flick of Nikolus' wrist, Elliot was inside before he rounded the car and got in. His behaviour was making her uneasy. Something was definitely up with Nikolus, but she didn't know how to approach it.

Celest climbed in and sank into the leather chair, her muscles ached and burned because of exertion. Her fingers trembled; she felt herself shuddering from the inside.

She stole a glance in Nikolus' way. He was staring into the distance, gripping the steering wheel. He was irking her, but she did not want to be demanding or rude after everything he had done for them in the past four days.

"Didn't I tell you not to use your powers?" he finally claimed through gritted teeth. His head snapped to her.

"Melckom was threatening to slaughter everyone in the city!" she exclaimed, defending herself.

"I clearly told you not to ever wield magic unsupervised. If it was necessary and utterly unavoidable, then the bare minimum. Which part of this statement was unclear for you?" Icy rage contaminated his words.

Celest studied him for a second. His eyes had not turned red, so he wasn't furious. Perhaps it annoyed him she hadn't listened to him. Well, too bad. The circumstances required her to do that. "I literally just said-" she began, but he interrupted her.

"Pyriom was there, he would have handled it," he glowered. "Fine, for an impossible moment, let's assume he couldn't have. Why would you display your power to that extent? A flicker of it would have sufficed. But no, you had to show off, had to surpass the boundaries," he fumed.

Celest crossed her arms in front of her chest, her eyebrows furrowed as anger slowly ebbed into her system, but before she could respond, Elliot spoke.

"She saved us, they were going to kill everybody and me."

"You stay out of this mortal," Nikolus barked. Celest tried hard not to flinch. Elliot retreated into his seat.

Maybe he was angry... Celest mused.

Nikolus' gaze returned to her, his features softening the slightest, but the irritation was still vivid. "Do you even realise what could have happened?" he took a deep breath and added, "you need blood."

Celest gaped at him. "No."

"You're drained," he asserted.

"I'm fine," she replied stubbornly. The unforgiving ache in her limbs was a palpable sign of her lack of recovery. But she would not admit to that, nor was she planning on letting Nikolus force her into consuming that foul liquid.