by Kat Bastion
His gaze dropped to hers as he settled his weight back on an elbow, while she finished the wonderfully sweet snickerdoodle. “Really? You’ve experienced me, time travel, a hoard of hostile angels, what mortals call Heaven…and you’re shocked most with food? And I’d manifested you a feast before.”
“But”—her gaze wandered over the extravagance—“not to this…’tis so verra much.” Enough food for ten of her.
Skorpius grabbed a turkey drumstick and handed it to her. “Here. Eat protein before you pass out.” Amusement glittered in his eyes. “I’ve explained how magick works. You imagine what you want and your thought materializes. Apparently, the feast I manifested for you before wasn’t enough to entice you to provide for yourself. And that hard cheese and stale bread you’d appropriated from that castle was a pitiful attempt. You need to think bigger to fuel the enormous amount energy using magick burns. Trust me. Your body will thank you for it.”
Brigid took a large bite of the still-hot meat, chewed, swallowed, then devoured more. Magick within her flared warm and bright with each next swallow. And when Skorpius held up a wineskin, she gulped down a good third of a sweet-and-spicy wine.
After lickin’ her lips clean, she scanned the food with a slight smile, then stared hard at him. “Seeeee…?”
“See what?” he asked. Then in spite of actin’ like he dinna need to eat, Skorpius grabbed a handful of plump violet figs, reclined back onto the plaid, and crossed his weathered black boots.
“You do have goodness in you.” She manifested one of her daggers into her grasp, stabbed a stewed parsnip, then pointed the dagger’s tip at him. “Even though you refuse to see it. Your stubborn denial means nothin’.” After a satisfied nod, she popped the sweet morsel into her mouth.
One by one, he finished his few figs, starin’ at each before tearin’ its flesh off the stem. After he finished and tossed the scraps behind him, he stared at her for a few silent moments.
“Goodness has a spectrum like all things do,” he finally replied. “Bad would cease to exist without good. Each being is capable of every level along the sliding scale. Ultimately, our actions determine the substance of who we are. Making a cornucopia of food appear, because you need sustenance and it pleases me to have you savor a variety of tastes, comes nowhere close to defining my character.”
Brigid tilted her head to the side, regardin’ him. “Nay. I doona agree. A person’s heart dictates their goodness or badness. With every beat, we choose.”
She curled down onto the plaid, leanin’ against his side, awash with sudden fatigue, but unable to consume another bite of food. Restin’ her head into the crook of his shoulder, she skimmed a hand over his chest and splayed her fingers over his thumpin’ heart.
“On the verra next beat, we can choose differently. Each echoes good or bad in the outcome. We are good or bad, only by our intention behind a choice. And our hearts make that decision.”
How profound, he mentally stated, tone heavy with amazement. “Your wisdom belies your age, goddess.”
Sleep tugged at her mind, which clouded attempted thought about his accusation. However, with the bit of teasin’ in his tone, she let his comment rest. And instead of fightin’ her tired body, she adjusted her head against him and let out a weary sigh.
But a low echo of his last word drifted through her relaxed mind, warmin’ her heart. For he’d begun to soften her new title of “goddess” with a tone of affection, akin to a lover’s caress.
“Often those choice-lines get blurred,” he muttered as the warm strength of his hand stroked up her arm before its weight rested upon her shoulder. “Good souls with worthy intentions can become irrevocably bad with one horrendous decision. Some actions are unforgivable.”
The land of dreams pulled her down. Her breathin’ slowed. But the substance of his statement still floated into her ears, the tormented self-judgment in his tone registerin’ through.
Holdin’ to a last bit of awareness while she sank into the calm realm at the bottom of her loch, Brigid pulsed a gentle wave of golden magick his way. “You doona see,” she murmured. “You’ve already been forgiven.”
Chapter 24
With the silent ease of a honed warrior, Skorpius slipped undetected from beneath Brigid while she slumbered deeply. The beautiful creature didn’t even twitch at his movement. Whatever inner place she’d tucked herself into had sealed her off from the outer world.
As he stared at her, the powerful words she’d uttered burned in his chest like an iron brand.
And his heart ached.
Not total ash, then.
Already forgiven, she’d said.
He didn’t know what to think. And in the last few millennia, that had rarely happened.
But how I feel? Fuck obligation.
A true and pure connection between two souls rarely happened. He’d lived long enough to attest to that. And the one aberration long ago, when he’d thought he had found a soul mate, had been doomed from the start. And still, he’d taken that risk. Which had taken down a kingdom.
“You’d think I’d have learned,” he muttered to a brain that had appeared to stop functioning.
But with Brigid, something altogether different had emerged. More profound. Deeper, on an elemental level. A human girl who’d only recently become a woman had further transformed into one of the most powerful beings ever to exist.
Yet she remained humble, understanding, generous. Chose not to be near those who shunned him, yet did not judge them too harshly in return. A bright heart beat within her. And with her acute perceptiveness, she detected some ember of good within him.
Which made him want to stoke that ember into a raging fire of good. For her.
Head still stuck on that unbelievable fact, and certain his heart’s fracture had done irreparable harm to his ability to perform his duties impartially, he glanced up at the magick shield that she somehow still maintained without effort or awareness.
Then he dematerialized from the glade, confident the strength of her latest shield would be impenetrable. No one wishing her ill will would be able to detect her, let alone attack her.
Not even Merlin.
As usual, Skorpius returned to the angelic realm into its misted entryway.
Yet the mist appeared more excited than usual. It swirled away from him like it typically did, but then it spun back toward him, brushing over his skin, as if it had never known the true him before. As if Brigid had left some mark of goodness on him that made him new, acceptable…or at least interesting.
Or maybe the mist now saw the ember of good in him, as if Brigid had already fanned it to life.
Orion’s observation echoed in his mind: She’s not the only one who’s transformed, evolved. You have as well.
Skorpius strode down their pathways, the curious mist chasing and playing in swirls around him, as he puzzled about the totality of events. Brigid had been to their world twice before. How many of the baffling occurrences did that pair of anomalies explain? Because beings didn’t just “visit” his realm.
Although he could have easily transported into where he wanted to go by visualizing the strategy hall, he enjoyed the brisk walk. Its physicality soothed him and helped clear his head.
And oddly, the amusing behavior of the mist pleased him.
So did forcing his brethren to watch him walk tall among them. After those who’d shunned him had been schooled by their betters about acceptance.
The gardens had refilled with angels, groups of twos and threes on benches, between topiaries and beside statues, walking within the hedge mazes, sprawled on the lawn. All their conversations filtered through his mind at once, fools who twittered on about the uninvited guest brought by their tolerated black sheep.
Skorpius ignored them with greater pleasure than usual. For once in the last eight hundred years, it felt liberating to give his brethren something new to buzz about.
He strolled along the crystalline beach that fringed their main river under
their brilliant white sky. The tributary sparkled with pure water, infused with the warm effervescent bubbles of angelfire magick that released up from fissures beneath their realm. It meandered from the gardens and flowed uphill into their city. Familiar faces splashed in its swirling rainbow waters. Inquisitive glances strayed his direction. But if any hostility remained, they’d hidden it behind cool masks of open curiosity.
On impulse, he met the gazes of a handful of the onlookers, one by one. Bold. Uncaring.
Not one angel turned away, far different than the norm.
Interesting. He wondered if they sensed the same change Orion had.
Have I become something other yet again?
He added that question to the growing mountain of unsolved mysteries. Then he rounded a corner shaped of denser mist, which led to a three-dimensional sparkling latticework made of sharper molecules—the kind that gleamed GO AWAY and sliced any who dared to ignore the natural warning. Yet he strode right through the security barrier, billions of iridescent particles allowing him to pass because he possessed the one thing required to enter their restricted strategy hall: warrior blood.
Only a few dozen angels had warrior blood, the singular qualification to enter the space not enclosed by physical walls and yet contained all the knowledge of every realm in existence. But only warriors on assignment were allowed within, and even then, restricted to the purpose of accomplishing their mission.
The instant he’d been granted access, his vision cleared.
And he’d strolled right in. Apparently just as he’d been expected to. So still on assignment. And needing to be here.
One other soul stood in the strategy hall.
A sense of calm washed over him upon seeing her. “Cass.”
She glanced up, bright smile already curving wide. “Skorpius.”
Ever the focused guardian when it came to her obligations, her attention returned to the image she’d summoned into a three-dimensional viewing space. All aspects of an event as it unfolded at that pinpoint of time flowed through, as if Cass and he had been transported there. In addition to their attaining visual information, sounds and scents expanded through to them too, though on scale to its miniature size. At that moment, heavy machinery trundled along, dust clouding up from its disturbance through a dry roadway.
Skorpius joined his closest friend, black wing nudging against her white in subtle affection, while he took in the scene unfolding before their eyes. United States military tanks rolled through ancient streets. One tank stopped. Its gun turret swiveled to one side. With a mechanical cough, it fired a mortar round into a cave, collapsing it to rubble.
He glanced at Cass. Her favorite two crossed swords were sheathed between the snowy wings on her back. So deceptive, this one. Beautiful. Kind. And stone-cold deadly. “Do you think you’re armed well enough?”
She glanced back up at him, amusement sparking in her platinum eyes at his joking. A single batt of Cass’s eyelash could obliterate a cruise missile into a cloud of harmless dust. “An American military commander was ordered to destroy every cave in his path. His tanks are approaching a sacred place where the waters are blessed, where miracles take place. I’m assigned to give him…pause…with that one. Make certain he sees the abandoned canes, crutches, and wheelchairs before his men act.”
Skorpius gave her a slow grin. “Entice the human to disobey orders. My favorite kind of mission.”
Cass deadpanned him, rolled her eyes, then shook her head with a snort. She returned to surveying her scene, amplifying the discussion between the commander and his soldiers. Her expression sobered while she gathered her intel.
Their missions were no laughing matter. Even with their ability to shift between worlds or dematerialize within one, danger still existed. Warrior-class angels were assigned cases where more hung in the balance than the mere mortal’s soul. And when the odds increased that they’d have to take corporeal form with their charges. Because other beings didn’t always take the appearance of a weaponized winged creature well—especially humans.
Angels of the more genteel classes served vital needs to lost souls as well, but in a far less do-or-die, guide-the-right-choice-or-worlds-will-fall-apart way.
Skorpius’s last near-millennium had been occupied with a task which no other warrior angel had ever been assigned—guiding the very fabric of time itself. Apparently, once he’d fallen dark, his unique magick had garnered the attention of the Authority. And until the prophesied Traveler had appeared, only he could fill the role.
Of course, it was his colossal misstep in becoming mortal that had been the catalyst for his reassignment from human-guardian to time-guardian. Which made him wonder on occasion if he had become little more than a glorified janitor cleaning up his own mess.
His latest assignment? A dual-tethered impossible task, with a temptation to stray off course that seemed tailor-made for him? For the first time in his immortal life had left him in the mental dark. Twisted irony.
“World War II?” He focused back on the destruction at the hand of arrogant humans.
Cass nodded. “Patton’s Fifth.”
He watched on in silence, knowing the gravity of her task. Identifying faces and places only scratched the surface of critical intelligence to be gathered. Countless variations of the same scene layered into her consciousness as she concentrated. And the entirety of the multifaceted information empowered her to be able to complete her assignment successfully.
That same three-dimensional viewing hadn’t worked for him with Brigid, however. Either due to the unprecedented dual-tethered mission or that no alternate realities existed. Why he’d consulted the more complex archival map with Orion.
Cass’s image disappeared when she straightened with a look of satisfaction. Her body held the confident carriage it always did. Even among warrior-class angels, few had elevated themselves to an elite undefeated status. Orion and Cass were among those revered above all others.
Skorpius had been there with them…once upon a millennium ago.
Cass’s firm hand gripped his shoulder. Swirling platinum eyes with pale blue sparks stared at him. “What troubles you, brother?”
He pinched his eyes closed, scrubbed a hand over his face, and heaved out a relieved sigh. That he could finally decompress. Because the only person in the worlds he dared bare all to, who cared enough to truly help, stood before him.
“I’m lost, Cass. For the very first time in my life, I have no idea how to proceed.”
The silence stretched wide between them until he opened his eyes.
Cass held his gaze for seconds more before responding. “Give yourself a break, Skorpius. You labor too hard to atone. Let the past die and live in the moment. Your heart is true; it always has been.”
True. Good. Females saw unbelievable things in him.
“How can you say that?” He snorted. “Trusting my heart destroyed an entire realm.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What makes you so convinced of that? How do you know your actions alone triggered the fall of the kingdom?”
Skorpius leveled an incredulous look at her. “Really?” He glanced toward the right and fanned out a black-feathered wing. “I transformed into the opposite of every other angel in existence. I don’t recall stumbling into a giant inkwell.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, a defiant glint in her eyes. “How would you remember? You were an incoherent mess when you returned. It’s a wonder you ever made it back here.”
“Wasn’t me who made that happen. Trust me. I tried. For decades as a mortal, I suffered the torment of a thousand deaths wishing I could shift again. I languished in a monastery and even prayed to their human God for the ability to remove myself from Earth-realm again.” The foul memory of his desperation brought the bitter taste of bile to his mouth.
Cass’s enormous patience shone back at him, in her soft expression, in her relaxed stance. “Regardless of how you arrived back with us, Skorpius, you did and you were a mess. But I’ve
never once thought your current state was forced on you by another. I’ve always suspected that instead of aging yourself gray like a worrisome human, your destroyed heart darkened you, and colored every hair and feather on your body black in the process.”
Her theory held as much merit as any other, yet his mind balked at accepting the premise. Blame and guilt had become a part of his essence to such a degree, all else felt foreign.
Yet Brigid saw in him a goodness he failed to.
Cass insisted he needed to ease up on himself.
A fresh dose of harassment from Isobel would round out the trio of female coddling nicely.
Sarcasm. Great for coping with the unacceptable.
Denial? Even better.
“Thanks, for the pep talk sis, but I’m in need of guidance not cheerleading. I still have no directive with Brigid. But there is no doubt I’m tethered to protect her.” He intentionally omitted the opposing task. No point in muddying the waters.
Cass folded her arms. “Which requires you to rely on your instincts.”
“Exactly. And I have. However, a variety of new problems have presented themselves.” He sighed. “Brigid stumbled into our world through the portal in Brodie Castle. And I’m beginning to wonder if that event alone somehow bonded us together. She’s from a dark plane, and I’m the only dark being in ours.”
“Then what’s the problem? You excel at adapting to new situations.”
“That is the exact problem. The situation, with Brigid, is not new to me.”
Skorpius stared hard at her, willing her to get his meaning. It was embarrassing enough that his heart had fractured. He wasn’t sure his mouth would speak the utter ridiculousness.
Understanding gradually washed over Cass, her eyes widening. “No. You can’t be.”
“Apparently, I can.” He heaved out a weary sigh.
“But you…I hadn’t thought you’d ever be tempted by another human.”
“Neither had I. But she’s no longer human.”
Cass blinked at him. “Immortal?”