Feather (Angels of Elysium Book 1)

by Olivia Wildenstein

  As she came out of the office by the guild’s front door, I studied her expression to figure out whether she’d been informed about last night.

  “Please don’t tell me I still have tomato sauce on my face.” She scrubbed her chin.

  “What?”

  “You’re looking at me funny.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” I lowered my eyes to the yellow bill she placed into my hand. “There are no sauce stains on your face, Ophan.”

  “Thank Elysium. That would’ve been embarrassing. Especially considering Seraph Asher stopped by this morning.”

  “He did?”

  “Oui.”

  “Why?”

  “Beats me. He trounced right through the Atrium and out the doors. Didn’t even say hi or smile, which is strange, because he’s usually so friendly.”

  Was his charm a disguise he donned to enhance his appeal?

  “Are you interested in him, Ophan?”

  “Me?” She let out a chirp of laughter that made a sparrow pause mid-note. “Don’t get me wrong. If I were attracted to men, possibly. Not only is the Seraph not my type, but also, he lives in Elysium, and I love it here.” She smiled at me. “Once you ascend, you’ll see that the human world is more . . . full. Diverse. Fun.” She shifted her eyes toward the octagon of brilliant blue sky over the Atrium and dropped her voice, “Everyone’s so solemn up there.”

  “Ophan Pauline!”

  A matronly angel with topaz feathers and graying hair appeared in the doorway of the office.

  Pauline’s blue eyes sprang wide. “Uh-oh,” she said on an exhale, but soon, her easy smile returned. “I’ll be right with you, Eleanor. Just filling a Fletching’s pocket.”

  “And mind,” the older angel grumbled.

  “Bye now, Leigh,” Pauline singsonged. “Have a beautiful day!”

  I wasn’t sure how beautiful it would be. After all, I was about to visit someone who despised me more than the Seven. The irony of my situation wasn’t lost on me.

  Hooking my bag to my shoulder, I set off by foot toward La Cour des Démons, indebted to Celeste for forcing me into espadrilles with wedge heels instead of the strappy sandals with toothpick heels I’d wanted to wear. As I wandered through the winding streets, my long black skirt swished around my ankles. I looked like I was going to a funeral—my own. At least, my orange hair added some color to my otherwise all-black outfit. Never imagined I would’ve found something pleasant to say about my hair. Then again, I never imagined I would argue with an archangel about the celestial system.

  I walked through a bustling, open-air marketplace lined with buckets of rainbow-hued flowers and crates of juicy produce. I exchanged a ten-euro bill for two baskets of plump raspberries. After placing one delicately inside my roomy handbag, I ate the contents of the other on the way to Jarod’s home, and it restored some sweetness to my presently bleak life.

  When I arrived in front of the blood-red doors, I hesitated to slip the bill under them and retrace my steps, but the niggling feeling in my shoulder blades spurred me to ring. As I waited, the memory of smoldering Jarod walloped me upside the head. Ugh. I’d conveniently forgotten about it.

  The lock clicked, and I pressed my palm against the lacquered wood. The cast-iron lamp flared to life, vanquishing the darkness gathered beneath the covered porch. How I wished it could vanquish the darkness crowding my mind, too.

  I licked my teeth. When I felt a little seed in the seam of my front ones, I licked them again, the superficial undertaking momentarily sloughing off some of my stress. To think I’d grinned at a gaggle of kids chasing each other around a gated playground. Most of them hadn’t paid attention to me, but a little girl with crooked pigtails had stared steadily at me.

  It had felt as though her soul were judging mine, which was impossible, because when souls were re-implanted into wombs, the memories of their past lives and of their time in Elysium or Abaddon were erased.

  As I crossed the courtyard, a new thought barreled into the others. What if the fault in the celestial scales extended to the rest of our system? My fist, which I’d raised to knock, froze in midair. What if the claims some humans made about remembering past lives weren’t fabricated? What if a few memories slipped through the cracks?

  Even though my knuckles hadn’t made contact with the door, Amir drew it open.

  “Muriel told me you’d be stopping by.” His nose seemed even more crooked in broad daylight.

  Muriel? Right . . . The baking lesson. Hadn’t I told her I wouldn’t be able to take her up on it? Some parts of the night had stayed crisp, and others had started to blur. Unfortunately, it was the parts I wished to forget that I couldn’t.

  “She’s in the pantry,” Amir said when I still hadn’t moved or spoken. “Told me to send you right through when you arrived.”

  “Is Jarod—is he here?”

  Amir leveled his dark eyes on my bag. “Monsieur Adler has asked that no one disturb him until this evening.” I started to slide my bag down my arm to hand it over when he said, “You may keep your bag.”

  Huh. I bent my arm, and the bag settled in the crook of my elbow. “Well then, I guess I’ll go find Muriel.”

  I walked past him, then crossed the dining room, keeping my eyes on the tapestry depicting a violent hunt complete with snarling hounds and deer with mangled necks and bloodied fur. It beat looking at the mural of innocent, blushing cherubs.

  I gritted my teeth, trying to squelch my growing rancor. I didn’t want to become an embittered person like Jarod. That would just make me unhappy. Besides, not all angels were bad. Just some. Just like humans.

  The checkered marble foyer was empty except for the bodyguard standing vigil next to the dining room.

  I glanced up the stairs, wondering if Jarod was in his bedroom or in his study. “Muriel’s expecting me,” I ended up saying even though the guard hadn’t asked.

  He gave me a perfunctory nod, his gaze barely scraping over me as though he’d been warned not to make eye contact after what had happened to the waiter. Why had Jarod even cared about who’d looked at me? He’d already known what I was back then.

  He’d already hated me.

  When the man made no move to block my path, I walked toward the pantry and pulled the concealed door open. My mouth watered at the smell of caramelizing onions and woodsy thyme. Jarod was lucky to have someone in his life who could create such delicious aromas.

  I set my bag down on the pantry table, removed the paper-wrapped offering stained with juice from the bruised fruit, and carried them through another small passageway that gave onto a kitchen that couldn’t be called anything but grandiose.

  The floor was covered in weathered mosaics depicting a fleur-de-lis—the symbol of French monarchy. Did the house date back to that time in history, or had Isaac Adler purchased the tiny tiles and installed them in his kitchen? A strip of glass along the top of the far wall let in a bar of sunlight that reflected on the garland of copper pans dangling over an island which resembled an outsized butcher’s block.

  “Ma chérie, you arrived just in time.” Muriel appeared from another little passageway.

  I couldn’t help but smile at her endearment. I extended the little basket. “I bought you some raspberries.”

  “T’es un ange.”

  My muscles seized up. As she circled the island and eased the packet I was crinkling out of my hands, I gaped at her. Had she meant you’re an angel literally or figuratively?

  She selected a plump berry and popped it into her mouth, which she’d reddened with lipstick. “Hmm . . . une vraie merveille.” Hmm . . . delicious. She smiled, and it settled my nerves. If she knew what I was, she wouldn’t smile at me. “Merci.”

  I shrugged. “It’s nothing, Muriel.”

  “No one has ever bought me raspberries, so it is something to me.”

  My wary heart slowed, and I returned her smile.

  “Are you ready to learn how to make sablés?”

  It hit me that there was
nowhere else I’d rather have been than in this serene kitchen in the company of this patient and warm woman. After all, I no longer had a sinner to reform; I no longer had missions to undertake or wings to complete.

  I had absolutely nothing to do.

  Instead of feeling bereft, I felt unfettered.

  Chapter 31

  I was removing the first batch of cookies from the oven when the kitchen’s doorway filled with the shape of a body. I almost dropped the tray. By some miracle, I managed to slide it onto the butcher block island, my hands shaking inside the oven mitts.

  “Finally taking me up on cooking classes, Jarod?” Muriel said, slicing a roll of chilled, salted chocolate dough into perfect disks.

  Gaze affixed to me, he said, “Not a chance of that ever happening, Mimi.” A smirk played on his lips, and I knew exactly what he was thinking . . . that I was a piece of gum he’d stepped on, sticking tiresomely to his person.

  “Thank God I found myself a good disciple then,” Muriel said, sliding me a wink.

  “Still can’t get Amir in here?”

  “The problem with that man isn’t getting him in here; it’s getting him out of here. He inhales all of my cooking.”

  “He’s part giant,” Jarod said, sticking his hands into the pockets of his suit trousers, which he wore with a tucked white button-down opened at the collar, but no jacket.

  Muriel laughed. “He is, isn’t he?”

  Their good-natured banter felt like being chained under Damocles’s sword, conscious it was about to skewer me yet unable to move out of the way.

  “What brings you to my kitchen, Leigh?” He caressed the syllable of my name instead of deforming it, surely trying to lure me into a false sense of security or to maintain a pleasant appearance in front of Muriel.

  “Baking cookies,” I said, nerves brimming.

  His smirk turned into a smile full of perfect teeth that seemed almost phosphorescent set against his dark afternoon shadow. “You don’t say. And who are you baking cookies for?”

  “Not for you,” I said before realizing how rude that sounded, so I amended my words with, “Because you don’t like desserts.”

  His eyes sparked.

  “Oh, flûte. I forgot to do something.” Muriel wiped her hands on a striped kitchen towel. “I’ll be right back.” She walked down the passageway she’d appeared from earlier, then turned and vanished up what I imagined were stairs, since I could hear her thick heels clacking against cement.

  I willed her to come back, but she didn’t. When I turned back, Jarod was circling the island. I tried to reassure myself that since his hands were still in his pockets, he wasn’t planning on strangling me. When he bent at the waist, I backed up.

  He inhaled the steam rising from the deflating cookies. “I told you I was a lost cause. Yet you’re back.”

  “I just came to return your money.”

  His gaze slid to the cookies. “And you stumbled into an apron on your way to me?”

  My lips parted, unsure how to interpret his question. It sounded like he was teasing me . . .

  He was so close I could no longer smell the sweet aroma lifting from the tray. All I could smell was him. His stare turned so intense I checked my arms poking from the oven mitts to make sure I hadn’t lit up like a string of fairy lights. My skin was blotchy and smeared with flour, but thankfully not shimmering.

  When I looked up, my chin bumped into Jarod’s fingers. I was so startled by his touch that I forgot to breathe.

  “You had some flour on your chin,” he said, lowering his hand, rubbing his thumb against his index finger to get rid of the powder, which had transferred from my skin to his.

  I touched my chin, which felt as hot as the baking tray, unsure what to make of his kindly gesture until I recalled his total and utter disgust.

  “Let me—I’ll just go grab . . .” I backed away from him, leaving my sentence aborted. I hurried to the pantry, dug out the yellow bill, then returned to Jarod, and brandished the money. “Here.”

  He recoiled as though I were offering him a live snake. “I told you I didn’t want it back.”

  “And I told you I couldn’t keep it.”

  His mouth thinned. When he didn’t take the money, I laid it on the island beside the tray. There. It was done. I wouldn’t lose another feather, which was ironic considering I stood to lose my entire wings.

  I glanced around me, then down at the cookies, realizing all that was left for me to do now was leave. “How’s your back?”

  “My back?”

  “You were bleeding last night.”

  “Right. My back’s fine. Are you done baking?”

  My throat constricted. Swallowing, I nodded and slid the oven mitts off. I laid them beside the blackened tray and glanced toward the passageway that had swallowed Muriel.

  “Can you tell her I said”—I cleared my throat, fixing my gaze to his Adam’s apple—“thank you?”

  “Your voice seems to be working fine.”

  I blinked up at him.

  “You should tell her yourself.”

  “Oh. Um. Okay.”

  I started to turn when he asked, “How well do you play chess?”

  “Chess?”

  “You know . . . the board game where you have to defeat the king?”

  “I know what chess is, Jarod, but I thought you wanted me gone.”

  He wedged his hands back into his trouser pockets. “I do. Eventually.”

  Why did he want to play chess with me? Surely, his motives were twisted. And then it hit me. “It’s not going to cost me any feathers.”

  “What?”

  “If you’re trying to mutilate my appendages—”

  He sputtered, and then he laughed, and it wasn’t dark and slimy but melodic and deep. I had to remind myself that he was laughing at me.

  “Ruining my wings isn’t a game,” I said, pinching my shoulders together as though to safeguard my invisible wings from Jarod, even though I’d ruined them far more than he ever could.

  And for him of all people.

  He sobered up immediately, and then one of his eyes twitched. “I . . . I . . .” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I . . .” Jarod at a loss for words? That was a first. “I didn’t suggest playing as a way to hurt you. But if you don’t want to—if you’d rather leave . . .”

  The look he wore was so at odds with his usual, intractable confidence that my protective stance slackened. “I thought you couldn’t stand the sight of me.”

  His hand was still on his neck, but he was no longer scouring his skin. “Last night, I felt cornered. I don’t like to feel cornered.”

  “I didn’t mean to corner you, Jarod. Or to scare you.”

  His lips quirked into a lopsided smile. “Scare me? Don’t give yourself too much credit.”

  “Why did you leave, then?” I twisted my long hair and let it unravel over my shoulder, its brassy shine a close match to the copper jam basin, which hung over the kitchen island.

  “Because I needed to think, and for some reason”—he reached over and slid the lock I’d been toying with between his fingers—“I can’t do that around you.”

  What was it with him and my hair? “Is it my hair color that distracts you?”

  “Hmm. I can’t decide if it’s orange or pink.”

  “It’s sort of both,” I said, watching the heavy fringe of lashes shadowing his eyes.

  “Rose gold.” As he ran the strand through his fingers, his knuckles grazed the skin of my collarbone and then the side of my breast.

  I stepped back, and my hair fanned out from his fingers and settled over my heaving chest. “Why do you enjoy making me uncomfortable?”

  “That wasn’t my intent.”

  I pushed my hair over my shoulder and crossed my arms. “What was your intent?”

  “I’m not quite sure anymore.” His gaze stroked up my throat. “Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask. I might not answer.”

  His l
ips quirked at my response. “Why did your skin emit light last night?”

  I moistened my dry lips. Out of all the questions, he had to ask that one.

  One of his eyebrows lifted. “So?”

  “I’m choosing not to answer.” I squeezed my fingers around my biceps and took another step back, as though if I stepped far enough away, the question would sink into the void between us and vanish.

  He smirked. “Is it very terrible?”

  “No, it’s not terrible.”

  “Then, why can’t you tell me?”

  “Because I’m not allowed to disclose information about us to humans,” I whispered.

  He tilted his head to the side, and a curl of dark hair fell into his probing eyes. “Except I’m not entirely . . . human.”

  “Please drop it.”

  “Your silence, coupled with the high color in your cheeks, speaks volumes.” He stalked toward me, and I steeled my spine to avoid bolting. “I think I have it all figured out.”

  “It happens when we’re tired.” The lie rushed out to cover the truth.

  I gritted my teeth, anticipating the cost of saving face. Even though I didn’t gasp when the Ishim robbed me of another feather, sweat beaded on my brow. Jarod’s smirk turned into a frown when he caught the glint of the feather drifting toward the mosaic. The loss should’ve saddened me, but I was way too busy seething to care.

  “What . . . no gloating?” I snapped.

  He stared at the fragment of my being rocking beside my espadrilles. “I’m sorry, Feather.”

  I doubted he was. When the downy barbs began to blur, I lifted my gaze toward the window, hoping the bar of sunlight would burn away the annoyance pooling behind my lids.

  “Are you going to pick it up?” His voice was soft, probably a distortion caused by the rushing in my ears.

  “No.” I was afraid of reliving a significant episode in view of my precarious state.

  “Does it hurt when it detaches itself?”