Shadow of the Sun (26 page)

The look on Andrew’s face was so tortured that I wanted to break through the glass to comfort him. Angels should not have to endure the heartache that was evident on his face. Did he look this way because he knew how close Joseph would be to me tonight? Could he be jealous? Ehno did say that Andrew had taken a liking to me, but why? Or was it the thought of me possibly killing myself while dreaming that had him so heartbroken?

“
Please,” he begged, “I couldn’t live without you.”

I didn’t quite understand where his intense feelings were coming from, and I most definitely didn’t understand where my own mutual feelings were from, either. Imagining a world without Andrew . . . well, that wasn’t a world I’d want to live in. Was that love? It seemed stupid to deny it at this point. I didn’t realize it would happen so suddenly. I put my head back, and it hit the wall with a slight thud.

Ugh, why did I have to fall so hard for this angel?

CHAPTER 19: PROPHECY

My eyes were firmly shut. The chilly night air softly blew over my skin, as was usual for November in Italy. I just couldn’t sleep in this confused haze. Not here, not now. The ground was too hard, and I just knew that I needed to be somewhere. There was something important I was supposed to be doing. What was it?

“
Abelie?”

The haze disappeared.

My eyes snapped open. The sky was dark, though the stars could be seen like tiny beacons. This was where I need to be. My hearing was great, and his footsteps—no matter how hard he tried—were easily heard behind me.

“
Abelie? Where are you?” He knew where I was—hiding behind a large boulder.

“
Shh! Keep your voice down, Aiden.” I turned when I knew he was going to attack. His arms wrapped around my body, sending warmth through my skin. His eyes were on fire, and I’d like to think they were on fire for me. His skin was dark, and his appearance was one we were told to fear, but I did not. Our lips met, and the heat between us intensified until we were both out of breath. Still, our lips continued to mold together out of fiery passion. He was my love—he was my life.

He was forbidden.

When our lips parted, he smiled, pulled me into his arms, and spun me around wildly. “Abelie, I missed you so much.”

“
How much?” I murmured.

His lips slammed into mine again. It seemed like we never had time to see each other anymore. It was so wonderful to be in his arms again. I hated lying to everyone, letting them think I was at the Divine Library—where I was supposed to be.

“
Aiden?” I mumbled, our lips still together.

“
Yes, love?”

“
We have to go to the library tonight.”

He groaned in my mouth and pulled away. “That place is so dusty and smelly. Completely unromantic.”

“
I think we could find something romantic to do in there,” I purred and brought his mouth back to mine.

He snatched me up into his arms and took off toward the library. We were lucky that Camellia had already unlocked the door—all we needed was my key to gain access. Immortals weren’t allowed in the Divine Library without both keys. Two keys were always required and, honestly, I didn’t know why she wanted me to be there this evening anyway. It was late and usually there was a motive to be at the library. As an Elder, it was my job to protect knowledge, but I didn’t understand why tonight I was commanded to come here without any reason.

Aiden raced up the stone steps to the library, though my mind didn’t comprehend when we were finally inside. My thoughts were too focused on Aiden and our lips firmly placed together. It had been weeks since I’d been able to see him, and now he was in my arms. Our bodies molded together like two pieces of clay. Our passion could have been felt for miles as we danced between the bookshelves, completely oblivious to the towering books around us. Aiden had picked me up and held me to his chest as I wrapped my legs around his torso. We slammed into objects and many books rained down around us. I didn’t care. I was too wrapped up in the moment—Aiden finally in my arms. He kissed down my neck, all the way to my collarbone. It was pure bliss. He slammed me against a wall and books came clattering down. I didn’t care. Neither did he.

Things grew intense between us. I practically tore his shirt off his body, which was blackened like charcoal. I didn’t care if he was forbidden—I had to have him. His hands slammed down on either side of my head and fire sprang from his fingertips. I gasped in his arms and pulled him closer to me, thrilled at his enthusiasm. He spun me around and threw everything off a nearby table. Glass crashed and books thudded as they hit the ground. He threw me onto the table and sent a trail of kisses down my neck again. I was in heaven.

“
Abelie,” he moaned under his breath against my skin. He yanked my small, white robe off and threw it to the floor. I was exposed. The way his eyes roamed over my body made me blush. He stared at me as if he couldn’t get enough. He pulled my long brown hair away from my shoulder and started kissing down, down, down until he reached my navel. I was about to explode. But his light kisses on my exposed stomach brought me back to reality.

“
Aiden,” I said, out of breath. “Wait. Stop.”

His eyes shot up to mine, the fire blazing fiercer than before. “Is there something wrong, love?” He straightened, looking concerned.

I sat up on the table and began crying. I didn’t mean to be so emotional, but it seemed like everything made me cry now a days. He wrapped his charcoal arms around me, mumbling that it would be okay. He didn’t know what was wrong with me—if he did, he’d know things were not okay. Far from it. I was with child, an impossibility with our kind. It was either a miracle or a curse. I was about to tell him about the baby growing inside me when we heard voices. He threw my robe toward me, yanked me into his arms, and we hid behind a bookcase. My back was against the old musty bindings, Aiden’s chest firmly holding me there. His breath was hot in my hair.

“
Shh,” he whispered.

“
Aiden,” I choked out, “if they find you here, they’ll cast you out. They think you’re evil.” Right now, I hated the immortals. Angels, as they liked to call themselves. They were far from it.

“
No baby, I’ll be fine,” he breathed in my ear, soothing me.

“
I love you.” The tears rolled down my cheeks, and I hated for him to see me like this, but if anyone were to find us, he’d be sent away, so far that I couldn’t get to him myself.

Footsteps echoed through the cave-like library. Voices followed in low-hushed whispers. I recognized the voices. “Oh, no.” My fingers clawed into Aiden’s blackened skin. His eyes roamed over my frightened expression, and he pulled my face into his hands and placed his forehead against mine.

We were silent then, trying not to give ourselves away. The Ladies of Light circled around the building, their footsteps growing louder. They were probably checking to see if anyone was listening. My grip tightened on him when the footsteps came frighteningly close. He pulled me into his hard chest—his heartbeat tattooed against my skin, and I knew he was just as tense about our predicament as I was.

“
The place is clear, Mimi. The doors were locked, and it’s late,” I heard Liz say. I was thankful that Aiden remembered to do that, because I hadn’t.

Was this why Camellia wanted me to be here? To witness their meeting? It was all incredibly confusing because Camellia was a Lady of Light, and I had yet to hear her voice. Were they meeting without her? Suspicion rolled off me in waves, and I was sure Aiden could feel my muscles tense. He held my head against his chest, lightly pulling his fingers through my long, brown hair—soothing me.

“
Good,” Mimi replied. Her voice was stiff. “Because it’s time.”

There were three sets of footsteps, though the only voices I heard were Liz and Mimi’s. I wondered briefly if Camellia was the third party.

“
Zola’s prophecy?” Liz asked nervously.

I’d read the prophecy and remembered it perfectly. It spoke of the Darkness Illuminator, and about how she would show us who the enemies were and how to defeat them. The name “Darkness Illuminator,” and Zola’s cryptic words, implied that Shadows were our enemy. Immediately, I didn’t like this meeting. How could anyone believe that the Shadow of the Sun were evil when one of them could love me as deeply and passionately as Aiden? Did Camellia know about Aiden? Was this her way of warning me that there was trouble afoot?

“
But there have been no signs of the prophecy coming to light,” Liz argued. I could only guess that Mimi had indicated that Zola’s prophecy was exactly what they were talking about.

“
The assassin has been chosen,” Mimi countered.

“
And this is?”

“
The Soul Stalker. She will find and kill the Darkness Illuminator. She’ll be using the pseudonym Karen.”

I gasped, and Aiden placed a hand over my mouth.

They didn’t notice the sound.

“
And what about the other angels? Don’t they remember?” Liz wondered.

“
The Soul Stalker has been thought to be dead for more than three thousand years. The Elders have had their minds altered—they won’t suspect the lie.”

When I heard the name, I almost couldn’t believe it. The Soul Stalker had been forced out of society thousands of years ago for her ruthless behavior. Everyone knew the stories of the Soul Stalker’s brothers, and many people believed her to be the enforcer of their actions, even after her death. It was rumored that she influenced them to act like fools and to speak lies to humans. We were not the celestial attendants to the gods, as they liked to tell humans.

Before Soul Stalker’s downfall, she would stalk humans and torture them—without ever touching them—by manipulating their feelings. “Empath,” they called it—she had no empathy. No one knew why she acted the way she did, but it wasn’t long before she was nicknamed “Soul Stalker” because she was believed to be devoid of a soul—constantly stalking those who possessed the one thing that she couldn’t. It was common knowledge that she was defeated three thousand years ago. And now—here in the Divine Library—the Soul Stalker and the Ladies of Light were planning on killing the one person who could bring us our salvation.

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There was loud shouting all around me. My mind was in a fog and my eyes were securely closed. Through the thin skin of my eyelids, I could see lights flashing. There was the sound of glass cracking on my right. I was too tired to find out what was going on and soon I was drifting back toward sleep . . . back to that strange dream. . . .

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The door shut with a loud grating noise. Aiden refused to let me go. “Abelie, we’re safe, everything’s okay.”

But everything wasn’t okay. They were going to kill an innocent girl—the Darkness Illuminator. Though I feared that she would destroy the Shadow of the Sun, and ultimately Aiden, I knew she wasn’t evil; she couldn’t be. This must be what Camellia wanted me to hear, but why?

Aiden reached for my hand and led me out from behind the bookcase where we had been frozen for thirty minutes. As we rounded on the table that the Ladies of Light had just vacated, I noticed a book that I’d never seen before. It was opened, and the pages looked yellowed, old, and worn. It wasn’t surprising to see an old book in the Divine Library, but I felt compelled to read it. I bowed over the book and read swiftly across the page.

The Darkness Illuminator will be born during the lightest day of the year when the Ladies of Light will kill one of their own. The Illuminator’s mother will be of the Light of Heaven and her father will be a Shadow of the Sun. Angel guards and Shadow barriers will not hold her back, as she will have access to both sides of the realm. Until the Shadow’s approach, protect her above all others, even from our kind.

Even from our kind.

I quit reading.

This was different. Before, there had never been any mention of where the Darkness Illuminator would originate from, or who her parents would be. For some reason I always thought it was just another immortal. This was not the same prophecy immortals had been reading all these years. My hand automatically touched my stomach where I knew a baby was forming. A child created by an angel—or Light of Heaven—and a Shadow of the Sun. It all made sense now. I felt weak, and then there was nothing but blackness.

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The lights flashed through my eyelids again.

“
Joseph”—I heard Andrew say—“wake her up. Now!”

“
Gabriella? Please. Wake up.” My shoulders shook, and fingers drifted over my cheeks and forehead. “Andrew, she isn’t coming to.”