by Alisa Woods
“What?” Elyon’s hand grabbed hold of her hair and yanked her toward him. “This is your dragon prince?” His anger boomed the air, his voice verging on angelsong. He shoved her away, releasing her physically and from his magic. She fell hard to the floor, and with her arms bound to her sides, she smacked her head on the glittering black glass.
It stunned her, but through a strong buzzing in her ears, she heard Elyon boom out, “Bring me his head!” The angel lifted from the platform in a blast of fury.
A tug on the magical ropes that bound her helped Erelah rise to her feet. Micah was scowling, the tether in one hand, her blade in the other. She should charge him—he wouldn’t expect it—but as she staggered up to standing, a booming overpressure nearly knocked her back down again.
She squinted up.
Her father floated high above with Tajael by his side! Surrounding them were a legion of black-winged angelings. Their warrior cries all went up at once, deafening her and making her cringe. Her father surged forth, but he didn’t get far before Elyon roared back, crashing into him. The two angels spun as they grappled, the magical wind of their powers buffeting the swarm of angelings around them, all of which were immediately attacking their closest foe.
Tajael dropped like a stone out of the sky, heading straight for her. He slashed two dark angelings on the way, their wailings echoing even above the melee.
A yank on the tether sent Erelah sprawling on the floor. Micah arrived just before Tajael, grabbing hold of her bindings and lifting her off the floor. He held her as a shield in front of him, with Erelah’s blade high, threatening Tajael, but not her.
“Your angel blade is useless,” Micah shouted to Tajael from behind her. “I’m the only one who can free her.”
“I’ll take my chances on that,” Tajael said, stalking toward them.
Micah pulled her close and whispered in her ear from behind, “He will kill me if I release you.”
Erelah twisted to see his face alive with fear. “If you release my bindings, Tajael will not—”
“Not your friend of the light,” Micah hissed. Then he flicked his gaze up above where her father and his were buffeting the air and the melee of angelings with their magic.
Erelah’s eyes went wide. “He is your father—”
“That matters not,” Micah growled in her ear. “All fathers are not like yours, angeling of the light.”
“I’m not…” But she stopped. There was no time to quarrel, and besides, Tajael was about to run his blade through Micah first and sort things later. “Tajael!” she shouted as he approached, stopping him in his tracks.
He gave her a puzzled look, then he glanced around. Elyon’s angelings were trying to dive for them, to come to Micah’s assistance, but her father’s angelings were intercepting them and holding them off. Tajael looked back to her. “I will get you free—”
“Do not tarnish your wings with this piece of shadow trash!” Erelah shouted for all to hear, as much as they could above the whipping wind. Tajael frowned. He was only a few feet away. She dropped her voice. “A flesh wound only, Taj. And quickly. Micah will cut the bonds as you fight over me.”
Tajael’s frown grew darker, but Micah gave a small nod. She only hoped that meant his agreement. Suddenly, a dark angeling of Elyon’s Regiment broke free of the melee and dropped down on Tajael. He whirled and slashed at his attacker. The two each sunk their blades into the other, but whereas Tajael growled with the gush of blood from his shoulder, the other angeling screamed as the blade-of-light sank into his chest. Tajael yanked his blade free and stepped back as the angeling slumped to the floor. Then he turned and roared as he charged, his blood-soaked blade held high.
The three went down together—Tajael grabbing hold of her to wrench her free, her sandwiched in the middle as they rolled on the floor, and Micah holding tight to her back and slashing with her blade. Only he miraculously missed Tajael with each pass and instead bit into her bindings. His blade scored her arms where her fingerless gloves didn’t reach, but only with glancing drags of the tip. When the last of the bindings fell free, Erelah felt the magic block release. Tajael gave one final growl and sunk his blade into Micah’s shoulder. He was shadow, and the blade was light, and his scream rose above the buffeting wind… but Tajael’s slash was not deep. Micah would be sickened by it, but not killed.
Tajael grabbed hold of her arm and lifted her into the air, free of the platform. Then he gave a trumpeting blast of angelsong and wrenched open a portal, slipping them both through it and away from the fight.
In an instant, they were back in her father’s palace of black, standing on the balcony. Tajael’s cry must have been the signal—with a flurry of interdimensional light and flutters of black wings, her father’s Regiment popped the air and reappeared above them. Her father followed, and last of all, a cohort of angelings appeared on the balcony next to her, two holding a dragon between them.
Leksander.
She lurched over to him. “What is wrong with him?” she screeched, her hands out to touch his glittering silver scales, but what could she do? He was covered in blood, sagging between the angelings as they lay him on the balcony’s cold glass floor.
“He took many strikes—” one started, but the other cut him off.
“He fought valiantly,” the angeling said solemnly.
“What? No!” Erelah knelt by his side. He was breathing still—she could see his chest rise and fall—but the cuts were numerous and deep. And made by shadow blades.
Leksander was nothing if not a being of the light. The shadow was killing him.
“Leksander!” she cried out, fighting back tears because she would not give into that. This was not beyond fixing. She cradled his dragon snout in her hands, the steely smoothness wrenching her heart. How often had she seen him in dragon form but never touched him? How often had she admired his beauty and fierceness from afar, his perpetual goodness in fighting to defend humanity? And now here he lay, finally in her arms, and the slow trickle of blood from his mouth was tearing her heart into pieces. “Leksander, please hear me,” she sobbed.
His ice blue dragon eyes slowly blinked open. Erelah. You’re safe. His thoughts dropped into her mind, as they did when he was in this form. Then he shifted to human again, naked except for the slashes across his body, which she could now see were numerous and not only leaking out blood but seeping shadow magic in.
“We must leave,” Tajael was saying to her, although she scarce could hear him. Her focus was on the way Leksander’s hand sought hers, the soft grimacing smile on his face, the way his eyes were slowly closing again.
“Leksander,” she gasped and leaned in. “My beloved.” You cannot die. The words rang through her, but she didn’t know if he heard either the ones she spoke or the ones she meant. His eyes were closed, and a horrible fear pulsed through her they would never open again. She whipped her head to Tajael standing next to her. “We must save him.” Her voice was shrill, and she could hear the panic in it. The other angelings had backed away, whispering and hovering, but Tajael remained by her side, staring at her with wide eyes. Even her father’s face was clouded with some turmoil she didn’t understand.
Why weren’t they helping her? If she were made of light, she could give Leksander a life kiss, but his wounds were made of shadow, and the two might simply fight inside him and destroy him. Then again, she was shadow now. Could shadow angels give life kisses?
She didn’t know how this realm worked!
“Don’t just stand there!” she cried out to Tajael and her father and all the angelings hovering around her, everyone doing nothing. “Help me.”
Tajael exchanged a look with her father, who gave him a small nod. Then Tajael knelt at her side. “I will help you,” he said, eyes still wide, almost panicked as he studied her face. What was wrong with him? “But not here.”
She shook her head, not understanding. “He’s dying, Taj!”
His expression grew determined. “Elyon will come
looking for you. And he’ll look here first. We can’t have him find you… or Leksander.” Then he leaned over to scoop up Leksander’s inert form. He was limp in Tajael’s arms, and that hollowed her from the inside like nothing she’d ever felt. “Come,” Tajael said. “We’ll return him to his keep, where we can heal him. You’ll both be safe there, once the wards are back up.”
She dully nodded, head buzzing as the fear of losing the man she loved engulfed her.
She rose to her feet, and with one hand on Tajael’s shoulder and another on her beloved’s, Erelah wrenched them all away from the shadow realm and back to the mortal world where Leksander belonged.
Leksander awoke with Erelah’s lips pressed to his.
He breathed in air, and it charged his body like nothing he’d experienced before. Only… it wasn’t air. It was Erelah. She wasn’t kissing him—she was giving him a life kiss.
Her hands held his cheeks as she breathed the life-giving magic into him, and he could feel her magic and the love behind it banishing all the strikes against his body, the ones he’d incurred in that frenzied fight with the shadow angelings. Even more, it was beating back the inky blackness, the dark magic that had seeped into his soul from the blade cuts. He gripped her shoulders, breathing in everything she was giving him. He slowly came fully awake and realized where he was. Back in his lair. Somehow she had transported him back to the keep, and he was naked on his bed, half sitting up as she administered her life kiss.
When he was brimming with life and love and energy, she finally pulled back. “Oh, my love,” she said, joy written on her face but still mixed with worry. “Tell me you live.”
“I’ve never been so alive.” Then he slipped his hand to her face and pulled her back for a real kiss. The kind that let his lips move against hers, that gave him freedom to touch her face and pull her close, and that ignited his smoldering passion into a burst of red-hot heat low in his belly. He was shaking with the need to pull her down to the sheets with him and make love to her, but that seemed impossible. She was still wearing the sexy-hot black outfit with the gloves and the thigh-high leggings, but that wasn’t an impediment to making love to her… it was simply a reminder she was still a shadow angeling.
Not that he cared. Not if she truly loved him.
He pulled back from the kiss, breathless, holding her cheeks and gazing into those beautiful blue eyes. “Tell me again that you love me. That I didn’t just dream it.”
Her lips were swollen from their kiss, and slightly parted, and she was breathing hard in a way that curled need inside him. “You are my beloved. You have always been, Leksander. I just couldn’t let myself know the truth.”
His breath caught with her words, and his heart swelled. He had no idea where to go next with it, but if she loved him… all things were possible.
Then something impossible grabbed his attention. “Erelah,” he gasped. “Your wings.”
She frowned and twisted to look—her wings were fully extended, but they weren’t midnight black or snowy white, but some mottling between the two. She sucked in a breath and turned back to him with wide eyes. “What is happening to me?” He’d never seen fear in her eyes before, and he would do anything to banish it.
He gently held her cheeks with both hands and stroked her lip with his thumb. “My love, I don’t care if you’re shadow or light or…” He flicked a glance to her wings. He truly didn’t understand what was happening, but it didn’t matter. “Or something in between. My love is for you. All of you, light or dark.”
But that didn’t seem to help. She shrugged like she was trying to slough off her wings… or maybe they were bothering her. “I don’t understand,” she cried. “Tajael said only shadow can cure shadow, and your wounds were made by shadow blades. He rushed us back to the keep so I would have time to heal you, safe from any angel interference.”
Leksander smiled, and an insane joy filled him. He could see exactly what Tajael was thinking with that. “Don’t you see?” he said, nudging her face back to him and away from the scowl she was giving her wings. “Tajael knew you could cure me, light or dark. Because it’s not your nature, light or shadow, but your True Love, Erelah.”
She was focused on him now. “My love for you is…” She swallowed. “It is powerful and overwhelming and True. And I feel it, Leksander. I feel it so strongly, so wildly inside me...” She seemed freaked by this, but he couldn’t help his grin.
It felt like his smile would break his face. “You were created to love, my love, don’t you see?” He smoothed a stray strand of blonde hair back from her lovely, perfect face. Even with her frowns and her worry, she was the most beautiful thing he had ever known, inside and out. “God created you to love—that’s why you love every single human you’ve ever met. I’ve always admired that about you. That you always loved. You looked past their flaws and saw their inner light. Their angel in disguise, as you’re always saying. You were born with that gift, that great ability to love no matter what. Effusive, grand, without question, without condition—great and small, weak and strong, you loved them all. You just forgot one thing.”
“To love you,” she said, placing her palm on his cheek.
He leaned into it, briefly closing his eyes with the sheer joy of her touch. Then he opened his eyes, leaned forward, and brushed his lips against hers, just because he could.
He pulled back and said, “You forgot to love yourself.”
She frowned and drew away from his touch. He could see the calculation in her eyes, but there was no way in heaven or hell he was letting her squirm away from this. Because it was essential that she know. Having seen her in light and in shadow, he knew that now.
“I am flawed, Leksander,” she said, her frown growing deeper. “I am… shadow.” But she flicked a glance at her wings, which were still in turmoil, like the light and dark were battling for her, feather by feather.
“Look past the flaws, Erelah.” He didn’t touch her, not yet, just held her wide-eyed gaze with his, pouring every ounce of his love into that look. “See what I see—a woman who loves so strongly, so purely, that it nearly tears her apart. Tajael said you were more righteous than any angeling he’s known, and he was right. You were born of light, Erelah. You are worthy of love… otherwise, how could I love you as much as I do?”
Her face was still twisted in struggle. “I have love of you, Leksander, but I also have… need. So much need.” Her eyes fell to half-mast, and he knew she was fighting it. The Lust that was a Sin to her, but he knew it was just her love reaching for its fullest expression with him.
She was meant to love him.
He eased forward, holding her cheek, stopping just short of kissing her. “Don’t fight it, Erelah. There is no Sin in Love.”
Breath escaped her—a trembling release that said kiss me.
So he did.
He pressed his lips to hers, holding her head to angle it just right. And when her lips parted, he possessed her mouth with his, tasting and probing and groaning with the passion that surged inside him. He was already naked, and his cock had already sprung to life, and they were already on his bed. All he needed was to peel these wicked-sexy clothes off her and make love to her as he had a million times in his fantasies. He pressed her back with the force of his kiss, and she didn’t resist. Her wings flexed wide and then wrapped around his back, encasing him within their churning war between light and dark.
He broke the kiss, his body pressing hers into the softness of his bed. He gazed into her eyes, which were wide and blue and trusting. She’d never done any of this, so he would have to take it slow, even though he felt like he might explode.
“Say yes,” he said.
“Yes,” she whispered, eyes shining.
Then an amazing thing happened—the battle ceased. Radiating from her back first, where her wings were smashed against the bed, the feathers turned snowy white. Then the whiteness spread and quickly ran the span of her wings to the tips. Leksander could tell the instant she
saw it—her eyes flew as wide as he’d ever seen.
“Leksander.” She pulled her gaze from her wings and stared with wonder into his eyes.
“You were meant to love me,” he said with a grin. “And holy angels of light, Erelah… am I going to love you.”
He kissed her again, only this time, her hands came to life. She grabbed at his cheeks first, running her hands up along his skin like she was trying to touch every inch, then they disappeared into his hair, fisting it and pulling him deeper into the kiss. He groaned and pressed her into the bed. His body was everywhere frustrated by the clothes still covering hers and preventing him from the full contact he needed now.
He nudged apart her legs, pressing his thigh between them and rubbing up against the heat of her sex, still covered by the fighting gear she wore. But he must have struck something because she arched up and into him and whimpered. Holy fuck, that sound. He growled and released her from the kiss so he could tip up her chin and nip at her neck. His hand found her breast, still encased in leather, but just palming it was making his cock twitch. Her clothes were either made of angel magic or real and somehow seamless—either way he couldn’t figure out how to get them off.
He nibbled his way to her ear. “My love.” His voice was so husky, he could barely speak. “I need your clothes off.”
She whimpered again—that sound would make him insane—but suddenly, she was bare underneath him. The hot flesh of her breast overflowed his hand. The bare skin of his thigh pressed against the hot wetness between her legs. The hard rod of his cock pressed into the sweet softness of her belly.
Everywhere they touched sparked magic.
“Holy fuck,” he breathed. He ground against her, touching her everywhere.
She cried out a wordless sound of pleasure. God, yes. He wanted to be buried in her so badly… but no. This was her first time—for everything—and he would make sure it rocked her world. He was holding nothing back. If it blasted her back to shadow status, so be it. She would know the full measure of his love.