Chapter 51 Deacon
POV: Niko
The coffee shop near the east building was quiet at this hour.
A few early risers scattered across the tables. A werewolf junior Niko vaguely recognized asleep over a textbook near the window. The barista behind the counter looking like she had been there since before dawn and was personally offended by every customer who walked through the door.
Deacon was already charming her before Niko had even picked a table.
He watched his brother lean against the counter with that specific brand of effortless confidence that was either deeply admirable or deeply exhausting depending on the day and settle his attention entirely on the girl behind the register like she was the most interesting thing in the room.
She was not charmed.
Niko sat down.
"Even if you are a werewolf." Deacon was saying. "Coming from an inferior species isn't your fault. I'm sure we can work something out."
The barista handed their order across the counter with the expression of someone who had been putting up with this for three minutes too long.
"One caramel macchiato and one black coffee." She said flatly. "Six dollars."
Deacon pulled a ten from his pocket and slid it across the counter without breaking eye contact. "Keep the change." He winked.
She looked at the ten. Then at him.
Then she turned around.
Niko picked up their drinks and found a table in the back corner and sat down and waited for his brother to finish being rejected and come join him.
Deacon dropped into the chair across from him looking completely unbothered.
"She's warming up to me." He said.
"She turned her back on you." Niko said.
"Prelude to warming up." Deacon said and picked up his macchiato.
Niko drank his coffee and said nothing and waited because Deacon always got to the point eventually and rushing him only made it take longer.
"So." Deacon said after a moment. "Carly McPherson."
Niko looked at the table.
"Not even going to pretend I didn't see what I saw?" Deacon asked.
"No point." Niko said.
Deacon tilted his head. "Fair." He turned his cup slowly between his hands. "How long."
"A few weeks." Niko said.
"And how serious."
"Deacon."
"I'm asking genuinely." His brother said. And the smirk had dropped out of his voice enough that Niko looked up and found something more considered on his face than usual. "I'm not taking the piss. How serious is it."
Niko looked at the window.
Outside the Black River Falls fog was sitting low as always, the morning light barely cutting through it. A few students were crossing the courtyard in the distance with their heads down and their collars up against the cold.
"Serious enough." He said finally.
Deacon nodded slowly. "Does she know that."
"She's getting there." He said.
Another nod. "And Aurora."
Niko's jaw tightened. "That's a separate conversation."
"Is it." Deacon said. Not unkindly. Just directly.
Niko said nothing.
His brother leaned forward slightly. "Look I'm going to say something and I need you to hear it without immediately threatening to remove one of my organs."
"Jury's still out on that." Niko said.
Deacon almost smiled. "You're a vampire and she's a witch. I know you don't care about that and honestly I don't either, you know I've never been built the same way about all that as everyone else. But other people do care. A lot of people care." He held Niko's gaze. "Your faction. Her coven. The whole structure of this school that keeps everything from falling apart is built on those two groups specifically staying in their lanes." He paused. "And your position as faction leader is not untouchable."
"I know that." Niko said.
"Do you." Deacon said. "Because from where I was standing at your door this morning it looked like you forgot entirely."
Niko looked at his coffee.
He had not forgotten. He had simply decided that knowing something and letting it make your decisions for you were two different things and he was done letting other people's agendas make his decisions.
He said none of that.
"And can you trust her." Deacon said. "Actually trust her. Not just want to."
"I don't trust anyone." Niko said.
"That's not an answer." His brother said.
Niko looked at him.
Deacon looked back.
"More than I've trusted anyone in a long time." Niko said. The honesty of it surprised him slightly on the way out.
Deacon sat with that for a moment. Then he nodded and picked up his drink and leaned back in his chair and the interrogation appeared to be over.
"Right." He said. "Well. Don't be an idiot about it."
"Incredibly helpful." Niko said dryly.
"I try." Deacon said. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small pink card and set it on the table between them. "Now. Other business."
Niko looked at the card without touching it.
"Freida is getting married." Deacon said.
Niko picked it up.
The card was thick and expensive the way everything associated with his family was thick and expensive. Embossed lettering. A small photograph printed inside. Freida and Lucien standing in front of the Eiffel Tower with his arm around her and both of them laughing at something outside the frame.
He stared at the photograph for a moment.
He had not seen his sister in two years. She looked exactly the same. She would always look exactly the same.
"Spring break." Deacon said. "At the mansion."
Niko set the card down.
The mansion.
He had not been back there in four years. Had driven past it once by accident two years ago and felt the specific cold that had nothing to do with the Black River Falls weather settle over him and had taken the long way home ever since.
"Isabel sent your invitation through me." Deacon said. "Because she knew you'd actually open it if it came from Freida."
"She was right." Niko said flatly.
"She usually is about you." Deacon said quietly. Not as a defense. Just as a fact.
Niko looked at the card.
"Freida wants you there." Deacon said. "We all do. Even if you spend the whole evening standing in the corner looking unapproachable, at least you'd be there."
Niko huffed a short laugh despite himself.
"Victor will be there." He said.
"Yes." Deacon said simply. Not minimizing it.
Niko picked up his coffee.
They sat in silence for a moment. The coffee shop moved around them quietly. The barista was serving someone else with the same exhausted professionalism.
"I'll think about it." Niko said.
Deacon's face did something genuine for a second before the practiced ease came back. "That's all I'm asking."
He tucked the invitation into his bag.
He thought about Freida. About the last time he had actually talked to her, really talked to her, before everything got too complicated to navigate. She had always been the least complicated of his siblings. The one who sent him books in the mail when she found ones she thought he would like without explaining why. The one who called on his birthday every year without making it a thing.
He thought about the house.
He thought about what it would cost him to walk back through those doors.
He finished his coffee and said nothing else about it.
Deacon was doing the same. Which was uncharacteristic enough that Niko noticed it.
"You all right." Niko said.
His brother looked up. Surprised.
"Fine." Deacon said. Then after a pause. "Just thinking."
"Dangerous." Niko said.
Deacon smiled. "Incredibly." He stood and grabbed his bag. "I have class. Try not to spend the morning wanking over your sketchbook."
Niko threw a sugar packet at him.
Deacon caught it without looking and dropped it back on the table and walked out.
Niko sat alone for a moment.
He looked at the table where the invitation had been.
Then he pulled out his phone.
Reba had texted three times last night. He had seen them before he fell asleep and had told himself it could wait until morning.
It was morning.
He typed back.
Niko: Still need to talk?
The reply came in under thirty seconds.
Reba: Yes. Where are you.
Niko: Coffee shop east building. Come now if you want.
He set his phone down and waited and thought about what his sister's face had looked like the last time he had caught her watching him. The specific expression she wore when she had filed something away and was deciding what to do with it.
He had a feeling he already knew what this was about.
He was going to hear it anyway.
POV: Reba
She had been awake since five.
Not because of anything specific. Just that particular kind of wakeful that came when something was sitting in the back of your mind and refusing to let you rest properly until you dealt with it.
She had been carrying this for two weeks.
Since the first night she had seen them go over the wall together and stood behind a pillar on the east path and watched her brother boost a witch over the perimeter of their school and flash after her into the Black River Falls night.
She had kept it to herself since then. Had watched from her specific angle on the cheer squad and in the corridors and in the cafeteria and had kept building a picture that she was fairly certain was accurate.
And then last night.
She had been coming back from the late library session and had taken the corridor past the east stairwell and had heard them.
Not the words exactly. Just the voices. His and hers. And the specific quality of silence between them that told her everything the words would have said anyway.
She had kept walking.
She had gone back to her room and sat on her bed and thought about it for a long time and then she had texted him because she could not keep carrying this alone and Niko was the only person she could actually say it to.
Her phone buzzed.
Niko: Still need to talk?
She was already putting her shoes on.
She texted back and grabbed her jacket and was out the door before her roommate stirred.
She walked across campus with the fog around her feet and the morning light just starting to push through and thought about what she was going to say.
She thought about the way Carly had looked when Reba mentioned Niko on the practice field. That micro pause. That careful neutral expression covering something that was not neutral at all.
She thought about her brother's face in the lounge yesterday when the sketchbook tore.
She thought about the text she had seen on Deacon's phone last night by accident, the wedding invitation he had been forwarding to Niko, and the dread that had settled in her stomach reading the address.
The mansion.
Spring break.
Isabel wanting Niko to come home.
She pushed through the door of the coffee shop and found him immediately in the back corner. He looked tired in the way he always looked tired when something was sitting on him. He was looking at his phone and did not look up until she was already at the table.
She sat down across from him.
He looked at her.
"So." He said.
"So." She said.
They looked at each other for a moment.
"You know." She said. Not a question.
"I have a feeling you're about to tell me." He said.
She put both hands flat on the table and looked at her brother directly. "I've known for two weeks." She said. "Since the first night I saw you both go over the wall."
He said nothing.
"I haven't told anyone." She said. "And I'm not going to." She held his gaze. "But Nik. You need to be careful. Not because of what people will think." She paused. "Because of what's coming."
His eyes narrowed slightly. "What do you mean."
She pressed her lips together.
"The wedding." She said carefully. "Isabel is going to use it to try to get you home. You know that. And if she finds out about Carly before you're ready for her to." She stopped. "You know how she gets when she thinks someone has leverage over something she wants."
Niko's jaw tightened.
"I'm not saying stop." She said quickly. "I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying be careful. And be faster than she is."
He looked at the table for a long moment.
Then he looked at her.
"Thank you." He said. Quietly.
She nodded.
She picked up his abandoned coffee cup and took a sip and made a face because it was black and cold.
"This is terrible." She said.
"I know." He said.
She put it down and they sat together in the quiet of the morning and she did not push for more and he did not offer it and that was exactly how it was supposed to be between them.
For now it was enough.