“I’ll go with you,” Eve volunteered.
“No.” Claire eyed Asher. “Let them go alone.” She probably considered me a terrible influence and wanted to keep her daughter away from me.
“You promise to burn them as soon as we’re done with our promenade, Seraph?”
Asher seemed to reach deep for patience. “I promise.”
“Let’s go then.”
A hand caught mine and reeled me back. And then a pair of thin, rigid arms came around me.
“I know I sent you away,” Eve mumbled, “but I hated living without you. I hated our fighting. I want you back, and I swear that if you choose to stay, I will be the friend you deserve.”
Slowly, I lifted my hands and hugged her back. “I can’t stay, but I appreciate every word you just said. And you have been a good friend.” I smiled. “Most of the time.”
A strangled laugh leaped from her, followed by a sob. “Pick us, Leigh. Pick us.”
I kissed her cheek, my lips coming away wet with the salt of her sorrow. In all the years I’d known Eve, her composure had never splintered. “You’re going to be a great angel, but use that greatness to better our two worlds, okay?”
A new sob lurched out of her. She pressed her knuckles against her trembling lips.
I sighed. “I wish you didn’t have to wait a century before returning to Earth.”
Celeste was right. So much had to be changed, and however deeply I wanted to see this change come about, help it come about, I needed to get back to Jarod before he assumed I’d abandoned him forever.
“I’m ready for my tour, Seraph.”
Chapter 64
Asher stretched his great wings and pushed off the glowing quartz floor, then waited for me, suspended among the stars.
“Do you remember when we used to hop between our beds with our arms out and pretend to fly?” Eve called out.
I looked for her, found her standing beside the Erelim, eyes still shiny but face otherwise composed again.
“Well, it doesn’t feel like that at all.” She raised a smile.
I returned her smile with a quiet one, then rolled my shoulders, and eased my wings out.
If I had wings, they’d be stretched from one wall of this office to the other. Jarod’s words tumbled through my mind, shortening each beat of my heart. I stared toward the Arch, toward the Channel that would soon take me home, then snapped my wings.
The ground vanished from beneath my feet, and then all of the angels staring up became no larger than ants. Gasping, I strained my feathers to brake my dizzying climb, then retracted my wings, and plummeted as quickly as I’d risen. An arm caught me around the waist, kept me afloat.
“It’s all right. I got you,” Asher said, as anguish battered my ribs. He angled my body so that my stomach was parallel to the ground. “Stretch your wings back out but don’t flap them.”
I followed his instructions, the fluid fabric of my pants twisting around my legs.
“I’m going to let go now.”
Every muscle in my body spasmed with fear. I was about to plead with the archangel not to let go, but it didn’t feel right to let him hold me, so I bit my tongue and steeled my spine.
His arm unwound slowly, then completely.
And I didn’t fall.
We remained suspended in midair, our feathers fluttering in the balmy breeze.
He studied the taut lines of my body before shifting his gaze to the top of the plateau from which rose a seven-pointed stone edifice nestled in the smoky ayim that raged toward the sides of the cliff and tumbled down the rock façade in seven powerful waterfalls. At first, I thought the pointy structure was an island, but then, I realized it moved, floated, like a star discarded from the sky.
“Is that the Shevaya, Seraph?”
“It is.”
I observed the glowing, unmoored star, then the land wreathing it—the crenellated mountains in the distance dappled with phosphorescent blooms and the dozens of other white islands that rose from the billowing ayim like Muriel’s soufflés.
Once I’d drunk my fill of this strange land, I turned toward Asher. “So, how do I maneuver these things?”
“Flex them once, then glide. The more you flap, the faster you’ll go. The key is finding the right balance.”
I moved my wings up and down. When my body lurched forward, I flung my arms out, trying to balance on the breeze. Somehow, I managed.
“That’s it,” Asher said encouragingly.
My speed slowed, so I pumped my wings again, and although I bobbed a little, I managed to make my way across the sky without falling. Other angels flitted around us, keeping their distance as though not wanting to disrupt my lesson.
“Should I land beside the Channel?”
Asher frowned.
“I imagined that’s where you’ll burn my wings?” Could I still travel through the Channel wingless? “Unless you have to do it back on Earth?”
His confusion turned to fury. “You hardly flew at all!”
The wind twisted my hair, tossed it into my eyes. “Have you ever been in love, Seraph?”
“No, and I hope I’ll never be.”
“Why do you say that?”
He flicked his hand toward me. “Look at what it did to you.”
I blinked but then sighed as I realized he was lashing out because he didn’t understand what it was to share a heart and soul with another person. “Look what it did to Jarod,” I countered.
His jaw sharpened. “Another reason you shouldn’t give them up. Imagine how many human souls you’ll be able to touch with your patience and love.”
I smiled sadly.
“Sacrificing your life for a few years on Earth”—he shook his head—“it’s not worth it.”
“Change the law and allow his soul to ascend, or allow me to return to Earth with my wings intact now.”
He wrenched his hair off his face. “You don’t understand what you’re asking! I can’t just snap my fingers and amend laws that were established to keep our kind safe.”
“I think you’re capable of a lot more than you give yourself credit for, Seraph.”
“If I take you back to Earth, I’ll lose my place on the Council, not to mention the other archangels will probably char my wings right off my back.”
“Better mine than yours, then.”
“Leigh,” he growled, slapping the air.
“I’m sorry if my decision angers you, Seraph, but I don’t want to live in a world ruled by laws I find outdated and senseless.”
“You think the human world is so much greater?”
“No. But the human world has Jarod.”
He fixed me with his turquoise eyes. “Marry me and change the laws.”
A wave of sadness lapped against my ribs. “I’m sorry, Seraph, but I can’t. I’d be a terrible partner, because I’d never be able to give you my heart.”
“I don’t need your heart, just your voice.”
“You’d want to spend an eternity with a person who loves another?”
“It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to save your life.”
I smiled at his brusque and unromantic gesture. “As much as I appreciate your selflessness, I cannot accept. And one day, you’ll thank me for having turned you down.”
His gaze hardened. “Thank you?” He snorted. “Your death—because without wings, you will die—will forever be on my conscience, so I don’t see how I’ll be thanking you.”
I dragged my gaze off his face and stared at the wisps of lavender smoke puffing from the white canyon beyond the Arch. “Please take me home.”
“You are home.” The pain in his voice made me want to reach out, but I didn’t.
“This is your home, Seraph, not mine.”
“Have you considered how seeing you wingless will make Jarod feel?”
Jarod’s words swelled inside, filled the void he’d left when he’d sent me away: I want you here. With me. I need you here.
I smiled.
“Angry. He’ll be terribly angry that I disregarded his wishes. Again.”
Asher stared at me as though I’d already lost a piece of my mind.
“Celeste, too. She’ll bite my head off.”
Asher kept staring, dumbfounded by my eagerness to feel their wrath, not understanding that some furies were fueled by love. “Let’s get it over with then,” he said gruffly.
My heart lightened as though it, too, were made of feathers.
He dove, his massive wings creating a current that pushed me higher. My wings strained to keep me in place, and then they, too, pumped the air, sending me hurtling toward the Arch and the future that awaited me beyond it.
Chapter 65
“I can make it quick but not painless,” Asher said, as I dusted myself off after landing a tad brutally.
I nodded.
“There is no reversing this once it’s done.”
Thin ropes of lavender smoke twined around my ankles, as though trying to carry me home. “I understand.”
He shut his eyes, and his nostrils flared.
I stared around me one last time. Perhaps I hadn’t given this world a fair chance, but how could I when it wouldn’t give Jarod one?
“Stretch your wings out and kneel.” Asher’s deep voice drifted to me on the breeze. “I don’t want you to fall and hurt yourself.”
I was touched by his concern. “You’re a kind man, Seraph.”
He grunted. “My kindness cost you your wings.”
I frowned.
“If I hadn’t listened to Jarod . . .” He let his voice trail off, but I heard all the unsaid words.
I would still have lost them, but their demise wouldn’t have weighed on his conscience. “I’m sorry you got tangled up in our story, but please don’t blame yourself. None of this was your fault.”
“All of it was my fault.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “If I hadn’t entered Jarod into the system, you wouldn’t be begging me to burn off your wings.”
“If you hadn’t entered him into the system, I would’ve missed out on meeting my soul mate.”
His hand arced toward his thigh, smacking the brown leather ensconcing it. “There is no such thing as soul mates!”
I didn’t want to waste any more time fighting with Asher over our diverging beliefs, so I chose silence and knelt, pressing my palms into the warm stone and offering the archangel my back.
For several heartbeats, nothing happened, and I thought he was going to go back on his word. But then, the reek of burnt feathers filled my nostrils, followed by a bolt of scorching pain. I gritted my teeth as tongues of fire lacerated my back, excruciating and insistent, like slashes from a serrated blade. White dots danced at the edge of my vision.
I would ask if all angels are as beautiful as you are, but I’ve seen them, and fuck if any hold a single feather to you.
Fighting to stay conscious, I dug my palms and knees into the stone, perspiration dripping from my scrunched brow. Another wave of fire streaked over me, so violent I thought my entire body would go up in smoke.
To Abaddon and the magnificent angel who’ll be sharing my cell.
Another brutal wave of pain sank into my spine. Even though I clamped my jaw together, a muted sob lurched out. The world grayed, and Jarod’s face, the one which had danced out of my holo-ranker, shimmered behind my closed lids.
You are blinding me to the surrounding world, Feather.
More gray dappled my vision, and I clawed at the hot stone to stay upright, but my elbows bent, and the ground rushed toward me. The world darkened, then came into focus. Clumps of silvery ash fell around me like fresh snow.
The temperature dropped, and I shivered, the frost that replaced the fire burning just as fiercely.
“Is it . . . is it over?” Sweat and tears ran into the corners of my mouth.
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes, letting air whisper through my cracked lips and across my scourged skin. Slowly, my heartbeats spaced out, my breaths, too. I tried to push myself up, but my muscles convulsed, and my bones rattled. My cheek smacked the hard stone.
“Don’t move, Leigh,” Asher commanded.
My fingers twitched as I pressed them into the stone. The archangel lifted my limp body, and I gasped from the pain of his arm pressing against my back.
Like peeling paint, the world flaked away, strip by strip, until only starless blackness remained.
Chapter 66
Pale light filtered through my clasped lids. Slowly, I pried them open. The bluest, brightest sky streamed through a large window. I stretched my body that felt like it had gotten trampled during the night.
I’d ascended, and then I’d . . . then I’d . . . I tried to move to check over my shoulder for feathers, but a face appeared over mine, and I froze.
“How could you do this?” Celeste’s eyes were redder than when I’d left her.
The last few hours trickled into my mind, feeling like both a dream and a nightmare. Had it been real? Had I flown over Elysium? Had Asher burned my wings?
“Can’t believe you got rid of your wings,” Celeste said, her voice breaking over a sob.
Apparently, it had been real.
I lifted my hand and touched her narrow jaw. Her tears ran over my fingers.
“When Asher carried you through the guild last night, I thought . . . I thought you were dead.”
I breathed in deep, and it reawakened the leftover agony of the archangel’s fire, so I held my breath instead, and that eased the pain. “Where are we?”
“A hotel. You’re not allowed inside guilds anymore.”
I stared at the unfamiliar room done up in heavy brocades and buttery yellow paint. “I need to get to—”
“Why?” Celeste’s voice sounded as raw as my back.
“Why what?”
“Why did you do it? Why did you get rid of them?”
“Because they weren’t going to let him ascend.”
“What?”
“Jarod is part Nephilim, and they won’t allow Nephilim souls to be harvested.”
“Nephilim have souls?”
I stole a breath, then retained it until the pain eased. “They do.”
Her large eyes grew larger.
“You were right, Celeste. Our laws—your laws . . .” They were no longer mine. “They need to be reassessed and reformed.”
Her pupils swelled in disbelief.
“Will you help me sit?”
She wrapped her fingers around my shoulders and began to lift me but let go when I winced.
“No. Go on.”
She hooked her fingers around my shoulders and peeled me off the downy pillow.
My bones felt as though they were being broken, one after the other, as though Asher’s fire had welded my vertebrae together and they were popping apart. The hotel room vacillated and vanished.
When it reappeared, it was cloaked in darkness, and Celeste was nestled beside me, her soft snores filling the quiet space. I shifted underneath the sheets, taking inventory of my body. The flesh on my back still tingled, but there were no fiery jolts of pain.
I edged away from Celeste, then eased my legs off the bed. The room spun but eventually settled. I pushed up and stood, one hand clasped around the headboard in case gravity stole my equilibrium. When several minutes passed, and my body hadn’t collapsed, I walked to the bathroom. I shut myself in, then felt the wall for a switch. I flicked it up, temporarily blinded by the sconces beside the mirror. I blinked, and peach marble—not white quartz—filled my vision.
Peach suddenly became my favorite color.
I turned on the tap, splashed cold water over my face, then stared at my reflection. My eyes looked sunken, and one of my sickly pale cheeks was marbled by a bruise. I lowered the straps of the navy nightie Celeste must’ve salvaged from my closet in the guild, tucked my hair over one shoulder, then let the silk slide down and turned.
Two purple angular crescents marred the skin over my shoulder blades—a r
eminder of what I’d given up to return to Jarod.
Although I didn’t regret my sacrifice, proclaiming their absence didn’t weigh on my heart would’ve been a lie. If only I could’ve kept them and Jarod.
But that hadn’t been an option.
Readjusting my nightie, I tiptoed back inside the bedroom and opened the closet, but it was empty except for Celeste’s black boots, a pair of terry slippers, and a bathrobe. I slid the slippers on and pressed a kiss as light as icing sugar to my friend’s brow before leaving.
When I reached the lobby, I realized I had no money. No cell phone either.
Oh well . . . I’d sort this out once I reached Jarod’s home.
I passed by the hotel lobby, thankfully deserted at this late hour. The concierge manning the night desk looked up at me, then down at my slippers, his brow furrowing.
“Bonsoir,” I said, blustering past him and out through the revolving doors.
The valet attendant blinked at me.
“Can you get me a cab please, sir?”
After another quick sweep of my odd outfit, he raised his gloved hand and whistled, and a cab glided beside the curb.
“Where to?” the woman driver asked once I’d settled in.
“Place des Vosges.”
She glanced into the rearview mirror several times during the drive. “I don’t know how close I’ll be able to get to it. It’s been a circus around there.”
I frowned.
“That mobster, Jarod Adler, well, he leaked names and documents detailing crimes to every paper in the country. The press is calling it the Demon Files. You haven’t heard about them?”
Alarm skipped down my spine. “I’ve been away.”
“Hasn’t been this crazy in Paris since the bombings a couple years back.”
I looked out the window, wishing the hotel Celeste or Asher had picked had been closer to Jarod’s home.
The radio blustered to life, and as the cab rolled slowly across the dark city, I heard Jarod’s name being spoken over and over as the late-night hosts speculated about what could have triggered the mob boss’s change of heart. I heard them mention Tristan’s death and then venture another hypothesis—secret agent of the DGSI.
Feather (Angels of Elysium Book 1) Page 37