by Sadie Moss
Wait until they’re close, Trin.
Wait…
Wait…
When the footsteps are right around the corner, I suck in a deep breath and leap out, my blade flashing as I swing it in a wide arc.
“Fuck!”
The noise doesn’t come from the man I attacked, but from the one behind him as he stumbles backward.
My blade whistles through the air, just missing the man in the front of the group. But he stays silent like always, staring at me with wide dark eyes.
Knight.
Chapter Sixteen
TRINITY
We stare at each other for a long, frozen moment.
I can tell my eyes are like saucers, and Knight’s face blurs in my vision as tears well. Behind me, all is silent. My sword vanishes back into the ether, leaving me with my arms raised, holding nothing.
Then Knight reaches out and pulls me toward him, dragging me into a tight hug. I cling to him, my heart hammering against his as my fingers dig into the lean muscles of his back. I breathe in his familiar scent, choking back a sob.
My heart feels like it’s soaring, like my whole body is made of air. Like I might float away if not for his hold on me.
They’re alive. They’re not dead.
I didn’t destroy them.
Anderson lied about that too.
Knight is trembling against me, little shudders going through him as he grips me like he might never let me go. But a noise behind him catches both of our attention, and we finally release each other. He takes a small step back, revealing all six of his brothers behind him.
Just like I did when I saw Knight, I stare at all of them, my heart and mind overloaded with a rush of feelings. I’m smiling and crying and laughing softly, all at the same time.
They’re okay. They’re alive, and we’re all together again. It feels like a freaking miracle.
“Trin?” Remi says softly, and Knight shifts to one side so that his brother can pull me into an embrace. I wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his neck, breathing him in. His presence is so comforting, even in the middle of a powerful demon’s lair.
“Holy shit. Holy motherfucking shit,” I hear Nix whisper, and then he’s hugging me too.
I feel a kiss on the top of my head, and I know it’s Sawyer. I just want to sink into these men, absorb their presence and relish the fact that they’re still whole and alive…
But we can’t do that here.
We’re not actually safe, we’re still in this demonic fortress, and we have to get out.
As if he’s reading my mind, Ryland grabs my hand and pulls me away from the others.
“I’m glad that you’re all so happy to be reunited,” he says. His tone is as dry and measured as always, but I can’t help but notice the way he grips my hand tightly, his fingers tangling with mine. There’s something possessive and protective in the gesture that warms my heart. “But we’ve got to go. We’re in a bit of a time crunch if we don’t want to be caught and killed.”
Ford glares at him like he’s miffed that he didn’t get a chance to really hug me, and that makes more warmth blossom in my chest.
Then Ryland tugs me along, striding quickly as he leads us all down another corridor. He keeps holding on to my hand, and the connection between our skin feels like an anchor. His darkly handsome features are set like stone as his gaze scans our surroundings. There’s something predatory and animalistic about his focus, about the way he seems to take in everything around us.
“Do you know the way out of here?” I whisper.
“I’ve got an idea of it,” he replies in a low voice, not looking down at me. I can’t tell if his confidence is earned or if it’s just his pride speaking. I’m really hoping for all our sakes that it’s the latter.
“Is this the same way you got in?” I ask just as we turn another corner and see the exit gate. A few demons stand in front, guarding it.
Ryland pulls me back around the corner before they can catch sight of us.
“No,” he says curtly, pressing his back against the wall and peering out to see the guards. “Your angelic light knocked all of us off our feet. The demons recovered first and managed to capture us.”
Oh, shit. Anderson and Salinas captured the sins too. My stomach tightens into a knot as I consider what they would’ve done with their captives. Anderson already told me they were dead, and I can’t help but imagine that he planned to make his words a reality.
“Three guards,” Ryland mutters. “All armed.”
“We can’t let them sound the alarm,” Beckett hisses. He’s pressed against the wall on my other side, with the rest of the sins gathered around us in a tight knot.
Knight signs something, then seems to melt into the shadows. Ford looks at me. “You got your blade, angel? Since you decided not to take Knight’s face off with it, maybe now’s a good time to give it a little blood.”
My heart stutters in my chest at the memory of how I almost slashed Knight before realizing who he was, but I don’t let myself dwell on it now. There’ll be time to break down and have a proper cry later as I process how close I came to losing them all.
Right now, Ford is right.
I’ve got my sword, and I’m still feeling a little bloodthirsty. I concentrate, and the blade appears in my hand.
“Good.” Ford’s blue eyes gleam. “Can I borrow it for a second?”
I purse my lips. Does he not think I can be trusted with it? I mean, I can kind of see his point, considering I almost just killed his brother. A little hesitantly, I hand it over, hilt first.
Ford takes it, then jerks his chin at the rest of our small group. The other men all press back against the shadows once more, shuffling me to be behind them. I’m not exactly helpless here, they must know that by now after the last fight, but it feels comforting to be back in a group again, to be with people who care about me and want to keep me safe.
I almost lost all of that, and I don’t want to go through that horrible, sinking, empty feeling again.
The only way I know Knight has reached one of the demons is the sound of someone being strangled. It’s a horrible noise, and I grimace, biting my lip so hard I taste blood. It’s quieter than you would expect, a kind of choked, gurgling sound, and the quiet of it is what makes it so horrible. I’m braced for the sounds of someone crying out in pain, but the softness of that noise worms its way into my ear in a way I didn’t expect, and I feel sick.
That’s when Ford throws my blade.
It whips through the air, whistling slightly, and buries itself in the neck of another demon. Or at least, that’s what I’m guessing from the aborted shout and the gurgling sound.
Ew. Death does not make a good soundtrack.
As one, the men and I all surge around the corner. Ford’s already running, almost as fast as the blade itself, and just as the third demon moves to send up an alarm, he yanks out the blade from the dead demon’s fallen body and slices as the neck of the other, taking him down.
Knight and Ford look at each other, as if confirming that the other one is okay, and Knight nods. Wrath turns back and looks at us, gruffly tilting his head. “Let’s go,” he rasps.
We hurry out of the shadows and slip out the gate, trying to keep quiet, closing it behind us. I glance around quickly, trying to absorb our surroundings as fast as Ryland did in the hallway earlier. We’re standing on the edge of a short but rocky hillside on the outskirts of the city where we arrived.
“It won’t be long before they realize we’ve gotten out,” Beckett says, smoothing his dark hair. “We were being held together, and we all broke out…” He trails off, his voice growing deeper as he looks down at me. “We thought you were gone, angel. We wouldn’t have tried to leave without you if we’d known you were all right.”
I nod, swallowing the lump in my throat. “I was told you were dead. That I’d killed you.”
Beckett gives me an oddly soft look, and then holds out his arm for me to take. “Lucky
us, then,” he says.
There’s so much contained in those three words that I can almost feel them straining under the pressure, and fresh tears burn the backs of my eyes. There are so many things I want to say, so many things I want to hear him say. But I just nod, giving him a shaky smile.
“Yeah. Lucky us.”
I grip his arm tightly, letting him help me navigate my way down the hillside. My angel wings would probably help me keep my balance, but now that I know I’m not in Heaven, there’s no way I can show them. It’d be like a flashing neon sign to all the demons around me.
Speaking of which… we better get out of here quick, before the potion Isaac gave me wears off. Now that I’ve got the men back, I’m less interested in rampaging around Hell trying to figure out what Salinas is planning. What we really need to do is regroup and make a plan, then go from there.
And, okay, selfishly I don’t want to put the men in harm’s way again so soon. I just need to have a little bit of time with them before we all risk our lives again. I need to reassure myself that they’re not dead.
We quickly make our way down the hillside and back to the city. The men are tense, all of us trying to keep a low profile. My demon-mark is gone, thank goodness, so at least we don’t have to worry about that causing us problems.
We get back to the spot where Isaac sent us the first time, and Ryland mutters into his hands, his palms lighting up with a bright blue color like he’s got a handful of magical fireflies in there.
“Hold on,” Beck says, and I tighten my hold on his arm as I get that dizzy feeling again. A black vortex seems to pull me in, and when I open my eyes, we’re back in Isaac’s basement.
The sorcerer looks up as we appear in his workshop. He’s perched on a stool in front of his desk, and his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline as he takes in the sight of us.
“Ah! You made it. Worked out well for you, then? I was starting to wonder if you’d come back. Or if you’d all come back.”
“We almost didn’t,” Ford growls, handing me back my angel blade. I send it back to its resting place in the ether as Isaac begins taking a bunch of notes.
“Can I ask what your experience was like?” he asks, sounding like a kid at Christmas. “On a scale of one to ten. Any tingling that lingers afterward in your toes or fingertips? Any unpleasant stomach aches?”
“We’re kind of on a time crunch, here, I’m afraid,” Sawyer says, looking over at Ryland and Beckett.
“Answer his questions,” Ryland orders. I have a feeling this is our payment to Isaac for helping us out—we give him information that pertains whatever it is about portals that he’s studying. “Beckett and I are going to find a place to go.”
“It can’t be a place that any of us would ordinarily go,” I warn them, following as they head for the ladder back up to the main part of the cabin. “My boss, Anderson—he’s the one who gave me my assignment. It was all a lie though. He’s in league with Salinas, I’m sure of it.”
Ryland pauses on the ladder, and I realize in a rush what I just said. What I just admitted.
The thing I’ve been keeping from them all this whole time—the thing that only Ryland knows.
He turns to look down at me, his dark features unreadable as Beck hesitates, his hand resting on one of the ladder’s rungs.
“What are you talking about?” Beck asks slowly. “An assignment?”
Chapter Seventeen
TRINITY
I look back at the others, who are all staring at me just like the other two men are. Well, three men if I include Isaac, who’s doing a terrible job of pretending not to be eavesdropping.
Oh, fuck.
Obviously, I don’t have any reason to lie to the sins about this or keep any of it from them anymore. And I deserve whatever consequences come from telling them the truth. But I don’t feel ready.
This could change everything. It could ruin everything.
My mouth has gone dry as bone, and I swallow hard before gesturing the other five sins closer. Beckett steps away from the ladder, but Ryland stays where he is, still watching me with eyes that seem to take in every single detail.
What does he think of all of this? Is he worried his brothers will be angry at him for keeping this from them, even though he guessed the true purpose of my mission?
Well, he’ll only find out the answer to that if he wants to. I’m not going to throw him under the bus by revealing that he knows. I don’t want to keep any more secrets from these men, but that one doesn’t feel like it’s my secret to share.
“Well… um, here’s the thing,” I say quietly, glancing from one man to the next. “I didn’t just run into Beckett by accident all those weeks ago. I went looking for him. I was given the task of… of redeeming you all. By Anderson. He’s one of my bosses, a higher up angel. Or at least, he was, until he decided to betray all of our kind by teaming up with a psycho, power-hungry demon.”
I shake my head. I’m getting off track. We can talk about Anderson’s betrayal after I tell them everything else. Assuming these men still want to have anything to do with me then.
“Anderson told me that if I redeemed you all, got you to join the side of good and Heaven, then I would be able to go home. I would be a full angel again. And so I went for it. I started to try to redeem Beckett…” I shoot the dark-haired man a glance, trying to read the emotions in his eyes. “That’s why I came to you with that animal charity thing. That’s why I was in your apartment watching you for a week.” I blush, shaking my head. “Then the demon portal appeared, and I got sidetracked. When I asked for your help closing it up, it’s because I really needed the help. But I also sort of hoped it would redeem you. It seems like a redeemable thing, doing good for humanity.”
My heart is beating like a drum in my chest. No one has said a word or moved at all since I started speaking, and even when I pause, none of the sins speak.
“I didn’t want to manipulate any of you,” I say, my voice cracking. “I didn’t like lying to you. I should’ve told you, but I thought that what I was doing would help you. That it would be a good thing for you.”
Beckett makes a noise in his throat, but I can’t interpret what it might mean. His face is impassive, almost as cold as Ryland’s often is, and I wish I could erase the past few minutes and go back to the way he was looking at me when we escaped Salinas’s lair.
But of course, we can’t do that. We have to go forward, not backward. And if I truly care about these men, I can’t let lies or hidden truths fill the space between us anymore.
“I’m not making excuses,” I go on. “The idea that you had to be redeemed, that you had to join Heaven’s side to be worthy people—that was wrong. Not to mention, the entire assignment was a lie. Anderson is working with Salinas. The two of them are in league in their bid to take over Earth. And I think… I think he wanted you all out of the way. After all, Earth is your dominion. It belongs to you seven more than it belongs to either Above or Below.”
I stop again to catch my breath, wishing someone else would say something. When no one does, I forge ahead. “Anderson made up my assignment knowing there was a good chance it could destroy you all. He sent me to redeem you because if you were redeemed, you would cease to exist. You wouldn’t be sins anymore, and sin is what you are. That’s what he told me when he had me in Salinas’s lair, when he was trying to convince me I was back in Heaven.” I draw in a deep breath, the words burning past my lips. “He made me think that you all were dead.”
Silence falls again, broken only by the soft scratching of pen on paper as Isaac scribbles furiously in his notebook. None of what I just said is exactly the information we promised him in trade for his assistance, but he’s looking at me like this is all utterly fascinating, taking notes so fast that his pen is a blur.
The brothers are all staring at me, their expressions conveying various states of shock.
I feel sick. Fuck, I hope they aren’t too angry with me.
Beck looks at Ryl
and, then narrows his eyes as he notices the expression on his brother’s face. “You knew.”
“Of course I knew,” Ryland says dismissively. His gaze shifts to me, and for a second, I see a flash of something I can’t quite name burning in his eyes. Then he drags his focus back to Beck. “I guessed the first time I met her, and she admitted it.”
“So you fuckin’ lied to us,” Ford growls, starting forward like he’s about to drag Ryland off the ladder so he can beat the crap out of him, but Remi holds out an arm, stopping him.
“He didn’t lie. He just didn’t tell us what he knew.”
“Same damn thing.” Wrath’s blue eyes flash dangerously. His jaw clenches, and a lock of blond hair falls over his forehead as he shifts his weight.
“Not exactly.” Remi steps in front of Ford, then glances at the other men as well. “If Ry had told us back then what he’d guessed, would any of us have helped Trin with the portals? Would we have gotten to know her, would any of this have happened, or would we have walked away?”
I cringe a little. A lot of good things have happened since I met these men… but there’s been plenty of bad too. Plenty of moments where all of our lives were in danger. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but it’s hard to know if the sins will feel the same way, especially now that they know the whole truth.
Nix’s brows pull together thoughtfully. Even Ford seems to be considering his answer to Remi’s question, although his muscles are still bunched and tense.
“Personally, I’m glad things played out the way they did. I’m glad our paths crossed, no matter what the reason.” Remi’s gaze flicks to me, his features softening. Then he turns back to his brothers. “Trin’s never done anything viciously manipulative. She asked for our help with the portals, and we gave it willingly. She even offered some of us a favor in exchange, so we got something out of the bargain too. But she didn’t create those portals as a means to lure us in—and she would’ve taken on the task of trying to close them herself if she had to. She never did anything to hurt us.”