He dropped lower.
Hit an invisible barrier that repelled him.
“What the fuck?” he muttered and beat his wings to hold his position in the frigid air as he stretched a hand out.
He slowly moved forwards until his palm met the invisible force. He pressed against it, his eyebrows pinching together as it resisted him, didn’t even bow as he exerted all of his remaining strength on it.
Magic?
He scanned the dark brown tiled roof below him and what he could see of the inner courtyard of the stilted circle of the chateau.
Was she here?
He flapped his wings and flew higher, needing to get a better look at his surroundings. Mountains. A forest. A lake far up the valley to his right.
Not a single building other than this one for miles.
Whoever had cast the barrier liked their privacy.
Either that or they didn’t want someone to know they were up to no good.
He wasn’t one to judge those who were up to no good, because he had never been the hypocritical type, but it was hard not to when there was a chance these people had turned on their own kind.
As much as he wanted to climb the ranks, he had never actively taken down a fellow angel to achieve the upward motion he desired. He might have orchestrated a few of their deaths, but he had never done the deed. Plenty of angels in Hell were happy to do that for him. He just had to find whoever the angel he wanted eliminated had recently pissed off and point them in his direction.
Of course, some might view that as turning on his own kind.
Everyone had their own rules they lived by.
He flew around the perimeter of the barrier, studying that beat inside him, trying to discern whether it was growing stronger or weaker as he moved.
It grew stronger the closer he flew to the mountains.
Rook headed out over the forest and that unjustified sense of fury swept through him again as the beat grew weaker, confirming she was in the castle. He turned back towards it, glared at the towers and felt his eyes shift to crimson as black rippled over his skin.
New question.
Had the barrier been made by whoever had apparently taken her, or had she cast it to keep people out and protect herself?
He only had Apollyon’s word to go on, and he didn’t place much value in it. For all he knew, the angel could be luring him here so the witch could weaken herself by attempting to kill him and his own witch could steal her powers, making herself stronger.
Rook cautiously flew lower, touched down in the white garden and glared at his feet as they sank into the freezing snow. He shuddered and kicked his feet, trying to shake it off.
A golden light burst to life in the corner of his eye, near to the ground.
His eyes darted there.
A shadowy figure moved beyond the barred window.
Was it her?
Had he found her because he had been her guardian angel, or because this was all some elaborate trap devised by the angel and his witch?
He hadn’t noticed the blonde witch casting a spell on him.
And the angel had seemed genuinely concerned about the safety of the one called Isadora.
He found himself wading through the snow towards that faint light, a need rising inside him, one so powerful he couldn’t deny it, didn’t feel the cold as the icy flakes washed over his knees and got into his boots. It consumed and controlled him, had him moving faster as it grew, driving him onwards. It beat inside him as fiercely as the feeling he was closing in on the witch in the picture.
Isadora.
He needed to see her in the flesh.
He needed to ask her a question, one that the answer to would either make him feel like a fool or turn his entire world on its head.
Did he know her?
CHAPTER 5
Isadora focused her limited power on her right hand where she held it out in front of her, her palm facing upwards. Sweat broke out on her brow as she stared at it, her breaths shallowing and coming faster as she fought the spell that bound her magic. The incantation echoed in her mind, a low-level one she could normally cast without having to think about it. Now, it felt as if she was trying to cast something high-level, beyond her ability, and she feared her strength would give out before she could complete it.
Her limbs trembled, causing her hand to shake in the air before her, and her knees weakened beneath her, in danger of giving out as the minor spell drew on every drop of magic available to her, hungry for more.
She couldn’t do this alone.
She closed her eyes, pulled down a breath to slow her racing heart, and shifted her focus to encompass a wider area.
She felt it the moment she connected with the ancient nature surrounding her. Power trickled into her. It would have been a torrent had it not been for her damned manacles.
But that trickle was enough.
Her eyes snapped open.
A tiny spark ignited above her palm as she channelled the magic into the spell she chanted quietly beneath her breath, afraid someone would hear her and stop her. Her heart hammered as that flicker of light became a small flame that weakly illuminated her hand.
Desperation drove her, had her pushing harder regardless of the potential dangers.
She could set herself on fire and she wouldn’t care, not as long as she could cast the light far enough into the world outside her cell window to reveal whether she had been hearing things.
Or whether the sound of wings really had broken the eerie stillness of the wintry night.
The flame burned brighter, its light stretching to the walls now, and she nurtured it, ignoring the weakness building inside her to push it harder still.
A blazing golden orb burst into existence above her palm. It swirled and twisted furiously, the bands of bright yellow and deep orange twining together into a blur as it picked up speed.
She dialled back her magic, slowing everything down as she centred her mind so she could control the flames. The spinning orb decelerated, the bands reappearing again as they moved at a speed her eyes could track.
Isadora lifted her hands as she tiptoed, reaching up towards the window, careful to keep them level so she didn’t drop the orb. Her right ankle wobbled beneath her and she swayed that way. Her eyes shot wide as her left hand jerked, the drop of her right one tugging on it, and she almost lost her grip on the spell. She stilled right down to her breathing, heart pounding as she stared at the fireball. The heat of it seared her, a reminder that if she dropped it, she was liable to injure herself.
“Stupid shackles.” She glared at them.
The chain that linked them was short, making it difficult to use her hands. She could do this though. She grimaced as she eased up on her toes again, pressing her chest to the damp stone wall for support, and finally reached the window. She bit her lip and fumbled with the latch on the window with one hand as she struggled to keep hold of the fireball with the other.
The latch finally gave. She stretched higher, trying to push the pane up so she could hurl the flaming light into the garden, ready to utter the words that would cause it to flare up again and explode into a bright well of flames that would chase back the night.
Her tired muscles trembled beneath her skin as she struggled with the heavy window, aching as she tried to force the pane high enough. When her arm felt as if it would give out, she mustered all of her strength and grunted as she tossed the fireball as far as she could manage.
It made it barely eight inches before it landed in the snow with a sizzle.
“Dammit,” she muttered under her breath and gripped the bars in both hands to hold herself up so she could see the orb.
She focused on it and it began to roll, hissing and throwing up steam as it carved a channel in the snow.
“Keep going,” she murmured as she weakened again.
She willed the fiery ball to roll a little more. Just a few more inches. It was almost twenty feet from her now.
She readi
ed the spell again, because she had to know if an angel had come for her. The hope the sound of wings had birthed in her was killing her. She wasn’t sure she could take it if it had been her imagination.
The black-winged angel she had heard rumours about in Paris had to be Apollyon. It just had to be him. She swore she had felt his power too, familiar and comforting. His senses were sharper than hers. If she had felt him, he must have felt her. The reason the people holding her kept moving her had to be because Apollyon was looking for her.
She tried to suppress that hope as it ran out of control, afraid it really would destroy her if it was shattered. She couldn’t tamp it down though. It seized her, gripped her so hard it was impossible to shake it and stop her mind from spinning with a thousand thoughts of seeing Apollyon again and the things he could tell her.
He would be able to tell her what had happened to Rook.
She stilled as the glow emanating from the orb cast light over a pair of armoured shins.
Not the gold-edged obsidian armour she knew Apollyon wore.
The edges were the colour of blood.
Armour belonging to the ranks of the Devil.
Her throat closed as memories surged to the surface of her mind to strip away all that was left of her strength. She clung to the bars with trembling fingers, stopping herself from collapsing, refusing to let this male see her weak and vulnerable.
Not a demonic angel.
They were betrayers. Devious and cruel. Vicious. They lusted after bloodshed and destruction, a gift from their master’s poisonous temperament and his blackened soul.
They took pleasure from delivering pain.
Images of her own blood spilling on black flagstones stuttered across her eyes as his taunts rang in her ears, promises of relief if she gave him what he desired.
Her grip on reality began to slip.
Isadora forced herself to focus on the Hell’s angel standing by her orb. She chanted the spell louder now, putting strength into each word, imbuing them with power.
This angel wouldn’t take her.
She wouldn’t go through that hell again.
She wasn’t sure how the Devil had found her, but she would be more careful in the future. She would take this demon down so he couldn’t report to his master and then she would reinforce her protective spells, the ones that had kept her concealed for centuries.
The orb blazed brighter, driving back the darkness, spewing streams of fire as it began to rotate, swiftly picking up speed as it grew in size.
The demon stepped back.
Isadora glanced at him, wanting to see his terror in the moment before she pushed the orb to overload and explode.
She froze.
Her legs gave out, swept from beneath her by the wave of disbelief that rocked her.
She hit the hard stone floor of the cell with jarring force and collapsed forwards, bracing herself on trembling arms.
No. She had to be mistaken. It wasn’t possible.
She shook her head and wanted to laugh at herself for imagining such a ridiculous thing. Tears came instead, a flood of them that stole her breath, had her choking on sobs as her heart ached so fiercely she felt sure it would finally give out.
It wasn’t possible.
“Mother Earth… please don’t let it be possible,” she whispered, her eyes and nose burning, throat tight as she fought the tide of her emotions, ones centred around the grief she had carried inside her for thousands of years.
Isadora mustered her strength, forced herself back onto her feet and clutched the rough stone wall, using it to haul herself back up. She needed to see if her mind had played a cruel trick on her.
Because it couldn’t be him.
She leaned into the wall, reached up and gripped the bars of the window. The sound of her shackles clanking against them competed with the noise of her rapid breaths as she tried not to cry.
She lifted her head, daring a glance at the demonic angel.
He stood staring down at the orb that had shrunk in size and had almost fizzled out, his eyes a strange shade of gold with turquoise hints as the warm light emanating from it flickered across his face. His head canted left and his black hair fell forwards to brush his brow.
She charted the familiar sculpted planes of his face, from the strong line of his square jaw to his high cheekbones, and the straight blade of his nose. Jet eyebrows dipped, narrowing his eyes in that way she had always found sexy, and pain tore a sob from her.
Because her beautiful, noble angel had fallen.
And she was sure it had been her fault.
She shifted closer to the window, an apology balanced on her lips, one she knew would be inadequate. Nothing she said or did could make up for what had happened to him because of her. He loathed the demonic angels, despised Hell and everything it represented, had been fiercely loyal to Heaven and proud of his position there.
She ached at the thought of what he must have gone through, how it must have killed him to fall from grace and become something he had hated.
Isadora covered her mouth with her left hand, her eyebrows furrowing as she forced herself to look at him, to see it really was him.
It wasn’t her imagination, a trick created by her fatigue and the hope she foolishly kept alive.
If he had been born of her imagination, he would have appeared as he had when she had known him. He would have been the angel she had fallen for all those centuries ago.
His hair would have been longer, his beautiful wings silver-blue instead of crimson, and his armour would have been cerulean edged with silver.
A need to touch him rushed through her, so she could be sure he really was there, was flesh and blood.
Alive.
She reached her right hand higher and tried to stretch it through the bars.
Her manacle clanked against the steel rod.
Turquoise eyes shifted to settle on her.
His black eyebrows pinched harder, putting a furrow between them above his straight nose.
He moved towards her, stepping over the orb, his eyes locked on hers. They were cold, flinty in a way she didn’t like and couldn’t understand. She stared up into them as he drew closer and she caught the flicker of anger that darkened them as he suddenly stopped.
He lifted his right hand and the skin of his palm paled as he pushed it forwards, as if it pressed against something.
A barrier.
The witches had cast a protective barrier over the castle.
Panic came rushing back, no longer born of fear a demonic angel had come for her. Now, it was born of the fact he couldn’t reach her.
She squeezed her right arm through the bars and reached for him, desperate to make contact, to somehow shatter the barrier that separated them so he could get to her.
Those turquoise eyes dropped to her and grew colder, all emotion draining from them as he glared at her.
“Rook.” She stretched for him, afraid he would leave now that he couldn’t reach her.
His eyes widened and he shifted back a step.
Her reach for him had the opposite effect to what she wanted.
He was swift to turn on his heel, beat his wings and take flight, and she could only stare as he quickly disappeared into the night. Cold swept through her, not the frigid chill of the wintry weather but the bitter bite of despair and devastation. She sank to her knees, her hands falling into her lap, and stared at the stone floor as something hit her.
Rook didn’t know her.
She shook her head at that. It wasn’t possible. She was reading into things because she hated how cold he had looked when he had gazed upon her, such a stark contrast to the male who had always held heat in his eyes when looking at her before.
He knew her. He had to know her. He had been the one to tell her all those years ago about angels, about how he would lose his memories if he died and was reborn in Heaven. He had made it sound as if angels retained their memories if they fell.
“What do I know?�
� she muttered to her knees, then twisted and sank against the wall, sitting on her backside on the icy flagstones.
Was it possible angels also lost their memories when they fell?
She leaned forwards, buried her fingers in her fall of silver hair and clawed it back as she curled up into a ball.
It hurt.
It hurt to know Rook had been alive all this time.
Serving the very realm that had made her believe he was dead.
Fresh pain rolled through her, memories of that night bombarding her, a blur of rage and agony so deep it cut and lashed at her. Tears streaked down her cheeks as she held herself, desperately trying to keep herself together because she felt as if this was it.
She was finally going to fall apart.
She couldn’t take any more.
Fear gripped her too, a poisoned whisper in her mind that grew louder as footsteps sounded in the corridor outside her cell.
She wasn’t strong enough to withstand whatever they were going to do to her. She was too tired, too weak to endure it any longer. She would break.
Afraid that would happen, she did the only thing she could to protect the spell that bound her to Rook.
She muttered old words, ones that set her heart on fire and had her soul screaming in agony as she forced her magic to build inside her, fought the spell on the shackles and tapped back into the power of the nature surrounding her. Flames tore through her, shredding her strength, and she wavered, the world growing dark for a split-second before coming back. She gritted her teeth and pushed harder, desperate to muster the strength to cast the spell, a powerful one that was way beyond her ability while she was bound.
She had to do it though, even if it killed her.
She had to do it now.
If she didn’t, she would give the witches everything they wanted.
The world darkened again, her head growing light as she fought to cast the spell. She shook off the dizziness and carried on, chanting the spell under her breath. Despair swept through her, stripping away all hope as she realised something.
She wasn’t powerful enough to cast it, not even with a fragile connection to the natural magic in the forest and mountains.
She needed to be stronger. She needed a bigger boost.
Bound Angel (Her Angel: Bound Warriors paranormal romance series Book 4) Page 6