Iridescent (Ember 2) (23 page)

Those two words made Candra’s stomach knot into a tight ball of apprehension. If he had released her and allowed her prone body to crash to the earth, it wouldn’t have hurt more than those words. They were back to the uneasy, antagonistic conversation.

It left Candra with a miserable decision. Should she ask him why he was giving up on them? Should she be the person she’d always thought she would be and tell herself it didn’t matter
why
he was walking away? Reasons wouldn’t make a broken heart any easier, and there were more important considerations in both their lives.

They descended slowly into a small opening surrounded by dense forest, neither them speaking a word.
Not good.
Candra continued struggling to persuade herself that Sebastian wasn’t ending things, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. His mood was too black and the distance between them more like a titanic chasm. Not to mention he had just admitted as much.

The moment they touched the ground, Sebastian took off into the trees. His wings disappeared into a golden mist along his back, leaving only two small tears in his shirt as evidence that they were ever there.

She staggered after him through the trees and thick foliage.

“Sebastian,” Candra called out, but he didn’t answer despite the twitch of his shoulders betraying he’d heard her. “Sebastian, where the hell are we going?” Twigs broke under her feet. The dead leaves on the forest floor caught around the toes of her shoes each time she trudged forward another step through the mushy pulp.

Sebastian never wavered in his relentless march onward, leading her farther and farther from civilization. Candra knew following him meant she’d have no option but to listen if he wanted to explain himself. She was already lost. It struck her that he was probably betting on it; perhaps he wanted to explain himself, and she couldn’t decide if she actually wanted to listen. Why should she alleviate his conscience? She wouldn’t have left him until the very end, no matter what happened.

Candra lagged behind his unwavering strides in an effort to not get too near, hoping he would eventually turn around. She should have known better. Sebastian was too stubborn, and the path they were on seemed endless. She halted dead in her tracks when dim light broke through the thick foliage ahead. Candra heard his stomping footfalls pause somewhere near.

“Candra,” he shouted with a note of exasperation to his voice. “Candra,” he called again, softer this time, probably a voice he had used on many young girls to lead them astray and leave them stranded…metaphorically speaking. The sound of his loud, irritated sigh rose above the gentle lapping of water against a shore. She refused to go to him.

Eventually, Sebastian relented, and his muffled footfalls on the soft earth betrayed his movement until he came into view. She stared at him, gaping like a floundering fish. His cheeks had a bright red flash of color to them, and his eyes had softened; specks of gold sparkled in the brown, unaffected by the shade of the trees around them. His jaw wasn’t set tight the way it had been before, and his lips formed a soft pout instead of a hard line. He looked lost, exposed, and more handsome than any being had a right to be.

“I can’t go any farther. I have to stop.” Candra’s voice laced with desperation, and she wasn’t sure what she meant—maybe everything. The roller coaster of sensations warring inside her seemed to go on incessantly, leaving no space for clear thinking.

Sebastian’s gaze fell to the ground, and his hand clenched and unclenched. Candra knew this action to be as unconscious to him as breathing when he attempted to control his emotions. When he lifted his eyes to her, they had darkened, heavy with ghosts of the past. Unexpectedly, he looked much older than the late teens he usually passed for and seemed to carry millennia of knowledge behind those eyes.

Candra swallowed thickly, and unsettling butterflies filled her stomach. Recognizable feelings surfaced again when he took a step nearer. His jaw clenched sharply, and his eyebrows drew to a frown. The moment was almost intimate, and Candra could think of nothing she wanted more than to give herself to him. She wanted to cling to him and escape this maze of impossible choices, trapping them inside the frantic, passionate, and seemingly hopeless love they shared. A slow warmth stirred within her as Sebastian took another step, averting his eyes away from her face to a tree to her right.

“Do you think this is easy for me?” he asked seriously, the edge of mocking returned. His movements were so weak, it was as if all his energy had seeped away, swallowed up by the surrounding trees. “I didn’t ask for any of this,” he yelled.

In reflex, Candra stepped back.

A virtual glass wall separated them, built by secrets held back, allowing her near and keeping her away at the same time. Candra wanted to smash right through and run to him, though she felt tethered to the spot where she stood, terrified to act and provoke him further. His anger vibrated like sound waves in the air, bouncing off tree trunks and echoing through the forest.

“I don’t want to go either, but there comes a point…a line…and once crossed, there is no going back…” Sebastian trailed off, and just like that, the glass came shattering down.

He turned his head side to side, looking for something on the ground while Candra watched, as if the line he spoke of was physical and suddenly…
that
was the only thing separating them. Sebastian was on the verge of telling her something.

Candra gulped, ignoring the itch in the back of her throat—a scream that would shatter the tentative calm inside her if she allowed it. She wanted to take back her lies over the last few days and admit the truth about Lilith. She could so easily step back from the metaphorical line, and they could rebuild trust. It wasn’t too late. As much as this pained her, she couldn’t give up that power. She had to know the choice was still hers to make without interference from anyone.

He turned in a slow, wide circle, and his shoulders rose and fell with each deep breath. His behavior was curious, even a little unhinged. He scrunched his eyes shut and pressed his hands into his face, alarming Candra when he let out a deep, pained growl.

She half expected him to punch something. The apprehension hurt like a knife, driving through her insides, but after a moment, he appeared to calm a little, and his irregular breathing began to slow.

“It’s not far.” Most of the emotion had drifted from his voice again, to just beneath the surface as always. “Come with me…please.”

How could she refuse?

Sebastian turned without making eye contact and headed back in the direction he’d come from moments ago. She stood frozen, staring as he rubbed his face once and then again before wiping his hand on his thigh. If she were a gambling person, she would have safely bet he’d wiped tears away. Her stomach lurched. She hesitated and then reluctantly forced herself to follow, watching him lift his hand to his face again. Candra took five short steps, losing distance with each step before he darted her an incredulous look over his shoulder.

“For the love of all that’s holy, Candra, keep up,” he scolded.

After a few more tense minutes, they came to a break in the trees that opened to the shoreline of a small lake. Several large boulders scattered across the space where the green and brown forest floor gave way to the stony ground around the water. It vaguely reminded Candra of the park where Sebastian had healed her, knowing he would reveal his wings. Except where there had been grass in the park, here, water took its place and trees replaced the park railing.

A blissful quiet wrapped around her. The water barely rippled, and the thick clouds overhead muted all the colors. Nothing in their surroundings was overpowering or too vibrant. Peace washed over her, making her body limp. Her heart slowed to a steady thumping. Sebastian’s sigh was audible, and his relief tangible. Tension rolled off him like a sheen of sweat under the flow of a hot shower. Every muscle in him seemed to relax as he stood by the water’s edge, silently breathing in the fresh air. Sebastian’s eyes closed, and his head fell back a little.

Candra sat down on the ground. It struck her out of nowhere that as soon as Sebastian calmed, she did too—or was it the other way around? She couldn’t tell. She sensed the usual comfort of his body and his company. The kinship of their twisted emotions wrapped around her heart and mind, erasing everything else, washing away her fear of all that waited for them when they returned to the city and leaving only peace.

“Sebastian,” she whispered in a low, breathy voice and saw his body tighten instantly.

He didn’t respond. She wasn’t sure she could find the words to say what she wanted to. She didn’t know for sure what Sebastian felt about them right now. She had always known darker parts of Sebastian constantly bubbled away under his skin, as if he was fighting against something trying to break free, the feral part of him…the dangerous part. Not that she believed she was in danger from him—not physically, at least—and she empathized with the sensation after thrashing with her own internal demons lately.

“Why are you angry at me?” She knew it wasn’t what she wanted to say at all as soon as the words were out of her mouth. She wanted them to comfort each other and make things right, not stoke the flames of an already building fire.

Arguing didn’t mean they didn’t love each other. It was possible to be angry at someone while still loving them. In the beginning, she’d thought she hated Sebastian, until she realized he hated the things he’d been through that made him behave as he did.

His fingers combed back through his hair, still damp and darkened by the mist from the clouds. The air crackled with his tension, building again with her own anxiety. He lowered his hand and clenched both into fists before stuffing them in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels. The lack of a jacket didn’t appear to bother him.

“Is that what you think…that I’m angry at you?” His voice sounded calmer and smooth as silk, with no hint of emotion whatsoever.

Candra curled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them—a comforting position. “Please, just stop this,” she started in the most unruffled voice she could evoke. “I feel like I’m stuck in a revolving door with your split personalities. You’re angry at me, and I know why.”

“Whatever you are thinking, you are way off,” he snapped back, picking up a stone and swinging his arm back to throw it aggressively into the water with a loud plop.

“Explain it to me.” She was trying. She wanted him to give her something, anything to help her figure out all this.

He didn’t reply for the longest time, and Candra sat listening to the lapping water, knowing it would be dark soon and their opportunity to resolve anything was fading away with the daylight. She had seen this side of him before, somewhere between the powerful angel ready to kill or be killed for humanity and the gentle side of him craving love but unconvinced he deserved it. Calm and nonthreatening, but still remote and cut off. Finally, he released a big gust of breath, and his shoulders slumped.

“You can’t save me.”

Candra lowered her legs and tucked them to the side while trying to get her thoughts in order. His words knocked the wind out of her.
Save him?

“But—”

“Every being I’ve ever met in my existence thinks they’ll be the one that can put me back together. They think they can rip out this darkness inside me.” His hand fisted and punched his chest so hard, the sound made Candra jump. “As if I’m a project that needs fixing.”

He appeared exasperated and annoyed, picking up another stone and flinging it with a grunt. It was larger than the last and made the same plopping noise. It sent circles rippling outward in the water before he returned his hand to his pockets and started rocking again.

“I can’t be fixed. I can’t be saved. I’ve done terrible things over and over. I’ve tried, believe me. I’ve tried…” He took a hand out, raked his fingers through his hair, tugging at it a bit, and kneaded the back of his neck. “The only thing it does is end up hurting the ones I love, and I’m tired…” He turned then, and she saw the sadness in his eyes and the struggle for him to say these words to her, words that she couldn’t understand. “You can’t save me, but I can try to save you.”

She’d been tempted to put herself first when the chips were down. When Draven had made his offer, she’d been tempted by a darkness inside her to stay with Sebastian, knowing it meant certain death and destruction for untold numbers. She wanted to tell him she wasn’t like anyone else. She knew darkness, but it was nothing she hadn’t already admitted to him, and she suspected he wouldn’t want to hear it anyway. So instead, she sat quietly and listened, secure in the knowledge now that she could talk her way out of this mess just as soon as he worked through his frustrations.

Sebastian walked over slowly and indicated the spot beside Candra with his eyes, asking permission to sit. Candra nodded.

“I’m tired, Candra,” he said, looking ahead. “I’m tired of trying to figure out all this shit going on in my head. It’s so hard. Nothing I do makes any difference. Nothing is ever enough to make it all end.”

“I still don’t understand,” Candra said. “I thought we were supposed to figure this stuff out together.”

The corners of his lips curved up into a grin, and he turned to her briefly with a dejected smile. “I thought we were too, and no, I’m not sure you will ever understand.” He followed with a small chuckle, shaking his head.