Throne of Fire

by Addison Moore

  “Bravissimo.” Candace shudders as if Dudley’s dissertation was breathtaking. “Almost word for word. Your power with prose is truly enchanting.”

  Chloe scoffs. “Get it, Logan? Gage might be sweet and loving. You might love him more than yourself and Skyla, but that was the point all along. You can still love Gage. You can be his brother, his friend.” Her dark eyes pour into me without restraint as if the nexus of the universe depended on my understanding of the riddle, of the point of this entire intervention. “But you, alone, are the one meant for Skyla.” She shoots Dudley a quick glance. “Yes, Logan. Just you. I don’t know how much time you’ll have with her, but you’re wasting it by letting Demetri steal it from you like candy. Gage died. Yes, he’s been resurrected, but he can’t participate in any of the covenant promises.” She’s reiterating in hopes it will sink in through my thick skull. “He’s not like you and me. He has an eternal body and a new set of rules to play by. The enemy is using him as a pawn to get in your way, to take down Celestra as effortlessly as possible. Do you think Gage would truly want that? If you made it clear that you wanted Skyla back—would he really stand in your way?”

  I search the ground for answers. The dry bed of pine needles we’re standing on is soft as a mattress, and yet as muddied and gnarled as my life seems to be.

  “Skyla has a say in it. And no, I don’t think Gage would be packing her bags and shipping her to Whitehorse. They have a family.”

  Chloe lifts her chin as if I had struck her. “They have a family, but it’s not the right one. You are her family, Logan. When all is said and done and the totality of our people pass away in a whimper and not a shout, you will realize that what these two are preaching is gospel. You will feel great shame for falling for the enemy’s old, tired, and tried tricks. Gage will feel sorry for you for not fighting. And I’m betting somewhere down the line in this life, when it’s truly too late to take back what’s yours and get Celestra back on course, you will realize you had one job, Oliver, and you fucked it up.” She shrugs over to Candace. “Sorry. It’s the only way I could get my point across.”

  Candace offers a slow blink. “Oh, that you could. All is forgiven.” There’s a marked sadness in her voice, a grief that I have never heard from her before. “Logan.” She turns to me, takes up my hands in hers, her fingers cold as ice, and this startles me. Her skin, her hair shimmers a pastel rainbow, her pale eyes glow bright as the moon. “Sector Dudley’s future, that of my own, our destinies lie in your decision.” Moisture glimmers in her eyes, and for the first time, in any of the lives I have lived, I feel true fear, a horror that shakes me to my bones as my own blood runs cold. “It is true, but it is not the point. The point is for you to step into your destiny, and that alone will set the trajectory of all that should follow in the right direction. Do not be afraid. Be strong. Be strong.” She grips me as she says it, and that hypnotic hum that resonates from her blasts through me like a nuclear assault. My body bucks under the pressure, blowing me back until I hit my head against something hard and flat.

  “Shit,” I hiss as I slam to the ground, only to pry my lids open and find myself in the butterfly room I built for Skyla at Whitehorse, a naked Chloe lounging on the lavender velour sofa that Ellis and I dragged up here. I thought it complemented Skyla’s eyes and hoped she’d love it. It’s been months, and I don’t think she’s aware it exists. In all fairness, I bought it for her birthday, and things have been a little shitty and wild since that fated day.

  “Welcome home, Oliver.” Chloe stretches her arms over her head, affording me a clear view of her bouncing girls, and I quickly turn my head as if I were about to be sick.

  “Now what?” I mutter mostly to myself.

  “Knowing you, you’ll sulk while doing some heavy duty soul-searching. I think you’ll make the right decision, though.” She shrugs as she crawls down to the floor with me. The bright blue butterflies pinned to the walls flutter with her every move. Chloe crosses her legs, what’s left of that dark thicket below tries its best to snag my attention, but I refuse to give it. “It’s the only way to depose Gage.” Her voice is soft. She shakes her head as if on some level she were sorry. “He’s not the same. I can see it in his eyes. Something has changed. He’s not for our people like he said he would be—like he thought he would be. Something darker is motivating him, and I can’t figure out what. But I’ve been around him enough to know there’s an edge to him now. Getting Skyla back might prove to be a challenge.”

  My eyes hook to hers, and for a moment I marvel at the fact I’m having this conversation with Chloe of all people. And if I had to wager money on it, I would think she were being genuine.

  “I’ve noticed it, too—about Gage. I thought it was all in my head, but you’re right. Something has changed. It’s subtle, though. His heart is still very much the same. But I’m not taking Skyla back. She’s not mine. Maybe she never was.”

  Chloe is quick to scoff. “Skyla is determined to give the enemy what he wants. And apparently, so are you.”

  A thick moment of silence clogs up the room. “So this is what you’re going to ultimately do.” She slips her feet past my sides and hugs me with her legs, her hands grabbing mine, warm hands, strong hands. Chloe has always had the inner and outer strength of a bull during mating season, and the only one this bull ever wants to mate with is Gage himself. A dark laugh strums from her chest, and the girls percolate. “Once you come to your senses, and you will, I suggest you don’t waste any time. You get right in there, between the two of them in bed if you have to—God knows they have logged some serious time conjoined at the hips.” She averts her eyes, and I can’t help but do the same. “And soon enough, you’ll win her back. It may take time, but you will be the victor. Gage, however, may never fully get out of your way.” My heart thuds. Chloe is right. And more importantly, Chloe’s alliance is only as good as her motivation to conjoin hips with him. “We’ll have to do something about Wes. He can’t stay in power. He’s a danger, too. A bigger threat to our people than we realize. He’s the madman at the helm, a wild horse braying and neighing, kicking his way through the village, taking out children, fathers, mothers, any and everyone who gets in his wild way.”

  My head bounces against the wall a moment as I think about what to do with Wesley. Chloe is right. He’s a danger just like his brother. A dull laugh lives and dies in my chest. I just lumped the two of them together, Gage and Wes as if Gage were a stranger to me. “I think I know what we’ll have to do with Wes.”

  “Cage him up in Tenebrous?” Her dark eyes ignite like a brushfire at the thought of imprisoning her ex.

  “Nope. We’re going to have to kill him.” A dead Wesley Edinger is the only safe one we can have.

  But I’m pretty certain Demetri won’t let that happen just yet.

  As much as I hate to admit this, and I’ve been admitting it on the regular lately, Chloe Bishop is right.

  On a clear spring afternoon, I take a break from the chaos inside the bowling alley, which seems to double as a preschool during the day—and lie down in the back of my truck, just looking up through the twisted branches of the evergreens into the open Paragon sky. I should be headed off to the farm to help Liam. We’ve hit irrigation problems. If they’re not corrected, we might lose the entire left side of the pumpkin patch, and I can’t have that happen. Nathan and Barron will really enjoy it this year now that they’re walking—running everywhere on their own. If time keeps up with its dizzying pace, they’ll be old enough to help out themselves, and I’ll welcome them with open arms.

  But right now, I just need to sit and marinate in my thoughts. My conversation with Dudley and Candace, that naked one-on-one with Chloe has plunged me into the depths of my soul to decipher the answer to what feels like a riddle of the ages. In a perfect world, one without Fems or the Nephilim in general, one which brought us all to the same place in life through much more natural means, I would never entertain trying to break up a family. Hell, I’m still not
entertaining it. But something in me demands I give the matter its due diligence before I close the door on the subject forever. Skyla has been with Gage for so long it feels natural to see them together. When either Skyla or Gage drops by the bowling alley alone, I always glance past them in anticipation of the other’s arrival. They have become conjoined in more ways than one. And the boys. A chord of three is not easily broken—how much stronger is four. The boys would grow to hate me. They love their father. They always will. I would be nothing but a cheap replacement. And what about Skyla? She’s madly in love with my nephew. Hell, I’m madly in love with him, too.

  The rustling sound of footsteps steals my attention, then the distant sound of water hitting the ground. I sit up to find Ellis relieving himself next to a silver tip pine and groan.

  “Shit, dude. You do realize the health department comes around now and again, don’t you? We’ve got toilets inside, nice shiny new ones. I suggest you use them.”

  He turns around. That silly look of surprise on his face makes me want to punch him. “Oliver? Is that you?” He shakes it off and heads over, zipping himself back up in the process. Before I know it, Ellis is in the bed of the truck with me, seated on my wheel well. “What’s going on, man? You feeling okay? You look like shit.”

  “Thank you. I can always rely on you to tell it how it is.” I scoot back and lean against the truck. “I’m thinking about Skyla.” I fold my hands over my stomach and lose my gaze in the woods—the woods Ellis just took a piss in. Why do I feel like Candace and Marshall just took a piss in my emotional woods?

  “What about her? You’re over her, right? I mean, you got the Lexmeister on lockdown. Lex and G are out now shopping for shit for Michelle’s wedding. Lex says you’re next. You want Skyla to be your best man?”

  I take a moment to properly scowl at him. “No, I don’t want Skyla to be my best man. I’m not marrying Lex.” The words come out jarring to hear because a small part of me is still convinced this is a distinct possibility. A frightening one, but still very real. “Do you think I should marry Lex?” This right here is an eye-opening experience. When I start asking Harrison questions that delineate the path of my future, I should be very fucking concerned. A brand new terror grips me because it’s becoming clear I’ve hit a fork in the road whether I like it or not.

  “Hell yeah. Lex is hot. She’s got a body that doesn’t quit, and she’s mean as hell. No one will ever give you crap about anything. And, if they do, just sic her on them. She’s like a rabid dog when you piss her off. You’re better off dead than dealing with her wrath. Once Lex sees something she wants, she digs her fangs in deep, and there’s no hope of escape. She’ll make sure you give her what she wants and how often she wants it. I’m sure she’s a pistol in bed. But I’d do a ball check when I got up in the morning, though, just to make sure she doesn’t have one rolling around in that thorny mouth of hers. She’s like a freaking shark that—”

  “I get it. I get it.” I wipe my face down, just trying to remove half those visuals. As harsh as the assessment might have been, it was startlingly accurate. “A life with Lex would be demanding to say the least. And to be truthful, I have thought about what a drill sergeant she might be like in bed. It’s part of the reason why we haven’t gone there.” Nor will we after that rosy testicular scenario Harrison just painted. “I want a woman who’s kind, soft, not hardened by the world, but has courage, a good head on her shoulders. I’m less about outward appearance and more about substance. Is this someone I can raise a family with? Would I want her as the mother of my children? Is she the kind of person my friends would want to spend time with?”

  “I don’t know, dude. You’d have to clear all this with Skyla. But I’m pretty sure Lex isn’t letting you off the hook just like that either. You have got a tiger on fire, and you’re leashed to her tail. If you tell Lex you’re gonna ditch her, you’re going to have hell rained down on you the second you try to make a break for it. Good luck, man. Do not, and I repeat, do not, break this to Lex in the bowling alley. I don’t want to fix another damn thing in that place.”

  “First, I don’t need to clear anything with Skyla.” My gut cinches because I’m afraid I do. Hell, why don’t I just hand her my balls and get it over with? That would be easier. “And second, I never said I was breaking up with Lex. I was just saying I might prefer another type of girl. For the most part, this other girl is a work of fiction.” Only she’s not. She’s living right here on this haunted island with me.

  “I get it. You’re torn, man. But you’re not pulling anything over on anyone—maybe yourself. Everybody knows that you’re devoted to Skyla. She was your first true love and you never got over her. Chloe was mine, but I tossed that shit to the fan ages ago. That’s what you got to do.” He pulls out a joint and doesn’t hesitate to light it up. He takes a long hit and holds his breath, passing it to me, shaking his hand for me to grab it, so I do. “That’s right.” He exhales a long white plume. “Break in those shiny new lungs of yours. Mellow the hell out, dude. You’ll figure it out. I’m sure the answer to whatever you’re looking for is right under your nose. I mean, most of the time people know what to do, but their mind gets bogged down with what the world tells them is the right thing.” He says right thing with air quotes.

  I take a quick hit, feel the burn, close my eyes, and imagine the smoke curling in my newly issued lungs before stomping the joint out next to me.

  “What did you do that for?” He snatches the stub from the floor.

  “Because I don’t need this crap seeping into the establishment behind me. I’ve got every soccer mom and her best friend in there having a cup of five dollar coffee. I don’t want to ruin the momentum by being known as a stoner hangout. Lose that crap when you come up here, would you?”

  “Somebody’s touchy today. Look, you know what’s bad for business? You. Stop sulking. You’re putting an effing damper on everyone else’s good time. Those so-called soccer moms in there? They hit the gym, too. They’re busy doubling your greenback pleasure while you shake your balls at the sky and wallow in your misery. Maybe if you put a damn smile on your face and hung out with those chicks a little more, you might actually meet that sweet kickass girl you’re dreaming up in your head. But no, you’d rather hide out in the bed of your truck than face something good that might actually happen to you. If you’re dating Lex—and Skyla is obviously more than dating Gage, then it’s over. High school was a lifetime ago. I think you need to burn up all memory of the past and move on. Yes, it sucks, but like G says, ‘life is nothing but a bed of roses.’”

  I open my mouth to correct him on the euphemism but think better of it. And aside from that one mental slip up—man, I hate it when Harrison starts making sense.

  Ellis eyes me as if he were prying into my thoughts. “Life is a bed of roses, and as beautiful as it can be, it snags the shit out of you with its thorns. Don’t cut yourself up trying to climb back down to the past. Drift away from that shit and float up to the present, smell the roses. You keep trying to go back, you’re just going to nick yourself to death.”

  And there it is. Ellis has a ball of knowledge sitting on his shoulders after all. I glance up to the towering evergreens. The unknowable future stretches out as vast and stark as those dark, skeletal branches. I can feel it coming, see it a mile away, and yet there’s something incredibly unsettling about it. Skyla and Gage. Are they just some concept dreamt up by the enemy that I’ve bought into?

  I wince over at Ellis because I’m not sure I like what I’m about to do next. “So here’s the deal. This is what’s really got me hiding out in the back of this truck. It’s called soul-searching. Let’s see what you have to say about this.” I spill it all out there at Ellis Harrison’s feet as if he were some twenty-first century sage. I’m so tethered down with my own confusion I doubt anything he has to offer will unleash the ropes of my torment.

  “Shit,” a deep voice mutters from behind, and Brody Bishop hops into the back of the truck
as quick as a mountain lion. “So that’s their game.” He lands next to Ellis and wipes down his face as if he were coming to from a drunken stupor. “Dude, look, I’m slow to agree with my sister on anything. She’s always ridden the edge of sanity, but I think she’s right. As much as Gage is a great guy, he’s a plant. The enemy struck at the nexus of the most vulnerable avenue.”

  Ellis nods. “They went for the family jugular. Skyla’s mother, man. She is a piece of work. She allowed that shit to happen, you know. As much as she wants you in that bed with Skyla, she allowed Gage to end up there first. One minute you think she’s the badass with a plan, and the next you find out she’s been stabbing you in the chest with a hot poker all along.” The tree above Ellis rattles unnaturally. I give it a minute before the damn thing topples onto the bowling alley knocking every soccer mom on Paragon unconscious. I can smell the lawsuits a celestial mile away.

  “Watch what you say,” I grumble. “And for whatever reason, Gage is here. I’m glad about it, too.”

  Brody shakes his head. “Deal with this shit. You and Skyla cannot put Noster lives on the line—all of our lives, our lineage on the line and still walk a high wire with the enemy, not expecting to get pushed over. I get it, he’s like your brother. You have a heart for his kids, their marriage—if there is one at that. But now that the scales have fallen off, it’s your duty as overseer B to step in and make this right.”

  I scowl at him a moment for the overseer B remark, but my chest bucks with a dry laugh anyway. “We can monitor him better this way.” It’s not a thought I had up until this moment, but it’s true, I suppose.

  Brody scoffs at me. “Likewise. What do you think he’s doing to us?”

  “Then we’ll have Skyla and Gage agree not to go there. Faction business is off-limits. I’m sure they’ll agree to it.”