Archon(100)

To come between us, she wanted to say.

Thankfully, the words stopped at her lips.

It was almost too much—the enormity of what had happened only an hour ago. Here, in this abandoned shell of a church, the carnage felt as far away as a true dream. Yet it had been all too real, because Angela was still suffering from Israfel’s manner of traveling, especially traveling such a distance in a short space of time. He’d grabbed both her and Sophia, and there had been a roar, the intense rush of wind, and a light that could have melted her eyes. Then, nothing. Until she stood in the church at his side, dazed, disoriented, and sick to her stomach. He’d left her alone with Sophia in their little alcove, leaving for some room that connected to the altar, visibly disturbed by how nauseated she looked. Whether it was because he cared or not—that hadn’t even entered into her thoughts. Maybe because she’d had none. For what felt like forever, she and Sophia had simply sat side by side in silence.

Leftovers of the storm rumbled overhead.

Faintly, Brendan’s voice spoke amid the thunder, still screaming, still accusing her of every ounce of his suffering and every sliver of pain. But Angela knew it was only her imagination. Her brother was dead. Gone. The last person connecting her to the past, he’d been ripped out of her life just as quickly as he’d returned to it.

Yet the tears wouldn’t come anymore.

Despite her best efforts otherwise, she was also seeing Brendan’s face in his final moments. Without a doubt, it had been the face of a person lucky to be put out of their misery.

“Angela . . .”

Sophia glanced at the broken ceiling, her gesture too human to be anything else.

Then she looked back at Angela, her eyes darker than the sky, grievously vacant, and all her tormented words about Hell and waiting for the Archon sounded clearer than what she said now. “I don’t mind. If you have to talk about your brother—”

She cut off abruptly, noticing what Angela knew was an expressionless haze over her face.

The silence seemed to go on and on even longer than before.

“If you need me,” Sophia finally whispered, “I’ll be here.”

There was a terrible loneliness in her voice, but Angela couldn’t acknowledge it. The shock was still too fresh. The pain of knowing Sophia’s true identity gnawed at her trust like a worm. Suddenly, her new friend seemed so much less helpless and so much more of a nightmare.

Angela needed—wanted—space.

“I’ll be here for you,” Sophia said again, as if she hadn’t heard. “I promise you that.”

Without another word, she slipped into the shadows, disappearing like a ghost. She hadn’t been crying as she left, but a gentle sobbing mixed with the low thunder. A moment later, Israfel stepped beside Angela, and she instantly forgot everything else that existed, frozen by his proximity and the elation of a dream she’d always prayed to come true, now doing so ten times over. He kept silent, but forced her to face him directly, examining the wound on her chest. His fingers were smooth and unspeakably soft, like sculpted pearl touching the skin above her left breast.

“Does it hurt?” he said at last.

The music in his voice was subtle, but the disgusted look had left his face, replaced by what could have been concern.

“No.” She nodded at the cut on his neck, remembering how he’d reacted the last instance she’d touched him without permission. “You?”

His lips pursed together. There must have been pain, but not the kind he’d admit to.

Israfel’s hair, already feathery, had become windswept and careless, wisping delicately at his shoulders. He took the strands and stroked them to the tips, his distinctly graceful movements somehow more comprehensible than Sophia’s. “You should have let me kill him and be done with it. Why did you stop me? Out of affection for him?”

Angela kept silent.

“Although I feel more grateful by the minute. The smell of his half-bred blood would have been less than pleasant on my hands.”

No answer would have been a good one. Which was fine, because too many of her own questions took up space in her mind anyway.

Why was perfection like him living in this horror at all? Israfel resembled a star thrown into a puddle of mud, so above everything surrounding him, that even light lost its luster next to his brilliance. Worse yet, he knew he had that effect. Angela strove to conquer her awe, desperate to pick out the real, though barely perceptible flaws, trying to remind herself to keep her head. He was beautiful, and it was very difficult, but . . .

Yes. She’d found it again.

There was that languid decadence in him that unnerved her somehow. Israfel was obviously used to everything in creation kissing the ground he walked upon, and it showed in the teasing way he toyed with her, with anyone, instinctively moving in ways designed to infatuate. It should have been impossible to resist him—but whenever Brendan’s face flashed before her—suddenly everything shone a little less divinely.