“I guess we’re even now.” He chuckles softly.
He’s laughing after everything that’s happened?
I test pushing away from him, and this time he lets me go. I recoil from his touch, but I stay on the bed as I turn around so I can face him.
“Arsen, did you kill my parents?” I ask.
He doesn’t even blink as he replies, “I did not.”
“I believe you,” I whisper. “But I don’t understand it. How we met, when I thought you killed them, and how it made me hate you right at the beginning, when I don’t think I would have if I had met you under different circumstances. Are you saying all of that was a setup? Are you saying the angels did this to make sure I’d be on their side?”
He cocks his head. He really does remind me of a dog. I don’t know how I ever mistook him for a vampire in the beginning.
“It seems that way,” he replies.
I shake my head. Angels. Rynne.
“Where is Rynne?” I ask. “I need to talk to him. I need to tell him I’m sorry. H-he stopped me from what I was doing to you. He wanted me to get away from the other angels.”
Arsen averts my gaze. “He isn’t here. He stayed behind with Imae.”
I suddenly feel sick to my stomach. “But he made it possible for us to get away. If he goes back, what will they do to him? Why didn’t he stay with us? We have to get him back.”
“I am sorry,” Arsen replies steadily. “There’s nothing we can do for him right now. He made his choice. Going back for him now would be an insult. You may not believe me, Tasia, but if he had asked to come, I would have let him.” Arsen’s upper lip curls up aggressively. “Even though I don’t like him.”
Maybe I shouldn’t, but I believe Arsen when he says that. Rynne was the one who tossed my crystals away after all. He did that. He made it possible for Arsen to get away, and he told Arsen to take me with him and Yuki.
Where is Yuki?
I shake my head and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to stop the tears I know are coming. “He can’t do this to me,” I say, tears rolling down my cheeks. “He can’t be this good. I don’t deserve him, and neither do the angels. Maybe I should be mad at him for leaving me with you, but I’m not. It’s weird, but right here, right now, is the first time I’ve felt like myself in what feels like a really long time.”
I wipe at my eyes and say, “I don’t care if he doesn’t want me to come after him. I’m going to. I’m not going to leave him.”
Arsen replies. “Take a couple hours at least to get your strength back, and then make your decision. We’ll be safe here for at least that long.”
“I want Rynne. I at least need to know if he’s okay, and if he’s not, I have to save him,” I murmur. “And I want to know who you are. I want to know why I feel like I know you, but at the same time I don’t. There are so many things I want, need, to know, but I don’t even know where to begin.” I meet his eyes. “And I want to break this connection we have.”
“I want to break this connection as well,” Arsen replies.
He gets off of the bed and holds out his hand to me. I stare at his hand. Part of me wants to take it. The other part of me wants to keep a distance between us.
I don’t take his hand. He retracts the gesture as he makes his way to the door, glancing behind him to check that I’m following him. When he sees that I am, it’s good enough for him. We move into a large room that looks like a sitting room and a kitchen combined. I have to do a double take when I see a fox leap in through an open window and land on the wood floor with a couple of rabbits. The fox looks up at me with night sky eyes. I think I’ve seen those eyes before, and then the fox shifts. Its body grows large and its orange fur recedes. It’s a woman. Yuki. Now she’s standing naked in front of us. She’s really gorgeous with her long black hair, fat free body, perfect curves. Any girl in the world would feel lucky to look anything like her… I feel heat cross my face as embarrassment consumes me. I hastily look away.
“It seems you finally decided to wake up,” she says.
Out of the corner of my eye I see she’s getting dressed in some hiking clothes that were left on the floor. She picks up the rabbits and drops them on the counter near the stove.
“I brought you food, human,” she announces.
“W-why?” I sputter. “Why would you do that for me after what I did to you?”
“Truth be told, I don’t like it one bit. I’d gladly kill you, but Arsen doesn’t want that, and I respect him enough to let you live.”
“Sounds like I’m not going to die anytime soon then,” I mutter.
“I won’t let you die,” Arsen says with so much conviction that it startles me a little. From the look on Yuki’s face, she feels the same way I do.
“I’m not going to let you die,” he says again, this time looking right at me. “That’s a promise. As long as we’re together, until we break this connection, I will protect you. When our connection is broken, we’ll go our separate ways. We’ll never see each other ever again. We’ll never bother each other again. You’ll go on with your life, and I’ll go on with my life.”
I don’t really have any reason to believe or disbelieve him. Actually, I feel like I have more reason to believe him, and somehow my heart knows what he’s saying is true—at least as far as not letting me die. He’s not going to let me die. He’s already proved that to me.
“I wish you both a safe journey,” Yuki says with a delicate wave of her hand.
Arsen looks at her in surprise. “You’re not coming?”
“I understand you have to figure out what’s going on between you and this human girl. I also understand that it would be best to do it without me.” She walks up to Arsen and places her hands on his face. “I’m letting you go, Arsen.”
She grabs the back of his neck and brings his lips down to hers. She bites his lower lip, sucking passionately. He bites her back in a way that’s somehow playful. I should look away. I feel like it’s something I shouldn’t see, but I can’t stop myself from staring. And I can’t stop this weird pang of jealousy in my chest.
“I’ll always love you,” Yuki says when she stops kissing Arsen. “That will never change. And if you ever need me, you shouldn’t hesitate to ask. You can get a hold of me with this number.” She slips a piece of paper into his pants pocket. “Go figure things out for yourself, Arsen. We’ve been stagnant for eighty-one years. It’s time you moved on. You need to figure out what you want, because I know it isn’t the life you’ve been living. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
Arsen cups Yuki’s cheeks in his hands, forcing her to look into his eyes, and replies, “I hope you find what you’re looking for, too.”
Yuki smiles and this time Arsen kisses her, but it’s nothing more than a peck on the lips. Then he lets her go. One second she’s standing there in front of him, and the next I feel a rush of wind. Then nothing. It’s just me and Arsen.
“What?” I ask, feeling really confused. “You two obviously care about each other a lot, so why did she leave? I saw you cry for her. You tried so hard to resist that terrible command I gave you. You must love her, so why did you just let her go like that?”
Arsen glances at me and asks, “Do you know how to prepare a rabbit?”
I shake my head.
“Then it’s time you learned, rogue.”
“And you do?” I ask. “I thought immortals didn’t need to eat.”
He smirks. “I don’t need to eat, but what else does an immortal stuck in your world for the past eighty-one years do except learn a lot of useless skills and trivia?”
I raise an eyebrow at him and follow him to the counter, where he picks up a knife and starts skinning the rabbits, showing me what to do.
Right now, Arsen doesn’t seem like anything scary at all. He certainly doesn’t feel like a demon. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was just another human. He isn’t trying to seduce me. He isn’t trying to sway me one way or the other. We’re ta
king a moment of silence, a moment to complete a simple, and necessary, task until we have to go back to the real world. I want to go after Rynne right now, but I also know Arsen is right. Rynne didn’t do what he did just so I’d come running back to the angels without a plan. And truthfully, I’m scared to. I felt like I could trust Cassius, like I could trust all of them. But there’s something very wrong if Arsen isn’t the one who killed my parents. I can feel it in my heart. My parents came to me because they wanted me to know that simple truth, and that simple truth changes everything.
IMAE AND I HAD to take a plane back to Philadelphia since neither one of us can fly. She also made a phone call to the confidant, letting her know everything that transpired. As soon as we get back to the PA Branch of the EEA, Imae leads me straight to the Command Center where Blade, Divya, Donovan, the confidant, and even the oracle are there waiting. Everyone is silent as my overseer and I enter the room. All eyes are trained on me, though.
Imae takes something out of her pocket and hands it to the oracle. That’s when I see the diamonds. She must’ve retrieved them before she came back into the film studio to get me. The oracle doesn’t seem fazed. He simply stares at the diamonds in his hands, and then he brings his eyes to me. The colors in his eyes are cold and dark.
The oracle speaks first, “You gave him Tasia. You took the diamonds I gave her, and then you gave her away to a demon.”
It sounds really bad when he says it like that, but it’s not that simple.
“Tasia was the one acting like a demon,” I reply. “I did what I thought was best. Arsen won’t hurt her.”
“Hurt her? No. Corrupt her? Yes. You can’t always trust what you think is best,” the oracle says coldly. “Sometimes God’s will is hard to understand. What did I tell you about compassion for demons?”
“You said it never ends well,” I reply. “And I’m ready to accept whatever punishment you see fit, Oracle. I still want to believe in angels. I’ve been living among and as one of you for twenty-four years. I’ve been an angel longer than I’ve been a human, and I want to believe in you. I tried my hardest to do everything you told me to do because I believed it was right. I believed in you and God. But this, whatever this thing is that happened to Tasia, wasn’t right. I couldn’t do it anymore. She wasn’t even in control of herself. She wasn’t feeling anything. She was growing darker and darker, and I was the only one who seemed to sense it. She was consumed with that darkness, and I don’t understand how something like that can come from angels. I don’t understand how something like that could have come from you, Oracle.”
“Are you challenging me?” The oracle asks.
“I’m challenging your conscience.” I reply. “I’m asking you to tell me what the purpose of all of this was. I wonder if you’ve been taking things too personally. I wonder if even the oracle can be swayed by his own hatred and anger. The way Tasia treated Arsen was pure malice. She started changing after sessions with you. So explain what that means. What is the purpose of those diamonds exactly?”
“They are only guides,” he replies with a glare. “The black one saved her from her own powerful sixth sense. The white one was a barrier to stop Arsen’s side of the bond he shares with Tasia so that she could control him unfettered. You know this. That anger was something she cultivated on her own. It had nothing to do with me. She has plenty of reason to be angry with him. He did kill her parents after all. She is only human after all. Demonstrations of anger and malice aren’t uncommon among humans.”
“That’s true,” I agree. “But I’ve never known her to be ruthless and merciless. She was indeed full of anger over what Arsen took from her, but I believe she never would’ve gone as far as she did in Hollywood if you hadn’t done whatever it is you did to her crystals. I believe she would have stopped herself. I don’t even honestly know if Arsen killed her parents at all. He claims he didn’t, and Tasia didn’t actually witness him kill them.
“I know you say the black diamond protected her from the ghosts that haunt her, but I wonder if it did something else to her as well. You’ve been prepping her since the day she was born to be a tool for angels. I was part of that preparation, too. For that, I don’t regret what I did today. Tasia needs to restart. She needs to figure out who she is without the diamonds, without me, and without angels.”
“So you surrender her to a demon?!” the oracle asks, raising his voice.
“She’s safer with a demon than she is with us!” I shout back. “Arsen isn’t going to hurt her. He’s not going to let anyone hurt her. Blame this bond or whatever you want, but Arsen doesn’t want to hurt her. You’ve said as much yourself. The connection works both ways.”
“If Arsen can get the upper hand in this bond, then Tasia will be lost to him. Did you think about that?” The oracle retorts.
“I don’t regret what I did,” I repeat.
The oracle regards me in silence for a moment. No one else says a word.
“You will be returning to Ilenima with me,” he concludes.
The confidant steps forward, placing her hand on the oracle’s arm. He jerks away from her touch and snaps at her, “You should’ve seen this coming. What have you been doing here?
She folds her arms. “I must be losing my touch.”
“I’ve come to expect much more from you, Valor. You have never made mistakes like this before.”
She grins and says, “Maybe you made a mistake, Oracle Cassius. Perhaps you shouldn’t have appointed me the confidant after all.”
He stares at her long and hard before saying, “Continue as planned. Keep hunting the demons.”
The confidant rests her hands back at her sides. “What about Tasia? You didn’t have anyone mark her soul. What’s the point in continuing without her? You said this whole thing revolved around her and Arsen.”
“I marked her,” the oracle replies.
The confidant falls silent.
The oracle goes to the door and says, “With me, Rynne.”
I do as he says, but I take one last glance around the room before I leave. I figured I’d get some angry looks, but I don’t. Maybe it’s disappointment I see spread across all of their faces.
I follow the oracle out of the Command Center.
“What do you mean you marked her?” I ask.
“I mean I know Tasia’s soul, and I can pick her out among a crowd.”
“From anywhere?” I ask.
“That really isn’t any of your concern, now is it?”
I’m sure of it. The oracle is furious.
“Are you going to blow up on me like you did with Arsen?” I ask.
The oracle stops dead in his tracks. I have to stop quickly as well to avoid running into them.
“Why did you do it?” I ask.
He whips around, grabs my collar, and pulls me to him. “I did it because he deserves it.”
“Because of what he did to Leo?” I ask, somehow keeping calm. “That’s a rather personal reason, don’t you think? You’re an angel, the oracle, the mouthpiece of God.”
“We’re done talking,” the oracle announces as he lets me go and continues at a quick pace through the base.
This is the oracle like I’ve never seen him. These are the actions of someone emotional, someone like the confidant described.
All luminaries line the red carpet that leads to the throne in the Great Hall. These holy angels robed in white are here to pass my judgment today. I walk up the red velvet carpet, on my way to the oracle’s throne with two silver clad soldiers at my sides. Once I’m at the foot of the throne, I kneel. The soldiers beside me would’ve made me do it anyway, and I’m not here to disrespect the oracle. I’m here because it’s the right thing to do. This is where I’m supposed to be.
“You’re all here today to bear witness to an angel who has betrayed us,” the oracle announces. “All these years of waiting for God to give us the key to stop the demons’ rule in Terra, and this angel has betrayed us all by giving that key to a demon hims
elf. Not just any demon: Arsen. Even worse, Rynne has failed to see the error of his ways. He doesn’t regret what he did. Isn’t that right?” he asks me.
“That’s right,” I say. “I don’t regret what I did. I did what I thought was right.”
I’m about to say more, explaining why I did it, but the oracle cuts me off. “As you can see, he has no remorse whatsoever.”
The luminaries whisper among themselves and the oracle closes his eyes.
“I have a proposal,” he says, his eye still closed. “I suggest, since Rynne seems to love demons so much more than his fellow angels, that we give him what he wants. Let him live out the rest of his days in the Dregs, because from this day forth he is fallen.”
One by one the luminaries bow, signaling their agreement.
“So let it be known,” the oracle says. “On this day forth Rynne is marked as fallen, and is therefore considered a demon in our eyes. The Dregs is where he will live out the rest of his days.” The oracle signals to the soldiers at my side.
They lift me up by my arms and place me on my feet. They lead me through the Great Hall and out of the Citadel. The luminaries and the oracle himself follow behind. They parade me all the way through Zenith. I take one last look at the frost crystal city, appreciating its beauty. Angels look upon me with fear, and parents try to shield their children’s eyes. I hold my head high, because I don’t feel any shame. They take me through the Crystal Oasis, the magnificent clearing of green grass, crystals, and water, and onward, to the very edge of the province where one step farther will send me spiraling into the clouds and smog obscuring the Dregs below.
Here, at the edge, I see the end.
One push from one of the soldiers at my side, and I’m falling. I drop into the smog and feel the darkness and smell the putrid scent of the Dregs as the world spins around me. I try to grab on to trees sticking out of the cliffs, or any rocks jutting out. I diminish the speed of my fall some by managing to catch a few trees and rocks, but I keep falling. I’m not able to stop myself.
Crack.
The Pull of Destiny (Undying Love, Book 2) Page 38