The Sweetest Burn (Broken Destiny #2)(86)

"Well, you can always pick one, although I don't recommend Iscariot," I said, attempting to walk back the new, tense mood with my quip about Judas's last name.

Adrian's wry smile said he appreciated my stab at humor. "That wouldn't be my first choice, either."

"Or, maybe Zach knows what your mother's last name was?" I said, remembering that he had an encyclopedic knowledge of lineage, not to mention children. But when Zach's dark gaze landed on me, I knew I'd made a mistake.

"You inquire about Adrian's real mother, yet you've never asked me about yours."

I used walking through the busy lobby as an excuse not to respond. All my life, I thought I had known the basic story of my biological parents. Due to my mixed coloring, pediatricians had guessed that my father had been Caucasian, and my adoptive parents had believed that my mother had been an undocumented Hispanic immigrant who'd left me on the side of a highway when the tractor trailer she'd been hiding in jackknifed.

I hadn't hated my bio-mom for abandoning me. The Jenkinses had raised me better than that. Instead, the few times I'd thought about her, I'd pitied her for being desperate enough to give up her month-old newborn so she'd have a better chance at disappearing into this country. Her life in Mexico must have been truly awful. As for my bio-dad, well, I knew nothing about him. No Caucasians had been spotted escaping the tractor trailer the day of the accident, so he'd been gone by the time I was abandoned. Maybe he hadn't even known that he had a daughter.

That's what I'd believed, and the Jenkinses had showered me with so much love, I'd been fine with it. Then I'd met Zach and he'd ripped my world apart, first by telling me about my supernatural lineage and unwanted destiny, then by his comment about my birth mother. Your real mother didn't leave you because she was running from the police. She did it to save you, just as your dreams revealed. 

He'd tried to tell me more, and I hadn't let him. I'd been too overwhelmed after finding out that my adoptive parents had been killed, Archons and demons were real and demons had my sister in one of their realms. Add in the part where my best chance at saving Jasmine involved a lost supernatural slingshot and an arrogant, secretive man who wanted nothing to do with me, and I'd been full up on what I could handle.

But Zach was right, I reflected as I got into the limo while Adrian gave Brutus instructions to follow us by air. I'd had chances since then to ask about my biological parents, and I hadn't. Why didn't I want to know? Was I afraid that the reality was worse than the fallacy I'd grown up believing?

I'd ask Zach after we found the staff, I decided, telling myself I wasn't taking the coward's way out. I was only being practical. Whatever the truth was, it could wait until then.

* * *

WE TUMBLED INTO the light realm soaking wet from the East River. Well, all of us except Zach. He somehow emerged without a drop on him, then had the nerve to give me a condescending back pat as I coughed out the water I'd inadvertently swallowed.

Archons. They really rubbed in their superiority at times.

"Ivy!" Jasmine exclaimed, running over and hugging me despite getting dirty river water on her. "Are you okay? What happened? You were gone so long!"

"Just two days," I began, then stopped. Right, time moved differently here. "How long has it been on this side?"

Jasmine let me go, flipping back her odd streak of white hair. "Weeks," she said, a catch in her voice. "Zach came by an hour ago to say he was bringing you back soon, but before that, I hadn't seen him in weeks, either."

I turned to give the Archon a scathing look. "You promised me that you'd look out for my sister."

"And I did," he replied in that infuriatingly calm tone. "I left Jophiel to watch over them."

"You'd like him," Costa said to Adrian, giving him a hand slap instead of a hug. "He quotes Scripture all the time."

"And I missed that?" Adrian replied with heavy irony.

"Yeah, but-" Costa eyed the ring on my finger that Jasmine hadn't noticed yet "-guess you were busy with something else."

Adrian's hand covered mine, hiding the ring. "We were, but before we get to that, I owe both of you an apology."

Costa's brows rose, as if he'd never heard those words from Adrian before. My sister looked at our clasped hands and her mouth curled down, but all she said was, "For which thing?"

I shook my head at her choice of words. Good to know she still had her spiteful side even after being trapped with a Scripture-touting Archon for this timeline's version of weeks.

"For accusing you of betrayal."

The words fell flatly from Adrian, but his hand flexed around mine almost convulsively, indicating his true emotions.