Chapter 2 Galilee
Galilee
Watching Oriak? walk through the halls of her father’s mansion was like witnessing a princess in the heart of her kingdom.
Gali was in awe. Oriak? radiated wealth and power, reeking of a confidence Gali could barely imagine possessing. Oriak? simply
belonged there, with millions of dollars’ worth of art on the walls and priceless rugs under her feet. Her hair rippled gleaming and
dark down her back as she walked Gali and Bonbon through the sprawling house, and she was wearing an archival Mugler dress,
carved for her body, with her collarbones gleaming above the neckline, her hips switching as she strutted. They’d left the
main gala behind for a private viewing of the artifact Oriak? had been telling them about, and Gali was trying not to be overwhelmed.
From the minute the limo dropped her and Bonbon off, the foreboding from Gali’s dreams had crawled back up her neck, and now
the sheer scale of opulence around them was somehow making it worse. With every step they took deeper into the house, a headache
seeped out from behind Gali’s eyes. Oriak? was talking, and Gali fought to listen.
“Dad’s got the artifact locked up in the east wing, like there’s some heist waiting to happen.” Oriak? paused, and her brow made a tiny furrow. “Actually, now that I think about it, I would totally try to steal it if I was a thief.”
Gali tore her eyes away from what looked like an original Basquiat in an elaborate gilt frame hanging on the wall. “Uh, what
exactly is this artifact again?”
“Oh, I did find that out, actually! So apparently, it’s rumored to be from one of the Vatican’s secret collections—”
“The Vatican has secret collections?” Bonbon looked surprised.
Oriak? grimaced. “Absolutely,” she answered. “They stole tens of thousands of artifacts from Indigenous people during colonialism
and—surprise, surprise—they never returned them.”
“That’s fucked up,” Gali said. “I know museums be doing that, but man, the Vatican?” She shook her head. “Hits different when it’s an institution pretending to have some kinda religious moral authority, you
know?”
“Exactly,” Oriak? agreed. “Dad goes on and on about this all the time. Anyway, this one’s a ritual mask that’s a few thousand
years old. It’s, like, cast in bronze and inlaid with ivory and gold and a bunch of shit. Very extra.”
“Ancient drip. I like it.” Bonbon smoothed down her dress. “How much is it worth?”
Oriak? shrugged. “Like nine?”
“Million?”
“No, figures.” Oriak? turned a corner, not noticing that both her friends had stopped dead in their tracks.
Gali mouthed a silent What the fuck? as her brain did the math, and Bonbon stared at her with wide eyes. “Is she serious?”
“I think so.” Gali grabbed her hand, and they hurried around the corner to catch up. “Oriak? . . . should you be showing us
this?”
Oriak? snorted. “Absolutely the fuck not. Dad would kill me if he knew.”
“See,” Bonbon muttered, “it’s a problem when I can’t tell if she’s exaggerating.”
They arrived at an ornate set of carved wooden doors with four men stationed in front of them and cameras mounted above the
lintel. Each of the men was heavily and blatantly armed, wearing black tactical gear. They watched the girls approach with
cold, flat eyes.
Oriak? tipped her chin up and spoke in her most imperious voice. “Get me Helel,” she ordered.
Only one of the men acknowledged her order. His eyes were gray and unfriendly as he touched his earpiece and murmured something,
his voice pitched low; then he gave Oriak? a curt nod. “One moment, Ms. Onyearugbulem.”
Bonbon stepped a little closer to Gali. Her body had gone tense at the sight of all the guns, and Gali slid her arm through
her friend’s.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. Her aunt Shirley had taught her how to shoot out in the fields, and Gali was excellent at it,
but she didn’t like the guns either. The foreboding was loud and oppressive this far into the house, and a migraine was stabbing
through her right temple. Celestial would kill her for ignoring how bad this was starting to feel, but Gali was stubborn.
They were just going to view the artifact, and everything was going to be fine. She didn’t need to do any work because nothing
was wrong. She was normal. This was fine.
Oriak? was about to snap out another order when someone melted out of the shadows on their right, startling them all. Bonbon
squeaked, and Gali did a double take because she could have sworn there was nothing there—no door, no hallway—just pools of
darkness splashed on the walls and floor. She looked up at the stranger, and her brain nearly short-circuited. Her migraine
squeezed at her skull.
God, he was beautiful.
His skin was a pristine dark walnut that seemed to almost glow, and when he turned his head to glance at the guards, Gali saw the hooked jut of his nose in profile.
The stranger lifted a hand to brush a shadow off his black shirt, and he had those damn piano hands that were always Gali’s weakness, with the long, articulated fingers and singing tendons right under the skin.
Coarse dark curls fell into his face and around his ears, kissing the collar of his black shirt, and his mouth was unforgivably wide and lush.
He wasn’t visibly armed, but there was something about him that seemed intrinsically wrong, like he wasn’t really supposed to be here, like he was one step sideways out of this reality. Gali knew that feeling quite
well. Her entire family had that strangeness to them, but it was much louder in this man and much, much more dangerous. He
was displaced and he wasn’t happy about it.
Gali knew she was staring, soaking him up with her eyes, but she didn’t care. Bonbon leaned in. “Who the hell is that?” she
whispered. “He’s fucking delectable.”
Oriak? glanced over at her friends. “This is Helel,” she said. “He’s the head of the artifact security team.”
The stranger’s eyes flicked in Gali’s direction, and her knees almost gave out. He had the longest lashes she’d ever seen,
and his eyes were so dark they seemed black. Shards of gold splintered in his irises, shifting in the light, and she thought
she saw a glimpse of violent power before it was shuttered away. Her skin skittered over her body. He really did seem illuminated
from within, radiating a light that animated the dim hallway they stood in. It wasn’t something Gali could ask the others
to confirm, because she would sound crazy and she was trying very hard not to be that, not in Salvation, not this far from
the Kincaid house.
“Can I help you with anything, Ms. Onyearugbulem?” the stranger asked Oriak?. “Have your companions been cleared for this
wing?”
Gali exhaled as the rolling heat of his voice curled around them. He sounded like a herald—the kind who sang down falling
civilizations, who stood mad on a mountain as children burned. That voice . . . it scorched like both magma and a cold that
could sear flesh off the bone, iron bleached soft at an unfathomable temperature. It licked against her like a spell.
“They don’t need clearances,” Oriak? snapped. “They’re with me.”
The stranger’s face didn’t change in the slightest, but a haze of contempt oozed out from him.
A faint smile curved Gali’s lips, and she couldn’t help herself. “You’d like us to get on out of here, wouldn’t you?” she
said, amused.
She wanted him to hear her voice, to look at her. She was Galilee Kincaid, and he was some kind of creature, and she wasn’t
afraid. Her head was splitting apart, but she felt reckless and close to laughter. Gali gave in to it—“normal” was going to
have to hold on for a second.
The stranger’s gaze swung to her and he narrowed his eyes, angling his body slightly in Gali’s direction. The stinging ache
inside her made a leap for her bones and clawed through her marrow as it bloomed into wanting. Gali cursed silently, biting
down on her lip. No, no, no, not now! She didn’t want her worlds to overlap, not like this. Her foreboding yelled that something heavy hung behind those carved
wooden doors, and the damn migraine in her head wouldn’t stop. Gali took a step backward, clenching her hands to will them
dark. The stranger’s eyes tracked to her mouth, and far away in the Kincaid forest, Celestial Kincaid giggled, standing shin-deep
in water.
Did you find a toy to play with, Galilee?
This was what Nana Darling had warned her about, this treacherous amplification of her wanting, and if Gali had any sense,
she would run far and fast away from anyone who could set this cascade off within her. She’d done it once before, years ago,
when a girl with silver eyes had visited the Kincaid house from another powerful family and touched Gali so tenderly that
Gali had wept from the force of the ache inside her. She’d avoided the girl for the rest of her visit and Celestial had scolded
her for it, but then again, Celestial had no problem living madly with overlapped worlds. Gali wasn’t like her cousin. Gali
could be exactly like her cousin. Possibilities swung in front of her like falling blades as she looked into the stranger’s
fractured eyes.
“I don’t want you here,” he confirmed, his voice clipped. “The artifact is not on exhibition—”
“The artifact,” Oriak? interrupted, a beatific smile on her face, “is not yours. I will show it to whomever I please, and
if you have any issues with that, Helel, I suggest you take it up with my father. Are we clear?”
Everyone fell silent as the man turned his gaze toward Oriak?. Gali flinched at the way the air changed, at the unexpected
malevolence that suddenly swarmed around them, thick enough to block her throat and lungs.
“I don’t work for you,” he snarled. “Unless your father stands before me himself, the decision is mine. The artifact is not
a toy you can show off to impress your entourage. If you have a problem with how I do my job, I suggest—as you recommend—that
you take it up with your father.”