Hidden: House of Night: Book 10

bandaged arm around Lenobia’s shoulders. “If I have my way about it, little missy, you’ll be seein’ a whole lot me of me kissin’ this pretty girl.”
    I waited for Lenobia to strike him dead with her death-ray vision. Instead she looked adoringly up at him, pressed her hand to his chest over his heart, and rested her head, carefully, against his shoulder. Then she repeated, “What did you see when we were kissing?”
    “Travis turned into a big black guy and you turned into a younger version of yourself. And all around you there were these wispy, bubbly, happy things that were blue. I’m pretty sure they were sprites of some sort.” My eyes widened. “Actually, now that I think about it, the bubbles reminded me of the ocean. Huh. Weird. Anyway, I got all caught up in it, like it lifted me from the earth and put me in a happy blue ocean bubble. Sorry. I know that sounds crazy.” I held my breath, waiting for Lenobia to laugh and Travis to scoff.
    They didn’t doeither. Instead, Lenobia began to cry. I mean, seriously. She did the big, shoulder-shaking, snot bawl that I tend to be prone to. Travis just held her closer to him. He looked down at her as if she was a miracle personified. “I’ve known you before. That’s why you feel like home to me.”
    Lenobia nodded. Then, through her tears, she told me, “Travis is my only human mate, my only love, returned to me after two hundred and twenty-four years. I vowed never to love another after him, and I have not. We met and fell in love on the ocean in a ship that carried us from France to New Orleans.”
    “So the Seer Stone showed me the truth?”
    “Yes, Zoey. It absolutely did,” Lenobia said before she turned her face into Travis’s chest and wept while he held her, releasing two centuries of waiting and loss and pain.
    I stood and took Stark’s hand again, pulling him away so that the two of them could be alone. As we walked into the stables he said, “This does not mean Aurox is Heath come back to you. You know that, right?”
    Stevie Rae saved me by rushing up and gushing, “Ohmy
goodness!
Where have you been? I can’t wait to tell you ’bout Lenobia and Travis.”
    “Been there. Done that,” Stark said. “Where are Aphrodite and Darius?”
    “They’re already in front of Nyx’s Temple at the funeral pyre,” Stevie Rae said. “We’re meeting them there real soon.”
    “I’ll go find Erin and Shaunee and Damien. We need to get going.”
    “What’s up with him?” Stevie Rae asked, watching Stark stride away.
    “Heath may really be inside Aurox,” I said.
    Stevie Rae echoed my thoughts exactly by saying, “Ah, hell!”

CHAPTER TWELVE

    Kalona
    Being on the side of Lightwasn’t asinteresting as he remembered. Truth be told, Kalona was bored. Yes, he understood why Thanatos had told him to stay in the background and not draw attention to himself until after Dragon’s funeral. It was then that she was going to announce to the school that he was her new Warrior, and would take the position of Sword Master and Leader of the Sons of Erebus at the Tulsa House of Night. Until then his presence would be confusing, if not insulting to the other Warriors.
    The problem was Kalona had never minded being insulting. He was a powerful immortal. Why should he be bothered by the inconsequential feelings of others?
    Because those I find most inconsequential sometimes surprise me: Heath, Stark, Dragon, Aurox, Rephaim.
The last name in his mental list startled him. Rephaim had seemed inconsequential to him at one time, but he’d been wrong. Kalona had realized he loved his son—needed his son.
    What else had he been wrong about?
    Probably quite a lot of things.
    The thought depressed him.
    He paced back and forth along the darkest, most shadowy side of Nyx’s Temple. There he was within hearing distance of Dragon’s pyre, so he could come when Thanatos called, but he was also out of sight.
    Being told what to do annoyed him. It had always annoyed him.
    And there was this fledgling who had an affinity for fire, Shaunee. She seemed to have the ability to prod him, to make him consider things he was unused to spending his time considering.
    She’d doneit before. He’d meant to manipulate her—to get information about Rephaim and the Red One. What had happened was that she had gifted him with something ridiculously mundane and simple: a cell phone. That small gift had saved his son’s life.
    Now she’d made him think about all those