“Jace.”
“You can thank him later.”
Another itch formed behind my left shoulder blade, and combined with trying to inch off my shoe, the movement sent Giles into the stone wall. “Stay still. I can’t carry you and go down the steps if you wiggle.”
“I’ve got an itch.”
“You can scratch it once we’re out of here.”
Only a dozen more steps to go, and I reached for the spot on my back, and I sighed. My shoe hit the stone wall, the heel catching on a crack that had my shoe popping off.
“NO!” Giles stopped suddenly, reached for the shoe, and let go of me with one hand, sending us both crashing down. We rolled and rolled, my body bouncing down the rock as I thought the jolts of pain couldn’t sting and pound any harder. They kept coming and coming until I laid atop my half-brother like a twisted pretzel.
A haze of pain and blurred vision didn’t help. Good thing I was half immortal. That wouldn’t stop this from hurting worse as I tried to move. Giles was grabbing my foot, the wrong foot, and he tried to shove on the shoe. Above, the darkness cracked in the clouds, and a cold drizzled rain fell on us.
“Joy.”
I knew that voice.
I turned my head as Cupid stood a few feet away. He had his bow in his hand, and an arrow notched back. “Come to me, Joy. Quickly.”
Still half on the stairs, my body was glued to the pavement. I didn’t know how many bones I’d broken, all of them by the deep-seated ache and throb overtaking my limbs and rendering them as heavy and stiff as the stone I hugged. I tried to reach for him. “Father. Please help me.”
“You’ve got to get off the stairs.” Giles looked back over his shoulder, at the top of the stairway, where Damen De Santis, a descendant of Chaos, stood.
“He came,” I croaked.
“Joy, he’s going to take you to the pit of Tartarus!” Giles cried. “Where are your shoes?”
Giles took a stance at the bottom of the stairs over me, his head dipped low, and his body poised to attack.
My fingers inched to the shoe laying closest to me, I tried to move my leg, and a new searing pain radiated through my body. Damen was coming. A storm over his head as wicked as the darkness swirling around him. I could feel his fury; it balled in my gut and squeezed.
I glanced between him and my father. Cupid’s face was grim, but in his eyes I saw a light I’d never seen before. He looked at me long and hard. His arrow pointed directly at Damen.
He nodded his head as he understood something I’d said without saying it.
“Giles,” Cupid called to him. “Step away from Joy.”
I wept. Lying there bruised, broken, and shoeless. Giles rose beside me, the shoe in his hand.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I’ve got this.” Cupid lifted his elbow, inhaled, and held his breath, his sight on the man barreling down the stairs in a swirl of darkness.
A glint of silver hit the end of Cupid’s arrow. That was no love arrow. Lightning spread across the sky, its thin claws reaching across the heavens.
In a blink, darkness surrounded me, thick, heavy. It shrouded me like a heavy cloak, and I lost sight of my father.
Giles roared, and a rush of wind backlashed him toward a car. Overhead, I heard the people, the screams, and the shouting as the storm forced them back inside the shelter of the monastery.
For a few moments, while the dark whirlwind hovered over me, the rain dissipated. Damen stood beside me; I tried to get a grip on the cold, and the pain seeping into me.
“Eros,” Damen growled.
“Son of Chaos,” Cupid said.
“Damen.” His name was a soft exhale from my lips.
His gaze flickered down at me. Rain drizzled, dripping from his eyebrows as they furrowed together. He hunched down. “Sweet, sweet Joy. What have you done?”
25
I heard a loud grunt. Jace stepped out of the darkness. He lowered his head toward Giles, and the two of them rammed into each other, their horns locked in a pushing match. I swallowed down the last wave in my stomach.
Damen touched my face and winced. He looked at Cupid. “Fix her!”
“No!” Cupid shouted in the rising storm.
I was back where I started. Two voices arguing while I became aware once more of my surroundings. I was wet and cold. It rained. Still raining. Damen stripped off his jacket, laid it over me. I winced, trying to move my legs.
“She’s your daughter. Fix her!”
“Release her to me.” Cupid tilted his head to the side, his blond hair almost white as it glowed in the darkness.
“Never.”
“If you love her, you’ll let her go.”
Two hot slices went down my shoulder blades, the fire so intense that I cried out. My flesh had gone from cold to on fire. I felt hot, too hot, and I was burning up.
“You took my love.” Damen rose. He pulled darkness from beneath his shirt sleeves, forming into long-bladed swords in each hand.
Cupid took aim at him once more. “Joy is not to blame for this.”
“No.” Damen took another step toward Eros. “You are, and I intend to take everything you love from you as you did me.”
It built around us—the tension, the storm, and this fire inside me were about to consume me. It split down my back and I cried out again.
On the side of us, I heard the crash of Giles and Jace trying to overpower each other.
“She’s your daughter!” Damen roared.
“Please.” I pushed up on my arms. I had to stop my father before it was too late.
As Damen leaped to go after Cupid, my father said, “Trust your heart.”
Damen screamed, his cry one of a warrior. Every droplet of rain hitting my face jagged and pricked my tender flesh. I tried to move. I couldn’t imagine the position I was in was anything close to being ladylike.
As I tried to move, a set of burning claws set down my back, and I arched, my flesh peeled back and something slick and heavy protruded out.
Eros let his arrow loose, Damen swung his sword, but demigod or not, my father’s arrows always flew true. I propelled myself in front of him as the arrow went straight into my heart. Damen’s swords disappeared, and his arms went around me.
“No.”
He sunk to his knees, holding me, his eyes rimmed with blue. My vision wavered. My body filled with numbness, the pain no longer there. Something heavy hung down my back, and I flexed my shoulders. They came around Damen and I saw them. They were slick with rain and blood, and the more it rained, the more those white feathers became stained, more pink than red. “My wings. I got my wings.”
Eros had folded his weapon at his back and walked toward us.
Damen held tighter around me. “Yes, baby Cherub, you’ve got wings.”
“I can fly.”
Tears swam in his eyes, or maybe that was the rain soaking his cheeks. Either way, he kissed my forehead and whispered, “Why?”
“I can’t walk, silly. I don’t have my shoes on.”
There was no humor in his expression. I had seen that expression. He wore it the night I stood in the hospital and watched him with Marisol. It was love. Bright. Beautiful. Glowing. Damen De Santis might not have been able to say it, but it was written all over his face and in his eyes.
I did it.
I got him to love again.
Iwasn’t that bad of a love angel, after all.
“Shoes?” He acted as if he didn’t know I’d taken off my shoes, and Giles had made such a big deal about it. Damien laughed. It was filled with a sad kind of happiness. “Jace!” Damen picked me up and stood to hold me close to his heart. “She’s under my protection; you can’t touch her.”
“It’s too late,” Eros said. “My arrows can’t be reversed.”
And he was right. I felt it down to the marrow of my bones.
“I’m sorry.”
Pins and needles spread through my body as if awakening from a long sleep. Excep
t I was already awake, and my heart pumped slower and slower.
My only regret was I wouldn’t be there to hold him in his time of grief. I understood now how Marisol could do what she did. I thought I did before, but not really. One moment of true love was worth all the years of being without it. My life might have been short, but having love, true love, was worth it.
Even if he couldn’t say it. I could and would until the last beat of my heart. “I love you.”
Eros had come closer, but he stayed out of Damen’s reach. The wrath of the descendant of Chaos poured out toward him. I had become immune to it after all these weeks.
“You’re not dying,” Damen said. “You’re not leaving me.”
There was a glimmer of blue in his eyes.
Inside my chest, the dark thread curled around the arrow and slithered from my heart. “One last kiss?”
His lips were cold at first, then warm. They pressed against my forehead, my nose, and brushed across my lips. “Stay with me, Joy.”
“Always. You have my heart.”
“And you mine.” His kiss sent sparks fizzing through my veins, and at the pleasant sensation, I sighed, letting go of my last breath. The bracelet he’d given me for my birthday slid over me and away from my body.
26
DAMEN
“Joy.” What had I done?
“No. You’re not dying. You can’t die.” I pressed my lips back to hers. I tried to push her breath back inside her. But it was no use. She slipped away from me, and I felt the stench of a reaper nearby. She went limp against me, the last of her breath a whisper against mine. It tingled, and a sharp stab of pain pierced my chest. It radiated through my veins as I swallowed Joy’s last breath.
A thin strand of smoke curled around the arrow protruding from her chest. It floated up through the rain, and I snatched it, pulled it back to me, and it stung. My threads never hurt, but there was a static to it that made my skin crawl.
Glaring over her body, Eros strode toward me. My lip curled up, and I growled as my true nature rose to the surface. My fingertips burned. Anger and panic swelled in my centuries-old body. “I’ll kill you. If it’s the last thing I do.”
Eros pulled another arrow.
I drew the darkness around us. Jace and Giles fought against the swirling winds. Inside the funnel of the cyclone whirling around us, the rain had ceased. Thunderous rumblings continued above. I am the night. I am the storm. I control the chaos that ensues. I would destroy him.
I couldn't let him get away with this. Twice, he had stolen what was mine.
“Let her go,” Eros shouted.
“You can’t have her.” My chest grew tight. It burned, and a dozen jets of fire burst inside. It didn’t hurt as much as looking upon the face of the dead angel in my arms.
“She was never yours,” Eros shouted over the swirling darkness holding us apart from the rest of the world. But he was wrong. She was mine as I was hers.
I didn’t know when. I didn’t know how. And somewhere in this desperate ploy of mine to teach Eros a lesson for meddling in the lives of mortals and immortals, the lesson became mine. Above us, inside the monastery, the mortals danced and sang at the exchange of vows for Arthur and Marisol. Vows I couldn’t give her. The darkness trembled with the reevaluation. To love made my kind weak. Chaos could not ensue without strength and cunning.
I blinked as, within the cylinder, three figures started to form.
“Faith. Hope. Cherish.” Eros introduced each one of his daughters. A weakness of the immortal world. Ties that could bind and hold our kind to become vulnerable.
I stepped back, cautious as to why the three offspring had appeared. Their eyes filled with an illuminating shine of love.
“May I?” The eldest of the three stepped forth, her wings tipped with gold, and her eyes landing on the fallen angel in my arms.
I nodded, my body tense as I waited for her to approach. She kissed Joy on the head and whispered to me, “Thank you.”
They all did that—kissed their sister and whispered, “Thank you.”
My eyes began to burn, and I swallowed against the anger building in my chest. It pushed and pushed, and as I watched, the very being of love and light disappeared from my arms. “Joy.”
I tried to hold on to her, curl my fingers around her, but her body dissolved into a soft shimmer.
“No.” I curled my hands into a fist.
“It was time.” Eros held his bow and arrow at his side.
“As it was Marisol’s time?” The anguish was hot and fresh in my veins. “You lose.” I snapped my fingers, the dark barrier around us opened, and Jace stepped through.
“Are you so sure?” Eros moved to stand in front of the three sisters.
It made me sick to look at them. My head spun, my gut twisting. “I will go to the fates; her strand lies within my hands.” It had wrapped around my wrist. It pulsed with the barest of hope.
“You’d go to the depths of the dead to get her, wouldn’t you?” This asked by one of the sisters.
“I would.”
And the sisters all opened their arms to Giles, the satyr sired by Eros a half-century ago.
“She won’t be there,” Eros said.
“We shall see about that.” And I called the darkness to take me home.
Jace stepped forward, Joy’s shoes in one hand and the sparkling bracelet that once graced her wrist in the other. Not even my last charm had been enough to hold her to me.
“I suppose she won’t be needing these anymore.” He turned and handed the shoes to a sister, her eyes filling and gushing with new tears.
I snapped my fingers, pulled my gift back to my hand, and tucked the bracelet in my pocket. Inside my chest, a deep cut formed, wounding me far greater than any physical blow.
I stumbled back, glared into Eros’s smug face, and as the darkness started to pull me toward home, I extended my sword toward him. In a blink, the darkness had evaporated, the love angels were gone. Jace stood before me, staring at me, and Eros faded away.
I sighed. “Go check on Joy. I need to reinforce my protection over the property.
Jace shook his head, his nubs of horns showing through his dark hair as he tilted his head. “She’s not here.”
Even as he said it, I wouldn’t accept it.
All the things I had done to ensure she would always return to me—the shoes, the bracelet, the thread—none of them had kept her safe.
She was gone.
The clouds grew dark and thick with the reaping of her life. The chaos of tonight’s events should have energized me. I walked under the pergola. Her scent lingered here, as subtle as the scent of the flowers from the garden that shouldn’t be in bloom this time of year. I punched the pillar, the wood splintering. Jace walked into the house, knowing when to leave me alone.
Not even the darkness whispered to me as it usually did. Inside, the cut spread wider.
I glanced out to the stars.
They wept as I wept.
For the first time since I was a child, I reached up and touched the dampness on my cheeks.
The dark thread from Joy’s heart twisted and made its way into mine. So, this was what it was to have someone’s lifeline entwined with yours. It throbbed and beat along with mine, and the comfort of having this last piece of her clinging around my heart brought no peace.
I walked out to the gardens, as I often did in the night after ensuring that chaos ensued in the world. I stood before Marisol’s likeness in stone. “What have I done?”
I pressed my forehead to her stone-cold thigh, and rubbed the spot in my chest where my heart had started to beat in a way I’d never thought possible.
27
JOY
There was music, soft from the lute, floating and teasing me to come to consciousness. I was warm and felt the peace of love surrounding me. I wasn’t surprised as I turned my head to find Giles dancing and playing one of the many tunes I had heard before.
I had always imagi
ned what heaven would look like when I got summoned to its gates. Never had I imagined the beauty of the white pillars or the drifting of the fog at my feet, too, in which I wouldn’t be able to see my polished pink toes. I stood and I couldn’t quite remember if I were genuinely lying down. I leaned against the marble of one of the pillars, my palm pressing against the gray vein of the stone, cool and smooth to the touch. On my back came a tug of weight, and instinctively I hitched up my shoulders and reached back. Feathers. I ran my hand down the smooth silk of them and pulled them around to make sure I confirmed what I felt.
Oh yes. I had evolved.
I was an angel.
Cherish said I would get my wings at twenty and one.
They were so beautiful, and I flexed my shoulders for them to spring out.
I shouted for Giles to come see my wings, but he was too far in the distance, the sound of his lute getting further away.
Was he dead, too?
Was it Damen or Jace?
I remembered the look in his eyes, his last kiss, and the feel of his beating heart against my palm. Pressing a hand to my heart, I turned at the sound of my name.
“Joy.”
“Father?” He stood on the other side of the pillar. He appeared to have grown older, his shaggy brown hair curled at the nape of his neck and the deadly arrow of my demise in his hand.
“You killed me.”
Eros smiled. “I gave you life, daughter.”
“How could you?” My wings folded in around me.
“In order to find our true selves, we must give up who we once were to become reborn,” Eros tucked the tip of the arrow back in a braided quiver. He slipped it off his shoulder and handed it out to me. “This is yours.”
“You mean I’m not dead?” I hesitated to take the quiver.
“You may have lost your mortal side, daughter, but you are very much still alive.”
“If I’m not mortal, does that mean I can’t go back to the mortal world?” My first thoughts were Damen, and then my sisters. Could I never see them, return to them?
“You are much like your mother.” Eros chuckled. “Fear not, Joy, you are free to return to your sisters, or to whomever your heart leads you.”
Joy In Love (Daughters of Cupid Book 1) Page 14
