Iridescent (Ember 2) (38 page)

“Gone?” she parroted, pivoting gracefully to look at him. “Gone where?”

He scrubbed his hand over his face roughly and ignored the prickle of his wings testing his restraint. “Candra is dead.”

“She can’t be.”

Again, Ananchel’s surprise momentarily distracted Draven. His fingers itched to reach out, clasp her slender neck, and crush it with his bare hands. He refused to look at her, pressing his thumbs into his eyes. The clicking of her heels grew nearer until he felt Ananchel so close, the heat of her body invaded his and the smoked spicy scent that always accompanied her filled his nostrils.

“I’m sorry, Draven,” she whispered earnestly. The words were salt poured onto his bleeding heart. If he could pluck out the part of him that still cared for her from his body, he would do it gladly. “I know you cherished her deeply.”

Ananchel’s warm fingers wound around his wrists and gently tugged his fists away from his eyes. He imagined she thought he was crying for the love he would never get the chance to explore. That wasn’t it at all. Draven mourned for himself, but his ravaged being ached for all the others, the ones that had left heaven in shame. Also for the humans, who hadn’t brought the impending war on themselves but would nevertheless become casualties. Lastly, for the Arch, whose beloved angels had given in so easily to temptation.

“I don’t have a back-up plan,” he admitted. “I’ve been so damn focused on peace between the Watchers in preparation for this that I didn’t think ahead to what would happen.”

“I have a plan,” Ananchel sneered angrily, gold dancing in her eyes. “I’m going to start with Lilith. She will rue this day. I swear it.”

Draven kept his expression guarded but shook off her grip on him and moved away. “This is about more than a broken heart, Ananchel. Our entire existence is at risk.”

“I know that,” she shot back, a blush spreading over her cheeks. Draven appreciated that she must be furious at Lilith right now. He watched her walk toward his desk, her head held high. She swished her hair over her shoulder with an elegance reserved for those of angelic nature. Draven reminded himself of what she’d done. What goodness could exist in one who placed their own desires before everything and everyone else?

“Death is coming,” Draven breathed solemnly. “Can’t you smell it? It pollutes the winds that blow through the city. It’s in every face I see. With heaven corrupted, what is left to hope for?” He approached the stained glass window and ran his index finger over the cold lead glass. The street was too far down and blurred by colored glass to make anything out clearly, but he knew what was going on down there. Destruction. Human beings, poisoned by Lilith, rampaging through the shadowy edges of the city. Soon, they would make themselves known, and then it all would end. The ultimate good versus evil showdown, and it could have been prevented.

“All this time, we’ve been looking to the Arch for answers to what we are, what our existence means. All this time, we should have been looking closer to home. We should have been looking at ourselves. We should have been asking why we did what we did. Such a wasted opportunity. This planet is done for. Its inhabitants are nothing but rotting pieces of flesh now, just like us. We were never meant to come here. Look what we’ve done.”

“What we’ve done?” Ananchel demanded incredulously. “The Arch is responsible for this. If we had been made equal, if we had been given what they were given…if he had loved us as much…”

Draven kept his main focus on the window but caught her movement in his peripheral view. Ananchel’s hand slid backward over the sleek polished wood and dragged something into her grip: his sterling silver letter opener.

“No. You’ve never accepted the truth. We left. We made the choice to give up heaven…for what? Something we couldn’t possibly have. Something that wasn’t created for us. We wanted it all.
We
carried a part of something into a world where it was never meant to be.” He applied too much pressure to the window, and a fracture rattled the glass, spreading a crack like a fault line through ice.

In a flash, Ananchel was beside him, yanking his arm back and forcing him to look at her. “What are you doing?” she challenged furiously. “This is our world now. We existed first. We were the perfect creation, and then we were tossed away like rancid milk. With the Arch gone, we can do anything. We can go or stay; it’s all ours for the choosing. Don’t you dare give up on me because that little pipsqueak went and got herself killed.”

Draven dropped his eyes. He saw her fist wrapped around the letter opener and held back a little.
She thinks I won’t notice her weapon
.

“What have you done, Ananchel?”

“What do you mean?” she asked with an uncharacteristic tremble in her voice. Her fingers twitched around the silver.

Draven lifted his eyes to her. “All this time…all this time, you stood by me, and you never understood me.”

His massive plumage burst forth from his back, spreading wide and casting a giant shadow over Ananchel. She stepped back unsteadily. Draven expected her to attack immediately and protect herself from his wrath, but she hesitated. Her jaw set defiantly, and her own wings unfurled to their terrifying width.

“Don’t be a fool, Draven.”

The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and a vengeful fire sizzled in his belly. Something vaguely reminiscent of a memory taunted him, a fuzzy echo, like a radio station that hadn’t been tuned correctly. He recalled the feeling inside him, bottled lightening straining to escape. In his memory, he had never struck down another being in anger, only ever in retaliation. Something inside him now convinced Draven that this was not quite true. Maybe once, long ago, he had been the Arch’s hand too. When his eyes locked on Ananchel’s, she confirmed it. Why else would he see fear there?

“She was the temptation you hoped would blind me to you,” he spat. “You hoped I would be so distracted by my emotions that I wouldn’t see how absolutely you’ve been polluted by the same darkness as Lilith.”

His wings flexed out wide and seemed to expand until the tips brushed the walls on either side of the room. Draven felt their enormous weight shudder and understood that what they were here was only a shadow of their true being. The energy pumping in every cell of his body was never meant to be inside a terrestrial form.

What have we done?
They had fought a war, lost brothers and sisters, and it was only now that Draven understood. The Arch hadn’t denied them humanity as they’d always believed. Their angelic nature was a beautiful gift, and like ungrateful children, they had selfishly wanted more. The Nephilim and all the destruction they brought with them was the price.

Ananchel stepped back again. Her jaw jutted out, but her eyes watered, further enforcing that she knew what was coming. She had seen this before. Sebastian had told him the truth: Ananchel remembered heaven. The bizarre part was that he could almost swear there was a part of him remembering it too. Perhaps it was the same part that connected them.

“Why?” he thundered, his voice so loud that the sound reverberated off every wall. The stained glass behind his head jangled in its frame. His heart pounded, and blood roared in his ears.

Ananchel flinched.

“Tell me.”

The fracture in the glass spread swiftly, creeping outward and upward with a grating noise, like the sound of nails on a chalkboard, until there was nothing to hold it together any longer. It shattered, falling away from the frame, showering Draven in droplets of rainbow crystals.

She rolled her shoulders back, still holding on to some of the bravado he recognized in her. Taking another step back, Ananchel pulled her wings in to rest along her back, the slick red feathers framing the black almost in a heart shape—a black heart. “I did it for you. All for you. You don’t remember what it was like for you before, always the runner-up, always second best to Sebastian. I wanted more for you.”

“And so you had me convince them that this was better.” Draven held his arms out wide. Tears of rage stung his eyes. His guts twisted, faced with his own inadequacies. He had led them out of heaven, but she had been the whisperer in his ear. “What about what I wanted? Did I ask for any of this, or did you make the decision for me?”

She didn’t answer.

“You knew, didn’t you? You knew the children would be monsters, corrupted and evil just like Lilith but with the blood of angels in their veins. You knew they would be unspeakable. We were never meant to create life; we weren’t made to. Just like humans can’t sprout wings, we were never meant to create life.”

“Why?” Ananchel asked defiantly. “Why shouldn’t we? Who was he to decide? Who was he to judge us?”

“He is everything,” Draven raged.

Ananchel stood her ground but blinked rapidly. Tendons protruded painfully from Draven’s neck, and veins popped from his straining forearms, twisting across the backs of his clenched fists. White-hot fury rolled through him in waves, receding and rising with each harsh breath. The sound of his feathers rustled in his ears with each violent shudder of his body. He saw the direction of this conversation. What Ananchel had done. Despite knowing it wasn’t his place to condemn, he couldn’t help himself. It was weakness, but it was there nonetheless: the desire to judge consumed him.

“He
was
everything,” she corrected him with a sly curl to her top lip. Tentatively, she took a step forward, hesitated, and then took another. It reminded Draven of a child approaching an animal for the first time. Concern creased at the corner of her tightened eyes.

Draven was still fully aware of the weapon in her grip. Never in his imagination would he have believed she would attack him, yet here they stood. Neither of them would ever be the same.

“Think about it, Draven. The Arch is gone now. What does it matter anymore? We need to look to the future.” She continued taking delicate, careful steps. Her head dipped slightly as she looked up to Draven from under her eyelashes. Her hair seemed to move at odds with the room, catching the late daylight now flooding into the window from behind Draven. She was lava moving down a mountain, ready to consume anything and everything that got in her way. Draven no longer doubted that included him. “No one knows. We should be thinking of Lilith now. She is the one that deserves to pay. She took Candra from you.”

“What about Sebastian?” he growled out bitterly when she was barely two feet away from him.

Ananchel paused and sighed. “Really, Draven, will it be so much of a hardship for you to rid yourself of Sebastian?”

Draven bristled.

“He has always been in your way, always. We can move on from this. Think of what we will be—rulers of all heaven and earth.” Her tone had shifted a little.

Draven noted the quiver in her voice because he didn’t calm as she’d expected him to. Finally, she stopped completely, just within reaching distance. Ananchel’s shoulders dropped as she sensed he wouldn’t side with her on this issue, and her eyes fell to the ground, her hair shielding her face from him.

It had to end now. Draven couldn’t allow this to go on. It seemed like forever since the war, forever since they’d been trapped and cut off from everything they once were and knew. To realize it had all been a fool’s errand was almost more than Draven could bear. To realize it was his closest confidante who had betrayed them all was more than he could stomach.

“Please, Draven, with the Arch gone and now Candra, you need me. You can’t turn your back on me.” Begging did not become Ananchel. It made the typhoon raging in his blood swirl fast.

“You betrayed me. You betrayed your own kind and your creator. You allowed jealously to rot everything good inside you.”

She stared at him for a moment, her eyes pleading, and Draven wondered if she expected him to say something else or to take his words back.

“If that’s how you feel, Draven, you leave me no choice—”

Before the last syllable had left her lips, Ananchel’s eyes and arm lifted. It happened in less than a fraction of a second. Draven saw the darkness inside her, her black heart shining through her eyes, churning and weaving with its towering flames of hate and rage. A flare of light slashed toward his chest, the blade in her hand so fast, the metal blurred. Her wings flared out once more, creating a blast of wind. She meant to kill him, but he was ready.

Draven’s long fingers circled her wrist and squeezed, wrenching it back. She dropped the letter opener, and it clanged loudly on the hardwood floor. At the same time, Draven lifted his knee high and planted his foot in her midsection, pitching her back with a brutal kick.

Winded by his attack, Ananchel soared backward across the room at unimaginable speed and crashed into a framed painting of golden wings rising though blue-white clouds. The canvas ripped, wood splintered, and glass shattered, demolishing the image beyond recognition. She landed on the ground in a flourish of twirling feathers, immediately shot into the air again, and flew at Draven. He swatted her away with the back of his hand as if she were no more than an annoying insect. The space around him seemed to vibrate, as if shuddering at his ire. Ananchel somersaulted in time to kick off the wall and crash into him again before he caught his breath. She clawed at his face like a crazed harpy, tearing long, jagged scratch marks into his cheeks.

This time, he struggled to get a grip on her squirming form.