Ember (The Ember Series)

by Carol Oates

  “Earth to Candra,” Ivy called, snapping her fingers.

  Candra blinked coming back from the memory and trying to shake off the sudden cold shiver she felt. Tears caught in her lashes. There was an idea floating around in the back of her subconscious, trying to force its way forward, and she really didn’t want to have to think about it. Was that a real memory? Did she really see angels, even then, or was it a dream as her father had said? She thought she was protected from seeing them. Was that just her mind playing tricks on her? If she did see them, who were they protecting her from? It all came back to Sebastian, always to him. Everything had been played out to keep her away from him, and yet now he was the one person Candra struggled to keep her distance from.

  Lofi was right; she needed to talk to someone, someone who wasn’t caught up in all this madness.

  “What would you do if something you thought wasn’t real—something you never truly believed ever existed—was?”

  Ivy narrowed her eyes cynically. “What are we talking about here?”

  “Angels…what if I told you angels were real, living breathing things, walking around city just like all of us? We just didn’t know it—hypothetically, of course.”

  “Hypothetically—I’d say step away from the crazy buffet, you’re all full up.”

  Candra laughed lightly at Ivy’s scrunched up face. She looked so young. She had her whole life ahead of her, Candra thought, free to make whatever choices she wanted, free to make mistakes and fall in love with someone she could share a life with. She had choices.

  “Are you in love with him?” Ivy asked candidly, flicking her head softly so her hair swished over her shoulders.

  Candra shook her head swiftly and frowned. She was frowning a lot these days.

  “You’re lying,” she accused. “Candra, I’ve known you too long…and you didn’t ask who I was talking about.”

  “I didn’t need to.” Candra pouted. “I’m not in love with anyone.”

  Ivy nodded slowly with a knowing smirk. Candra rolled her eyes and stood up, brushing the dust off her ass and smoothing her jeans down harder than necessary.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Candra muttered. Now she’s being ridiculous.

  Candra presumed it was the hopeful romantic in Ivy seeing couples at every turn.

  “Where are you going now?” Ivy moaned. “You’re always running off somewhere.”

  “I need to clear my head,” Candra told her. “I’m going for a walk.”

  “And which hottie is it you are walking to? Beautiful, crazy stalker guy or smoking hot, older, mysteriously intense guy?”

  Candra rolled her eyes again, as if she wasn’t being childish enough already. She knew she was running from the conversation because she wasn’t ready to admit anything yet, even to herself. She stuck out her tongue at Ivy before she turned on her heels.

  Very suddenly Candra was overcome with an intense desire to see Sebastian. She had been planning to head to Draven and ask him about her memory. She had already discussed with him several of the strange dreams she had lately, but she wanted to see Sebastian. She turned quickly in the other direction toward Sebastian’s house. She had barely taken two steps under Ivy’s watchful eye when she realized she couldn’t ask Sebastian about this memory; all her nightmares recently were non-specific. What if she’d actually seen Watchers guarding her as a child? Which Watchers were protecting her then? Sebastian hadn’t known about her. If it was a memory her father was trying to talk her out of, did that mean Draven knew about her all along? Candra groaned at the questions swirling around her head. She lifted her shoulders and dropped them heavily as all the air deflated from her lungs, slowly turning yet again to catch Ivy watching her, bemused.

  “What is wrong with you?” Ivy inquired.

  “Shit, I don’t know what way is up anymore. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m being pulled in two different directions. One is sort of familiar and comfortable. I feel safe—most of the time, but I don’t know if I’m in a shelter or if I’m really just standing in the eye of the storm. The other I’m on the edge of a cliff with one foot hanging over the edge. It’s dangerous and exhilarating…and I’m afraid to close my eyes in case I fall, but I’m getting tired of fighting it.”

  Ivy raised her eyebrows. “Wow. Profound.” She walked toward Candra and wrapped her arms around her. “Sometimes by leaving what you’ve always known and what is safe, you are actually headed in the right direction of where you need to be.”

  “Huh?” Candra wondered aloud, thinking maybe Ivy didn’t get her analogy about Sebastian begin the storm and Draven being the cliff.

  “You won’t get anywhere by standing still in a storm or on a cliff, no matter how safe it feels. You need to make your move. What do your instincts tell you to do?”

  “That’s just it, I don’t know if I can trust them.”

  “I trust you,” Ivy said assuredly. “You’ll do what’s right.”

  Candra hugged her more tightly, grateful for Ivy’s faith in her. She just hoped it wasn’t unfounded.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sebastian had been going over books in his library for hours—texts, histories, journals, anything he could get his hands on. It was just like any other day he’d spent recently, surrounded by the smell of wood polish, old leather, and yellowing pages. Stacks of useless information lay scattered across the mahogany desk. Moment by moment, it felt as if the tall bookcases surrounding him were closing in. He kept the heavy, forest green drapes closed, blocking out the daylight, the city…the future. There was nothing. He could find no loophole, nothing in the text of the covenant that he could use to get Candra out of this. It was hopeless, and yet he still couldn’t bring himself to give up hope. She didn’t want Draven; he couldn’t believe that she wanted him. Still, she was going to do this to keep the rest of them from harm’s way. As if Sebastian didn’t have enough reason to hate Draven, this provided him with one more. The worst part of it was that he understood why Draven wanted Candra. Sebastian knew his nemesis liked to think it was Sebastian keeping the animosity between them going, but that wasn’t true. Draven was the one that never gave up, and now he was using Candra. Still looking for a way to finish what they started, and just as Sebastian expected, he was powerless stop him.

  “Hey.” Candra’s small voice called from the door, making him look up.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?”

  It wasn’t the first night Candra had been back since the evening of the party. She liked to come and sit in the library; she was slowly working her way through all the photograph albums, saying it made her feel closer to them somehow, seeing them all in images.

  “I wanted to see you.” She walked into the room, skimming her hand across the carving on the door and then dropping it by her side. Candra was dressed casually in jeans and a dark green shirt that made her pale skin take on an almost luminescent quality.

  She looked tired, although Sebastian knew she had been sleeping. He was there every night. She was simply worn out from everything going on in her life and all the weird dreams that he guessed was her subconscious mind struggling to work through it. He knew how she felt; waiting for the future to arrive was like standing in the sand and waiting for a tide flowing toward the shore, knowing you’re completely incapable of stopping it.

  “What are you doing?” Candra asked softly, coming to stand behind Sebastian and resting one hand on his shoulder.

  Through the fabric of his shirt he could feel the heat of her flesh, and his nerves tingled, wanting more. His desire for her was getting harder and harder for him to dismiss.

  He closed the leather-bound text he was reading with a quiet thump, feeling the frustration sizzle like acid in the pit of his stomach. “What I’ve been doing for the last three and a half weeks: trying to find you a way out of this deal with Draven.” Sebastian’s voice was harsher than he intended it to be, and Candra’s fingers tightened slightly before she released him.

  “That�
�s what I want to talk to you about. Can we take a walk?”

  Sebastian leaned back in the leather chair. His weight made the wood joints creak, and he swiveled to look up at her, crossing his hands over his stomach. Candra’s eyes were downcast, her tousled hair hanging loose like a curtain over her cheeks. When she pushed it behind her ears, she was frowning—nothing new. Sebastian hated seeing her frown. He clenched his fingers tighter to stop from reaching out and running his thumb across the line to smooth it out.

  Then she bit the inside of her lip, tilting her head to the side. It was a look he knew too well, and he knew he was toast. Candra glanced up at him from under her eyelashes, all innocence and fury raging in the brown of her eyes. It was the same exquisite fire that he’d seen in her from the very first day, smoldering beneath the surface of her captivating exterior. He was so lost when she gave him that look.

  Over the last three weeks Sebastian had finally accepted that his feelings might be a tad more confused than he had first been willing to admit. Candra had crawled under his skin. They spent time together every day, so it stood to reason they had become closer. Sebastian found it hard to define now exactly what they were. He wanted to be Candra’s friend, but he also wanted to touch her…all the time. It was strange because he had never felt that way before—and she let him touch her, which was unexpected. She seemed to welcome it. He would brush her hair over her shoulder with his fingers, pull her to him while he read to her, and they would sit on her bed, cut off from everything and everyone. She didn’t call him out once for his sudden change in behavior; she simply went along with it, no questions asked.

  At times it was still hard to stay his quick temper. Candra could be infuriating. She was willful and quick witted, she asked questions constantly about everything and was like a sponge, greedily absorbing any information she received. He still wanted her to choose him; that much of his plan hadn’t altered. Lofi was right. It would probably mean war and lives lost. Sebastian knew he was being selfish in wanting to keep her with them, with him, but he just couldn’t bring himself to think that far ahead. He wanted to linger in the futile hope that the future wouldn’t happen.

  Some leader I turned out to be.

  “I know what you’ve been doing,” Candra scolded as they walked through the park.

  It was more or less deserted, except for a few people out walking dogs or strolling after dinner. The evening was verging on darkness, and it had recently rained, forming puddles on the pathways and making the grass spongy where they walked. Sebastian raised an eyebrow, wondering if maybe he had spoken too soon about her never calling him out.

  She sighed, clasping her hands behind her back and watching her feet. “You’ve been looking for a way out of the treaty because you think you’re still protecting me.”

  Oh. “Yeah, but I haven’t been very successful.”

  “I want you to stop.”

  He froze, gawking at the back of her head. “Excuse me?” What in the Arch’s name could she be thinking?

  She was still walking slowly, heel to toe. “I have decided to accept Draven’s offer without challenge. I’m going to do what he wants. I don’t want to fight it anymore.”

  Sebastian couldn’t stop himself or even think about what he was doing. He put his hand on her arm, halting her and spinning her toward him. “What are you talking about? You’re just going to walk away?” he demanded, glaring at her.

  “I have to. It’s going to happen. This is about more than what you or I want.”

  “You don’t have to do anything.”

  Candra scowled at her arm. Sebastian’s eyes flashed to see what she was seeing. His fingers wrapped so tightly around her upper arm that the skin around his fingernails was pressed white. He loosened it a little.

  “You have to give me more time. I can find a way. You don’t have to walk away from everything,” he insisted sharply.

  Candra’s expression was soft; a small blush rose on her cheeks as she very gently laid her hand over his, slipping her fingers one by one beneath Sebastian’s to release her arm. “It doesn’t matter how much time you have. There is no way out of this. I was his the moment I was conceived. The moment my father decided to go against the covenant, I became one of them.”

  “You mean you want to be,” Sebastian snapped, drawing back from her touch.

  Her hand floated in the air for a moment before she took it back to her chest, rubbing it absentmindedly, as if it had been burned. “Whether we want something to be true or not has no bearing on it. This isn’t about choices. Sometimes what is simply is, like the color of the ocean or the sun…even history. There are some things that can’t be changed. Draven is right. I just couldn’t see it before, or I didn’t want to. All the Watchers know about me; there are more arriving into the city every day. Tensions are beginning to build, and not just among Watchers. Violent crimes are rampant, break-ins, robberies. It’s almost like the people can sense the unrest. If I don’t do this, there will be a war. Draven is trying to protect everyone.”

  “No!” Sebastian could feel his face tighten and the veins in his neck throb as his blood boiled. The very idea of Draven having Candra made him rage.

  “Yes.”

  “No,” he reiterated, pressing his hand to his chest because for some reason his heart felt like it was about to explode. His raised voice was loud enough to make a young woman cycling on the nearby path look over with an expression of distaste.

  “Yes,” Candra repeated calmly. “It isn’t the worst case scenario, me being with Draven. I don’t believe he will treat me badly, and I think he really does care for me.”

  “Sure,” he muttered cuttingly. “He cares for you so much that he is taking you away from the only mother you know and forcing you to be his mate.” He turned away, not willing to see the sadness in her eyes brought on by his biting words.

  “I don’t think it’s like that for him, Sebastian.”

  He wanted to shake her. Despite everything, Candra was still holding tight to the idea that there was more, that Draven had hidden reasons for doing what he was doing. He couldn’t make her believe that Draven was a bad guy. Sebastian reckoned Candra blamed his own longtime prejudices on a history that was no longer relevant. Draven was the one making history relevant by threatening to let it repeat.

  “Explain to me how it is then? Because that’s what it looks like to me.” He bunched a clump of hair in his fist, pulling it until his scalp hurt, anything to take away the sharp pain cutting at his insides. Why did he even care? Why couldn’t he just walk away and be done with all of this? Oh, yeah, Brie. He was holding onto Candra for Brie. He repeated it over and over in his head as if it would make it miraculously true.

  “I think Draven feels he has to do this. I think he wants something, but I can’t figure out what it is.”

  Sebastian spun sharply, feeling grass squelch under his sneakers. “I could tell you.”

  Candra flinched. He meant her to. Damn it all, he was so old that his existence seemed to stretch behind him for eternity, but he was behaving like a vicious teenage boy being dumped—even though that wasn’t the case at all because Candra was never his.

  “It’s not like that,” she fired back, equally caustically.

  Sebastian cocked an eyebrow disbelievingly. She frowned again and dipped her head. He could see she was blushing, and rage boiled up anew inside him at the idea of Draven’s hands on her.

  “I’m not saying it won’t be at some point…”

  It was inevitable. Sebastian knew it, and Candra had obviously accepted it. Draven wanted more than a friend, more than a companion. It would be easier to lie and swear it was otherwise, but what would be the point? He groaned, turning from her again. “I hate this. I hate that I can’t make him stop this.”

  Candra sighed. “I don’t know, Sebastian. Maybe you aren’t meant to. Maybe free will is an illusion and we are all just rolling along, becoming what we were meant to be right from the outset. Maybe we only believe w
e have choices, but there really is a bigger plan. I just know I have to do this.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “I know.”

  “You make me furious.”

  “I know.”

  “And you make me feel powerless.”

  “I know. Do you have to go on?”

  He could hear the smile in Candra’s voice, as if she could sense the fight in him diminishing, even if it was only on this discussion…for now.

  “I could,” Sebastian said.

  She chuckled quietly. Her hand touched his back over the spot where his wings were hidden, playing lightly over the thickness of the bone there.

  “I know the other thing you’ve been doing too,” she whispered.

  Busted.

  “I know you’ve been nice to me so I wouldn’t want to leave you,” Candra scolded, her tone clearly illustrating the depth of her knowledge.

  Sebastian kept his back to her, enjoying the light touches. This was poles apart from anything he felt before. Anytime he’d been with a human woman in the past, he was careful not to expose his true nature or to allow them to touch him like this, for fear of them asking questions. With Ananchel there had been no caresses, no gentle touches. It just hadn’t been like that with them.

  “It obviously hasn’t worked,” Sebastian pointed out.

  “You didn’t need to change for me, Sebastian,” she teased lightly and then paused, silent for a moment.

  He turned then to see she was staring straight ahead, looking at his chest instead of his face. He had the urge to lift her chin and make her look at him, but he resisted. Candra wasn’t shy, and if she wasn’t looking at him, it was intentional.