Iridescent (Ember 2) (32 page)

“There is nothing to understand. It is what it is…Sebastian cheated.” It sounded so bizarre. As if Sebastian was a normal guy, and she was a normal girl. So basic and simple…but it was anything but simple.

Brie took a sip of coffee and paused with the rim of the cup millimeters from her lips. Candra always believed she could practically see questions forming on Brie’s face. Tiny details in her facial expressions gave her away: a twitch of an eyebrow, or the tightness of her mouth. How she always swallowed if the question that followed would be particularly cutting or drag an emotional response from the one on the receiving end. Her eyes darted away, focusing on nothing at all, because her concentration was so wrapped up in the goings-on inside her head. Finally, her eyes locked with Candra’s to gauge her response to whatever she was about to ask.

“Wasn’t it you who told me that how it
is
isn’t always how it
should be?”

Candra pressed her lips together, growing more agitated with each passing second. She didn’t expect Brie to turn her own words on her and didn’t consider it helpful. “Sometimes, it doesn’t matter which is true.” She bent her head to conceal the moisture forming in her eyes. Sebastian didn’t deserve her tears—she’d give up her life for him in a heartbeat, but no more tears. A quick, sharp pain, a white-hot needle pierced her heart, shooting through her chest.
Later
, Candra promised herself. She would deal with the pain of Sebastian’s betrayal later. He was on her list of goodbyes.

Brie continued to scrutinize her, and Candra felt judged. Brie was no fool; she never had been. Candra realized thinking she could get her to simply overlook her relationship breakdown had been an exercise in futility. Brie expected her to talk, and she just…she couldn’t. That specific dam gate needed to stay closed for now. Blood flooded her cheeks when a fleeting desire to enter the abyss Lilith offered flickered into her mind. She dismissed the thought as running away. That couldn’t be the reason. It would take more than a broken heart to make her a coward. It was a choice, not an escape.

Brie frowned and picked up her cell phone from the table.

“What are you doing?” Candra demanded, horrified and reaching forward to grab the phone out of Brie’s white-knuckle clutches.

“I’m going to find out what is going on with him.”

“No,” Candra squealed, diving across the table. She couldn’t imagine anything more humiliating than Brie berating Sebastian for his treatment of her. Her heart raced a mile a minute, and her palms began to sweat.

Brie’s reflexes were faster, and she swiveled out of Candra’s reach. “I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t been on board with a relationship between you two, but you need to take my word for one thing.” Her brown eyes looked huge, and her shoulders rolled back with indignation. “I know Sebastian better than anyone else, better than Lofi…even better than you. He did not just walk away from you. Walking away is something that does not compute in Sebastian’s programming.”

Candra stood and glared at Brie, aghast. She reached for the phone over and over, with Brie continually wrenching away from her.

“Sit down, Candra. You are being immature.”

“What?” she cried. “Honestly, you cannot be serious right now.” Candra felt bile bubble up her throat. There was every possibility she might vomit if Sebastian answered that call.

They tugged back and forth for a few more moments. Brie kept the phone locked to her ear, shrugging off Candra. They weren’t an even match physically. Candra had a slight advantage on Brie with height and weight. However, Brie was fast and wiry. She was used to fighting, and Candra wasn’t. Candra had to use all her strength to wrestle the phone from her hand.

“Stop it,” she scolded Brie. “I am not a child, and you don’t need to fight my battles for me.”

“You are
my
child.”

Candra let out an exasperated groan. Brie had always been overprotective, but this verged on ridiculous.

Brie managed to pull the phone from her hand again. “You don’t get it. There has to be more. He wouldn’t—”

“He would…he did,” Candra broke in angrily. Perhaps Brie was right, and there was more to it. It didn’t matter. He’d cheated, and he wanted his old life, the one without her, the one where his only wish was to return to heaven. He couldn’t have decided at a worse possible time. Her fragile heart was already dealing with the loss of her friend. “I made him tell me to my face so I couldn’t lie to myself or make excuses for him,” she said, almost choking on the words. “So just stop it.”

Candra placed the phone back on the table and stepped away from Brie. Two deep frown lines cut across Brie’s brow, and her jaw jutted out defiantly. She seemed to want to keep fighting but lacked the words. Candra took a deep breath and returned to her seat, shaken and irritated at herself. Despite everything, her instincts told her to protect Sebastian. She felt justified in her rage but didn’t want Brie, or anyone else, to punish him. He’d been right about one thing: he’d warned her from the beginning not to fall in love with him.

Brie seethed, her arms rigid by her side where she gripped onto the armrests of her chair. It made Candra aware of the choice she had made for Brie. Tomorrow, the world would be a different place for her, one where Candra no longer existed. Candra’s conscience wouldn’t allow her to take any more of Brie’s family from her too.

“It’s between us, and it’s over. That’s all you need to know.”

Brie’s posture softened, but her brow furrowed more deeply. Candra closed her eyes, unable to look at her any longer. Her body felt as if every muscle had been wrung out. Exhaustion settled on her like darkness folding in after a long, weary day. She ached everywhere, inside and out. The worst of it was the hopelessness of it all, the continuous movement in her life when all she really wanted to do was stop and find her bearings again. It wasn’t that long ago that she knew with complete certainty who she was and what she wanted from her future and her life. That version of herself seemed like a stranger now, and soon, she would disappear completely.

“Anyway…” Candra paused and sighed. “It wasn’t real. Us, together, was just some ploy dreamed up by Draven to force the sides together.” Her eyes burned, but rubbing them would draw further attention to her battered and bruised emotions.

“You don’t really believe that, Candra, and neither do I…not anymore. Not after…I saw you two together at the ball. I have never seen Sebastian so relaxed, so free of the past that haunts him. He loves you.”

“Maybe he does,” Candra conceded, unsure if it made things better or worse. Her chest ached dully, her emotional hurt manifesting as physical pain. She was still too angry and her hurt too raw to see his actions clearly. He had cried, she reminded herself, and his torment had been perfectly apparent. On the other hand, it was equally possible she had seen what she’d wanted to see, perceiving his irritation at dealing with an emotionally wroth teenage girl as angst. “It makes no difference now. There is no going back for us.”

She opened her eyes to find Brie gazing at her with compassion. A small quiver in her chin made Candra speculate Brie was smarting over more than a break-up. She saw this as a failure on her part to protect Candra again, and nothing would persuade Brie otherwise.

Losing Ivy had shaken Candra’s confidence in her ability to protect those around her. No matter how far she looked inside herself, she couldn’t find the strength to keep herself deluded into believing she was some magic weapon. Lilith understood exactly what she had done by taking Ivy. Candra felt as if time was slipping through her fingers, eroding little pieces of her and leaving only a weak imitation of the girl she had once been.

She was about to speak, when the sound of the front door closing heavily distracted them from their conversation. If anything, Candra was grateful for the distraction.

“Gabe was supposed to lock up when he left,” Candra observed.

Brie went to stand, but Candra got there first and held her hand up. “I’ll go deal with this so you can finish up here.”

“Okay,” Brie agreed, her tensed shoulders relaxed. “If you need me, just call.”

Candra held back a chuckle at the irony of that statement, given their conversation. She nodded and picked up Brie’s phone, handing it back to her.

Chapter Twenty-Five

D
RAVEN
S
URVEYED
T
HE
C
ITY
B
EFORE
H
IM
. The view from this part of Acheron differed from the one he had grown used to recently, and the constant droning of alarms melded together to resemble an air raid siren. Even the smell bothered him. The river snaking through Acheron didn’t flow near his home. Around here, the pollution turned the water a moss green and filled the air with the repugnant stench of rot. He grimaced. The smell would be hideous come summer when the heat intensified the stink. Of course, that was if they made it through winter.

He could practically taste the pain and suffering radiating from the residents in the surrounding buildings. His flesh crawled with their misery. He closed his eyes to it. The action only helped to concentrate his hearing so that he picked out the cries of the child who hadn’t eaten all day. Somewhere else, a drunk hurled verbal abuse at his wife because she couldn’t stretch their meager household budget to pay for his brand-name beer and had bought generic instead. In the same home, pop music played and charcoal scratched over paper. He wondered if that was where the money had really gone. In an alley on the other side of the building, a junkie attempted to score a fix from her dealer, without the money to pay. He dared not imagine where she would end up tonight.

Draven could ignore his gift for the most part, but his highest senses tingled in this part of town and sent chills deep into his bones. Nausea made his stomach curl, and his cotton shirt irritated everywhere it touched. His feet itched to the point of being painful. He could bear the clothes on his skin as long as his feet remained uncovered. It grounded him, like rubber soles for an electrician or a metal rod with lightening. Then there were times that it wasn’t feasible to go barefoot; a man walking barefoot through the city in winter was bound to draw a few speculative glances.

A disturbance in the breeze at the back of his neck followed by a muffled thump warned him company had arrived.

“Gabriel.” Draven turned in time to see Gabe’s wings fold in behind his back and disappear.

Gabe stood several feet away, wrapped in the swirling steam from a nearby chimney vent. Gabe lowered his head in formal greeting. Draven noted his stiff shoulders, the hard set of his jaw, and the way his fingers clutched the jacket of his expensive suit. Gabe was a man on a mission. These last few years had worn on them all, but on the angel before him especially. Draven commended Gabe for taking on the roles of leader and second-in-command during all those times Sebastian struggled or didn’t quite live up to his responsibilities. Gabe was probably the reason Sebastian still held onto his position—because he’d always had Gabe to pick up the pieces and watch his back. Regardless, history couldn’t re-write itself, and the Nuhra still looked to Sebastian.

“Thank you for coming.” Gabe walked toward him and held out his hand.

Draven took it without hesitation and shook it firmly. “How could I resist?” he admitted. Clearly, Sebastian was up to something. If Gabe was turning to him, it meant the issue was something that concerned all of them. “I take it you are here to explain what’s been going on?”

“First—”

“Nathaniel is nearby, should Brie require assistance.”

Gabe released a breath. He didn’t need to explain his reasons for seeking extra protection from Draven. Calling in another Nuhra to replace him would mean running the risk of alerting Sebastian.

Curiouser and curiouser
, Draven thought.

“But isn’t he—”

Draven cut him off a second time. “I trust him implicitly,” he stated confidently about the guard who had once seen his Nephilim daughter slaughtered and in turn annihilated the Nuhra responsible.

Gabe sighed again. “We need to talk.”

“I gathered.”

Gabe scowled, reproaching Draven’s flippant attitude. Rhetoric was another tool he used for containing the effects of his condition. It distracted him, and he wasn’t about to give it up. The Nuhra walked past him—too close. His anxiety caused the hairs on Draven’s arms to rise. It radiated off him and pinged at Draven’s skin, leaving him feeling like a plucked chicken. His toes curled inside his sneakers. What he wouldn’t give to be rid of them already.

“That bar down there.” Gabe inclined his head in the direction of a gaudy blue neon sign…
The Devil’s Snare.

The bar was as seedy as they came. Even the thought of circulation among its wretched patrons made Draven shudder, fortunately imperceptibly. “How amusingly apt.”

“That’s where Sebastian’s been hiding.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” He peeked over the side again, in time to see the sign flicker, accompanied by a distinct sizzle.

Gabe shot him a cold glare and stepped up onto the low wall surrounding the roof of the building. His wings appeared, and one long stride, he disappeared out of view.