Chapter 59
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
DAKOTA
I stared at the door to Mason’s apartment, my heart breaking further and further.
The frame was still all splintered from when I’d broken it down the day I came back to Earth, the day I learned the worst truth in the universe.
Mason had no desire to fix it, and neither did I. I had no desires at all anymore.
And the door remained shut, no matter how long I stared at it.
Please come back.
He wasn’t coming back.
I knew I couldn’t fix him. I’d known that when I was still a human. I’d known it from the moment he put his hand over my mouth until I lost consciousness in his backseat, known there was a darkness in his brain which could never be carved out. I wasn’t trying to carve it out.
I just couldn’t lose him, too.
I wasn’t going to give up on trying to save him because then what would I have left?
Absolutely nothing.
After a few more minutes of waiting for him to come back, knowing he wouldn’t, and wrestling with my thoughts about that, I decided to go find him. There were two places I thought he could be. Micah’s house or the beach.
Before leaving, I went into his bedroom and grabbed a long sleeve shirt, then tore a slit down the back before swapping into it. I hadn’t truly considered how inconvenient having wings would be before I’d been given them. While I could technically forgo a shirt, I didn’t want to do that.
I exited his apartment, focused on making myself invisible long enough to get mostly into the clouds, then allowed my wings to carry me towards the ocean.
Learning everything about being Sigeian without Micah’s help was difficult, and isolating in a way.
Mason didn’t have much interest in explaining things to me, and when he tried, it wasn’t especially helpful because he didn’t know how to do any of this himself.
The winter wind rippled sharply against my shirt, pushing the cotton to my skin in the front and billowing it open in the back, my hair catching on invisible gusts. My shoulder muscles were sore with use, my wings holding steady on either side of me.
In all honesty, I hadn’t processed the fact of me being an angel now.
I couldn’t even start to process it.
My brain was incapable of coming to terms with another massive life-changing event right now, so I did my best to pretend it’d always been this way. It wasn’t abnormal. This was just what was always going to happen to me.
I’d barely spoken to Mila in the past month, and I knew she was worried, but I had no idea what to say to her. The man I love died? The man you’ll never be able to remember? The man I never actually told you about because of how complicated everything was—and still is?
I’m grieving a person I thought I would never grieve in this way?
I blinked fast a few times, trying to dry my tears before they slipped out onto my cold, wind-reddened cheeks. It was pointless.
As I approached the beach, I saw his car through the clouds, which relieved some of the tension in my chest.
If I was more skilled, I would’ve tried for more invisibility on my descent, but I didn’t see any other cars, and I wasn’t skilled.
I landed hard on my feet next to his car, looking in the windows but not finding him.
The gray sky reflected on the glass, clouds swirling and mixing, obscuring the sun.
I made my way over to the rocks and climbed down to the dark sand, waves rolling up and down the beach, crashing on rocks along the far edge.
He wasn’t here. Not that I could see.
But I smelled him.
In the same way that I could pick Micah’s kapnos out from the scent of the forest while I was a human, I could easily separate Mason’s kapnos from the ocean air.
Layered and twisted darkness, the storm and the shadow echoing across landscapes.
I did not have kapnos. It was only for male angels; females were only supposed to smell it and be affected.
Since I’d been affected as a human, it wasn’t incredibly different now.
I could smell it better, but that was all.
The sand looked the same as always, unchanged by my fall a month ago. Nothing marked the Earth where I’d landed.
Just dark rocks and black sand and shark teeth.
I walked further up the beach, smelling Mason in the air.
If I focused my mind, I could feel him, somewhere.
Hurting. When I really tried to smell him, to feel for him, I knew where he was.
My wings swept out of my back without delay, and I was soaring over the ocean until I got deep enough to where I dove in.
The water was freezing, but it didn’t touch the core of me. I had my own warmth now, just like Mason did.
I kicked harder, pushing myself deeper and deeper. Down into the darkest depths, the place where sunlight didn’t reach, the place where I’d always find him.
How far am I willing to go for this? For him?
As far as he needs me to go.
Until the end of my life. Until the end of the Earth.
Currents swirled through my hair, catching the hem of my shirt, pressing into me. I didn’t stop going deeper, darker, until I could see the blurry shape of him lying on the sand, his agony clouding his mind.
I had my arm outstretched, reaching for him.
A mirror of the first time he’d ever touched me.
I’ll pull you up this time.
My hand found him, my fingers wrapping around his wrist as I tugged his arm up. I planted my feet on the sea floor, using my stance as leverage to force him upward.
Please.
He was resisting me, trying to stay down, and he was so much stronger than me. He always was, but even more now. His arms banded around my back, locking me against his body, trapping me in this underwater prison with him.
Is this it?
Is this the time I finally die?
Is today the day he won’t ever let me resurface?
I wanted to save him, to do what I’d tried to do on the first day I met him. I’d gone into the ocean after him, but he didn’t need me then.
He needed me now.
And I needed him.
I shoved against his chest, my fingernails digging into his skin, everything moving in slow motion so far below the waves.
Maybe I could infiltrate his emotions and figure out how to steal his resistance, but it wasn’t easy to do that, and I was already tired from flying and swimming and holding my breath. Fuck.
Somehow, I managed to escape his death grip and grab his arm again.
The moment I did, I used all of my strength to swim upwards. But every small movement he made against me stole another foot I’d fought to gain. I shook my head at him, bubbles escaping between clenched teeth. No. Whether he understood or not didn’t matter. I wasn’t leaving without him.
I kicked harder, my thighs beginning to burn, my chest tightening.
The ocean didn’t care that I loved him, that I needed him alive.
Every bit of pressure shoving in against all sides of my body only weakened me, every bit of resistance in the water only tired my muscles.
The ocean refused to help me steal what it had already been offered.
Panic began to creep beneath my ribs. Every kick felt smaller than the last.
I refused to look up. I knew the surface was still too far away.
My lungs didn’t burn in the same way they used to when I was human. I had more time now, more chances to drag Mason up with me. But even with infinite chances, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to bring him up on my own.
With my eyes shut, I quit crawling towards the surface, still gripping his arm, but focusing now on my aspect.
Sigeian. There were other ways to save Mason’s life.
I was decent at taking the unstable emotions from him, maybe now could be the time I figured out how to take his resistance. Force him into listening to me.
But the moment I entered his brain, I could feel him stop resisting.
He quit pulling down.
He would rather let me save him than let me try to reshape his emotions.
So I did.
I kicked and kicked, pulling him with me like a heavy weight I had to drag from the ocean floor, swimming with all my strength until we finally broke through the surface.
Mason’s skin was glowing with ultraneon, brighter than I’d ever seen it, and that terrified me. How long had he been down there? How close had he really been to death?
I gasped in huge gulps of air, my mind spinning, my pulse racing.
Mason wasn’t speaking, was hardly looking at me.
I didn’t care, though.
I just wrapped my arms around him tight, feeling his skin that was wet with seawater, warm against my palms, feeling his strength buried below the surface.
I clung to him, pushing my face against his shoulder while I kicked my feet to keep my head above water, my knees bumping against Mason’s knees.
He was treading water too. No longer sinking to the bottom.
I love you so much.
We didn’t say anything for a while, and neither of us made any move to head back towards the shore. We remained in the middle of the ocean, treading water, fresh tears streaming down my cheeks. He might’ve been crying too, but I didn’t look at his face.
His ultraneon waned and disappeared, the glow dissolving into the normal shade of his skin a couple of minutes after mine had.
There was the slightest ache in my veins, which I recognized now to be akrasia.
I didn’t want to think about how strongly that had accumulated in Mason’s veins, how badly he’d need to burn through it now.
We could worry about that on land.
Eventually, we both swam the distance back to shore, water pouring off of us as we trudged up the sand.
Mason sat on the big rock with his head in his hands, fingers weaving through his hair that was made darker by the water, wet strands hanging in his face.
I sat next to him, my own hair long and tangled down my back, wrapping around my shoulders.
“Akrasia?” I asked, hoping to start with an easier subject.
“Pretty fucking bad,” he mumbled.
“Do you want—”
“No. I’m fine. I’ll deal with it later.”
“Okay.”