by Ali Cross
Still, I pulled the cord off from around my neck. A sibilant whisper crowded my mind but I ignored it and focused on slipping the necklace over Michael’s head. He swallowed and scrunched his eyes a little before resuming the mindless expression of a sleeper. But I swear I saw the mark on his cheek fade. Just a little.
I placed my hand over the charm, feeling Michael’s cold skin beneath it and closed my eyes. I’d pray if I were that kind of girl. Instead, I thought for a moment. Wished.
My cold hand warmed where it rested against his skin.
Warm.
His skin was warm.
Last night it had been so, so cold. Cold like mine.
“Cornelius!” I shrieked, wanting to run, to jump, but not wanting to move my hand, to lose the connection, however tenuous it might be.
Longinus scrambled into the room first, looking around as if there’d be someone to fight, someone to kill. He looked a little disappointed when he discovered it was only me. Cornelius hurried to the bed.
“What is it? Did he wake?”
I hesitated for a moment, but finally I lifted my hand and pulled it back. “He’s warm. I think. I think he’s warm.” My words stumbled over each other, rising in pitch with each new word.
Cornelius paused, like he might discourage me from harboring false hope. But he reached out and placed his hand on Michael’s shoulder. He glanced at me, his eyes wide with amazement, then looked back down at his hand as if it had burst into flames or something. “He is warm,” he said, his breath catching in his throat. “He’s warm!”
He looked at me and I laughed, a little strained, a little out of practice, but there it was. And when Cornelius joined me, we both laughed together—even while part of my brain whispered that while Michael might be warm, I never would be.
But Michael knew what I was and had loved me anyway. Once.
“Did he wake?” Cornelius asked when our laughter died away in a sour rumble.
I shook my head. “I put my mother’s necklace on him. Could that be it?” I pulled the edge of the blanket down enough that he could see the pendant lying on Michael’s chest. “And look—isn’t his mark fading?”
Cornelius’ eyes tightened and I could see him wrestling with whether he should humor me or not. He leaned over and looked at the side of Michael’s face anyway. Then he pushed up Michael’s sleeves and peered at the (definitely fading) marks on his wrists. “You may be right. I hadn’t dared hope such a thing could be possible.” The awe in his voice left me shaking with hope. Could Michael really come back? Could he really?
“But you will no longer be protected.” Cornelius studied my face, searched my eyes.
I was an expert liar so I met his gaze square on. “I don’t matter. Only he does.”
Someone else might have tried to convince me otherwise. Extol my value, my worth. But Cornelius gazed at me for a moment before nodding his head and returning his attention to Michael.
“Well, this is a blessing,” Cornelius muttered.
I reached out tentatively, my hand hovering over Michael’s forehead, waiting for Cornelius or Longinus to stop me. They didn’t. I let it fall ever-so-gently to his short-cropped hair, then swept my hand over his head. It was the barest of touches, but Michael gasped, arching his back, the tendons in his neck popping out.
I snatched my hand back.
“What did you do?” Cornelius asked—not exactly accusing, but close.
“I-I-nothing. I just touched him.”
Cornelius glanced at my hands, but I’d shoved them both under my armpits where the right one radiated burning cold like never before.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” He spoke softly, care coloring his words with warmth, but he still looked at my hands, hiding beneath my arms. “Are you all right, child?”
“Fine. I’m fine,” I snapped.
I’m fine.
Fine.
Fine.
Or maybe I wasn’t.
My right arm burned like it had been flash-frozen.
Maybe I wasn’t fine at all.
chapter twenty-six
Michael
I could hear her voice. Feel her presence in the room. I longed to reach out to her, but I felt frozen as surely as if I’d been encased in ice. I’d been cold for so long. And I’d had many dreams of my love, though none as real as this.
She touched me, in the dream, and sent a chorus of screaming shards of ice singing through my already frozen veins. It hurt. It burned—but I wanted more. Hungered for her touch, even if it killed me. I wondered if I would ever get used to Hell, if the warmth of Asgard would ever leave me entirely. If I would ever stop dreaming of Desi.
With fervent desire I prayed it not to be so. I’d endure an eternity of freezing torture to see her in my dreams.
And then something new entered my mind.
A flash of golden heat followed by a delicious warmth that radiated from a point near the center of my collarbone. A feeling like warm honey spread through my veins—a small thing against the block of ice I’d become. Still, I felt my body relax a little for the first time in forever. Felt Loki’s iron grip on my soul release. Just a fraction. The smallest of concessions. But it was enough.
I took the first truly deep breath in what seemed like centuries. Even in sleep I could feel myself sink deeper into the bed on which I slept, feel the sigh of release.
“Cornelius!” Desi screamed.
My heart leapt, called to serve her, to care for her, but my body lay stone-still. This was not the dream I usually had, though I often dreamed of her need and my inability to protect her. Because I lived in Hell now. A place Desi had abandoned for me.
I felt a gentle touch—not Desi’s—but I couldn’t rouse myself. The murmur of voices hummed around me and I struggled to make sense of this new dream—though I began to suspect it to not be a dream at all.
When she touched my head, I knew.
Her fingers burned and tore into me like an ice pick. I felt like a drowning man who gasps for air only to be filled with water. I craved her touch, had waited for centuries to feel it again, but her touch would kill me while it fulfilled me.
My body lurched beneath her hand—the electric shock awakening my fuzzy brain.
She withdrew and I heard Cornelius ask her what she did.
But she hadn’t done anything at all.
“Are you all right, child?”
“Fine,” my beloved said, though she lied.
Because the burning ice that filled her veins was not her choosing—I knew its bite, its flavor. I’d lived with its constant presence since the moment Loki drew me down to Hell.
My love was not fine. Whether she knew it or not, Hell had reclaimed her.
chapter twenty-seven
Desi
For hours I sat with Michael, afraid to touch him, but desperate to do so. I leaned forward on my elbows, my left hand mere millimeters away from his, my right hand balled in a fist on the edge of the bed.
My eyes didn’t leave Michael’s face.
He continued to grow warmer, until he radiated heat like he used to. His skin grew less pale, but the mark didn’t fade any more than it had. At least it looked less troublesome now that his skin was no longer so deathly pale. No longer as pale as my own.
I stared at him and wished. Wished I could twine my fingers in his soft curls—but my touch seemed to hurt him. And Father had cut them all off, anyway.
Wished I could touch him.
Wished I could kiss him.
Thoughts of kissing him had captured my mind until someone touched my back. I jumped and my chair toppled over. Everyone looked at Michael, afraid the noise had disturbed him, but he slumbered on.
“Whoa, princess.” James put his hand on my back again while Miri leaned forward and took my hand. She was always touching me, even when I burned so cold, so untouchable.
“I’m okay. Look.” It was Michael they’d come to see, after all. Michael they should see.
“Oh ...” Miri breathed, moving to the other side of the bed where she got close to Michael’s face. She put her hand to his forehead like I had done, smoothed over his scalp, like I had done. But Michael remained calm, peaceful. The complete opposite of what happened when I touched him.
“What’s this?” Miri asked, picking up my mother’s pendant. “You took it off?”
I felt her concern flow outward like the waves of the sea. I shrugged.
“He needed it more than me. Plus,” I said, pointing to the mark on his cheek. “It made him warm up, and made the marks fade a bit, too.”
“Yesssss,” she drawled. I glanced at her and saw her face in a wide smile. James had a hand on her lower back as he studied Michael, his expression soft. They loved him. No matter what happened to me, he’d still have them. Plus, he could always go back to Asgard.
A part of me knew he never would. No matter that I wasn’t good enough for him. That he could never trust me again. Never love me again. I knew that even though I’d broken his heart, he wouldn’t really leave me. At least, that’s what I hoped.
“Does Cornelius think he’ll be okay?” James asked. The front door opened with a creak and I heard Knowles come in, talking animatedly with Cornelius.
A moment later he stood in the doorway to the small room. We were already crowded—a priest isn’t expected to have company in his bedroom, after all.
“His Claiming?” Knowles asked without any preamble. He stared at Michael, but I knew he spoke to me.
“Fading—do you think it will go away?”
He glanced my way, then pushed to the front, leaning down to look more closely at the mark on Michael’s face. I slipped out of the chair and stepped back without question. I probably shouldn’t have been there anyway.
“He’s warm—what did you do?” He turned on me and I felt a momentary flash of irritation. Why does everyone keep asking me that?
“I didn’t do anything.” My guilt—because I’d done everything; I’d done it all—flared in my heart like a beacon.
I opened my mouth again, then snapped it shut. There would never be enough words to excuse all I had done.
“She put this on him,” Miri said, picking up the pendant a little and holding it to the light. “Cornelius says he began to grow warm after that.”
“You took it off?” Knowles demanded. Again I bristled beneath his accusatory glare.
“I thought he needed it more than me.” I picked up the chair to . . . I don’t know what. I set it back on the floor with a solid thud, and turned for the door.
“Desi, I am sorry. It’s only—you need its protection, too.” He managed to soften his voice, but when I faced him his expression still held that same hard edge. His Shadow lurked dangerously close to the surface.
“He needs it more than me.”
Knowles held my gaze for a moment before nodding, somewhat reluctantly, and returned his attention back to Michael.
Cornelius shuffled into the room and took Knowles by the elbow. He whispered something to him, then the two of them left, closing the door behind them. Miri and James didn’t seem to notice the exchange.
But I’d heard every word.
“We need to talk,” Cornelius had said. “When she touched him, he—well, let’s just say I am concerned.”
I didn’t sit back down. And I didn’t listen in on their conversation in the front room—though I could have.
I rubbed my arm, wishing it would be warm.
Wishing I wasn’t always wishing, and that I could be the girl that Michael could love.
At some point someone ordered pizza and set a plate of it on my lap, with a popping Coke on the nightstand. I ate and drank carelessly, my eyes never straying from Michael’s face. I knew what Knowles thought of me. How he thought I couldn’t be good for Michael. How he disapproved of our relationship. He wanted me to be as lonely and bitter as he. Well, he’d get his wish—but not yet.
I’d leave, but only when Michael awoke—only when I knew for sure he’d be okay.
Then I’d get out of his way, leave him alone. It would be better for everyone that way. I hissed as the cold bit through my wrist and made my arm burn. I rubbed it and hoped no one noticed. Miri chattered away, telling Michael all of the school gossip as if he really cared. As if they were having a conversation. As if everything was the way it used to be.
Miri and James eventually left, and then a long time afterward, Knowles left too. Cornelius draped a blanket over my shoulders, but he didn’t speak.
The apartment grew dark and quiet, until only the sounds of Cornelius’ gentle snores from the other room punctuated the night. I leaned forward, my forehead resting on the edge of the bed. I wasn’t tired, only weary.
My own thoughts were torture and my resolve waned. It takes a lot of effort to maintain a hateful attitude to one’s self. Plus, I was so cold. Shivering cold. At first I thought Hell was near, that Father had come to enquire after his servant, but it wasn’t him. It was just me. My right arm ached with a biting, vicious cold. Maybe the heat of my Halo had made me less resistant to the cold, I don’t know.
I settled into a dark and lonely silence, both in the apartment and in my mind. Silence breathed all around me, inside and out.
When his fingers touched mine, and not because I had moved, I stopped breathing. Willed the rushing in my ears to quiet. I waited, hoping, and.... There it was again. His finger twitched, reaching toward mine.
I grasped on to him while he curled his fingers around mine, and my forehead pressed against his and my name was on his lips and
he loved me.
He loved me.
chapter twenty-eight
Desi
When morning came, I found myself curled against Michael’s side, a big, downy comforter pulled over the both of us. Lucy’s comforter.
I jolted away, his arm falling weakly from where it had draped over my shoulders, and fell onto the floor.
I was so cold—he was so cold. Cold like death. Like Hell. “Michael!” I couldn’t lose him now, not when he’d just returned to me against every possible odd.
He murmured sleepily and turned his face away, the sunlight peeking through one side of the drawn drapes casting a line of light across his profile. While I watched, he sighed and I swear his face took on a more golden hue, as if the sunshine fed him pieces of heaven. Healing pieces of home.
I stood and carefully tucked the comforter around him on the narrow bed, and backed out of the room. It took all my effort to drag my eyes away from him, to turn and walk into the hallway, leaving Michael behind.
“Good morning,” Cornelius said, getting up from his chair and stepping into the tiny kitchen. “Coffee?”
I nodded, raking my eyes over the place, looking for . . . what, I don’t know. Longinus watched me, something like concern in his eyes. Cornelius pressed a hot mug into my hands and directed me toward the couch. I sat and huddled around my cup, soaking up the hot steam. No one spoke.
“He woke,” I finally mumbled into my cup. Inexplicably, shame washed over me and I set the mug down on the coffee table. I didn’t deserve to be warm, I reminded myself.
Cornelius, perceptive beyond his humanity, picked up my mug and pressed it into my hand, placing my fingers around the ceramic surface. “We know. Now stop beating yourself up.” When I glanced up at him, startled, his kind eyes regarded me. “You may have cried out a time or two in your sleep.” His smile took on a different flavor, one of great tenderness that tugged painfully on my heart. Tears pricked the back of my eyes, but I blinked them away. He tucked my unruly hair behind my ear. “He talked in his sleep, too.”
I flinched, but Cornelius kept his hand on me, grounding me, calming me.
“He said he loved you.”
He loves me.
I stared into Cornelius’ eyes, looking for the catch, for the hammer to fall. But there was none. Only love. Only acceptance. Cornelius took my free hand and squeezed. “My, your hand is cold, child.�
� He turned my hand over and looked at my palm, my fingers, the back of my wrist. He started to push up my sleeve, but I pulled my hand away, pretending to need both hands to bring my cup to my mouth.
“Who brought the comforter? It’s Lucy’s ...”
“James brought it, bless him. He knew my scant supply would be taxed with the extra guests.” He chuckled and Longinus actually grunted—possibly as close to a laugh as I’d ever heard from him. “He returned late last night with several blankets, including that one, in tow. We took it into you, and that’s when we found you . . .” His cheeks flushed and he cleared his throat. When his silence stretched on for a beat too long I looked up and found him peering intently at me. “He’s going to be all right, Desolation. He will be all right.” I read his eyes, his mouth, his truth. Michael will be all right.
Finally, I sighed, long and deep, and drank in the aroma and warmth of my deliciously dark cup of coffee. Everyone else complained that Cornelius made heart attacks in a cup, his coffee was so strong, but it was perfect for me. I finally took a long drought and closed my eyes while the heat worked its way down my throat, melting a little of the ice that had taken up residence there.
“So where is everyone?” I finally asked, leaning back into the threadbare couch and looking up at Cornelius. Longinus took a knife from the bookcase beside him (why there was a six-inch blade stashed on a priest’s bookshelf, I had no idea) and began swiping a rounded stone over its surface.
Shhhhtttt. Shhhhttttt. Shhhhtttt. Over and over again.
Cornelius chuckled. “Why, it’s mid-morning, my dear. Miri and Reginald were here before classes began, but we thought it best not to wake you.” I snorted when he said Reginald—I so couldn’t see Knowles as anything other than, well, Knowles.
