Ember (19 page)

Candra stopped fighting him and crossed her arms over her chest stubbornly. Sebastian’s definition of trouble and hers were apparently quite different. “Is that what I am to you? I’m just a project to study. Are you like the others, waiting to see if I’ll change?”

Sebastian pursed his lips and frowned, drawing his eyebrows downward. He shifted Candra on his lap, still holding her tightly, and scooted backward on the bed, until his back hit the metal frame.

It was all Candra could do to keep from groping him, the way his muscles twitched and the fine indents appeared on his shoulders…and his scent—it was so strong. Every inhaled breath was filled with the sweet spicy fragrance of his skin lightly underlaid with a smoky aroma. She wondered if that was what Brie was referring to. Did Sebastian go to a bar earlier?

“No and no,” he replied sternly, his serious brown eyes glinting with gold. “You are so much more.”

“What then? Why didn’t you kill me?”

Sebastian leaned his head back against the bedframe and closed his eyes. Candra watched his Adam’s apple bob and had the strongest urge to lay her lips against his skin. Her angel crush was growing at an astronomical rate. She guessed there was some truth in the idea that there is no one as attractive as someone who’s in love with you. Except that she was positive Sebastian wasn’t in love with her.

“I just couldn’t,” he said after a long sigh.

Candra scowled even though Sebastian wasn’t looking at her. “That really isn’t an answer, is it? Please talk to me. I want to understand who I am and where I come from. Please help me do that.” There it was. She couldn’t be any more honest than that with him, or anyone for that matter. She didn’t believe she was asking for much, just the truth about herself.

Sebastian looked back to her and hesitated. She wondered if he trusted her at all. He had just said he wasn’t waiting for her to change, but maybe he was already so convinced she would take Draven’s offer that he didn’t want to share the darker part of his personality, that he was expecting her to betray him. Really, when it came down to it, she wondered if she had a choice. The finality of the situation was apparent to all of them. She would have to go to Draven; it was simply a matter of when.

Chapter Eleven

Candra contemplated asking Draven, if she were to go to him, if she became one of the Tenebras, if they left the city, could she still maintain her relationship with Brie? She knew it wouldn’t happen. She wasn’t stupid; Brie would still be seen as one of the Nuhra. She would never be accepted by them. Even if Candra could ask her, she wouldn’t. There was clearly something between Brie and Gabe. Brie had given up so much; Candra would never ask that of her too.

Tears itched in her eyes when she realized she was fighting the inevitable. There was no way to come out of this unscathed; maybe that was why Sebastian was being so nice. Sudden desperation washed over her when she realized their time was limited. Her head leaned against his shoulder, and her arms sought his waist of their own volition.

“I wish I could find another way, but I don’t know how,” Candra murmured against his skin and felt his heart jump.

“Why don’t you hate me? I’ve done such terrible things,” Sebastian whispered against her hair. She could feel the vibrations of his lips against her scalp, and his fingers threaded up through her hair.

“Why don’t you hate me? I’ve invalidated everything you thought you stood for.”

“I was looking for Brie, because I needed some sort of closure. I have a little problem with always wanting to be right about everything.” He paused to chuckle, and Candra couldn’t help joining in. At least he could see it.

“Wow, really? I hadn’t noticed. You always seem so open and willing to compromise,” Candra teased. Again, her body reacted without conscious decision, and her head turned toward him. Sebastian’s breath stopped when Candra’s lips brushed over the skin below his collarbone, and she froze.
I didn’t kiss him
, she thought.
It wasn’t a kiss.
It was just her lips accidentally touching his body—it wasn’t a kiss. All the time she was trying to convince herself, she was stock-still and he wasn’t breathing, but his heart was thumping heavily. Candra was relieved when instead of confronting her with her actions, Sebastian continued on.

“I was convinced that Brie was persuaded against her will to fall, even though my rational mind knew it to be completely impossible. You see, like everything else, we have to want it badly enough and truly enough. There can’t be any indecision. Still, I searched for her. When I found her, I found you.” He stopped again, breathing deeply and exhaled, sending his warm breath over Candra. “This is hard. I haven’t spoken about it with anyone else.”

“Then I’m glad it’s me.” She focused on the metronome beat of his heart to steady her nerves. At this point she was willing to concede that Sebastian didn’t, in fact, hate her.

“They are all wrong about me. I know what they think: that I can’t accept what I’ve done, that I’m still looking for forgiveness. I’m not proud of my actions, but I did what I had to, and if I’m being honest, I would make the same decisions again. You don’t invalidate what I’ve done in the past. What I did in the past was right at the time, but I hate that I had to do it. The first time I saw you, I knew you were different. Do you want to know the first time I laid eyes on you?”

Candra nodded against his chest. “I have memories, but it’s like they overlap. Sometimes I remember you there and sometimes I have the same memory and you aren’t.”

“Hmmm,” he hummed.

She knew that was his influence. It was just like the drive to Draven’s where she knew she saw things but couldn’t recall them properly.

“I had just found Brie and was being a petulant child, stubbornly refusing to accept she had moved on with her life. She seemed happy, relaxed. I felt nothing. It was like someone had taken a blade and sliced through the connection we once shared, and it hurt really badly. I followed her while she shopped, keeping my distance and trying to figure out a way to approach her. Then I saw you. I could tell, you know, right away…” Sebastian ducked his head down to Candra’s so she only had to tilt her face a little to look at him.

She quickly wiped a stray tear away, but he saw and averted his eyes, clearly unsure how to react now that his bravado had slipped.

“You met Brie outside a little coffee shop, and I knew…I knew you were good. It shone out of you like a beacon of light in utter blackness. You sat outside, and there was a young child at the next table. He was terribly upset, and you turned to him and made a funny face then smiled. The little kid, he stopped crying right away and smiled back at you. Kids see through masks so easily. If you had been merely pretending to be good, he would have known; he would have been afraid. I couldn’t hurt you.”

“I don’t remember that day,” Candra said sadly. She wished she could recall it as vividly as he clearly did. It was just one day out of many for her; it wasn’t anything that she would have committed to memory.

“That was the first day I felt hope in a very, very long time.”

Candra curled in tighter to his warmth, uselessly attempting to stifle a yawn. Sebastian brought his other arm up to wrap around her shoulder and pulled her closer.

“Why would my father do this? Why would he go against what he believed? I don’t understand. I don’t want to have to choose,” she murmured. There was no choice. She knew she’d been kidding herself. Draven was right: hate and love were two sides of the same coin. She had been such a fool. Not that she was in love with Sebastian. They had been spending so much time together she had grown attached to him without realizing it. If she was to choose, she would choose to stay with him. But Draven had made himself clear. He wanted her to barter herself for peace, a tentative peace that she had to hold onto at any cost. So there was no choice.

Candra hadn’t noticed Sebastian stiffen under her until he spoke quietly.

“I’m not good, Candra. You should know this about me. There’s a monster inside me that has never been allowed to be laid to rest. I would kill again in a heartbeat, if I had to. You see this body and this face, but you can’t see the ugliness that’s inside. I’ve been a black cloud over everything and everyone I’ve ever come into contact with through my entire existence. You see a storm as a shelter.”

“My eyes are open. I see you,” Candra assured him. She wasn’t under any misconception about Sebastian. She saw him for what he was from the beginning. There was a darkness and sadness inside him that was almost overwhelming, but at other times, looking at him was like trying to focus on the sun: unbearably, dazzlingly bright and beautiful.

“That’s beyond anything I have the right to ask for from you.”

He relaxed once more, and his breathing softened. Candra yawned again. She would have to get up soon and felt as if she had hardly slept. “Where is God in this? How could he just leave you here all this time? What about the Devil?”

“God, or the Arch, was the very first of us. He is there somewhere, but I’d like to believe he’s simply forgotten about us.”

By his tone and the way he said he would like to believe it, Candra suspected he didn’t.

“As for the Devil…Lucifer, who God loved above all others.” He laughed bitterly and sighed before continuing. “We are the light, Candra, the light bringers. The first Watchers brought the darkness to the world, and we returned it to the light. We were the ones loved above all others, for what we did.”

Candra’s sleepy brain worked hard to grasp what Sebastian was explaining. She wasn’t sure she was getting it right, because she’d thought it was the other way around. Before speaking to Draven, she thought those like Sebastian, the Nuhra, were the light because they were first, but she was wrong. Everything Candra knew from the past was confused and mixed up. Nothing she had ever learned truly prepared her for the things she was learning and experiencing now. The Nuhra were the most loved and cherished of all the angels before they came to earth, but they were not the first Watchers. If Lucifer was the second wave of Watchers…

Sebastian’s voice was grievous and barely audible when he finally confessed, “We are Lucifer.”

If life was a rich tapestry, elaborately woven with colors and textured yarns, full of intricate details mapping out every moment of our existence, then could it be said that one slipped stitch or one knot out of place could alter the entire design beyond recognition? Sebastian pondered it as the perfect metaphor for his life.

He awoke stiff and aching from a heavy slumber, heavier than he had known in, possibly, forever. The reason for his nocturnal oblivion was still cradled, asleep in his arms, wrapped around his bare chest as if he might disappear with the sunrise. Sebastian guessed his peaceful hours came because he was physically holding onto the precious bounty he was protecting. Holding her so close meant no one could steal her in the night. He shifted a little to alleviate the ache at the bottom of his spine from the metal bars at his back. They hadn’t fallen asleep in the most comfortable of positions.

He expected guilt to hit him in the cold light of day, but there wasn’t so much as a trace. She believed the act so easily, being nice was exhausting for him, but Candra believed he was revealing his feelings for her.

The first level in his assault was complete. Sebastian planned to make Candra believe the choice was not about the Nephilim, but simply a choice between Draven and him. He cared about another war erupting; the idea was repulsive to him, but not as much as bowing down to Draven. Draven was insane if he thought Sebastian would willingly allow him to take Candra. His rational mind knew he was acting crazy and that his absolute priority should be to protect human kind from the scourge that once threatened to wipe them out…but his rational mind wasn’t screaming loud enough.

Candra moaned lightly and turned toward him, her soft lips brushing against his skin just the way she had done during the night. It sent a surge of heat through his body directly to his groin; his nerves vibrated under her mouth.

Thank you, morning,
Sebastian thought.

While he froze with horror at the reaction she could stimulate, her hands slipped out and tenderly caressed his body from his waist up, over his chest and into the hair at the nape of his neck, pushing her fingers through it. Her body curved further toward Sebastian, pressing her barely covered breasts against him.

He knew that wasn’t good. It was one thing to charm her from under Draven’s nose, but his own attraction for her was a mistake. He could deny it to himself all he wanted to, but it was there. Right there. The way his body reacted and the way he wanted to act on it wasn’t good.

A few minutes later, Sebastian had managed to maneuver Candra into a more comfortable sleeping position and was leaving…okay, running away, but it was far better than the alternative as far as he was concerned.

Lofi was waiting, complete with uniform and stern face at the end of the stairway. “Do you see this face?” she demanded, clearly agitated.

“Excuse me?” Sebastian asked as he reached the bottom and put his jacket on.

She slapped her hand down hard on the newel. “Covering up another ripped shirt will not make this go away!”

He shrugged brusquely to settle the jacket on his shoulders. Sebastian could understand Lofi feeling a little left out. He knew he hadn’t been spending a lot of time with her lately; they were more or less playing tag team, but he wasn’t going to let anyone tell him what he should or shouldn’t do.

“You know, all I keep hearing from everyone is what won’t fix this, what won’t make it better. Why don’t one of you geniuses come up with something that will work? Right now, I don’t really know what I’m doing, but at least I’m doing something. Which is a whole lot more than the rest of you can say,” he shouted back at her angrily. It felt foreign to be shouting at Lofi, almost like an out-of-body experience. So much of his behavior was uncharacteristic these days.

“This,” Lofi yelled, pointing at her face again.

Sebastian was worried she would wake Candra, who’d had a late night and needed sleep.

“It takes one hundred and seven muscles to frown and only four to smile.” Lofi reached out quickly, and before he had time to react, pinched his arm…hard.

“Ouch!” he spat out. “That hurts.” For such a little thing, she had an amazingly strong grip. “As well as being a gross exaggeration.”

“It’s over, Sebastian. If Draven has given her a choice, you have to let her take it.”

“I don’t
have
to do anything,” he fired back stubbornly, wondering what in the Arch’s name was she suggesting. He couldn’t believe Lofi thought he would just allow Candra to walk away.