He stopped near the side of the bed, lowered his hand, and gently ran his left index finger down her spine. He half expected her to wake and smile at him as she had back at her apartment after they had last made love, to reach for him and slide her hand around the nape of his neck and lure him down for a long unhurried kiss. Her skin was velvet beneath his fingertip, warm and soft, soothing yet tearing at him at the same time. It was miserable torture. He replayed her smile over and over again, wishing with every drop of his blood that when she woke she would remember him and this nightmare would end.
“Stop punishing yourself.” Lukas’s quiet voice stole into his fantasy and he frowned at Amelia, keeping his back to him. “Come and talk with the others.”
Marcus hadn’t expected Lukas to be the first of his fellow warriors to physically check on him. It made sense in a way. Out of all of them, Lukas was the most sensitive when it came to this sort of thing. It was probably why he had been reborn as a mediator these past two lifetimes, an angel made for talking people down off ledges and making people see sense. Marcus didn’t think that Lukas could easily ease his suffering or take it away. It hurt too much. All he knew was pain.
“I am fine,” he whispered and glanced past Lukas through the open door that led into the bright living room. Annelie was watching him with pity in her dark eyes. Everyone else seemed to be avoiding looking at him.
That room bore more punishment than his current location.
He smiled tightly at Lukas. “I will take first watch.”
He walked past Lukas into the living room, turned away from the others as they looked at him, and headed straight through the kitchen to the small rooftop balcony that overlooked a leafy park. The warm light of evening heightened the verdant colour of everything and he sighed as he leaned against the iron railings.
He could still feel everyone’s eyes on him and could hear them as they talked, discussing him in low voices.
Marcus watched the world below, eyes tracking couples as they walked through the park, or families as they played together. Even this was torture. The sun slowly sunk towards the horizon until it disappeared from view behind the trees and buildings, and the sky began to darken. Marcus remained there, standing sentinel with his senses on high alert in case something happened.
The conversation died down inside the apartment and gradually the streetlights came on, illuminating the road below that ran alongside the darkening park. Someone entered the kitchen, Serenity judging by the sense of power, and hesitated a moment at the door behind him before leaving again. He heard cupboards open and close, and what sounded like crockery being piled and cutlery gathered.
His stomach growled at the thought of food but he ignored it and remained where he was, part of him afraid of facing the others. He didn’t want their pity and couldn’t bear the way they looked at him as though he would break under the slightest breeze. He was stronger than that, or he would be if they gave him time. These feelings were new to him but he would master them.
The moon rose and his gaze followed it, watching as it changed from deep orange through to white. Stars began to appear but only the brightest ones. The yellow haze from the streetlights drowned out the rest. He would have given anything in that moment to fly away until he was high in the sky, far from Earth, between it and Heaven, and could see the stars properly. He couldn’t leave though, and it wasn’t his wings stopping him this time. He had to remain here and watch over Amelia. Even if she didn’t remember him right now, there was a chance that she would regain her memories. He couldn’t be weak and run away from her. She needed his protection now more than ever.
His resolve to face everything crumbled when he sensed someone step out onto the balcony behind him, their footsteps silent on the terracotta tiles, and then they stepped into view.
Amelia stood beside him, a vision in her sheer white flowing dress that barely concealed her body and her silver hair shining in the moonlight. Her eyes were still a shade too close to silver, brighter and more otherworldly than his Amelia’s had ever been. He quickly cast his gaze downwards to the hem of her dress where it turned blue and her bare feet, staring at them in order to avoid having to look into her eyes and torture himself with the differences between this woman and his lost love.
A breeze blew the hem of her dress against her legs, revealing the cherub tattoo on her ankle. Marcus frowned at it, pain spearing his chest as he remembered the first time he had noticed it. She had been in the hall outside her apartment, wearing that plum coloured slip that had left little to his imagination and had sparked the awakening of his suppressed feelings for her. He could still remember the warmth of her hand on his as she had iced his knuckles, and the heat of her gaze on his bare back. Everything between them had started that night. It had been their beginning, and now they had reached their end, and he would give everything to go back to that moment and do things differently so she didn’t have to die.
So she didn’t have to leave him alone in the world with only an eternity of suffering and loneliness ahead of him.
He tore his eyes away, skipped over her and stared at the moon.
The bright orb held his eyes but not his attention. That wandered back to Amelia where she stood beside him and he ached inside. He wished that everything would end so he no longer felt the pain burning in his chest. The past day had been a nightmare and he hated what had happened and hated that Einar had saved him. He would rather be dead than face this torment. He couldn’t bear it. He tried so hard to cope with everything and to be strong, to find his resolve to continue his mission and protect the woman now standing beside him, and when she wasn’t present, he could find it and some sense of peace. The moment he set eyes on her again, it shattered, leaving him weak, and his heart cried out for Amelia to return to him.
He drew in a slow deep breath and then forced himself to look at her.
Amelia.
His heart still called her that even when he knew she was no longer that soul.
What was she now?
Not an angel, that was certain.
Was she still Amelia?
The temptation to raise his left hand and gently brush the backs of his fingers across her cheek was overwhelming. If he did, he wouldn’t get the reaction he expected. She wouldn’t lean into his caress or look at him with love in her eyes as she used to. She would remind him that she didn’t know him and his heart couldn’t bear to hear it again.
He shut down his emotions, forcing them away until he was cold inside, as empty as the silver eyes watching him.
“What do you want?”
CHAPTER 18
A deep sense of pain in her heart woke her and it wouldn’t be ignored. She stared down at her chest, confused by the feeling burning inside her, trying to understand it. She knew nothing of emotions. Not positive or negative. What sort of feeling was this? It drove her to leave the bed although she wasn’t sure why and then led her from the room. She regarded the mixture of mortals and angels gathered in the next room with cold eyes, unaffected by their presence. They watched her and when they looked as though they might speak, she turned away, following the pain in her heart into another room.
She looked ahead of her and raised her eyebrows when she saw that her knight was alone and the pain in her chest began to lessen. Was it his doing? She didn’t understand it at all. How could laying eyes on him alleviate the strange hurt inside her?
The air was cool outside on the small balcony and she walked forwards, desiring to see what it was that held her knight’s attention so intently. The moon. It hung above them in an inky sky, surrounded by bright pinpricks of stars. She stared at it, bathing in its strong light, and then looked at her knight.
He avoided her, choosing to look at her feet instead of her face, and she recalled the pain that had been in his eyes and his heart when they had met in that field.
He had called her Amelia.
She wished that she recalled that name but it was foreign to her, as mysterious as he was and the others
too. While she knew what they were, she didn’t know who they were, and she had no desire to either. They were instruments to her, three angels who would eventually do her bidding or would die.
Three?
Four angels.
She looked at her knight when her heart hurt again and the pain eased. Why couldn’t she think of him as one of the rest? Why did she want to set him apart from them?
“What do you want?” he said in a deep voice and she wasn’t sure how to respond to such a demanding question. She wasn’t sure yet what she wanted or what she needed to do. It would come to her in time. She was sure of that much at least. “You should remain indoors where it is safe.”
She looked back into the apartment and through it to the living room where the others waited. There was truth in his observation. He was a single angel and there were three in the other room, one of which was superior in strength, power and experience. Logically speaking, she was safest there, surrounded by three angels.
But logic didn’t seem to matter much in this instance. Something overruled it.
“There is nowhere safer than near you.” It was an answer she derived from the fact that her pain had eased when she had laid eyes on him and that it was almost gone now that she was close to him.
She was certain that was what the feeling was about. She wasn’t safe without her knight and he hadn’t been in the room when she had awoken. It had shocked her and she had felt the need to find him.
He turned to regard her with startled eyes. “Why?”
His silver-blue eyes were warmer for a moment and then turned hollow again.
Amelia touched his hand and felt his pain. “You are sad.”
“I am,” he said without inflection, cold and emotionless.
“Because I do not recall you?”
He exhaled slowly and looked at the moon again. “Something like that.”
She felt different inside again, no longer cold or empty, and struggled with the new feelings as she looked at his profile, her gaze tracing it. The more she looked at him, the stronger the feeling became, spreading through her until she could no longer bring herself to see him as nothing more than a creature that was beneath her, one who should sacrifice himself to protect her. A sense that she knew him flowed through her in the wake of the first feeling and she tried to grasp it but couldn’t.
The sight of him in pain moved her to go to him and comfort him. She stepped around him, a trickle of fear running along her nerves, confusing her further, and cupped his cheek, her eyes meeting his.
“Did I do something to upset you?” she whispered and his eyes widened. “Is it the mortal soul that shared this body with me?”
His face darkened and he pushed her hand away from him, scowling at her. “I don’t want to talk about this with you.”
Amelia frowned back at him. She wanted to put him in his place for speaking so disrespectfully to her but she couldn’t bring herself to go through with it. She had never witnessed such suffering. It filled her with a sense that she should feel something for him or do something to help him.
“There must be something I can do to ease your pain,” she said and he looked at her again, eyes soulful and full of hope.
“Do you remember me?”
Amelia thought about it as she stared into his eyes, searching her fragmented memories for knowledge of him and his kinsmen. A flicker of something beat in her chest again as it had done in the field when he had posed that question to her before.
“I know you… in here.” She touched her chest and then her head. “But not in here. I wish that I knew more about you than just this sensation within me. You are familiar to me.” She curled her fingers up and then touched her chest again, focusing there. “Dear to me… or perhaps I was dear to you. I wish I remembered you.”
“Why?” His voice cracked and the pain in her chest increased as his eyes searched hers.
Amelia touched his face again and he closed his eyes and leaned into her palm. She sensed the moment his pain eased because the ache in her heart eased too. Whatever connected them, it was strong and fierce, a bond that couldn’t even be undone by death.
“This is not Amelia touching me now,” he whispered to himself and frowned, his eyes still closed. The sense of sorrow and hurt in him increased. “Whatever this divine being before me is, it is not the woman I was falling for.”
“I wish that I remembered you because then your pain would cease. I want to ease your suffering.”
He opened his eyes and looked so deep into her eyes that she felt as though he was trying to see the answer to his question before he posed it. “The others believe that in time you will remember things… will you?”
The pain that beat in her heart now was so intense that it stole her breath and hot liquid rose into her eyes, threatening to spill onto her cheeks. The feelings awakening inside her both confused and surprised her. Whatever this angel had felt for the mortal soul within her body, it had been strong. She had meant a lot to him.
She didn’t understand the emotions involved, struggled to grasp their meaning, and had thought that angels didn’t bear such mortal feelings.
They had changed since her last life. She didn’t recall exactly what they were like before, only that they were cruel beings fit only for destruction.
Marcus was anything but cruel. There was such warmth in him and affection, and she honestly felt safest around him, as though they still shared a bond.
He looked at her, his icy eyes full of turbulent emotions that she could feel through the point where she was touching him. He lowered his head, causing his overlong black hair to fall forwards and caress his forehead, and a desire to brush it back again so she could see his face momentarily burst into life inside of her.
She raised his head so he looked at her again, leaned in and tiptoed, bringing her mouth up to his. He knocked her hand away and stepped back before her lips could touch his.
“Don’t!” he snapped and the anger that radiated from him and flowed into her gave her a sense of the true depth of his power and how dangerous he was. She had underestimated him. The dark angel wasn’t the most powerful after all. There was something about Marcus, a hidden strength that she hadn’t noticed before. Did he even know that he had it? “It doesn’t work that way… you can’t just do something like that.”
He stepped back again and she didn’t like the gap that opened between them or how it felt as though it was a vast crevasse rather than a mere few feet. He glared at her, eyes void of warmth now and full of unending darkness.
“I can’t take it,” he growled the words and his power rose again, his fury burning through her and warning her away. “I can’t… not if you don’t remember everything that has happened between us.” He clenched his fists and they shook at his sides. “You don’t remember anything?”
His anger faltered and hope flickered in his eyes again.
She shook her head. “Perhaps I will in time. Perhaps the feeling in my heart… the sense that you were dear to me… will revive the memories I have lost and restore them. Would you like that?”
She trembled as she waited to hear his answer, suddenly unsure of herself and of anything. What had he done to her? Angels were nothing but instruments. They were disposable. They were not creatures that she sought to placate and soothe. They were beings she had little care for. She had little care for anything. How had this angel changed that about her?
Part of her was afraid. The emotion was as alien as the rest of the ones she had experienced since waking this evening and made her feel vulnerable and weak. For the first time, she was aware of the power an angel held, and it scared her. While she could take him in a fight, she couldn’t defeat him in this war of feelings. They stripped her of her defences and left her bare, exposed to him and at his mercy, and she couldn’t grasp why they were flooding her. She hadn’t asked for them, and couldn’t recall ever feeling anything for one of his kind before. In the past, she had never cared what they had thought of h
er, but now she stood hanging on every breath he drew, waiting to hear the answer to her question.
He lowered his gaze so he was staring down into the street below them with his face turned away from her and whispered, “I would like that more than anything, because being with you when you are no longer Amelia is killing me… and I wish that Apollyon had finished me off.”
He closed his eyes, turned, and walked back into the apartment, leaving her alone on the balcony staring at his retreating back.
He wished for death?
That shocked her and left her cold.
Her knight wanted to die because of her.
She looked down at her hands and then at her body, and then gazed at her reflection in the full length window beside the doors.
Who had she been?
She had to remember because if she didn’t, she would lose her knight, and she didn’t think that she could bear that.
A flash of images danced over her reflection.
Moonlight. Palm trees. Dark waves lapping at a white shore.
And then her knight. Marcus.
Carrying her through the water to the shore, his eyes locked with hers and so full of passion that she was hot all over, burning for him.
It wasn’t passion heating her now though.
It was a single feeling that crashed over her like a wave and swept her away, leaving her dazed.
Love.
She had fallen in love with Marcus that night.
CHAPTER 19
Marcus woke to the sound of an argument. Rather than hearing two familiar voices locked in noisy combat, he only recognised one—Apollyon. The object of his wrath was a young male voice but one filled with anger that almost matched Apollyon’s. Marcus couldn’t sense the power of the other angel. Apollyon’s eclipsed it, pressing down on the apartment so heavily that Marcus was surprised it hadn’t woken him before the shouting had.
He rose to his knees on his uncomfortable makeshift bed on the floor next to Amelia’s bed, his muscles stiff and sore from healing, and checked to see if she was still asleep. Her eyes were closed and she didn’t seem awake, although how she could sleep through such a racket was beyond him. He sleepily rubbed his hair and then caught the topic of the argument. It purged the tiredness from his body in an instant. He stood and called his armour to him as he strode to the door, and opened it. Apollyon stood in the middle of the spacious living room with his back to him, his black armour and wings making him as dark as ever and a sharp contrast to the paleness of his surroundings.
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