Chapter Twenty-Three
SEBASTIAN HUDDLED AGAINST THE SKYLIGHT GLASS, crouched and praying to an Arch who no longer resided in heaven for help he knew would never come. The descending winter turned the night air in Acheron frigid. Sebastian’s breath condensed against the glass, and he wondered if it was possible for his heart to freeze out here. If it could freeze, could it shatter? He didn’t doubt it would be a relief to be without his heart right now as he peered down on the scene playing out below him in the museum hall. Sebastian’s fist clenched around the metal piping on the roof and left deep imprints of his rage when he released it.
He’d expected Draven to take his chance. He would have done the exact same thing. He did do the same thing: he took his chance, and then he messed it up. According to Ananchel, he’d messed it up a long time ago.
She was right. He couldn’t trust Draven to help him. Sebastian had to deal with Lilith himself. Then he would give Ananchel her due. Watching as Draven embraced Candra and she returned his kiss with exuberance, Sebastian contemplated hell. If heaven could be a place created on Earth, surely his blasphemous words had locked him in a hell of his own making.
“Why do you torture yourself?” Gabe asked quietly from the shadows not far away. “We know you are lying. We simply don’t know why. You need to let us help you.”
Sebastian turned his head in shame and tucked his chin to his shoulder. He refused to see Gabe now, or the other Watchers musing over his recent bizarre behavior. He couldn’t trust anyone with his secret. It was his burden to carry.
“Go back to Ambriel. Hold her. Love her…protect her.” His words left his lips drenched with sadness in thick, bilious clouds of heated air and evaporated into the cold night as if they’d never existed. Sebastian flapped his great wings with a violent fury. He shot into the sky like a golden comet across the blackness and above a city that didn’t realize it sat, very precariously, on the brink of the end of days.
“Wait,” Candra gasped and landed back on her heels with a thud to the marble floor, snapping back to reality. Sebastian’s face once again plagued her thoughts.
Draven stopped kissing her immediately, but didn’t pull away or release her from his embrace. He seemed to have found reassurance of her affection in that kiss. A little thing like the tears that suddenly began to spill unbidden down Candra’s cheeks apparently wasn’t going to put him off. Candra looked up at him mournfully.
He scowled, and anger radiated from him in powerful waves that threatened to bowl her over. Candra internally cursed the unjustness of it all and wondered if her father ever had any idea of the torment he was leading her into by making the choices he did. Maybe everything would be simpler if she had never existed. She was just one great big avalanche thundering down a mountain, destroying everything in its path.
“That asshole,” she ranted. “I am so sick of crying. I never cried before.” She stepped back, shaking her head, unsure who she was referring to.
“Who?” Draven’s warm breath brushed the side of her tear-soaked cheek. The combination of it with her damp skin made her shiver.
Candra looked up at him. His chest heaved as his eyes darted back to her mouth. Without warning, his thumb swiped across her lip. His navy eyes pierced though her heart, and her lungs filled with a startled breath when he brought his thumb to his mouth. As if she’d caught him unguarded, Draven paused with his hand frozen in front of his face and swallowed.
A chill rocketed down Candra’s spine and sent needles of excitement shooting through her body. “Why did you do that?” she asked, although her lips barely moved and shock kept her riveted to the spot, her hand still resting on his chest.
Draven took his eyes from her and dropped his hand to her waist. His tongue traced across his bottom lip, leaving a glistening moistness. Candra had no idea why she found the action so incredibly hot. A deep, searing need hissed like nothing Candra had ever experienced before. Her nails bit into the tensed flesh below his shirt and trembled to explore him. Her heart sprinted, and her lungs moved, but Candra convinced herself that her light head was a result of the shallow breaths she managed to suck into her lungs.
“I don’t know.” His voice tinged with a gravelly desire. His eyes smoldered, half-closed so his long, dark eyelashes cast shadows across his golden skin.
The air left Candra’s lungs in a great whoosh as fierce as if she’d been stabbed with a dagger of ice straight into her chest. Draven forced her behind him roughly, leaving welts of white fingerprints on her flushed skin.
“We’re not alone,” he hissed, scanning the long room for the apparent intruder.
“Wh—”
She didn’t get one word out before he threw her a withering look over his shoulder. His nostrils flared, and Candra felt the vibration of his wings about to burst out of his skin. She stumbled backward, smashing her back into the painting behind her. How different Draven’s imagined image of her was. The girl in the painting needed no protector; she burned brighter than the sun. Just as Candra expected, Draven’s black wings shot out from his clothes and left her trapped and blind behind a wall of lustrous dark plumage. Draven had never looked so terrifying.
“It’s me,” Gabe’s disembodied, authoritative voice called out.
Candra’s hands disappeared under Draven’s wings, and she shoved him forward. He resisted, she supposed on instinct to protect her. She shoved again. She didn’t need any protection from Gabe.
“How did you get in here?” Draven demanded, his wings pulling in.
Candra scowled at the low warning pitch of his voice and ducked sideways around his wings. “It’s only Gabe. Put the guns away.”
Gabe emerged from the gloom of a side door, wingless and frowning. Okay, maybe she’d spoken too soon. There was definitely more than a hint of trouble brewing about his stiff posture. His mussed-up auburn hair looked sort of windswept, she presumed from flying.
“I got in the same way you did—security guy,” he answered.
“What’s wrong?” Candra’s heart still hadn’t returned to its normal pace, and a steady blush bloomed across her cheeks. He saw us. How would the embrace look from Gabe’s point of view? She wasn’t sure someone like Gabe could understand her confusion. He’d loved Brie, even when they weren’t together, and had held onto the belief that she would eventually find her way back to him. Even now, when Brie’s fallen body continued to age and her mortality stared them in the face, he remained loyal.
Candra cast those thoughts aside for later, when she had a chance to digest what occurred. She recalled the last time a Nuhra had burst in on her and Draven: it had been Lofi delivering the news about Ivy. Her stomach turned over violently. No more bad news, please.
“I thought Candra should be made aware that you had an audience,” Gabe said plainly. His finger curled into a fist and straightened by his side. No person was capable of lying. Even when the words were believable, the body betrayed them. Gabe words weren’t meant as merely informative.
Candra’s eyes flickered back and forth between him and Draven, waiting for one of them to elaborate. Draven closed his eyes and shook his head, his wings vanishing as if they were never there, and left it to Gabe to answer.
“I found Sebastian on the roof, licking his wounds.”
“Was he drunk?” Candra snapped.
Gabe’s eyes widened, clearly expecting a very different reaction. “No.”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll correct that soon enough.” Ice-cold anger shivered down her spine. How dare Sebastian spy on her again, when he knew perfectly well how she felt on the subject? Part of her wondered as to the extent his prying went to; how much had he witnessed and heard?
“Candra—”
“No.” Most likely, Gabe wanted to make some excuse. She wasn’t about to let anyone explain this away. Sebastian had betrayed her. She wouldn’t have been at the museum if he could keep his hands off Ananchel. Then something occurred to her. “Wait.” She turned on Draven. “You knew he was there?”
Draven’s smirk was unapologetic. “If you want me to be sorry, I’m not.” Appearing to sense their date—was it a date?—was over, Draven unbuttoned his sleeve and began rolling it back over his tanned forearm. “Sebastian would have anticipated this situation, and if he didn’t…well, he should have.”
“You’re a dick,” Candra chastised him and punched his shoulder for extra effect.
“You’ll forgive me.” His sexy smile caused a tremble in Candra’s stomach.
She couldn’t blame him. She had been an active participant, and she agreed with Draven that if Sebastian saw something that bothered him, he only had himself to blame.
She sighed. This wasn’t about hurting Sebastian. Why was he spying anyway? He had what he wanted: his freedom to get back to his games with Ananchel. It was easier to believe he no longer cared than to believe that he did and had walked away regardless.
“Can you take me back, please?” she asked Draven.
He nodded, holding his hand out, palm up. He scrutinized her, conveying a subtle expectancy and taking in every nuance of her reaction to his offer. Candra hesitated, still wary of leading him on. Friends held hands too. At least, that was what she told herself when she slid her palm across his. His fingers closed with a reassuring squeeze and guided her to his side.
“I’m sorry,” Gabe offered in a muted voice. “I thought you should know.” His eyebrows pulled down into a frown, and his lips pressed together tightly, holding back on whatever else he wanted to say.
