Okay, this was the most bizarre conversation I’d ever had with a spirit, and I’d had some really out-there conversations, but even more out there—wasn’t that what Peanut had overheard Thierry saying?
Before I could ask him what he meant, his features were suddenly marked with such heavy sadness that I could feel it in my own chest. A second later, he scattered into thin air. My brows rose as the breeze lifted a strand of my hair and tossed it across my face.
I waited.
He didn’t piece back together.
Frowning, I unfolded my arms. “Why did you disappear?”
“I cannot fathom why anyone would disappear on you.”
15
My heart nearly jumped out of my chest at the sound of a deep voice laden with amusement and a hint of sarcasm. The hem of my gown whirled around my ankles as I spun around.
“Zayne,” I said, my eyes going so wide I was sure I looked like a squeezed bug.
He looked regal, standing a few feet from me, dressed in the ceremonial garb of a warrior. White linen pants and matching, sleeveless tunic. His hair was loose, brushing his shoulders.
I was so shocked by his sudden presence that I just stood there, staring at him, and all I could think about was the fact that I’d kissed him. And maybe—maybe he had kissed me back, but even if that was true, he most definitely had torn himself away from me as if I were on fire. He hadn’t lost himself to the whirling, chaotic desire that had been pounding through me.
One side of his mouth curved up as I continued to openly gawk at him. “Are you okay?” A moment passed. “I’m starting to get a little concerned.”
Heat swept across my face as I snapped out of my stupor. I found my voice. “I’m sorry. You startled me.”
That half grin ticked up. “I can tell. I didn’t mean to.” He glanced at the statue and then looked back at me. “Then again, I was kind of quiet.”
“Obviously,” I replied, hands fidgeting at my sides.
A moment passed as he looked around the garden. “So, someone...disappeared on you?”
I nodded. I’d found it amusing earlier to taunt him about Peanut’s presence, but not so much now. “You’re dressed as if you’re attending the Accolade.”
“I am.”
“You weren’t inside.”
“I decided to attend last-minute.” A lock of blond hair fell against his cheek and he reached up to brush it back behind his ear. “I’m surprised to see that you’re here.”
Was he? And was that why he’d decided to attend, because he thought I wasn’t going to be here? I clasped my hands together and lifted my chin. “I’m here against my will, basically.”
Zayne chuckled. “I can’t imagine anyone making you do anything against your will.”
My lips twitched in response. “Well, as you can see, I’m not really attending the ceremony, and it doesn’t look like you are, either.” I looked around, not seeing the spirit. “I’m not even sure if I’m supposed to be out here, to be honest.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“These gardens are supposedly sacred,” I explained. “Only trained warriors are allowed.”
He tilted his head and appeared to study me. “I can’t imagine that this is the first time you haven’t followed the rules.”
I shrugged.
“Can’t really blame you,” he said. “I’d rather be out here staring at trees and this statue than inside that hall.”
Unable to help myself, I laughed.
Zayne stepped closer. “But this is definitely a marked improvement over staring at the statues and trees.”
There was tiny flutter in the center of my chest that I ignored. “That’s not saying much.”
“I’m going to have to disagree.” That grin kicked up another notch. “That’s saying a lot.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that.
“It’s a beautiful night.” He lifted his gaze. “Clear skies and all the stars.”
Following his gaze, I squinted and was able to see the faint twinkles. I knew they were brighter to him and he could probably see a lot more. I could see...four. I closed my right eye. Correction. I could see three. My shoulders tightened.
“It is,” I murmured, pushing away the oppressive feeling of finality.
“And you...you look like a goddess, Trinity. Beautiful.”
I felt my breath catch in my throat as my gaze shot to his. Was he being serious? I was confident very few people, if any, would look at me and think goddess. Jada? Yes. Me? More like the dirty tree nymph running from the gods.
Zayne looked away, clearing his throat, and I wanted to hear him say those words again as a different kind of warmth swept across my cheeks and down my throat.
“Really?” I whispered, and the moment that word left my mouth, I wanted to take it back.
He dipped his chin and I thought his grin might’ve curved into a full smile. “Yeah, really.”
I bit down on my lip to keep myself from grinning like an idiot. “Thank you,” I said. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”
He chuckled as he looked back to me. “I actually was hoping to speak to you. I wanted to talk to you about yesterday.”
Every muscle in my body tensed as I closed my eyes. “About yesterday. I’m...I’m sorry for the way I behaved.”
“Which part of your behavior are you apologizing for?” he asked, sounding closer.
I opened my eyes, discovering he was only about a foot away. “Well, there are probably multiple aspects of my behavior yesterday that I could apologize for.”
“Like goading me into fighting you?” he suggested.
Pressing my lips together, I nodded. “Yes, that, but—”
“Or suggesting that I wasn’t trained well enough?”
“I don’t think I suggested that.”
“Oh, I think you did.”
My fingers dug into my skirt. “Okay, so maybe I did, but I was apologizing for—”
“For calling me a douche nozzle?”
I had called him that.
“Or are you apologizing for lying about having minimal training?” he continued smoothly.
I started to frown.
“Oh, wait.” His gaze lifted to mine. “Are you apologizing for refusing to admit defeat when I won?”
I drew in a deep breath. “Are you done yet?”
“I don’t know.” The slow, teasing grin both irritated and excited me, and the last emotion frustrated me even more. “Have I forgotten anything?”
“Yes,” I snapped. “The one thing I was actually going to apologize for.”
“Which was?”
He was going to make me say it. Bastard. “For kissing you.” My face burned like an unholy fire.
Zayne tilted his head to the side and a long moment passed. “That’s the one thing you don’t need to apologize for.”
“What?”
He lifted a shoulder. “It happened. You don’t need to apologize.”
“Yeah, but I shouldn’t have done it,” I said. “I mean, no one should run around kissing people and it wasn’t like you were into it—”
“You don’t know what I am and am not into.”
I quieted, unsure how to take that. What did that even mean? I was confident I couldn’t be the only person who would be thoroughly confused by that statement.
“It happened,” Zayne said quietly.
“It happened?” I repeated. “You’re making it sound like I slipped and my mouth fell on yours.”
Zayne laughed, and it was a real one, nice and deep.
“It’s not funny.”
“The way you just described it was pretty funny.”
“Glad you think so.” I sighed, angling my body away from his.
“Trinity, you’re not the first girl to kiss m
e.”
“Wow.” My gaze slid back to his. “Do you have that problem often? Girls just randomly throw themselves at you?”
“I wouldn’t say you threw yourself at me, nor do I have that problem. What I meant is that you...felt something and acted on it. That happens.”
Feeling more inexperienced than I’d ever felt in my entire life, I had no idea what to say. It wasn’t remotely acceptable to feel something and simply act on it, and I had a strong suspicion that he was saying that to make me feel better. While I appreciated it, it actually made me feel worse.
“Well, anyway, I’m sorry and I wanted to say that,” I said, clearing my throat. “I should probably get back inside—”
“How long have you’ve been training?” he asked, stopping me. “There’s no way you picked up all of that with just a few sessions with Misha or any of the trainers here.”
Because I’d felt the need yesterday to show off, I was now backed into a corner by my own actions. “I’ve had a...substantial amount of training. Probably as much as any of the Wardens going through the Accolade.”
Zayne probably had already figured that out, but there was still a margin of surprise settling into his features. “Why would they train a human like that?”
And that was the million-dollar question, but it was one I couldn’t answer. Not truthfully.
Zayne shook his head. “This is what I don’t understand about you. You’re human, but you can see ghosts and spirits, and yes, I know other humans can do that, but you’re living with Wardens and you’ve trained with them to the point you can hold your own against one of us.”
“I like to think I did more than hold my own against you,” I pointed out, not really helping myself at all.
“You’re right. You’ve killed one of us in self-defense,” he said, and a cold slice of dismay cut through my stomach. “You were attacked, and not a damn person here, including you, seems at all that worried about it.”
“People are worried. I’m worried—”
“Are you?” he challenged. “Because you’re roaming around alone like you’re not remotely worried that someone here wished you harm.”
“I’m not exactly supposed to be roaming around, and the threat to me, well, it’s been dealt with. It’s not like I’m out here just lollygagging around.”
“That’s exactly what you’re doing,” Zayne replied dryly. “What were you doing out here, by the way? You were talking to someone.”
I sighed. “I was.”
His brows lifted as he crossed his arms.
“I saw a...spirit.”
There was a slight widening of his eyes. “Here? At the Accolade?”
He sounded so much like Misha that I had to laugh. “Yes, spirits are everywhere. Even here. It was strange, though.” I glanced back at the statue. “I’d never seen him before, but he seemed to know who I was.” I shrugged. “I guess he was a Warden here.”
“You...you see spirits of Wardens?”
I nodded, relieved to be on safer, not so embarrassing grounds. “I don’t see them often, and I’ve never seen a ghost of one, but I have seen a few spirits.”
Zayne seemed to mull that over. “Why do you think you’ve never seen a ghost of a Warden?”
“I guess they all cross over,” I explained. “Unlike humans, they have very little to fear upon death.”
“I guess so...” The corners of his mouth turned down. Tension rolled off Zayne as he stared into the trees and bushes surrounding us. He became so still that I wasn’t even sure he was breathing. Then his arms unfolded.
A knot of unease grew in my stomach, spreading like a virus, and then I felt it—like a hot breath against the nape of my neck, a sudden heaviness at the bottom of my spine—
My wild gaze bounced around the garden, from Zayne to the statue and all the shadowy recesses around us.
Demons.
Demons were near.
My breath caught in surprise as Zayne’s hand curled around my arm. A jolt of electricity danced from his fingers to my skin and traveled up my arm, followed by an odd sense of acute awareness, but the feeling was quick and then I wasn’t thinking about it anymore.
One second I was standing by the statue, talking about ghosts and spirits, and the next I was spinning through the air as he thrust me behind him and held me there, off the ground by a good six inches.
Something...something happened—happened to Zayne. The arm around my waist was like a steel band and the back my chest was plastered to became as hard as stone and as hot as basking in the sun. There was a ripping sound, a tearing of cloth, and then a rapid stirring of air that lifted the strands of hair around my face as Zayne’s wings unfurled.
Zayne was shifting.
I drew in a shuddering breath as the air around us seemed to explode.
16
A startled scream lodged in my throat as Zayne doubled over, taking me to the ground, to my knees.
What in the holy Hell was happening?
My brain couldn’t process the shouts coming from every direction, the roar of the sirens going off and the sound of glass shattering, and the screaming—the high-pitched screams of terror. We’d gone from talking about spirits to the entire world exploding all around us. No amount of training could’ve prepared me for this, to react as fast as I needed to.
Something slammed into the ground near us, pinging off the marble and embedding deep into the soil.
Bullets.
There were bullets, and that made no sense. Demons didn’t use guns.
Cement chipped and tiny rocks flew upward, pelting the sides of my face and arms. I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood, squeezing my eyes shut. No matter how awesome I was, my body was part-human. Bullets were not my friend, and they were raining down around us.
Inside me, the buzzing, powerful warmth of my grace stirred to life.
Zayne’s arm tightened around my waist and I felt the next breath he took as if it were my own. “Stay down.”
I didn’t get a chance to respond. A second later, his arm slid from my waist and his hand planted on the center of my back. Pushed flat to the ground, I felt my fingers splay against the broken asphalt. Then the weight and the warmth left my body in a rush of wind and the sound of wings beating the air.
Some kind of inane, primal instinct took over, silencing the voice of common sense that told me to keep my head down. My chin lifted. I blinked and then squinted, trying to see through the strands of hair that already obscured most of my already less than stellar vision.
I saw...legs—legs coming toward me.
Zayne landed in front of me in a crouch that rattled the ground. My heart leaped as I rose onto an elbow, pushed the hair out of my face and saw him.
Saw Zayne for who he really was.
As he rose to his full height, he was the same shape and size that he’d been moments ago, but now the white tunic shirt hung in torn strips from his waist. Muscles tensed along his bare back, moving under deep slate-gray skin, and his...
Holy crap on a cracker the size of Texas, his wings were spread out on either side of him, a span of at least eight feet, maybe ten? Parting his blond hair, two fierce horns curled back.
I’d always though Misha was large for a Warden, but he had nothing on Zayne.
He shot forward, and there was a sharp yelp of pain. Something fell to the ground. A moment later I realized it was some sort of rifle. The next thing that hit the ground was a body, its neck falling in an odd, twisted angle. My stomach churned as Zayne spun to the right, lifting off the ground and coming down again. There was a fleshy smack, a sound of skin and muscle giving away. The sound of more gunshots rang out as my fingers dug in the ground.
I didn’t understand this—any of this. Demons didn’t use guns, and the bullets were virtually useless against Wardens. Once they shifted, their skin couldn�
�t be pierced by a bullet.
Mine could, so I stayed low and turned my head to the right, toward the Great Hall. The rapid fire sounded like it was coming from everywhere at once, and Jada was in there. So were Misha and Matthew and everyone.
I couldn’t just lie here. Pushing up with my arms, I—
A loud boom pierced my ears, and then there was no sound. Night suddenly turned to day in a flash of ultrabright, orange-white light. A blast of hot, scorching air followed with a force that kicked me back down, knocking the air from my lungs. Stunned, I was frozen for a moment, and then debris started to hit the ground. Large chucks of cement crashed all around me. Throwing my arms over my head, I grunted as the world seemed to fall apart.
Then the world stopped ending.
Sound came back in a rushing force, and screams—all I heard was screams and people calling out names.
Arms and legs shaking, I pushed up to my knees and saw a thick white cloud billowing out from the side of the building. Where a wall used to be, there was now a gaping hole with wires hanging free. Floodlights turned on with a series of clunking noises, and bright light poured into the garden, cutting through the smoke. The smell of burned metal and plastic and something that reminded me of a...a barbecue surrounded me as I reached out to steady myself. Whatever I gripped broke off as I rose to my feet. I looked down, seeing that I was holding the sword from the statue, and a near-hysterical giggle rose in my throat.
Struggling to breathe as the cloud of heavy, white dust flowed into the garden, I stumbled over debris and tried to find shelter. I didn’t see Zayne or anyone. The blast had been close, and I had no idea what kind of damage it could do to a Warden or how close he’d been to it.
“Zayne?” I called out, wincing at the dryness in my throat. I tried again.
Panic dug in with razor-sharp claws as I tried to see through the thick smoke. I clutched the iron arm as I called out. “Zayne?”
I didn’t think anyone could hear me over the shouting and the wailing of the sirens that alerted everyone in the community there had been a breach and to shelter in a safe place.
The cloud of white smoke stirred in front of me, spreading and clearing. I saw a man—a man in a tuxedo and a white mask. Another of those creepy, porcelain-like doll masks with the pink circles painted on the cheeks and the bright red smile.
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