Iridescent (The Ember Series)

by Carol Oates

  He laughed darkly and rubbed the palms of his hands roughly over his face. He was laughing at her, teasing her. It felt like a test to see if she was worthy of whatever secrets he kept locked away. Maybe he wanted to see if she kept her cool under pressure, if she could have met with Lilith and revealed nothing of importance. She was failing miserably. I didn’t ask for any of this. I never asked him to enter my life, and I won’t be mocked or ridiculed.

  “Fine, don’t tell me what’s going on with you. I don’t even care anymore,” she spat furiously. Warmth spread inside her body as her temper swelled, almost as if she blushed from the inside out. “You’re being an arrogant ass, obnoxious…and your hair is too long. Since when do you smoke around me?”

  Her hands seemed to be waving around of their own volition as she continued her rant. She threw the cigarette on the ground. Her eyes darted to it, as if the burning tobacco and paper would jump back up and bite her. “You forced me to smoke,” she shouted incredulously. Candra paused, knowing there was more, but it wasn’t coming to mind, and she felt like a petulant child, stamping her feet.

  Sebastian dropped his hand and stared at her with a blank expression, as if he’d never seen her before.

  “And I hate you right now. I don’t even want to be around you when you are like this.” She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her like she never existed. Even more than her anger at Sebastian, she was angry at herself for losing her control and voicing things she didn’t mean and would have to take back later. She had lost the high moral ground the instant those words had spewed from her lips. What am I? Twelve and crying in the playground?

  “You’re being irrational. I can’t talk to you when you’re behaving like a…” He began his accusation empathically and trailed off to nothing, clearly unable to say the word he was thinking.

  The tips of Candra’s fingers began to quiver with exasperation. She couldn’t get through to him when he was being like this. Why did he have to be such a pig?

  “Wh-What?” she stuttered. “I…I don’t…”

  “Spit it out, Candra,” he ordered brashly.

  Candra glared at him, irate. “Like one of the Nephilim, Sebastian? Is that what you wanted to say? There’s no reasoning with me because I’m like them?”

  His jaw flexed, and his eyes widened almost so quickly, she would have missed it if she’d blinked. “No. Like a kid. You are behaving like a kid.”

  Candra didn’t believe his lame excuse for a second. He was infuriating, yet she couldn’t make herself walk away. Nor could she escape the niggling doubt inside her heart that as quickly as everything came together, it was all falling apart again. A few of the girls who had passed them earlier made their way back through the alley toward the main school. Candra didn’t meet their eyes or check her watch. She knew she would have to make her way back in at any time, drawing her conversation with Sebastian to an untimely end. He still hadn’t said whatever he came here to tell her.

  “Who the hell shoved a giant stick up your ass?” She almost laughed. Everything felt so, different, so not them, yet it was what they always did, standing their ground and talking in circles.

  Sebastian forced out a deep breath, not offering an answer and evoking a nervous, highly ill-timed giggle from Candra. She had no idea why she’d laughed or what made this argument different compared to the others. His head shot up, and he looked at her with narrowed eyes. A deep groan rattled in his chest, reminding Candra of the sound an animal makes before finally giving up their fight for life. Then he just walked away, leaving her staring wide-eyed after him.

  “Where are you going?” she called out, even though the answer was perfectly obvious—away from the hysterical female.

  “Away from here.”

  Away from me. Candra didn’t like Sebastian much when he was being this way, putting her back into the box he marked little girl. He could be cruel and hurtful, treating her as if he couldn’t explain what was wrong because she wouldn’t be able to wrap her head around it. He could also be sweet, kind, and generous with his affection. She wished he could always be sweet. She wished it could that easy, or she could only love one half of him.

  Thinking that way was useless, but it didn’t prevent her from doing it. She couldn’t give up on him as soon as the waters they had dived into together got rocky. Candra loved every part of him, even the parts that allowed him to convince himself to give up…if that was what he was doing.

  She watched Sebastian walk away, leaving her with no answers. A strange tugging sensation in the pit of her stomach dragged her forward, the invisible bond that made them want to be together despite everything. He’d touched her hand the first night he slept on the floor in her room, and she’d felt their connection like energy shooting up her arm. She hadn’t understood at the time, but after her conversation with Lilith, the tingles made sense. Something greater and more powerful than both of them bound Sebastian to her, and maybe that day, the bond had taken root in her too.

  He stopped abruptly and turned his head enough so his face was in profile over his shoulder. “Are you coming?”

  Candra panicked. Is this it? Should she go somewhere alone with Sebastian and allow him to crack her heart open in private, or stay right here and ignore the enormous pink elephants doing a rumba between them.

  “Well?” he pushed impatiently.

  Candra moved without thinking to catch up to him, making every effort to keep her pace casual. He stormed toward the opposite end of the side street, coming out at the rear of Saint Francis’s. A gleaming, sleek black sedan which was parked illegally at the edge of the pavement beeped to life, flashing yellow lights like some kind of creature blinking. Sebastian snatched a ticket from the windscreen, crumpled it in his fist, and tossed it to the ground. He paused and sighed heavily with his hand on the door handle before walking around to the passenger side to hold the door open for Candra.

  It surprised her, given the circumstances, that Sebastian would be polite while in the middle of ripping her heart out. She cut herself off because her thoughts were getting away from her. She didn’t know the reason for Sebastian’s behavior, even if the gnawing pain in her gut hinted to her.

  “In or out, Candra?”

  She froze with her hand on the doorframe, gazing up into his eyes. As always, they were mesmerizing and tightened as if he expended great effort to not turn away. Candra shook her head and got in, immediately hit with the strong fragrance unique to him, the smoky aroma, combined with spices and heat. The car clearly belonged to Sebastian, even though she had never seen it before. She knew so little about him and his life before the last few months. His scent enveloped her in a familiar comfort, which amazingly managed to relax her muscles enough she could sink into the plush leather.

  Both their lives had been in constant flux lately, and Candra wondered if he had finally begun to resent her for it. Her heart thumped heavily until she forced herself to calm down and not read into things.

  Sebastian got in the other side and took off like a bolt of lightning to a chorus of bleating horns.

  “I didn’t know you had a car,” Candra observed, hoping to cut the atmosphere.

  “I have four.” He glanced at Candra out of the corner of his eye and, with a trembling hand, turned on the radio.

  She took it as a direction to remain quiet. That was a bad idea. Staying quiet meant thinking, and thinking meant reading into every nuance of Sebastian’s behavior, from the hand that gripped the steering wheel far too tightly to his rigidly set shoulders. Candra curled her fingers into a fist and bit the inside of her lip. Whatever he did or said, she promised herself, he wouldn’t see her shed one tear.

  He drove fast, effortlessly taking curves in the road and anticipating the actions of other drivers. They were way over the speed limit by the time they reached the city limits and continued north up the coast, heading a good distance inland.

  “Don’t you think you should slow down?” Candra clung onto the handle over the do
or with one hand and gripped the side of her seat with the other.

  “No.” He grunted. His fingers tightened around the wheel, bleaching the skin on his knuckles as their speed increased.

  Candra grimaced, pursing her lips and doubting Sebastian cared for her opinion on anything right now. It seemed clear that he’d taken her meeting with Lilith as a personal affront, even though she’d done it to help him. Was that all it took to tear them apart?

  He veered off the road eventually to a dirt track. The sedan wasn’t made for off-road, and each tiny bump rattled her bones. Sebastian stopped when their path was cut off by a steep rock face. Scatterings of dark green moss speckled layer after layer of slate gray rock. Candra didn’t recognize the place, but then, she had hardly ever left the city.

  The silence between them continued, and Candra wordlessly followed when Sebastian climbed out, slamming the door after him.

  He was already making his way toward an old dirt path smoothed into the grassy surface by use. If he wanted to take a walk, he could have just said so. Candra slammed the door just as hard as he had, gaining no reaction from Sebastian at all. She’d expected a flinch or at the very least a scowl at her treatment of his property, but he simply stood waiting for her. The car seemed as unimportant to him as she did.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  Sebastian turned to her, his chest rising and falling sharply with a deep breath. Her heart pounded harder. She didn’t move from the car; suddenly, she felt like a condemned prisoner with nowhere to run.

  “Up,” he responded robotically, darting his eyes upward to the gray cotton ball cloud cover. It was completely dense with no sun breaking through at all and made it seem much later in the day than it was.

  A shiver of excitement made the hairs on her arm stand. The last time she had been up with Sebastian was the night he’d told her in his own indirect, messed-up way that he loved her. It had also been the night of their first kiss. She consoled herself with the assurance that this must be a tantrum. He wouldn’t take her flying otherwise, would he? He hadn’t gotten his own way when she went to speak to Lilith, and now he was sulking in typical Sebastian fashion.

  He walked toward her, shrugging his jacket off as he did, and every tensed muscle in her body relaxed. Sebastian nudged her aside gently with the back of his arm, opened the door, and threw the jacket into the front seat. Not the leather jacket he usually wore, she noticed. She’d been too distracted before.

  “Ready?” he asked, the edge gone from his voice.

  “Are you going to take your shirt off?”

  “Not today.”

  Candra nodded and stepped forward to slide her hands around the back of his neck, feeling his skin against her palm and his pulse through the artery below his ear before threading her fingers up through the silken hair at the nape of his neck. His body was still stiff, but familiar…and warm. Candra pulled closer. His strong arms wrapped around her securely, and his breath grazed her cheek when his fingers clawed into the back of her jacket. His head dipped for a brief moment toward her shoulder before he pulled back and looked upward. At last, his hand settled at her lower spine. Something about his touch felt desperate, almost like it pained him. She stroked the back of his neck in what she hoped he’d understand was meant as a comforting gesture.

  A soft whoosh accompanied the sound of ripping, and his wings unfurled as flawless and majestic as ever. Less than a heartbeat later, Sebastian and Candra shot upward into the sky. The cold wind was no match for the powerful expanse of plumage and muscle that made up Sebastian’s wings. He adjusted Candra in his arms, shifting her up a little so she could wrap her legs around his hips. She stared in admiration at the wide expanse of white, tipped at the very edges with a golden hue, stretching out from his back proudly. Their immense strength and grace as he swept her higher into the sky was breathtakingly beautiful.

  Although colder than the last time, Candra recalled the same sensation of dampness settling on her skin and hair as they broke through the cloud cover into the sunlit sky. She blinked, adjusting to the sudden brightness, and pressed her face in Sebastian’s shoulder. All it achieved was to cause stars to flash in front of her eyes. Gradually, the sensation of lifting eased, and Candra’s stomach settled. Strangely, considering she was floating in mid-air with nothing to break her fall, it was the safest and most secure Candra had felt all day. Sebastian’s heart thumped heavily, finding time with hers. The entire world fell away, leaving only the two of them with endless blue sky above and nothing below but bilious, frothy clouds. Alone.

  “Are you okay?” His voice was soft, as if he might scare her. His wings beat sporadically to keep them in the air.

  “As long as I have you.” Candra looked up in time to see Sebastian’s lip twitch at the corner. It didn’t reach a smile. “Talk to me, please. If you’re mad, let’s just get it over with. I hate it when you brood. Anyway, I have every right to be mad too.”

  He raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond, looking past her to something in the distance instead.

  Candra squinted against the glaring sun blinding her every few seconds. She closed her eyes and settled her cheek against his shoulder. “I had to talk to her. I couldn’t just pretend I don’t play a part in this. Like it or not, it’s possible I am here because of Lilith—”

  “I don’t want to talk about Lilith,” Sebastian broke in.

  Candra pulled back to look at him, but his face was cast in a shadow of blackness, making it totally unreadable. Keeping one hand firmly on his neck, Candra stroked the back of her fingers along his lightly stubbled jawline and pushed wet strands of hair away from his forehead. Sebastian was usually clean-shaven.

  “Why are we here?”

  “Put your legs down,” he instructed her, ignoring the question. “There’s something I want you to see.”

  He didn’t sound as harsh, although Candra knew him well enough to know that there was something seriously bothering him. She wanted…needed to know what it was, so she did as he asked. Her breathing picked up, and nervous energy made her stomach bubble. Sebastian’s right hand glided up her back and along her arm to the hand holding onto his neck. Candra resisted his efforts to loosen her grip. It was one thing to trust Sebastian; it was quite another to hang in the air with nothing holding her apart from one hand still pressed against her back.

  “I can’t do this if you don’t let me go. I need you to let go,” he breathed against her ear. His voice held an underlying strain, and his lips brushed the shell of her ear. Her skin tingled.

  “I really don’t want to,” she insisted, clinging tighter into the front of his T-shirt with her other hand.

  “Please.”

  Candra’s death grip slowly waned as her drumming heart clattered against her ribcage. Sebastian pulled her hand away. In a blur of movement so fast, Candra almost didn’t feel it, he twisted her around so her back pressed to his chest and her legs dangled below her. Candra kept her eyes shut, terrified to look down. Even though she did trust that she was safe with Sebastian, her human instincts kicked in, overpowering her rational side. Sebastian’s arms wrapped around her. One hand splayed wide over her lower abdomen, and his other forearm settled below her breasts with his long fingers against her side.

  She held on to his arms tightly, taking deep breaths in an effort to compose herself. It wasn’t uncomfortably cold, which Candra put down to adrenaline coursing through her system and the proximity of Sebastian’s body to hers.

  His warm lips pressed hard against her damp hair and remained for a few moments. His lungs expanded and contracted against her with each deep breath. Still, she kept her eyes closed.

  “You’ve shown me things about myself that I could never see before. I wanted to show you something that you can’t see.”

  “What?”

  “Open your eyes and look.”

  Candra heard a smile in his voice, and his lips moved against her hair. The gesture proved comforting enough to settle her a li
ttle, enough that she could relax and open her scrunched-up eyelids.

  Chapter Eighteen

  IT TOOK A MOMENT before Candra could focus or discern the thing she saw in front of her. The vision didn’t seem possible. A shadow against the dense white and light cloud, she expected that much with the sun shining so brightly behind them. It was the form the shadow took that was so implausibly startling.

  She gazed in awe at the magnified figure with wings extending out wide and proud. The shape broadened near the bottom, the body part taking on an almost triangle shape toward the head and making it appear giant. What seemed most implausible was the one figure, glorious, with a bright halo of colored light around its head. Candra sucked in a lungful of cold air. She presumed the shadow to be Sebastian’s, until she lifted her hand to her heart. The shadow moved. Candra tentatively waved her hand. The shadow moved again.

  “It’s me,” she whispered, afraid even the quiet noise would disturb the image.

  The shadow wings appeared to move with jerking speed, growing and shrinking, then growing again as opposed to Sebastian’s that moved slowly as he swept them through the chilled air.

  “It’s an optical illusion,” he corrected her. “It’s both of us.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Mountain climbers sometimes experience the same phenomena…minus the wings, of course.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Candra sighed in astonishment. “I’m really an angel, aren’t I?” In spite of everything they’d been through, she honestly couldn’t be sure if she’d believed it before. Seeing herself, floating in the clouds with wings at her back, Candra realized she had never felt she belonged anywhere since the entire mess began. She wasn’t human or Watcher, but she always felt human on the inside, possibly more human than anyone gave her credit for. She battled with the thing inside herself, the part always trying to escape. This was the first time she ever felt at peace with the angel part of her dominating the human side. It was the first time she felt like an angel.