Once in her bedroom, I slowly make my way to her bed and ease her into it. She is completely dry and will never know what has truly happened, which is so much better for her. There is no way to make this better for me. I lay on the bed beside her for just a few moments and unfurl my wing around her, shielding us both from the outside world. While I can’t make things stop around us, I can for the moment block it out so maybe we can both find enough calm to continue against the chaos assailing us.
Reaching out, I stroke her face, savoring the softness of her skin. Her lips part slightly like she’s trying to speak to me, but she doesn’t even know I am here, lying beside her. In this moment when I am looking at her face, I feel tears pooling in my own eyes, and everything hurts. She is the only absolution I want, and I miss her.
Chapter Sixteen
After I am sure Elizabeth is wrapped deeply in sleep, and that when she wakes, she will believe that she’s only had a dream, I fly back to the falls so I can search for Celia. It has never occurred to me that a battle might ensue between two angels. In all the years of my existence I’ve never seen anything like that so why would I believe it would happen? I thought that only happened between humans.
What do I know?
At first glance at the falls, I see nothing amiss. Then again, I do not see Celia, either, and that alone is troubling. Another pass reveals nothing and that is when I have to rely on searching for her by sense, the same way she often finds me. Taking a deep breath, I shut my eyes and let my instincts guide me.
In that instant, all the pain and chaos swirling through Celia quickly jars me, making me feel light-headed. My wings falter, and I start to plummet. I have to detach and focus. Steeling myself, I try to concentrate even harder on Celia, flying lower.
What happened between Celia and Kane?
As I focus on her, I find myself lowering quickly, and a moment later, I land upon a spot that isn’t far from the falls. She’s lying sprawled on her back, one arm close to her head and a leg bent unnaturally. She’s so still I don’t know what to make of it. It’s not like angels need to breathe, so that’s not going to help me figure out what is going on.
“Celia?” My tone is breathy and panicked as I realize that her eyes are open and staring at the blueness above. They don’t blink. The only thing which even suggests she is still trapped inside that body is that I feel the chaos inside of her, the sheer panic that is so violently swirling around her she can’t fight it.
Frightened of what my choices have led to, I touch her face, trying desperately to stir her from unconsciousness. “Celia, can you hear me?”
No response. What did he do to her? I shake her harder, calling her name repeatedly. Nothing within her stirs. She doesn’t move. I keep trying for a couple of minutes before I realize she’s not going to wake up, and while I sense Celia is still inside this body, she’s not about to respond. She can’t.
“Cee, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” I say, slipping one arm beneath the bend of her knees and one below her back so that I can scoop her into my arms. Then I fling us both into the sky and desperately launch myself toward the Upper Realm. I have to find Evan. He’ll know how to fix this. But then I’ll be having to answer a million questions I’m not sure I can answer because the shame is too great.
But it’s my fault—all of it. Celia deserves only good things because in all of this, all she has tried to do is help me. No matter how twisted things got, she never stopped trying to do what was right, and I owe her for that.
Back in the Upper Realm, I take her to the place before the mountain, wondering how to reach Evan I’ll have to go to his restorative place. I glance down at Celia and find her eyes are still open and unseeing—the human equivalent of dead.
“Hang on, Cee. I’m going to Evan. He’s going to help.” Part of me wonders if he can, wonders what was done to her to leave her in this damaged state so far beyond me she doesn’t even blink.
I fly across the ocean towards a small cave. Although my memory is still a bit scrambled, I do know this is Evan’s place, and by the time I touch down, the chaos is about to overwhelm me, and it’s all I can do to keep myself together enough to lie her on the blanket spread across the cave floor and try to calm the madness inside so I can think. As I lie her down, her body just rolls out of my arm, her head turning the opposite direction like a doll’s.
I sit beside her, feeling more useless than I’ve ever felt, and I don’t know what to do. I hang my head and try to keep myself from falling over the edge. Then again, it’s so much easier to do that when you know exactly where the edge is so you can avoid it. I’m flying blind here. I’ve been flying blind since Evan took my memory away, thinking that would be all for the best.
It’s not hard to see how well that worked out.
“Lev?” I look up to find Evan standing there, his gaze first on my face, then on Celia. “What’s going on?”
“I need your help. Celia is hurt. She needs you to heal her.”
“Lev, where is the dagger? I must have the dagger that you took from the pulpit.”
My shoulders slump, and I wish I never had to speak again because I don’t know how I’m going to tell him I betrayed every trust he’d ever placed in me in a foolish gamble I knew better than to take.
“I don’t know,” I finally say in a calm voice.
He stiffens, and suddenly I feel the chaos starting to swirl around me crazily—his chaos, which is really not good. Evan is never worried, never unnerved. Except for right about now. He hasn’t even looked at Celia, which tells me a lot, that the dagger is so much more dangerous and powerful than I ever knew.
“Then tell me what you do know.” He eyes Celia.
“Kane has it.”
His head jerks up so he can glare at me, and right about now I’m pretty sure that is the worst thing I could have said, considering how he’s staring at me. “How could you be so foolish and gamble with something you had no right to touch? You have no clue what you’ve done, how much damage that one action has caused, and I don’t think I can begin to convey it to you. Ever.”
“Can we talk about the dagger later? Celia…is hurt. I don’t know what is wrong with her.”
Evan finally gets up, and when he moves toward Celia, his shoulders slump slightly. It seems like weights press down on him. As he bends to her, I can see the worry lines deepening around his eyes, and creases furrow his forehead.
“What happened?” He gently sets his hand on her forehead, and his fingers gently caress her skin lovingly, like a human father would stroke his daughter’s face. And then he turns to me and asks more demandingly, “What happened?”
I lick my lips and finally say, “Kane attacked her.”
His shoulders sink and he starts shaking his head. “You have no idea what consequences this will have, not just for Celia but for all of us.” His gaze turns back toward Celia, and he moves his hands to rest upon her shoulders. “You need to set your hands upon her shoulders so you can help me draw the chaos out of her. That is what has immobilized her. Until we can get her balanced, she won’t be able to move or do anything else.”
Looking at Evan’s serious expression, I feel more ashamed, and I will do whatever it takes to save Celia. I set my hands upon her shoulder and focus with Evan to draw the confusion from within her.
I don’t know how long we fight with the discord, but it seems like forever, and for the first time, I feel this madness spinning around me that exhausts me. I don’t think Evan has much strength, either, considering the way his shoulders sag. He seems to age before my eyes.
But our efforts pay off as Celia’s eyelids flutter open. The mist departs from her blue eyes as she licks her lips weakly.
“What happened?” she asks, her voice soft. She’s having trouble speaking.
Evan and I look at each other, and neither of us is really sure what to say. Finally, he caresses her forehead one more time. “Nothing you need concern yourself with. Lev and I will handle it while you rec
over. You just need to rest to restore your strength.”
She closes her eyes, trusting in what Evan says because Evan has never failed her, unlike me. Evan motions for me to follow him, so I fly after him until we reach my space, where he nervously paces around.
“I don’t understand. What were you thinking when you removed the dagger, Lev? What possessed you? You have no idea what is going to happen because of this.”
In that moment, I feel anger burn inside me, an emotion I’ve rarely ever felt, and the heat of it is so strong it owns me and forces words to come out I don’t even intend to say. “What possessed me? You stole my past—blanketed my memories and left me sitting here with nothing to go on except this idea that, if I just listened to you, everything would be okay. But it was never okay. That’s not what I sensed deep inside, and yet all you would tell me is that it would be okay. It would be okay. It was for the best. Yet, I don’t think any of this has been for the best!”
Evan sinks down next to me. “How did you get your memory back?”
“Theresa helped me,” I admit, not willing to look in his eyes. Instead, I focus on brushing my fingers against each other to give myself a distraction.
He looks at me. “And was it worth getting them back? Was all the pain worth the knowledge of what you have lost?”
I finally say, “Yes.”
It’s not the answer he’s expecting. I know he still believes he did the right thing in purging my memory, but the fact of the matter is that if you love someone, memories of that love don’t die. They never permanently go away. They will come back to you. It may not be a time or place of your own choosing, but they will return.
“Tell me the whole story; I need to know how all of this came about.” His voice is quiet, and he has started looking straight ahead instead of at me, so I start at the beginning when I began associating with Jayzee and the others. Though he says nothing, I can tell by his expression what I’ve done is far worse than I ever could have believed.
When I finish, I look at him. “What do we do now?”
He says, “You do realize that none of them are going to be satisfied with leaving things the way they are right now? They are no longer pure. You used to know this, and I don’t understand why you don’t remember….” His voice trails off as a new thought hits him. “Unless Theresa purposely kept those memories from you because she had planned to use you all the time, knowing what that dagger was capable of.”
I shift uncomfortably against the soft mattress, sensing a truth coming I probably don’t want to hear. “And what is the dagger capable of?”
“It can destroy angels.”
I inhale sharply. I had never thought such a thing could exist. “Can they use it against us?” I fold my arms across my chest.
Evan glances around the room, a flush on his cheeks. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I would have to consult with Turnoc to know for sure what it can do and how it does it. And that would mean revealing I no longer possess the dagger.”
While I don’t even remember Turnoc, I do get the impression admitting such a thing is horrible. “I didn’t mean to set things astray. I only wanted to help Elizabeth.”
Evan stands and starts pacing again. “If the memory blockage didn’t work on you, and you still felt Elizabeth’s presence, what could make you think that by doing the same thing to her, you would be able to fix everything? You yourself said you can’t erase love, and yet you tried just as I did.”
Suddenly looking at things from that perspective only makes me feel so much worse. He’s right. I had tried the exact same thing on her. “All I wanted was for her to have a normal, happy life, not one marred by my absence.”
“But you can’t change things, Lev. She loved you. Even though you never meant to, you fell in love with her, and regardless what you do or what I do, some part of you will love her still. Even thought you knew what you had with her couldn’t last, it didn’t change what you felt for her, and it never will. Ten to one she’s the same way about you. You are never going to be able to take away her pain. She has to learn how to live with it just like you do.”
I try to think of something that will make all of this better, but no words come. It seems as though all I’ve learned about myself is that I have failed so many people—Elizabeth, Evan, Sarah, Jayzee, Celia. The list seems to go on and on.
Evan walks over to me. “I guess I need to fix your memory right.” He shakes his head and sets his hands on either side of my face. He whispers, “Shut your eyes and think of Elizabeth. She is the key.”
I obey him without question. For a moment, it seems nothing happens. Then suddenly I feel all the memories jump inside my head like a million flashbulbs going off at once. It blinds me inside, and I groan as I remember not just the latent images of me with Elizabeth that Theresa hadn’t restored but also all the other moments of my existence, including those early lessons of training both Jayzee and Sarah and tormenting them.
In that moment, I see myself in constant conflict with both Kane and Colin, two angels who had never obeyed completely. They walked the finest line between right and wrong. Now I know that wrong won them over. Still, I have no desire to judge them, as my own failings have surfaced completely, and I can no longer hide from any of them. The truth does not change depending on who tells it. It is fixed, and that is what I measure my intent to—the truth.
“So now what can we do?” I ask, hoping he’s got some kind of suggestion to undo what I’ve done because I don’t know how I’m going to be able to live with my guilt.
“We don’t have time to second-guess whether Kane is keeping the dagger on him or if he’s hiding it. We’re going to have to go directly to him and confront him. This isn’t going to be easy, and you can expect more of the type of attack he used on Celia. If he is that proficient at it, he is very dangerous.”
“Is there any way to defend against that type of attack?” I stare off into space, trying to figure out how to stave off an attack of pure chaos. I would never even have thought of using such as a weapon against other angels, but Kane apparently did, which tells me he spent a lot of time preparing for this, and he is definitely good. I completely fell for it.
“The only defense I know isn’t to react, not to give into it, because when you give into it, the fear takes over and paralyzes you, as we saw with Celia.” He frowns. “Besides, if we don’t get that blade back and he figures out a way to use it against us, which I’m still not sure he can, then things are going to get much worse. I’m going to do some research to find out what the blade’s potential is. I’d just as soon the members of the Triune not know the truth unless we have to tell them.”
I realize my choices are forcing Evan to take a course he would never normally take—hiding things and my shoulders sink even more. “So when do you want to do this?”
Evan says, “Well, we need to give Celia a chance to recover so she can enlighten us about how he’s using the chaos like this, and then we’ll have to go looking for him. So probably tomorrow we’ll settle this one way or another.”
I would say something, anything, but there isn’t anything to say at this point, and I don’t think there is going to be anything to say until we get the dagger back.
Chapter Seventeen
“It’s all kind of fuzzy around the edges,” Celia says, sitting up from the cave floor. She’s still a bit pale, and it worries me because I’m beginning to wonder if she will totally recover. Evan seems to think she will, but I don’t know. What I do know is that if she doesn’t, it’s my fault. All of this is my fault.
“But do you remember the attack? Do you remember what he did?” Evan presses Celia, sitting next to her.
She rubs her hands up and down her arms. She acts like she’s cold, something most angels don’t feel. Then again, I’ve learned not to think there are things we can’t feel because every time I think, I find out the hard way we can feel so much more than what we ever expect, and some of it isn’t good.
&nb
sp; “One moment I was standing there coming towards him because I thought he had the dagger, and the next I see this blur of brilliant light and I feel it pulse into me. There’s pain, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I know what chaos feels like but when that hit me, there was a huge mass that left me terrified.” Celia shivers as she remembers that moment. She looks at Evan. “The next thing I know, I’m waking up here with you leaning over me and Lev standing there, with neither of you wearing happy expressions. What did it do to me?” She turns her focus to me. “You said you were the one who found me. What did you see?”
“You weren’t moving,” I murmur, not really wanting to answer. I don’t even want to think about that image of Celia lying there so still, with her eyes open like that, unblinking and still. “You looked dead. If you had been a human, that’s what they would have believed—that you were dead.”
I walk around Evan’s, staring out at the blackness surrounding us. Although tonight I would love to feel starlight, there are no stars, not that I can see right now. The clouds have obscured them. And so I have to content myself with the darkness which seems to know me better than I know myself these days.
Celia’s frown deepens, and I feel her level of chaos raising slightly, so I start toward her, intending to help her settle it so as not to raise the potential danger again, but before I can get there, Evan has already set his hand on her shoulder, and her fingers reach up and stroke his.
“There’s not going to be an easy way to do this,” he finally says, looking at me. “While I have been trained to shield against chaos, I’m not sure how effective it will be on an assault of this magnitude, and there’s no way we have the time to train you.”
“Then perhaps we should just go. I can take you to the place they’ve been staying.”
Celia licks her lips nervously. “They aren’t going to be there, Lev. By now, they’ve probably headed elsewhere.”
Covenant (Sojourner Book 2) Page 16
