Celestra Forever After

by Addison Moore

  Celestra Forever After

  (Book 1)

  ADDISON MOORE

  Edited by: Sarah Freese

  Cover and interior design by: Gaffey Media

  Interior formatting by: Amy Eye of www.theeyesforediting.com/

  Copyright © 2014 by Addison Moore

  http://addisonmoorewrites.blogspot.com/

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination. The author holds all rights to this work. It is illegal to reproduce this novel without written expressed consent from the author herself.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Books by Addison Moore:

  New Adult Romance

  Someone to Love (Someone to Love 1)

  Someone Like You (Someone to Love 2)

  Someone For Me (Someone to Love 3, coming July 1st 2014)

  3:AM Kisses (3:AM Kisses 1)

  Winter Kisses (3:AM Kisses 2)

  Sugar Kisses (3:AM Kisses 3)

  Whiskey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 4, coming 2014)

  Beautiful Oblivion

  The Solitude of Passion

  Perfect Love (A Celestra Novella)

  Celestra Forever After

  Young Adult Romance

  Ethereal (Celestra Series Book 1)

  Tremble (Celestra Series Book 2)

  Burn (Celestra Series Book 3)

  Wicked (Celestra Series Book 4)

  Vex (Celestra Series Book 5)

  Expel (Celestra Series Book 6)

  Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7)

  Toxic Part Two (Celestra Series Book 7.5)

  Elysian (Celestra Series Book 8)

  Ephemeral (The Countenance Trilogy 1)

  Evanescent (The Countenance Trilogy 2)

  Entropy (The Countenance Trilogy 3)

  Ethereal Knights (Celestra Knights)

  Beware of your friends; do not trust your brothers. For every brother is a deceiver, and every friend a slanderer. Friend deceives friend, and no one speaks the truth.

  —Jeremiah 9:4-5

  Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm, for love is as strong as death, its jealousy as enduring as the grave. Love flashes like fire, the brightest kind of flame.

  —Song of Solomon 8:6

  The Distal Future

  Logan

  Time waits for no one. Death comes in like a thief and binds your wrists. It fetters your feet, blinds and whips you before whisking off with your soul to the paradise of God. Death is ruthless in its endeavor as it rips you away from the planet—unremorseful as it gives all of your loved ones the finger. I cheated death, mostly. Rumor has it I’ll come back one day. But, in the end, Candace was right, this halfway life that my soul lingers in, this delicate state of limbo between this realm and the next, has proved a special brand of torment.

  They say every living soul has one true love—the trick is finding them, and then holding on. You can miss love by a mile if you’re not careful. It can sneak up on you in the least likely places, a parking lot, a chance meeting at a party, a bowling alley.

  My true love’s heart lingers for me, although our paths have split for a time. They’ll converge again, but for now, she belongs to another, and it hurts like all bloody hell. I didn’t think it would. I didn’t think it could. Then again I never think too deeply when Skyla is in the balance.

  “Oliver!” Dudley cries out from the clearing near his property and points a good fifty feet away to the arrow he’s just lodged in the eye of an oak. “Top that. I doubt you can.”

  That’s Dudley for you, always quick with the dig, at least where I’m concerned.

  He’s lured me out here, claiming he has a gift for me. I happen to know for a fact that Dudley’s idea of a gift doesn’t quite match up to the English definition.

  I pull an arrow from the quiver strapped to my back and take a few steps forward.

  “I’ll land it in the heart of the trunk, on top of yours,” I shout over to him. “Try not to get your riding pants in a bunch, sweetheart.” I fire one off, and it slips just past the tree, digging into the bushes.

  Dudley barks out a laugh.

  “You’re a fool to even suggest that arrow would obey your nonsensical whims.” He loads up and stretches his bow taut, but he’s not aiming for the oak, he’s aiming straight for me. “I’ll get it over your head and give you a little trim off the top at the same time.” He launches it like a missile, and, before I can duck, the wind whistles over my skull. That damn arrow nearly scalped me in the process.

  “You’re a piece of shit, Dudley.” I pat my head for signs of blood before glancing at the glorified stick neatly planted in the trunk of a pine just shy of where I’m standing.

  “The sentiment is mutual.” He fires another shot back toward the oak. “You think about my offer?”

  “No can do.” Hell, yes, I thought about his offer, and there isn’t a chance I’m going to let him utilize me as his lackey, especially not when it consists of me sidestepping Skyla. I’ll leave the trickery to my nephew.

  Skyla. A cloud of dread seeps over me just thinking about her. I never knew it would pain me to hold her in my heart, and, yet, that day has come—it’s been here all along. All these months on the island—all the shit that’s gone down with Gage, with the Steel Barricade, with Chloe and her constant scheming—it’s all more than I can take. But I’d do it again and again for Skyla.

  I wonder if she cares. I wonder if I should have left the planet entirely and never stuck around where I didn’t truly belong. At the time, staying seemed like the right decision, but now, in the light of day, under the inspection of the circumstances, I question the very thing I swore to cherish, my time here on Paragon—my time with Skyla.

  “Have you fallen asleep on your feet?” Dudley belches it out across the expanse, and his voice drones on in an echo, instable as water.

  “Yes, I’m asleep.” I yank an arrow from my quiver. “That’s because you bore me to fucking tears.” I stretch back my bow, with an arrow ready and willing to eat air, and turn slightly to my left, aiming straight for Dudley. I let go and watch as it glides across the field, right past his left shoulder. Figures. I shake my head in mock disappointment. “Missed.”

  “You’re a bigger moron than you think.” A fire churns in his eyes. His hands move quick as lightning.

  A blur of a line travels my way, slicing through the air at an alarming, low trajectory. I try to jump out of the way, but it nails me right in the heart.

  Dudley straightens with pride. “I, on the other hand, never miss.”

  My body lurches. I stagger back as a crimson stain blooms across my chest.

  “You shot me,” I say, disbelieving. God. He’s going to fuck up my body.

  I try extracting it, and a spear of pain shoots through my skull.

  Dudley strides toward me a few feet before reloading. “The important thing to note about a Treble is your flesh doesn’t quite have the ability to heal itself like it used to.” He fires another one off in my direction and lodges it into my chest right next to the last. “Pity.” He flexes a brief smile.

  A jolt of pain rockets through me.

  “Fuck.” Now it’s my voice echoing across the field.

  Maybe this is it—his big gift. Maybe the Decision Council sensed I was bitching about my imperfect half-life and decided to renege on the offer. And now Dudley gets to maim me at his leisure, bury me in his backyard so he can piss on my grave every now and again just for kicks. Hell, maybe Gage will join him.

  “I’m not going down without a fight.” I pluck arrow after arrow out of my quiver and land six in the field, two i
n his gut. His crisp, white dress shirt darkens as a deep red liquid oozes out. “Looks to me, you bleed like the rest of us.”

  He glances down at his newfound wounds slightly amused.

  “I don’t take lightly to what you’ve done,” he says it stern as a reprimand.

  “Nor do I.” My bow shakes as I stretch it taut with all my effort. I shoot another one off in his direction, aiming for that pompous mug of his, and son of a bitch—

  Dudley lets out a strangled cry and staggers with an arrow through his eye.

  The faint voice of a girl comes from the direction of the house, and Dudley holds up a hand as if to still me.

  “Marshall?” she cries. Her voice carries high and light like a flute.

  Skyla.

  I take a step back and try to pluck the arrows from my chest, but they’re lodged behind my ribs, and it hurts like shit. My chest tightens. It’s getting hard to breathe as the world starts to fade.

  “Marshall, where are you?” She shouts from just a couple feet away, and now the inevitable will happen. Skyla is about to see Dudley and me both in a serious state of disrepair.

  “I’m in the clearing, love.” He calls back with his voice smooth as silk.

  I glance over.

  He’s already extracted the arrow from his eye, and is working the two out of his stomach. I reach down to do the same, and another hits me, creating an unholy trinity of overgrown darts—pinning my heart, caging it in with pain.

  “Let this be a lesson.” Dudley tips his chin up. His eyes are still intact—his dress shirt, crisp and clean, no worse for wear. “Don’t ever think about turning on me.”

  Footsteps quicken in this direction, and Skyla illuminates the dark woods with her porcelain skin. Her eyes glow like quicksilver.

  “Logan!” She stops at the foot of the forest, examining me, but she doesn’t scream or run or flip Dudley the bird for inflicting such damage in the first place. Instead, Skyla smiles. She walks over slow with her eyes locked over mine as if the arrows, the blood dripping from my body at an accelerated rate—Dudley himself—were inconsequential in general. “It’s me.” She tilts her head as she steps up her gait.

  “I can explain.” I give a tug at my shirt, and she holds a finger to her lips never once taking those luminous eyes off mine. I shoot a look to Dudley because something, for sure, is the hell up.

  Maybe this is Chloe in disguise. Maybe Dudley’s big gift is for me to shack up in the Transfer with good old Bishop wearing Skyla’s body like a bad Halloween costume.

  “You’re really here.” She touches her hand to my face and looks at me in wonder. “And now, so am I.”

  “I think I need help.” My breathing grows erratic. My chest is on fire. I’m pretty sure I need to start hitting the panic button and getting Candace Messenger on the red line because something akin to a celestial ambulance is going to be needed in just a few seconds.

  “God, I love you,” she whispers. Her eyes narrow in on me as if she were in pain. She places her cool hands over my cheeks and pulls me in.

  Skyla hikes up on the balls of her feet and crashes her lips to mine. I don’t fight it. I twist my arrow-riddled chest to the left and pull her in close as we indulge in a deep meaningful kiss with our tongues slipping over one another for what feels like hours—weeks.

  My knees start to buckle, can’t breathe. The world feels as if its spinning out of control, and I sink to the ground.

  The last thing I see is Skyla’s beautiful face—then Marshall’s ugly mug as he stands over her shoulder.

  “Your gift is here.” He smirks down at me. “And should you have shown me an ounce of gratitude for all I’ve ever done for you, we wouldn’t be witness to your demise.” He kicks me in the thigh before heading toward the house.

  Skyla drops to my side and gently slaps my cheek, begging me to stay awake. Her voice dances around me elusive and hard to grasp, like a butterfly.

  The world fades in and out.

  Get your mother, I try to tell her.

  “Logan, wait!” she screams. “Logan, come back. Something big has happened, and it affects you and me.”

  Skyla stepped out of the forest with zero regard for the arrows lodged in my chest and kissed me. Something big had happened, and she wanted to share the news.

  Tell me, Skyla, I want to know.

  My eyes won’t open, all sound fades from the world.

  Skyla was my gift, and now I lose her twice.

  Dudley is right. I’m a bigger moron than I thought.

  Her lips sink over mine, soft as a summer breeze. Skyla’s kisses are resuscitating my love-thirsty soul—her lingual affection is the exact brand of medicine I’ve needed all along.

  Skyla is the cure for everything.

  I’ve always known that.

  And so has she.

  Prologue

  Skyla

  They say God is often found in the coincidences—that the devil is in the details. This is the season of my life where both sing true. It’s the coincidences that place the right people beside you. It’s the most insignificant details that can bring you to your knees.

  Together my love and I walk hand in hand down life’s thorny trail, only to find a stone set in our path—immovable, insurmountably heavy—far too much for us to bear.

  It’s almost tragic that we pass through one struggle only to believe we’re in the clear—that life will be full of sunshine and roses. For a brief moment we forget that the sun so often hides like a coward in our world—that the roses are laden with knife-sharp thorns. Somewhere in the desperation, all hope is lost, and all you have left to hang onto is the irony. You savor it—let it rust in your mouth like old pennies.

  This is the springtime of our lives where the black magic roses bloom, blood red and dangerous. Their thorns weave around my lover and me, caging us in, carving their wickedness into our flesh. But we cannot give up on our love—no matter how painful—we cannot let go of who we thought we were. It’s heartless to deny yourself the love of your life—a ruby red sin to even try.

  Perhaps God and the devil are best found locked in the irony—one a distorted reflection of the other. After all, God can weave the thorns of life into a crown of glory—while the devil does his best to press them in.

  My lover and I had stepped into a fire so long ago without ever knowing.

  We were set ablaze with unquenchable flames.

  Our love burns bright and wild—beautiful as God—sinister as the devil.

  Evil had swallowed us whole. We were damned from the start.

  Where would our help come from—the silent sea—the searing sun?

  It would come from the secret place that lives inside us—the deepest chamber of our hearts.

  Our love set the world on fire.

  Unapologetically we watch it burn.

  This is the genesis of who we are.

  This is the twisted beginning.

  1

  In the Beginning

  Skyla

  Present Day

  They say when you’re sleeping is when you really live. Deep in your subconscious all of your carnal desires play out, dark and sultry, in the theater of your mind. Some people are lucky enough to control their dreams, navigate them in the direction they wish to travel and enjoy adventure after adventure, have an entirely different life from sundown to sun up, if they wanted. Other people don’t remember their dreams. They drift off to sleep and rouse from their slumber without any record of their nocturnal wanderings. As for me, I can neither control my dreams nor forget them. Lately they’ve been rather thematic—one naughty Sector and me, the tumbling of our flesh, the tug and pull of limbs and teeth—the steady sound of skin slapping over skin—the hearty grunts, our cataclysmic screams pollute the night air with their fornicating howls.

  The sand of Paragon’s salty shore warms my feet as I wait for him to find me.

  The shadow of a man strides toward me, fully dressed in a suit, that sexy snarl permanently s
et to his face.

  “There you are,” I say, waving as he comes my way. Marshall is tall and stately—comely to the point of nausea. And each night, I need his body covering mine more than I need air to breathe. “You’re a little overdressed for the beach aren’t you?”

  “What—and deprive you the pleasure of undressing me?” He hooks his sultry eyes into mine.

  “You know me all too well.”

  He dips his chin and stares into me with demonic intent. “Inside and out.”

  “I wouldn’t want it any other way.” I pull him in by the waist. “Besides, I love it that you know me inside and out—especially the inside part.”

  His chest thumps into mine. His lip twitches. “What year are we headed off to?”

  He asks that very question every single night.

  There always seems to be a light drive involved, and other than having steaming hot sex with Marshall, that’s the only other constant. Time travel and nonstop hookups—it would figure this was Marshall’s M.O.

  “We’re headed back to Clara.” I pinch at my red bikini. “But I thought we could have some fun first. Just you and me under Big Yellow.” I nod up at the sun.

  Big Yellow? I want to reach into my own dream and strangle myself for being so ridiculous. And who’s this Clara chick?

  “I’m all for fun.” Marshall lands his hot mouth over mine, and not one sensation is lost on me, everything is alive, heightened, the scent of his cologne balanced by the natural musk of his skin. His tongue roams over mine, quick and lithe as a serpent. I try to drink this moment down as I work off his clothes, fast and furious as if they were about to combust into flames.

  Here’s the thing. I like these dreams. As much as I hate myself for having them on a loop, I find myself still heady from his kisses when I wake up in the morning. My body aches to have him thrust inside me. All. Day. Long. And I find myself having to catch my breath when I remember how it feels as he brings me to the zenith of my existence.