Wings of the Wicked (12 page)

To my shock, she smiled sadly, gazing through the trees. “He mattered to me, but the only thing that mattered to him was that stupid necklace.”

I studied her face. She took a deep breath and seemed to grow smaller, more vulnerable. A single tear fell from her eye. She wiped at it angrily, as if it were an ugly blemish she wanted no one else to see.

“He loved me,” she said. “I know he did. But his duty to protect the relic was more important to him. So I left him to his duty. I knew he’d die because of it one day, but I wanted to live my life. He was so angry when I left. That surprised me—how furious he was with me. He was so willing to hate me, but so hesitant to love me.”

Tucking her hair behind her ears and folding her arms across her chest, she looked at me finally, offering me a kind, hopeful smile. She looked so human in that moment. “At least he put up a hell of a fight, huh?”

I smiled weakly back. “Yeah.”

“I just want to know why no one else heard,” she said, and suddenly she was all business again. She straightened herself and looked to Will. “What do you think?”

He shrugged. “Think about Nathaniel’s aspect. If the attacking reaper was strong enough, he could wipe the minds of any humans close enough to have overheard. Either they never noticed or they remember nothing of the incident. Human minds are easily tampered with. Nathaniel would have had no trouble covering this up.”

“Right,” Ava grumbled bitterly. “Well, Bastian has quite the assortment of thugs. I’m sure he’s got a vir for every occasion.”

The idea of Nathaniel, or another vir, being capable of manipulating the human mind disturbed me. It seemed like the ultimate violation of a person. The mind was supposed to be a safe, sacred place, and for it to be torn open and completely vulnerable was a terrifying idea. I had no clue how to protect myself against such an attack and prayed that I’d never have to.

Suddenly, I couldn’t bear to be in the parking lot, so close to that place of death. “I’ve got to go back to school,” I said briskly. “I can only get away with playing hooky for so long.”

“All right,” Will said. “But let’s go back to Nathaniel’s and eat first. You should have a rest before going back.”

That sounded like a wonderful idea. As soon as the thought of food entered my mind, my stomach clenched and growled. I blushed when I saw Will grin.

He gestured toward my car. “Let’s get out of here.”

We rode back to Nathaniel’s house. Ava took off, and Will made lunch for the two of us. When I glanced at my cell, I saw a text from Kate but didn’t answer it. Instead I checked the time.

“I’ve got to run,” I said, stuffing the phone into my back pocket and taking my dishes to the sink to scrub them clean and stick them in the dishwasher.

Will watched me silently from his seat at the table before he rose to follow me out into the living room toward the front door. He caught up to me and pulled lightly on my fingertips, slowing me to a stop. I turned to him and smiled, studying his gaze when he didn’t say anything.

“What’s up?” I asked, allowing him to pull more of my hand into his own and rub my palm with his thumb. He sucked in his upper lip, and I knew then that he was nervous. My smile faded.

“I have to tell you something,” he said. “Because it’s not right that I keep this from you any longer. I don’t want to keep anything from you.”

“Okay …”

“Do you remember when we said no more secrets?” he asked as he stared at the ground, his voice faint and small.

I swallowed hard and something tightened in my chest. “Yeah.” The word was almost nothing.

“It’s been eating away at me,” he said. “Devouring me from the inside out.”

I shook my head, studying his dull green eyes in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“I thought everything was over.” His voice was cracking, and he took a long, deep breath to steady it, but the effort was useless. “I believed that I’d failed for the last time, that you were gone forever, because of what I’d failed to do for you.”

Fear tightened around my throat as I tried to figure out what he was trying to tell me.

“I loved you,” he continued, looking up to meet my gaze at last. “And I was broken for so long. For forty years, I waited and waited and searched for you. I hadn’t seen Nathaniel in over a decade, and I was so alone. Marcus and Ava came around a few times, and after being alone for
so long
, I stopped thinking or feeling. I
hated
myself for losing you.”

I felt an urge to reach for him, but I was afraid to. “I don’t understand. What are you trying to tell me?”

“Ava and I grew close,” he said, looking away from me. “We …”

“So it’s true, then. You slept with Ava?”

“Yes.” The word was barely audible, barely anything more than a small exhale of air through those lips I’d kissed and loved.

“I don’t even know what to say.” I swallowed hard.

“You don’t have to say anything, Ellie.”

My fingers were numb. I tightened them into balls and stretched them back out to regain sensation, but as I did, the rest of my body began to lose feeling everywhere. “So she’s not demonic or a spy or anything. The only reason she hates me is because you slept together. All this time, you told me there was nothing between you two, and there was.”

He started to reach for my hands. “She’s only my friend. She is nothing compared to the way I feel about you.”

“You don’t have
sex
with people who are
only friends
!”

“Ellie.” He sighed my name in that way of his that could calm me during any storm but this one.

“You told me it wasn’t what I thought! You
lied
to me!”

“I didn’t lie to you,” he said tiredly. “I never dated her. We were never anything more.”

“Well, you wanted
something
from her!” As soon as I said it, I was sickened by myself. I didn’t even know what I was saying anymore.

His expression darkened and his brow furrowed as anger boiled to the surface. “I didn’t
want
anything from her! It was a mistake!”

Tears were streaming down both sides of my face now, pooling in the corners of my mouth. I didn’t know how I’d gotten so upset so quickly. “So you broke it off with her? Just like you did with me?”

“I thought you were
gone
!” he repeated, his voice breaking. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, but he had little more control. “I was
dead
inside. I believed I’d lost you, the only thing that made my life worth something! You are all I knew, Ellie, and I’d died along with you. I never loved her, never loved anyone but you in all these centuries. You were gone and I gave up. When I found you again, barely a year afterward … I can’t describe to you what it felt like to see you again after believing with every last thread of my soul that you were gone forever. Seeing your smile brought me back to life and killed me again at the same time. I felt like I had to tell you, after all these centuries, how much you meant to me, how much I have always loved you, in case I lost you again and you never came back. In case I never got to say it to you at all.”

I was sobbing now, and at some point I had sat down on the sofa and hadn’t even realized it. I buried my face in my hands, tugging at my hair, desperate to rip the images of Will and Ava kissing, touching, out of my head forever. He sat tentatively next to me, but he didn’t reach to comfort me, didn’t murmur into my hair the way he often did when I was upset. He did nothing. When I pulled my hands away from my face and looked at him, he was watching me, his eyes dull and dark. It wasn’t like we were together then, or even now, and it wasn’t like he cheated on me. I didn’t have a claim to him, but I felt like I did, and knowing all that didn’t make it hurt any less. I couldn’t be mad at him or hate him, because I didn’t have a right to.

I stopped crying, wiped at my face with my hands, and climbed shakily to my feet. I faced him, looking down at him where he sat. He took my hand, his gaze lingering on it soberly, and I allowed him to pull me close. His touch was warm, unsteady, and gentle as he ran his fingers across my palm and wrist and then wrapped both his arms around my body. His palms opened on my lower back, and he tugged me toward him gently as he sat there, and he rested his face against my belly. He gave a small squeeze and kissed me there, his lips pressing to the sweater I wore. It took me a few moments to regain my composure and the strength to pick my hands up to touch his face, lift his chin, and smooth my fingers over his rough cheeks, his lips—and then he smiled beneath my fingertips, and my heart broke.

“I need you,” he said, and turned his face to kiss my palm.

Something collapsed in my chest and my lips trembled. “I need you, too.” I ran my fingers through the silk of his hair.

“Nothing has ever meant more to me than you,” he whispered. “You are all I know.”

“Don’t say that,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not true.”

“I have never lied to you.”

I had to leave before I started crying again. I pulled away from him, and his hands slipped from around my waist and fell. “I’ve got to get back to school before lunch hour is over.”

“I know,” he said.

Without saying good-bye, I left Nathaniel’s house and drove back to school. The rest of the day went by in a blurred daze, and I made a point of avoiding meeting Kate, only texting her back to tell her that I had learned nothing at all.

11

I WROTE TWO PAPERS FOR SCHOOL THAT WEEK, AND by Thursday I needed some down time and to get out of my house. Will and I were still a little shaky after our fight-slash-discussion about his history with Ava. No one I knew would bother me at the library, and it sounded like the perfect escape. Snow began to fall, lightly enough that it would be safe to drive in the dark if I went slowly, but tomorrow I’d have to shovel the driveway for sure. Three hours before closing was the perfect amount of time for me to find a good book and curl up in one of the giant sofa chairs on the second floor.

After some searching through the stacks, I selected a book I’d first found on my mom’s shelf when I was in middle school. I remembered being sucked in by the romance, so I grabbed it off the shelf and padded up the creaky stairs to the second-floor lounge, where it was quieter. I settled into a squishy chair next to an end table and lamp and lost myself in the novel. I didn’t even notice the reaper in the room quietly suppressing his energy until he dipped his head over my shoulder and cast his shadow over the pages.

I jerked out of my seat to face him and dropped the book, startled by the sensation of the reaper’s energy crawling on my skin like feather-light spider legs. “Cadan!” I cried out in a hushed voice.

He wore a gentle smile edged with amusement. The warm light in the library made the gold color of his hair even richer. “That book must be pretty good. You didn’t even notice me until I was right next to you.”

“What do you want?” For some reason, I wasn’t afraid of him—though I really,
really
should have been. I couldn’t explain the feeling. He never made me feel threatened.

“To see you.”

I blinked.
“Why?”

He didn’t seem bothered by my suspicion. “Why not?”

Was he serious? “Cadan, we’re enemies.”

“Who decided that?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious. He stepped around my chair to sit in the one across from me. “If we were enemies, then I would have tried to kill you already.”

“So far you haven’t.”

“But if you truly thought we were enemies, then wouldn’t you have tried to kill
me
by now? You hunt the demonic almost every night, so it’s not like you wait around to be attacked. You could have come after me, but you haven’t, though I can’t say I’m not disappointed.” He touched my hair the way he had the night we first met. I watched his fingers treat the lock as if it were delicate. The tips of his fingers brushed my neck and trailed across my collarbone, sending my heart pounding.

I wasn’t about to show any fear by backing away from him. “Don’t make me get violent.”

“Oh, baby,” he whispered, his voice husky and his smile darkening. “Please do.”

“You’re into that sort of thing, are you?”

“I’m into
you
.”

“This is extremely awkward,” I said, unsure of how to react to his blatant flirting.

“I disagree.” He let my hair fall, but he didn’t step away. “I very much like this.”

“It’s barely even nighttime,” I noted. “Shouldn’t you nocturnal types be sleeping at this hour?”

“What can I say? I’m an early riser.”

I was tired of being toyed with. “Why did you find me, Cadan? Besides to try to shower me with your charm. Last time I saw you, you came with a warning.”

His smile faded again. “I’m sorry to say that I have another. Bastian has a relic, the Constantina necklace.”

I frowned, thinking of Ava’s anguish over Zane’s death. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“So you located the relic’s guardian,” he deduced.

“What was left of him, yes.”