“With dark magic,” Orion replied in a serious tone. “But it won’t be simple to achieve.”
“Who cares about simple?” I asked. “I wanna know if it’s doable or not.”
“I think it will weaken Lavinia if we can manage it,” Darius added. “We definitely got the impression that the artifacts alongside the rift were increasing her power. That was before she crossed into our realm, but it makes sense that it would be helping her draw the shadows through to our realm too.”
“The vision we saw of Lavinia showed the Vega queen banishing her to the Shadow Realm and closing the rift to cut off the remaining Nymphs from the power of it,” Darcy added thoughtfully. “So maybe closing this one would weaken them again.”
“There are bound to be countless Nymphs there,” Orion protested, leaning in close to look at the map which Darius had pulled up on his Atlas. “Fuck knows how many they’d leave guarding something that important, but it’s not going to be easy.”
“Well nothing ever is for us, is it?” I shrugged, earning myself one of those blazing looks from my Dragon which spelled out just how much he hated the way we’d begun with each other.
The corner of my lips twitched in amusement as he frowned at me though, because I might have fucking hated him once and it might have been a whole lot easier on the two of us if we’d just been upfront over our feelings and attraction to one another to begin with, or even if he’d gone against his father’s wishes when it came to me, but that wasn’t our story. And I wasn’t certain I would love him this desperately if it had been. The way we came together might not have been a pretty little fairy tale filled with sonnets and roses, but it was raw, brutal, real. Ours. And I’d felt every damn moment of it along the way.
“Maybe we should just hit them hard,” Darcy suggested. “We have an entire army here waiting to strike - why not bring them out in force and show Lionel what we’re capable of?”
“We don’t have the stardust for that,” Max pointed out. “With Lionel restricting access to it, we’re going to be hard pressed to even make sure we have enough to keep using it ourselves.”
“We can handle it,” Caleb said with a cocky shrug. “We can take out a few Nymphs.”
“Hell yeah we can,” Seth agreed. “We’re the Phoen Dream, Bitchy Flame Eyes, Wolfman, Bitey C, Fish Fury, Dragzilla, Professor Shame and Batty Betty.”
“Don’t start with that shit again,” Darius groaned as Geraldine chuckled loudly at the name he’d gifted her and my smile widened at mine. I still kept getting caught off guard by seeing him acting so damn normal around his friends, that utter asshole facade slipping just enough to let the light in when he was surrounded by people he trusted.
“Oh fuck off,” Orion growled. “If I have to have a shit nickname, at least don’t bring my damn shame into it.”
“Aw, look at you wanting a cute nickname from Seth,” Darcy teased him and Orion sighed as Seth immediately dove on the opportunity to play with him.
“It’s hard not to bring your shame into when it’s looking me right in the eye, Lance,” Seth said airily. “You should just own it, make a shame club with shamed friends who go on shameful adventures.”
“Or I could cut your hair off and strangle you with it, how about that?” Orion tossed back.
“Wow, Professor Shame is grumpy today,” Seth muttered and Darcy flicked a finger, casting a perfect shot of water right up his nose.
“Ah!” he yelped.
“Don’t bring shame into it,” Darcy insisted.
“Fine,” Seth sighed. “I’ll think up something else, but we’ll use Professor Shame as a placeholder for now.”
“We should consult with Gabriel about this altar,” Darius said, steering us back to the task at hand.
“Gabriel can’t help us with this,” I said, pursing my lips. “But he said him and his family are going to keep Lionel and Lavinia distracted for us. So I think the best thing we can do is strike at them out of the blue and hit as hard as we can.”
“Her majesty is right,” Geraldine agreed with a solemn nod. “We must drive ourselves deep within their darkest recesses, slam down hard upon whatever cranny and crevice we can thrust through, pound them down beneath us and leave them begging for absolution.”
“Yeah, what Gerry said, let’s pound them until they can’t take no more,” Max agreed with a grin as Geraldine gasped.