Feather (Angels of Elysium Book 1)

by Olivia Wildenstein

  I shuddered.

  Before the episode I was still desperately trying to magick out of my mind. “Who?”

  He sat on the bed to fasten his black diamond cufflinks. “Celeste.”

  I grinned. I couldn’t help it. “What exactly led you to think she was warming up to you?”

  “She only called me a unicorn noodle once.”

  My smile increased.

  Done with his cuffs, he adjusted the placket on his tuxedo shirt, then patted his lap. “Come here.”

  I traipsed over and perched on his thighs.

  “Have I mentioned how stunning you look tonight?”

  I ran my fingers over the poufy tulle. “You really think so?”

  “I really think so.”

  “Tristan said you’d hate this dress.”

  “Tristan can be a dick sometimes.”

  I straightened his bow tie even though it was already straight. “You look incredibly handsome yourself, but then again, you always look handsome.” He’d slicked so much gel on his hair it seemed almost black.

  “I have something for you.” He slid his hand into the breast pocket of his jacket and extricated a small velvet box.

  “You’ve already given me so much, Jarod.”

  When I didn’t reach for his gift, he flipped my hand over and placed the box inside my palm. “I bought it to match your eyes, not your dress, even though it’ll go superbly with both.”

  I popped open the lid, my mouth going round before shutting to steady the rising tremors. A pair of yellow filigreed gold and emerald earrings sparkled against the black cushion. Pearls no bigger than needle heads and raindrop-sized diamonds were sprinkled throughout the setting.

  “I’ve never owned anything so beautiful,” I whispered, voice thick with emotion.

  He tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, then removed one of the jewels from the box and speared it through my lobe. “They were apparently the property of the Romanov family. At least, that’s what the man at Sotheby’s told me when I asked him for the rarest and most beautiful piece of jewelry they had up for auction.” He lifted the second earring out of the box, then gently turned my head to gain access to my other ear. “The czar had them fashioned the day he met the woman who was to become his future wife. Word has it, he even designed them and handpicked the stones. If I had any talent, I would’ve done the same. Since making pretty things isn’t my forte—”

  I pressed my still trembling lips against his before he could demean himself any further. I was certain he was just as capable as the czar of Russia of designing something of beauty. “I love them, Jarod.” I curled my hand around his neck, my thumb strumming his nape. “I love you.” The words came out before I could speculate if they might scare him off. Bullets through hearts, he was used to, but declarations of love?

  He stared at the faint scar on my neck. “You really shouldn’t, Feather.”

  My heart dropped right into my glittery shoes. I hated the guilt he carried for my attack. I hated there was nothing I could say or do to dispel it.

  “We should go. I have a few people to see before the show begins.”

  Nodding, I stood and accepted his proffered hand.

  In the foyer, Muriel was waiting for us. “Vous êtes si beaux.”

  He raised our clasped hands and twirled me. The unexpected movement made my heart bounce a little higher. “You mean Leigh is so beautiful.”

  Muriel picked a piece of lint off his black satin lapel. “You too, mon amour.”

  He kissed the top of her head, then backed up, pulling me along. “Don’t wait up, Mimi.”

  She grunted. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

  My heart drifted right back down. Dead. I’d never feared that word before, because death wasn’t the end. Except for Triples. I suddenly wanted to find out Muriel’s rank. I doubted it contained more than a single digit, but what if . . . what if her contact and enduring camaraderie with a mob family had tainted her score?

  The opera house was another architectural gem in a city that already enclosed so many—a temple of gold leaf, oil paint, and ochre-veined marble.

  Jarod kept me tucked into his side as I craned my neck to take in the splendor of the vaulted ceilings.

  My lips must’ve parted in awe because Jarod said, “How about I have this place closed down tomorrow so you can have a private tour?”

  I returned my gaze to his. “You don’t need to do that.”

  He kissed my still-parted mouth. “Consider it done. I’ll arrange for a few other sites too.”

  “Will you come with me?” I asked hopefully.

  “I can’t. But how about you take Celeste? I’m certain she’ll love it. Or if she doesn’t, it’ll give her fodder for new diatribes.” He added a crooked smile that made me shake my head. “I’ll send Amir with you this time.”

  My heart stuttered. Did Jarod think someone else would try to attack me? I was about to remind him I was immortal, that I’d rather Amir stick to him, when Tristan trotted over to us, arm in arm with a woman who must’ve been a runway model considering how tall, lithe, and exquisite she was. Everything about her was sculpted to perfection from her high cheekbones to her pert nose to the sloping shape of her eyes and the dainty collarbone on display in her strapless black gown.

  I burrowed closer to Jarod, feeling like a giant burr. I hadn’t felt so blimpish and lackluster since that last night I’d spent in New York, standing beside flawless, gorgeous Eve.

  “Jarod,” the woman said, a thick accent—Eastern European possibly—coating his name, “it has been too long.”

  “Good evening, Petra.”

  She leaned over to kiss his cheeks. Even though her lips didn’t make contact with his skin, hovering in that polite way of the French, my fingers twined like vines around Jarod’s jacket.

  “Nice dress, Leigh,” Tristan said with a smirk that brought out thorns in me. Who would’ve thought soft, supple Leigh could get so prickly?

  “I almost regret letting her out of the house looking like this,” Jarod said.

  Tristan’s smirk increased. “I can believe it.”

  Jarod’s right-hand man probably thought me an eyesore amid all the majesty of the Palais Garnier. What bothered me most, though, was that, as I took in the room, I joined him in thinking this.

  “Amir,” Jarod called out over his shoulder.

  His bodyguard broke rank with the other three trailing us.

  “Please escort Leigh to the loge.”

  The man nodded his meaty head.

  To me, Jarod said, “I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

  I released my death grip on his jacket, and it felt like releasing the tallest branch of a tree and freefalling backward. My wings poured out of my back as though they could somehow break my fall, but all they did was uselessly adorn my back.

  Jarod cupped my chin. I thought he was going to kiss me, and I desperately wanted him to, if just to show Petra and the rest of the women ogling him that he was taken, that even if he didn’t love me, he liked me better than them. Instead, his chin bumped my emerald earring.

  “You are blinding me to the surrounding world, Feather. How am I expected to look anywhere else or see anything else when you are near?”

  I wanted his compliment to reach deep and lift my sunken heart, but part of me thought he’d spoken it only to alleviate my manifest sullenness.

  He canted my face. “Smile for me.”

  Sighing, I raised a diminutive smile.

  He leaned over and kissed my taut lips before pulling away and striding through the crowd that parted around him and Tristan as though they were kings.

  The night I’d met Asher, I remembered thinking he was attractive, powerful, and kind, but the archangel paled in comparison to my sinner.

  Neither human nor angel could eclipse this man whose magnificent darkness devoured even the brightest of lights.

  Chapter 52

  As Amir escorted me into an opulent red box situated directly ac
ross the stage, curious glances were tossed my way, ramping up my tenacious insecurities.

  “Tristan mentioned Jarod was acting out of character, but kissing in public”—Petra glided toward the gold handrail of the loge next to which I was poised, scanning the crowd below—“that is certainly a first.” She leaned her dainty forearms on the scarlet velvet upholstery that matched the chairs with their deep button tufting and golden frames.

  I didn’t think she was telling me this to stroke my ego, but I lapped it right up. “I take it you know him well?”

  “Intimately, but not well.”

  I knew I wasn’t Jarod’s first, or second, or third, but hearing it from someone who’d come before me stung my already vulnerable heart.

  Petra turned away from the sight below to examine me. “I do not think it is possible to know Jarod Adler well.”

  How wrong she was.

  How deeply I relished how wrong she was.

  I kept my gaze on the operagoers milling around below, flattening their ample dresses to thread themselves down the narrow rows of seats or embracing friends as though they were long-lost relatives before disparaging their outfit or Botoxed features the instant their backs were turned.

  On my way up the stairs to our private box, I’d been privy to such hushed backstabbing. I’d even heard one woman comment how someone else was wearing the same dress I was, but in black, which was so much more distinguished than lurid green. My confidence level had taken another hit, but I’d raised my chin a little higher and spread my wings a little wider.

  For a slender moment, I’d wished humans could see them, or at the very least, feel them. Bodies passing through them as though my feathers were no more substantial than vapor hadn’t been half as satisfying as smacking them would’ve been.

  Such an unangelic thought.

  “It is Lee, right?” Petra asked. “Your name.”

  “Leigh,” I responded, adding a long yuh sound to differentiate it from the word that meant ugly in French.

  “Which agency do you work for, Leigh?”

  I glanced at her. “Excuse me?”

  “I imagine you are a model.”

  “A model?” I actually smiled at that. “No. I’m not a model.”

  “A call girl, then? Or an actress?”

  I shook my head no.

  She checked my left hand, and even though I wore no ring, asked, “A client’s wife?”

  “No,” I gasped.

  “Then how did you meet Jarod?”

  The memory of how I’d entered La Cour des Démons flitted through my mind. It felt like an entire year had come and gone. “I sought him out to offer him a chance at a better life.”

  “Better?” She made a little sound, which I wasn’t sure how to interpret until she shook her head. “Jarod leads the best of lives. He is the wealthiest and most powerful, unattached man in this city—probably in the whole country. Not to mention exceedingly handsome.”

  “Those aren’t reasons for happiness.”

  “You have obviously never known hunger or poverty.”

  “You’re right. I haven’t.”

  The strain that flexed her dainty shoulders led me to believe she had known both.

  The air changed suddenly, both in texture and scent. Without having to glance over my shoulder, I sensed Jarod had arrived. Nonetheless, I glanced to fill myself with the sight of him. Gait so proud, he advanced toward me. Petra also watched him, along with everyone in the surrounding private boxes, but I was his single focus, and that did things to me that were downright alarming.

  It made me feel special. And beautiful.

  It set me on fire.

  My body began to pulsate with light, and his eyes glittered. How much of that light was a reflection of my own and how much of it was a reflection of the one in his heart? He backed me into the guardrail, his hands drifting to my waist, probably to keep me from tipping over the red velvet balustrade.

  “Sorry I left you alone so long,” he whispered before pressing his mouth to mine, and although our lips didn’t open and our tongues didn’t twine, it felt like one of the most intimate kisses he and I had ever shared, like his mouth was memorizing the shape of mine.

  The lights dimmed then, and we took our seats. As the heavy curtains parted, his hand slid off my waist but not off my smoldering body. His long fingers played my feathers with the dexterity of the harpist in the orchestra pit, strumming and flicking each one until a melodic hum made its way through my lips.

  Although he kept his eyes on the show, the smile growing on his face as my breathing turned nippier and my skin shinier betrayed where his attention truly lay. I probably should’ve chided him for what he was doing, but I sealed my lips and eyes and waded through the minefield of impropriety. When his fingers sent me soaring, my lips parted with a gasp that was swallowed first, by the audience’s loud clapping, and then, by Jarod’s lips.

  After pleasure came pain, though. As though someone had punched my back with steel knuckles, I hissed, and my eyes flipped open, locking on Jarod’s. He lurched back, already scanning the shadowy expanse beneath my chair. When he located the feather I imagined the Ishim had purloined for our licentious undertaking, his expression darkened like my no longer glittery skin, and his hand fell away from my body.

  I apprehended his fingers. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He side-eyed me, and I sensed that, to him, it mattered.

  A duet began on the stage.

  He removed his hand from mine and crossed his arms, bunching the fabric of his sleeves.

  Instead of trying to pry his arms apart, which I sensed he wouldn’t appreciate, I let him stew in his guilt. But I did lean over to say, “I don’t want them; I want you.”

  “Don’t say that,” he snapped, his harsh tone garnering Petra’s and Tristan’s attention.

  I shifted closer to him again. “You don’t understand what they represent.”

  “Your safety,” he hissed. “That’s what they fucking represent.” His gaze was still riveted to the stage and stayed that way throughout the entire first act.

  Only once did they stray, and it was to glare at the hand caressing his lap.

  Which wasn’t mine.

  Blood thrashed in my ears as I watched Petra stroke up his thigh again. How dare—

  Before I could finish that thought, he plucked her hand off his lap and tossed it with a violence that made her slap her own body. “You fucking touch me again, and I will cut off your hand.” And then he shot up and walked out.

  Tristan followed him, but Petra didn’t even flinch. It was only once the lights came on for the intermission that she, too, rose and left without an apology or passing glance.

  I didn’t move. In part because I was pinned to my seat by all that had unfolded in the span of an operatic act, and in part because if Jarod returned, I wanted to be here.

  Minutes ticked by, and none of them returned. Only Amir had stayed, but I imagined it was more out of duty than pity.

  When he turned to look at the hallway behind the box, I picked up my fallen feather. I didn’t particularly want to relive an episode from my past, but I forced myself to. Jarod’s outburst might’ve been borne from guilt, but it had served to remind me how deeply I was rejecting my kind.

  The walls of a drab, gray high school appeared around me, and then the muscled body of the star running back popped into my line of sight—Sean. I’d posed as a transfer student, who’d helped tutor him in order to curb his habit of cheating on exams. I’d spent several weeks convincing him that he was smart and as capable of success in the classroom as he was on the field.

  At the memory of his face lighting up after scoring his first B- without copying the answers off his friend, a lump clogged my throat, and the tears that had welled up finally spilled. I missed the girl I used to be and grieved for the one I’d dreamed of becoming.

  I grieved for her, because I’d felt too much during this last mission, learned too much, to ever become her. I dra
gged both my hands over my wet cheeks, not caring if I ruined what little makeup I’d applied.

  The air around me shifted, and I knew Jarod had returned.

  Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t eventually abandon me for good.

  His steely gaze scoured the floor beneath my chair, probably seeking out the fallen feather. When he didn’t find it, his gaze climbed up to mine.

  “You didn’t leave.” Every syllable splintered.

  “You didn’t either.” Unlike mine, his tone was stiff.

  When the golden-red drapes lifted, I murmured, “I’ll never be the one to leave, Jarod.”

  He turned to stone.

  The lights dimmed, and he still didn’t sit.

  I crimped the green tulle, trying to prepare myself for a decision I’d be powerless to overturn, trying to remember that if he left it wasn’t because he didn’t care but because he cared too much.

  When I could no longer stand the sight of his stillness, I shut my eyes. The least I could do was not watch it happen.

  A warm hand spanned my cold fingers. My lashes pulled up slowly, afraid my skin was conjuring a touch that wasn’t there. But long fingers dusted with dark hair overlapped my knuckles.

  Jarod forced my hand off the tulle and speared his fingers through mine, pressing our palms together until I could feel his brisk heartbeat through the pad of his thumb. I glanced at him, but his eyes were affixed to the stage and the progressing scene. He didn’t say a word to me throughout the entire second act.

  But I didn’t need words.

  Not when I had his hand.

  Chapter 53

  Petra had never returned after that first intermission, yet her hand stroking up Jarod’s lap had haunted my sleep and awakened me more than once throughout the night. Each time, I’d tracked the wisps of light trickling from his balcony and through the drawn curtains as they danced across the ceiling like ghosts until they lulled me back to unconsciousness.

  Unlike me, Jarod had slept soundly, but I suspected it was thanks to all we’d done once we’d gotten home from the opera. Three times, he’d made love to me. The first was sweet, an apology for how he’d acted. The second brisk, an assurance of my desirability. The third, slow and unfinished—he never climaxed even though he made sure I did—a promise that there would be no end to us just as there had been none for him.