Women. Can’t trust them. Can’t bond with them. Can’t live without ‘em, even for a minute.
Jada’s eyes darkened. “As an angel of life, you could have saved them both. Many of my people are dead because you wouldn’t help. Why would I trust you with the pearl, or honor you by giving you anything?”
Angel of life? Ian studied Alice, surprised by the news. If she was an angel of life, how was it that she had such difficulty staying alive? His mate was getting more complex by the moment, and a part of him liked it. She was a miasma of secrets and barriers that needed to be unraveled, and he was the guy to do it. Challenges kept the day interesting, and as long as she let him get up close and personal with her, it was good.
“Why should you trust me?” Alice stiffened. “Because you need that pearl too badly to do anything else but trade for it.”
Jada stared at her. “You know nothing about us.”
“I know enough.”
For a long moment, Jada said nothing. Then she surged to her feet, anger crackling off her. “You are my guests tonight. Tomorrow you will die, or I will bargain with you. It is my decision.” Then from the folds of the harness that covered her breasts, she pulled out a small thin stick.
Ian swore at the sight of one of Cardiff’s wands and dove across Alice to shield her, but it was too late. A razor-thin stream of light hit them both. Turquoise light swelled around them, and when it was gone, they were no longer in the ballroom.
They were in a small, barren chamber with no windows, no doors, and no way out.
*
Two hours after being transported into the cell and searching for a way out, Ian finally had to accept the fact that escape was not going to happen. Feeling caged and impotent, he paced across the floor, clasping his hands behind his head, trying to mask his frustration.
Their prison was small, maybe ten feet in diameter, with an arched ceiling that went up at least twenty feet. The walls, floor, and ceiling were smooth oyster shell, but must have been protected by magic because his mace was powerless against it. The only furnishings were a cot and tiny bathroom, as if it were designed to keep prisoners for a long time.
They were in jail, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit. “There’s no way out.”
Alice was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall, her forearms draped over her knees. She had accepted their fate long before he had. “I know. We’ll have to wait until morning.”
The frustration of inactivity gnawed at Ian. He didn’t like being incapacitated. Being trapped in the small room reminded him too much of the months he’d spent in the Order’s dungeon, fighting for his sanity.
Shaking out his arms, he paced restlessly, needing to do something to further their mission. For a split second, he debated trying to reach out to Ry and have Kane teleport in, but he quickly dismissed that. Turning himself over to the Order would not get them to Cardiff. He would not give up that easily. Plus, he suspected they were too far away anyway. Since he wasn’t blood-bonded with either of them, the range of their telepathic communication was limited. “We need a plan for the morning,” he said. “Tell me what you know about these people.”
“As I said, they are fallen angels. They were originally in human form, but they lost that when they were cast aside.” Alice shrugged. “They were once like me, Ian. Then they did something terrible and were banished.”
“What kind of terrible?” Those hadn’t been women with good hearts out there. He’d felt their need to destroy him, their thirst for his pain and suffering. If he hadn’t sensed that about them, he wouldn’t have been able to fight to kill. But he’d realized instantly that it was his death or theirs, and the choice had been made.
“It depends.” She leaned her head back and studied him warily. “But once an angel loses her status, it isn’t just her body that decays. It’s her mind and her soul. They become what they chose to be when they broke the rules.” She bit her lip. “Chloe was brand new. She was still so close to her humanity. I don’t even think she is full angel. Maybe a half or a quarter. She doesn’t belong here. She’s not even dead yet, Ian. What kind of suffering is she going through right now?”
Ian reached the end of the room by the foot of the cot and turned back. “I’m the one who delivered the blow. I take responsibility.” Once he’d seen Chloe’s humanity after he’d struck her, he’d replayed that fight again and again in his head, haunted by the fact that he had made a mistake and struck an innocent. But no matter how many times he revisited the moment that he’d struck her, he was always absolutely certain that there had been not even a whisper of decency in the foe he’d been fighting. She had become something else in that battle, or been possessed by it. But how was that possible? He was a highly experienced warrior, taught from day one to know who was the enemy and who was the innocent. During the battle, Chloe had not been an innocent.
What had happened out there?
He knew there would be no answers tonight, and solving the mystery of the Mageaan wasn’t his mission. He had to stay focused. “We’re not leaving without directions to Warwick’s,” he said. “We have to convince Jada she needs that pearl.” He looked over at her. “Why do they need that jewel, Alice?”
“The pearl of Lycanth can save an angel’s soul,” she said, sounding too tired to play games anymore. “It’s like a get out of jail free card. One soul, one pearl. Only three exist. I have…had one of them.”
He whistled under his breath. “No wonder they would want it.” He nodded with satisfaction. “We can leverage this. There’s no chance she’s going to let us go without giving her the pearl.”
“She might. The pearl of Lycanth will send the angel straight to hell if she doesn’t have a pure heart.” She looked wearily at Ian. “Is she willing to take the chance? Does she look like someone who has a pure heart? Even life as a Mageaan is better than hell.”
Ian had sensed the darkness in Jada, and in all the creatures he’d fought. There hadn’t been a pure heart among them, at least not during the fight. But then he thought of the one Alice hadn’t let him kill, the one who had chosen not to eat them. He thought of Chloe, who had clearly been an innocent once she was out of the battle. Was there some kind of humanity left in those creatures or not? He wished he knew.
“They’ll be ready for you this time,” Alice said. “Your fighting ability caught them by surprise, but you’ve revealed yourself. If Jada chooses to kill us, she now knows what it will take.”
Ian ground his jaw. “I have more than what I showed today.”
“She commands the oceans, Ian. You may have more, but she has everything.” Alice pressed her hands to her face. “We really might die tomorrow.”
“I won’t allow it.” Despite his claim, however, he was grimly aware that without his team to support him, there were limits to what he could defeat. But if he called them to aid him, he would lose the chance to go after Cardiff, and he would die the same death as his father. The Order would come to retrieve Alice, not to join him on a mission to find Cardiff.
If he could prove Cardiff was the one threatening the Order, they would help. Or, if they already knew it was Cardiff and had chosen to block him from the mission anyway, then he’d have to prove that he was sane enough to take on his personal enemy. Either way, calling them in now meant he’d get the boot. But he didn’t like being without his team. It was what he was bred for.
“I don’t know if I can come back again if I die,” she said. “It was hard this time.”
Ian swore at the reminder that it wasn’t simply his life and his mission at stake. Could he risk Alice like that by not asking the team for help? Shit. He had to. His obligation was bigger than a single woman. But how could he risk her? Scowling, he walked away, giving her his back as he paced the room. “If I call in the Order as backup, we will be unstoppable. No chance Jada will be able to kill us.” He left the words hanging in the air, offering them to her.
For a moment, Alice was silent. “They’ll take me to
their mansion.”
“They will.”
“They’ll take you off Warwick.”
“They will.” Ian didn’t turn to face her. He simply waited.
After a heavy moment of silence, she spoke. “I would rather die than give up. Don’t call them.”
He spun to face her, but her eyes were closed and her head was resting back against the wall. The body language of a woman too exhausted to cope. “You’re sure?”
She nodded. “It has to be us, Ian. We give it our all and either die or succeed. I can’t walk away, and neither can you.”
Grim resolution flooded Ian, but with it was a deep admiration for the woman before him. Her bravery, her commitment to her sister…she was like a ray of white light shining into his darkness. “I’m in,” he said.
She managed a faint smile. “It’s settled, then.”
“Yeah.” Ian resumed his pacing, his mind working hard now as he tried to predict all possible scenarios for the morning, and to establish a plan for each one. He had an hour or two to plan, and then he had to go into his healing sleep and regain his strength for tomorrow.
“Can you stop pacing?” Alice sounded tired. “You’re making me dizzy with all your circling.”
The weariness in her voice broke through his focus. He swore when he saw how pale her face was, and how drawn her features were. “You okay?”
Her head was still propped up against the wall, her green eyes at half-mast. “I killed a woman, Ian. I killed someone. I felt her life bleed out the moment I did it.”
Ian remembered the first day he’d taken a life. It was never easy, even in self-defense. “You had no choice,” he said, walking over to her. He crouched down in front of her and brushed a lock of her hair back from her face. “You did good. It’s my fault you had to defend yourself. I should have been able to keep you safe.”
“You were keeping me safe. You were keeping hundreds of Mageaan away from me.” She shook her head, and tears glistened in her eyes. “I’m an angel, Ian. An angel of life. I’m supposed to protect lives and give people a second chance, not kill them.”
Ian sat down beside her and leaned back against the wall, resting his shoulder against hers as he propped his knees up and draped his forearms over his legs. “Sometimes angels have to save their own lives.”
“We’re supposed to let ourselves be killed.”
Ian snorted with disgust. “That’s total crap. Break that rule, sweetheart, and feel good doing it.”
But Alice didn’t acknowledge his comment. “Did you see what happened with Chloe?” She closed her eyes and pressed her palms to them. “I can’t do this again,” she whispered. “All I had to do was give her an angel’s kiss and I couldn’t do it. She’s dying right now because I could do nothing.” Her shoulders started to shake, and Ian swore softly, his soul aching for her anguish. “Two women died today, and both of them were my fault.” She looked at him, her face full of so much self-loathing that his gut clenched. “All I’m supposed to do is bring life to others, and I do the opposite. Do you know what it’s like to want to save someone and not be able to?”
“Yeah, I do.” To his surprise, she leaned into him when he answered her, as if the weight of the world was too much for her to handle alone. And it probably was. He knew exactly what she was feeling. There was nothing as horrific as the feeling of impotence when watching harm befall someone and being completely unable to do anything about it. “I was ten when my father killed himself in front of me.”
Alice glanced over at him, tears still glistening in her eyes. “You saw it?”
“Fuck yeah, I did. I caused it to happen.”
Her brow puckered in a small frown. “How? You were only ten.”
“I thought I could save him from the curse.” Ian threaded his fingers through her hair, grounding himself in her presence as he relived that moment from so long ago. “He’d explained to me about the curse. My grandfather had killed himself when my dad was a kid. He’d ordered my dad to restore the family honor by breaking the curse, and he banned my dad from ever speaking to a woman, let alone having sex with them. Of course, it’s not that easy to do when you’re out there saving the damn world and running into women all the time. My dad wanted to give me the same command, but he knew it was impossible, so he instead taught me to identify women who might bring me down and to get out before they could get to me.” The irony of the moment, that he was telling his story to a woman he’d made love to until his soul had exploded was not lost on him. “By the time I was ten, my dad was suffering. The curse was pressing him hard for a woman he’d seen from a distance once. It was killing him.”
Alice raised her brows. “Was it his sheva?”
“Yeah. She wouldn’t have been able to affect him so intensely from such a distance otherwise.” Ian closed his eyes, remembering that night all too well. “He came to me in the middle of the night and told me that he couldn’t fight the curse much longer because the separation between him and this woman was killing him. He gave instructions on what I was supposed to do after he killed himself.”
Alice put her hand on his arm, her face softening. “I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.” She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have your parent tell you that they were about to kill themselves. How helpless and vulnerable would that make a child feel? And how terrified? “Did you try to stop him?”
“Of course I did. I went out and found the woman and brought her home. I figured that if he couldn’t take the separation, then maybe it would be better if he had her in his life.” He flexed his hands restlessly, and Alice could feel the raw strength he was exerting trying to keep the memories superficial. “The moment he saw Helen, their connection was instant.” He looked over at her, his dark eyes hooded. “Like us.”
Alice felt heat flood her cheeks, but there was no way to deny it. Even just sitting beside him on the floor, she was aware of the rhythm of his heart, the strength emanating from him, and the potent sexuality that seemed to heat up the very air between them. She’d chosen to sit on the floor instead of the cot, because the bed seemed too dangerous in this small room with him. “So it worked?”
“For a couple days. He even told me he was feeling better.”
Alice could hear the edge in his voice, the precursor of something terrible. “So, what happened?”
Ian lifted her arm and traced his fingers down the smooth expanse of her skin. “They completed the sheva bond. All five stages.” He raised her arm to his lips, pressing a kiss against it.
Desire and awareness pulsed through her. “So, that’s good, right? For them? I mean, he had cemented the bond, which is what you want to do with me.” She wanted to pull her arm away from Ian, but she couldn’t make herself do it. Not with the feel of his breath drifting over her skin, the delicate way his fingers were clasped around her wrist, as if she were a fragile porcelain doll that would shatter.
“No. Not good.” He pressed another kiss to her arm, never taking his gaze off her face. “Remember the sheva legend?”
“Oh…yes.” She’d forgotten about the ill-fated destiny of the Calydon and his mate, having been slightly occupied with clear and present dangers instead. But even remembering it didn’t lessen her need for him. She could barely resist the urge to melt into him. Was her response because she really was his sheva? Or was there something else about him that made her come to life? “Has anyone survived the bond?”
“In the last two thousand years four couples have survived, but it’s unclear whether they defeated fate, or simply delayed it. The jury is still out.” He leaned back against the wall, resting his head against the luminescent shell. “But the curse changes it for us, for my father. He lost Helen, the way destiny commanded, but instead of going rogue, the despair of the loss was so great that he took his own life.” He was staring across the room, not looking at her. “She’d simply gone to buy bread,” he said. “That was all. But that loss was enough. I was screaming at my father that she would be right
back, and it didn’t matter. He grabbed me by the throat and shouted at me to end the curse, to restore honor to our family’s name. Then he called out his axe and chopped off his own head right in our kitchen.”
Dear God. Alice was horrified. “Ian—”
“When Helen came back and saw my father, she killed herself, per the fate of the Calydon and his mate. Two people dead, same ending, but if destiny had been allowed to play out, he would have at least died with honor. But this way? Just shame.” He grimaced. “The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is not so romantic in real life. Two people dead because I thought I could save them by bringing them together.”
“I’m so sorry, Ian—” Alice wanted to touch him, to hug him, to take away his pain, but she knew it wouldn’t change anything. She knew that all too well.
“Even though my father had been one of the most admired Order of the Blade members, they weren’t able to honor his death because it was by suicide. He lived for his mission, and he believed the only oath worthy of obeying was the one he’d made when he was sworn in as one of the elite. Nothing else mattered, and yet he lost it in the end. It was stolen from him by the curse. His body didn’t disappear at death the way Calydons usually do because he had violated the sacredness of life. To this day, his body and soul lay trapped beneath the earth in my family’s burial grounds, along with the other Fitzgerald males who have died.”
Alice stared at him, the reality of his words sinking in. No relief for the soul? No afterlife? “Like the Mageaan,” she said. “They’re banned from the Afterlife as well. Trapped here.”
He glanced at her. “Hell.”
She nodded.
“I made a promise that day,” he said softly. “I vowed to restore honor to my family’s legacy as Order of the Blade members, to free their souls, and to bring back honor to my father’s memory. The only way to do it is to break the curse. It was my fault he died, and I have to fix it.”
She understood now what drove him. What a terrible burden for a young boy to carry. A burden for a grown man to carry as well.
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