Guardian (The Guardian Series Book 1)

by A. J. Messenger

  His eyes meet mine for a long, slow stare. I can’t quite pinpoint his expression but from the slight turn at the corner of his mouth I think he’s going to humor me. “Okay, for the sake of convoluted arguments, let’s say you did jump off a cliff—”

  “Or got eaten by a shark.”

  “She says nonchalantly as we sit in the middle of the ocean on surfboards the size and shape of seals.” His delivery is dry and his eyes flash bewilderment, or perhaps amusement.

  “As if saying it will make it happen?”

  “What you focus on ...”

  I squint at him. “Is that really true?”

  “Not always directly. But what you choose to give your attention to—or not—can shift the energy around you.”

  I consider his answer. “Well it’s not as if you’d let anything happen to me.”

  “No,” he says with a smile as he leans over and gently tucks my errant hair in place again, “but I’m enjoying the peace out here in the water with you and I don’t particularly feel like fighting off a shark today.”

  I laugh. “Okay. I jump off a cliff then.”

  “You’re forgetting the fact that you would die.”

  “You said energy never dies.”

  “Okay,” he smiles, “you’d transform.”

  “Right … I’d transform into a guardian and then you and I would be together as guardians forever. You said my aura showed I was about to be realized.”

  He shakes his head. “You can’t become a guardian that way. Intent matters. And there are no guarantees about anything, including becoming a guardian.”

  “So there’s no way around it.”

  “Even if it was possible,” he says, “you know you could never do that to your mom. Or Finn and Liz. And I wouldn’t let you.”

  “I know,” I concede. He’s right. I would never leave them that way. “I doubt I’m going to become a guardian anyway,” I add.

  “Why?”

  “Wouldn’t I know it if I was? Wouldn’t I feel especially wise … or ready in some way? My whole life I’ve felt like I don’t know what the heck I’m doing from one moment to the next. How could I go from that to being a guardian?”

  A smile reaches Alexander’s deep green eyes. “Declan, it’s the people who think they know it all that have the most to learn.”

  “Well,” I say, considering his words, “that may be, but I haven’t done anything particularly important.”

  “What’s important? You see people for who they are and you understand the connection we all share—that’s a rare quality.” He pauses before continuing. “But I understand how you feel. When I look back, most of what I did throughout most of my lives doesn’t seem spectacularly grand.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I wonder sometimes how I came to be a guardian.”

  “You do? But you were good.”

  “Yes,” he nods, “and you’re good, too, day after day, in big ways and small that ripple out with consequences you’ll never realize.”

  “And that’s enough?”

  “Apparently,” he says with a smile as he spreads his arms wide, “since I’m sitting here now as your guardian.”

  I smile, shading my eyes from the sun. “I hope you’re right.”

  His expression turns thoughtful. “It’s about doing the right thing, when it’s not easy. And it’s about cycles and learning more each time. But I’ve wondered if my being realized was more about the way my life ended.”

  “You mean because you tried to save Alenna from Avestan?”

  “More like something to do with lives being taken so abruptly—with fear … and violence. I don’t know,” he says, his voice drifting off, “I used to wonder if becoming a guardian was a way to bring peace and maybe I wasn’t truly worthy. I took my brother’s life, after all.”

  “You were trying to save a life.”

  Alexander looks down at his surfboard, not saying anything.

  “I understand,” I say softly.

  He looks back up and meets my eyes.

  “I can imagine how that must hurt,” I say, “with the way things ended.”

  Alexander holds my gaze for a long beat and in my mind I try to imagine the shock and horror of being murdered by your own brother and being forced to stab him back as you try to save someone you love. The rage Avestan must have been consumed with—to kill Alexander and Alenna with a knife, up close and personal. I look at the jagged scar Alexander keeps on his left temple as a reminder and my heart hurts for the memories he must hold of his last mortal life.

  “I’ve never actually voiced these thoughts aloud,” he says.

  I meet his eyes. “You saved me from Avestan … against every odd and obstacle. If that doesn’t prove you were meant to be a guardian I don’t know what would.”

  “We saved each other,” he says quietly. “But you’re right—when I’m with you I feel as if I’m where I’m supposed to be. And Edwin always says certainty is for idiots.”

  “That sounds pretty informal for Edwin.”

  He smiles. “Okay, what he actually says is ‘To pursue truth we must doubt all things as much as possible.’ In other words, only those fooling themselves are cocksure.”

  My eyebrow rises. “Is that an Australian thing?”

  “What?”

  “Cocksure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I want to know if I should add it to my list of favorite words you use, like jaffle or tosser.”

  He chuckles. “It’s just a word. It means arrogantly confident.”

  “I know what it means, silly. It’s just not heard much in everyday conversation.”

  “To society’s detriment,” he says with a wry smile.

  I laugh and I find myself surveying his kind eyes and warm smile and marveling at this angel before me. How I love the way Alexander sounds, from the timbre of his voice to his accent to the odd words he sometimes tosses out. He’s so different and I love that. Even if he wasn’t an angel he’d still seem otherworldly to me.

  “Well,” I say, forcing myself to focus back on our conversation, “I think it’s a mark of your intelligence and worthiness that you’re not cocksure. The very fact that you’ve questioned if you were meant to be a guardian means you were meant to be one.”

  He smiles.

  “And any lingering doubts keep you striving that much harder to do good,” I add.

  His smile reaches his eyes and they crinkle handsomely. “Have I told you how much I love sprites?” he says. “Especially smart sprites that embrace doubt and mock my vocabulary?”

  I laugh. “Well I have a long, sordid history of doubting myself. So if doubt can serve a good purpose for once, I’m all for embracing it.”

  He holds my gaze for a long beat and then his eyes trace a path around my face. “Your aura is beautiful right now,” he says softly. “It’s shimmering brilliantly with vivid whites and rich blues … it’s hard to tell where you end and the ocean and the sky begins. I never get tired of looking at you.”

  Our eyes meet and the air around us is charged with electric energy. Combined with the quiet sounds of the water lapping and the soft undulation of the swells, I feel as if there’s no place in the world I belong other than right here, right now, in this moment with Alexander. I take a deep breath and surrender into the sensation as he holds my gaze.

  “Do you feel this right now?” he asks. “Between us? How our auras blend? You don’t have to come up with crazy ideas like jumping off cliffs. This feeling we have when we’re together makes age meaningless.”

  I nod. “I know you’re right,” I say, looking down. “I guess I just like the idea of growing old together ...”

  “Like that couple we always see holding hands as they walk on the beach,” he says. “I understand.”

  I meet his eyes, surprised. “Yes … I don’t know why it matters so much. Maybe it’s because my mom and dad didn’t get to … I look at pictures of us with my dad sometimes … it�
��s been almost ten years now … my mom and I keep getting older but my dad is frozen in time. Like we’re leaving him behind.”

  Alexander leans over and takes my hand. “You haven’t left him. He’s still around. Somewhere. Everywhere.”

  “Why don’t I feel him then?” I ask.

  “Would it make you feel better to know that someday you could all be together again?”

  “You said there are no guarantees. For any of us.”

  “There aren’t, but there are some things I know. Things that are right with the universe. And you and I are one. I know, in every thrumming part of my being, that we were meant to find each other. The way our energy connects … it’s a kind of harmony I’ve never felt before.”

  I close my eyes for a moment to focus on the feeling. “It’s like we’re on the same frequency,” I say softly before I open my eyes again.

  “Yes,” he says with a smile. “Some energies belong together, and from everything you’ve told me your mum and dad had a deep love between them. When you have a powerful soul connection like that you tend to find each other over and over across lifetimes.”

  I nod. The idea of them together again, in a future life, does make me feel better. And it feels right. Maybe I could find them, too. The thought makes me smile.

  Alexander leans over and kisses me softly. “I love you,” he says.

  “I love you, too,” I say and my heart swells with the truth of it.

  “Should we head back?” he asks as he looks around. “I think the waves are all rubbish now.”

  I nod. “I can’t feel my feet anyway.”

  “Told you you should have worn booties.”

  “I like the way the board feels under my feet,” I say as I swing my legs out of the water and lie on my chest so I can start paddling.

  “Aye, but if you can’t feel your feet, you can’t feel the board.”

  I splash water in his direction. “Don’t spoil my argument with logic.”

  He laughs. “Give me your foot.” He eases his board alongside mine and places his hands around my foot. Immediately it feels enveloped in soothing heat.

  “Ohhh, that feels so good,” I groan. “Where were you an hour ago?”

  He smiles. “You do the other one.”

  “How?”

  “Imagine your light sending warmth to your foot.”

  “I can do that?”

  “Only one way to find out,” he says with a shrug. “Didn’t you say you felt warm when you used your energy before?”

  He’s right. It’s worth a try. I close my eyes and conjure a ball of white light in my core. I imagine it growing brighter and spreading out to my limbs and then rolling over to my right foot. Very slowly, as I focus and concentrate, I feel my foot thawing from within, getting warmer as the white light unfurls from my heel to my toes. It’s not as hot and as fast as when Alexander warmed my other foot but I’m doing it myself. “It’s working,” I say with amazement as I open my eyes and look at Alexander.

  “One more sprite power you can add to the list,” he says.

  “Ability to warm feet while surfing. Check,” I say. “That’ll scare the pants off the dark angels.”

  Alexander bursts out laughing. “I think you’re far more powerful than you realize,” he says as I bask in the warmth of my newly-toasty feet and we paddle happily towards shore.

  We strip off our wetsuits when we reach the sand and sit back on our elbows on our towels to soak up the warm summer rays. I’m wearing a bright yellow bikini and Alexander has on a pair of blue and yellow Billabong board shorts that hang low on his hips. His ab muscles ripple as he rolls himself up to unzip his backpack and extract two Capri Suns.

  “Do you remember the first time we had these together?” he asks as he sits back and hands one to me.

  “Up on the mountain when you took me flying for the first time,” I say with a grin. “On Valentine’s Day.”

  He nods and meets my eyes. “I wanted to kiss you that day.”

  “Is that right?”

  He nods again. “Very badly.” His voice is low and husky.

  I smile, besotted, and my eyes trail to his kissable lips as that familiar electric charge hangs in the air between us.

  “If only I’d known I could have come close like this,” he says as he leans over until we’re a breath away. “And I could have kissed you, like this,” he says as he grazes my lips, softly at first, and then harder as the kiss deepens.

  We lie back on the towel and I melt into the sensation, my arms around his muscled frame as his lips part mine, our tongues teasing and exploring. He groans, deep within his throat, as our bodies entwine and I sigh softly, but before long Alexander pulls back and lies down on the towel beside me. He closes his eyes and rakes his fingers through his dark, tousled hair, letting out a long, slow breath as he faces up to the sky. “We should probably get going soon,” he says finally.

  I steady my own breath and peer around at the emptiness in all directions. “Why?”

  He turns on his side to face me and I do the same.

  “Because everything else falls away when I’m with you,” he says with an intensity in his eyes that makes my breath hitch in my throat.

  “And?”

  “And,” he smiles, “I’m still getting used to the idea that we can do this.” He leans over and kisses me again softly.

  “You’re getting used to it?” I say.

  He nods, slowly. “Yes … I’m getting used to the fact that I can kiss you here …” he says as he kisses one eyelid softly. “And right here …” he says as he kisses the other eyelid. “And over here …” he murmurs as he trails kisses along my cheek and over to my ear where I feel his breath hot on my skin. “But especially here …” he says as he makes his way back to my mouth and kisses me with an ardor that makes me sigh.

  “I love it when you sigh like that,” he groans.

  I smile against his lips as I kiss him back.

  The invisible string between us glows and embraces my heart with a warm, white light that crowds out the worries in the back of my mind—about how Alexander and I can be together long term, or when Avestan will be back and how he’ll seek his vengeance against us.

  When we finally sit up to watch the sun set with our arms wrapped around one another, I rest my head on Alexander’s shoulder.

  He holds me close and kisses the top of my head softly before he asks a question I’ve been avoiding for far too long.

  “Declan, do you want to talk about what happened to your dad?”

  End of Chapter One

  Read Fallen (book two in the Guardian series)

  Available now on Amazon.com