“I’ll be retiring to the belfry,” Yulian went on. “I need to commune with the ancestors and prepare.”
Dom vehemently shook her head. “It’s not safe. You nearly lost your sight last time.”
“You are dead on your feet,” I pointed out. I didn’t like to tell a grown man what he should or shouldn’t do, but despite Dom’s tendency to be overprotective, I agreed he was pushing himself too hard.
“That’s enough from the angel who has castigated himself for fifty years over things of which he had no control.” He looked at me over the top of his glasses.
I recognized that look. The don’t question my authority look.
I put up my hands in surrender and shrugged at Dom. “I tried.”
Yulian dropped an affectionate kiss to her forehead. “Let an old man do his duty.”
In the silence after he shuffled away, I retired to the pretend comfort of my sleeping pallet. Something waited for me on top of my covers—
A bow and quiver full of arrows.
I grinned, hefting the new bow in my hand. It was lightweight without being too flimsy or fragile. I tested the string to find it taut, almost as if it were brand new.
“You did this?” I asked Dom.
She shrugged nonchalantly. “You said you wanted a bow. I guess I forgot to tell you Gregori Asimov is a woodworker. Pure witch blood, brand new bow, one fell swoop.”
“You’re a brilliant woman.”
“I know. Lest you forget.”
Despite the small fire, the hall hung heavy and cold. I shivered, moving my blankets as close to the warmth as I could without setting them on fire. I retrieved the bone and my sharpening knife, determined to finish the weapon before going to sleep.
“I didn’t want to make the fire too big,” Dom said as she sat on her own pile of blankets. “If they see any hint of light over here, we’re toast.”
“Literally,” I agreed as I ran the knife up the length of the bone. “They wouldn’t be able to come in, so they’d burn us out.”
Dom grimaced. “You’re probably right.”
We lapsed into silence as I carved the bone. A trait I’d noticed about Dom was her ability to sit comfortably in silence—not an easy feat for most humans. As a rule, a vast majority of the human race had a hard time being alone with their thoughts.
A vast majority of the fallen angels, too.
“I’m not happy about waiting another day,” I said.
“We need rest. You’ll be sleeping and won’t even notice.”
“I’ll notice.” I blew off the excess dust on the bone and eyed the sharpened edge. “We have such a small window to get in the Kremlin, get the book, get out alive, and get the spell cast.” I shivered. “Then getting back to Belias.”
“Be real. Once we set foot in the Kremlin, they’re going to discover us. Whether we did it right now or tonight, the window of time before they kill us is going to be small.”
“Before they kill us, huh? Way to keep up that optimism.”
She laughed. “Okay, before they try and maybe kill us. Regardless, we can do this.”
“Without magic or weapons?” I lifted an eyebrow in her direction.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m adaptable. We’ll figure it out. The safest thing for us to do is hole up for the next twelve hours and break into the Kremlin at dusk.”
The steady scrape of knife on bone echoed off the high ceilings. “I’m ready to go home to my cat.”
“Your cat?”
“Yeah. Lacey. She’s a calico. Mostly white. Some ginger on her face and belly.”
Dom’s throaty laugh filled the hall. “You’re a man of many layers, Gadreel.”
I walked down a hall lit only by flickering torches. The stone walls were bare, but the floors were covered in rusty stains. Bloodstains.
I knew this place. I’d been here before with rage in my heart and my bow in hand. I knew this cracked door.
I knew what waited on the other side.
Déjà vu struck hard as I pressed a palm to the warm wood and shoved the door open.
Belias.
The demon queen stood in the middle of the room clad in tight jeans and a tighter shirt, her sultry, curvaceous silhouette on display. She was beautiful—nobody could deny that. Hair the color of cornsilk, Mediterranean olive skin, dark eyes, luscious lips.
She had one long arm wrapped around her prisoner. Long red fingernails dug into human skin until blood seeped.
Dom.
Terror flooded me. I remained frozen to the ground, unable to breathe. I couldn’t do this again. I couldn’t lose someone else, not when I’d fought for fifty years to keep everyone out, only for this woman to barrel into my life.
I reached for my bow, but it wasn’t wrapped around my body. Neither was my quiver. I was completely weaponless, useless to stop Belias as she swiftly and viciously sliced a razor-sharp fingernail across Dom’s neck.
24
I sat straight up in the darkness of the cathedral, gasping for air. The fire had died to embers while I slept, and at the end of the hall, the gray light of day peeked through an open door.
Dom touched my knee, startling me. She kneeled beside my makeshift bed, her hair mussed as if she’d also just awakened from a deep sleep. “You were talking in your sleep.”
“Nightmare.” I rubbed my eyes and head, waiting for my heart to calm, the pounding to stop. When the fear left my body, something else took over. I stared at Dom in her T-shirt and sweatpants—so different from her usual leather and knives. I realized how important it was that she sat here, right beside me so that our legs were barely touching, in her vulnerable state.
I leaned in to kiss her, sinking my fingers into her long hair. Déjà vu hit me hard as I lifted her easily in my arms and slid her onto my lap. Good déjà vu that canceled out the taste of the bad from my nightmare.
She straddled me, the entire length of her pressed into me as the kiss deepened.
I thought I would be out of practice—a fumbling oaf making a fool out of himself with a beautiful woman. But my mind tuned out as I drowned in the sensation of her soft skin on mine, of her hands on my body, and my body inside hers.
Every excruciatingly beautiful moment felt like ecstasy.
After, she cuddled under my arm with her head resting on my chest. Beneath the covers, I moved my fingers over her bare back, touching every dip and curve as if I could memorize them with my hands. Sleep wasn’t far off, but I struggled against it so I could be here and now in this moment for just a little while longer.
“What do you know about my past?” I asked.
Dom shifted, the silk of her skin on mine like a drug. “You were an angel. You fell in love with Yulian’s niece. God cast you out of heaven. You married Catie and had a daughter. Belias came, the demons invaded, they…”
I liked that she couldn’t put it in words. She understood how much it hurt.
“They died,” I said roughly.
“Then you ghosted on Yulian.”
I grimaced. “Do we have to put it that way?”
“Sorry. He was hurt, you know.”
“I know.” I took a breath and pulled the covers over our shoulders. “Catie and Gretchen died in front of me. I couldn’t save them from the demons.”
Dom found my hand beneath the covers and entwined our fingers. “I’m so sorry.”
“I was furious. I didn’t want to live without them. They were my whole world. So when the dust settled and the city realized Belias had taken over, I went to the Kremlin.”
Dom jerked, looking up into my face. “Are you serious?”
“I wish I wasn’t. It was stupid. And suicidal. But that was on purpose, I guess. If I was going to die to be with them, I could at least take Belias with me.”
“What happened?” Dom asked breathlessly.
“I took down eleven demons on my way in and found Belias in her chamber. I got her with an arrow in the thigh. She knocked the shit out of me.”
> “But clearly didn’t kill you.”
“No, she did worse.” I chewed on my lower lip. The ceiling was near invisible in the darkness. But I felt it there, the only thing between us and the frigid outside world. “She decided she liked me. Thought I was pretty. She tortured me for days, picking through my life story until she knew everything. Then she cursed me with immortality.”
“I thought that was just you being an angel?”
“I age slowly. But I do age. I would have outlived Catie. Maybe even Gretchen, too. But the immortality was a curse, courtesy of Belias.”
“I think a lot of people would consider it a blessing. Death is terrifying to most people.”
“A lot of people didn’t give up their heavenly citizenship for the woman they love, only to have her die in their arms.” I tightened my arm around Dom, anchoring myself to the present. “Living forever is a curse with those memories.”
“I can imagine.”
“But I figured you should know that when Belias released me, she told me if she ever saw my face again, she would kill me.”
Dom didn’t speak right away. Finally, she said, “I guess tomorrow should be interesting, then.”
I laughed. “Interesting. Yeah. Let’s go with that.”
The intimate silence stretched between us. I thought we were done, both of us ready to sink into the blessed oblivion of sleep.
Until Dom spoke. “You know Yulian adopted me as a child.”
“Yeah. But I only have a vague understanding of the timeline.”
Dom’s fingers traced figure eights on my chest beneath the blanket. “I was five. My family was murdered by nymfa.”
I tensed, and then tightened my arm around her just a little more, as if I could hold her broken pieces in place.
It was the same story over and over. Dom. Liliya. How many kids in Kremlin Circle had watched their family fall to the demons?
“You must have been terrified,” I said.
Dom shrugged. “A little, I guess. To be honest, I’ve forgotten many of the worst details.”
“The human brain does that. To protect you. It’s a fascinating organ.”
Dom shifted to look up at me. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“You speak of human things as if they aren’t in any way connected to you.”
I laughed. “Half a century on earth without my wings doesn’t make me human.”
“Maybe not. But I think you’re more human than you think.”
“We were talking about you,” I pointed out.
Dom grinned. “Right. My family was murdered. I ran, and somehow found my way below. Call it God’s will, call it serendipity, call it whatever. But I found his cabin, lit from within, and it just looked so perfect. Like if there was ever a safe place for me, that was it. When he answered my knock, I knew right away I was meant to be there. He didn’t even seem shocked.”
“Yulian has always had an infuriating way of knowing things ahead of everyone else. It drove Catie crazy.”
“He talks about her all the time. I feel like I know her.”
“You would have liked her. She was a pistol, like you.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I would have been too jealous of her to like her.” She angled her head up and kissed my neck, sending a thrill straight to my groin.
“Finish telling me your story before you seduce me,” I growled, cupping her ass in my palm.
Dom chuckled. “I didn’t show up with anything but the clothes on my back and this locket in my hand.” She touched her neck, where the delicate gold heart nestled in the hollow of her collarbone. “Whatever was inside has been ruined. There was blood all over it. Not mine, clearly—I was unharmed.
“As I aged, some memories returned to me. I think this was my mother’s necklace. I get flashes of removing it from her bloody neck, but to be honest, I don’t know what’s real anymore. I try to not dwell on those memories too long. I feel like it’s a Pandora’s box. Once I look inside, I’ll never escape it.”
I tightened my arm around her. She fit neatly against my side, soft skin, hard muscles, but beautiful curves, the kind to make a man weep. I touched her hair gently and kissed her forehead. I didn’t know what else I could offer. I wasn’t good at the sympathy thing. Out of practice.
“We all live with loss.” Dom’s breath was warm against my chest. “Belias may have cursed the Circle with envy, but the real curse of living is the curse of losing.”
We lay in silence for a long while, her declaration mulling over in my mind. She was right. Painfully so. My chest ached for her, for me, for the loss we all felt so deeply. This time, it wasn’t the envy curse inside me, eating away at my heart, killing me with every pang of jealousy.
This time, it was real, raw pain from inside myself. I could fall in love with this woman. Hell, maybe I already was, and that was why it hurt so much. I already loved her strength, her contrary nature, and her loyalty to the people she loved and the causes she believed in.
And maybe I loved her.
But when the sun went down, and we entered the Kremlin, things would get dangerous. Our lives would be at risk.
I could lose Dom, the same as I lost Catie.
25
I awoke in a cocoon of warmth and a nest of entangled limbs. Dom and I lay facing one another, legs laced together, my arms around her, our blankets piled high around us.
I smiled at her sleeping face. The hardness she carried in her brow had eased with rest. She looked peaceful, one corner of her lips tilted up in secretive amusement. I wondered what kind of dream had put that look on her face.
I heard the swish of Yulian’s robes before he cleared his throat to announce his presence. “The sun is setting. We should prepare the spell. If you leave Kremlin Watchtower with demons at your heels, we need to have the essentials in place to act quickly.”
I rolled to look at him over my shoulder. He had a good-natured smile on his face—almost smug, as if he’d expected to find us together. As we had discussed the night before, the man always knew.
“Fair warning!” Yulian said around his smile. “She can be a difficult person to awaken.” He turned on his heel and left the hall before I could even respond.
“I’m awake,” Dom murmured, though her eyes remained closed.
I rubbed her back in slow, comforting circles. “Ready to risk our lives to save the Circle?”
A smile touched her lips. “Mm. I was born ready.”
We left the warmth of our blankets for the bitter cold of the cathedral and dressed in silence.
Something had definitely shifted between us—in a good way. We exchanged smiles and lingering glances while we dressed. I’d admired her since the day she kicked me in the head and saved my life—though not exactly in that order. But now, it was as if a connection had been made. I was sharply aware of her every gesture and her every breath. I couldn’t wait to have her in my arms again, and quite frankly, the rest of the Circle could fuck off if I could just be with her a little longer.
As Dom strapped a dangerously sharp blade in a sheath on her thigh, she asked, “What will you do if we succeed and you get your wings?”
I faltered in tying my boot laces.
Raphael, large and golden in my kitchen, his fingers wrapped delicately around a photograph of Catie and Gretchen. Unwelcome in my modest cottage, but making himself at home, anyway. And offering me a decree I couldn’t refuse.
I was never really doing any of this to regain my wings. Hell, I wasn’t sure I remembered how to be a functioning angel at this point, and if I were admitted back into the heavenly ranks, I’d probably end up booted again.
From the beginning, this entire venture was about Liliya—the small, fierce little girl who reminded me so much of my daughter. Chances were slim that Belias hadn’t killed the girl already, much as I hated to admit it. So if it was no longer about Liliya, what—or who—was I fighting for?
Dom had studiously avoided looking at me when she’d
asked. I had a feeling she thought she already knew the answer, when in reality, I didn’t even know the answer.
But I did know this: I didn’t want to lose my life, my cat, my cabin, my garden.
My Dom.
Sometimes, comfort and love is where it’s at.
I stood, abandoning my still-untied boots to go to her. As she straightened, I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her, slowly and thoroughly.
“Let’s survive what comes next, then I’ll worry about Raphael,” I told her, trailing the words down her neck.
“It doesn’t have to be more than one night,” she said softly as I returned to her lips. “You didn’t come to us expecting…this. I don’t expect you to give up a chance at redemption for me. I don’t want you to give up more than you already have.”
“Anything I have ever given up was done with eyes wide open.” I met her gaze. “Frankly, I could give two fucks for redemption. I don’t think I did anything wrong falling in love with my wife, so there’s nothing to ‘redeem.’ I don’t care about God’s plan. I care about you.”
Tears shone in her blue eyes but didn’t fall. She tiptoed and pecked my lips. “We’ll see how you feel after you skewer Belias like a suckling pig.”
“I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
We joined Yulian in the ruined belfry, where he hunched over a three-legged chair he’d repurposed into an altar. He had shoved a rotted wood beam under the broken leg, which seemed only slightly sturdier than going with no leg at all.
As usual, it was snowing. Being that the tower was as broken as the chair, a delicate coating had begun on the stone floor—and all over Yulian’s candle circle and magical tools.
“Love what you’ve done with the place,” I remarked as I stepped over the candles to join him inside the circle. “Should really spring for a heater though. Colder than a witch’s tit up here.”
“Ah, there you are,” Yulian said, ignoring my offensive joke. “I believe I’m well on my way to being ready for the spell. Did you bring the bone?”
I passed over the sharpened femur. “Ready to turn a demon queen to shish kebab.”
The Shadows and Sorcery Collection Page 33