Lucille
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
It was just until Aspen had a solid footing.
That was what I told Oliver when he realized he’d be sharing a bed with him.
It had nothing to do with the bed’s size, but Oliver being Oliver.
Even with Rune between the two, there was plenty of room for more, including me.
But I settled onto the uncomfortable couch despite their protests.
I just… Aspen took up a lot of my mental energy, and I was confused.
I was still hurt from what he’d done. I resented our guardian bond.
Yet I worried for him, and my lingering feelings were still there.
They clung to the fact that Aspen had been forced to hurt me.
He never wanted to. He didn’t place this bond on us.
He could still be the male who dazzled me on Earth.
But then there was Ronen.
His anxiety still hummed in my mind, changing in intensity throughout the day. And for some reason, it comforted me. The sliver of his essence faintly wove around the single emotion, giving me the tiniest taste of him. It meant more that he could ever know that he hadn’t taken it away.
But while a part of me bathed in that knowledge, another yearned for… more.
I fiddled with the afghan on my lap, wrapping and unwrapping the fringe around my fingers. The fireplace had dwindled to nothing but red coals, their slow pulse matching the throb behind my eyes.
Did Ronen know if there was a rune on my father? Or did it need to be placed on my father? Was it the key to opening the gates? It couldn’t be a coincidence that the doors showed the rune between an image of the gates opening. It had to be connected.
The hours, the days, the weeks were shrinking every second. I couldn’t figure this out.
But time and the rune weren’t the only things haunting me.
Did my mom always know about the guardian bond? Did she put it on us? Did that relate to the prophecy, or was it just a note in the margins?
“At this rate, you’re going to burn a hole through your blanket. Care to share?”
Oliver’s whisper startled me. I hadn’t even heard him get out of bed.
I glanced at Aspen. The blanket covering him shifted with each slow breath.
Oliver noticed the direction of my eyes.
“Is this about your mom and…”
Only in part, but I still nodded.
The floorboards creaked beneath his weight as he gestured toward the sitting area. We both left the bedroom, closing the door softly behind us.
Oliver placed another log on the dark coals. He poked them with the fire iron as if shifting around the heatless embers would reignite them.
Settling into the settee, my Infernus scattered itches across my skin and sang in my ear. If I had to guess, the deep, alluring melody took one glance at Oliver and pitied him.
I allowed my Hellfire to gather in my palm. The overeager black flames formed a large ball, its heat brushing threateningly across my face. Adding to the throbbing in my head, I attempted to shrink it.
It resisted me.
We’re trying to light the fire, not consume the fireplace.
The semi-sentient flame bent to my will and shrank to the size of a pea.
I guess that’d do.
“Move, Oli.”
He stepped aside, and I threw my Hellfire at the coals. The tiny black flame crawled across the dark chunks, slowly devouring them as its heat licked up the log, igniting it. Black fire edged in violet danced around the wood, filling the sitting area with heat and shadows.
He stepped back, staring at the fire like it might bite him.
“Do we need to be concerned about it eating anything else?”
“I guess we’ll find out,” I teased.
He side-eyed me, lifted a blond brow, gave the fire one last considering glance, then plopped down beside me.
I covered us with the afghan and snuggled into his side.
“So your mom…”
“My mom.” I sighed.
Then I told him about the dream-walk, the notebook with the prophecy, and the Guardian Rune in the margins.
Oliver’s silence spoke volumes.
“Oli?”
“Sorry, I’m trying to decide if I want to be a good friend and disregard the fact that you never told me about this prophecy and the fact that your mother thought your father was going to kill you, and just stew in my off time, or yell at you for keeping it from me for so long.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I think most of it has already happened.”
“Most,” Oliver murmured, squeezing me tighter into his side. “Except for that middle part, huh?”
“Maybe the last line too. Unless we assume the whispering ice was my father in Elora.”
Oliver lifted his free arm, and I didn’t even need to look to know his hand was buried in his blond locks.
“I’m more concerned with that middle part, Lucille.”
I pulled out of his arms and looked into the concerned fury dancing in his flaming green eyes.
Shit.
“Does anyone else know?”
I swallowed, daring to shake my head.
He turned away, his hand fisting in his hair like he’d rip it out.
“Dammit.”
He yanked me back into his side and squeezed.
“Just fucking dammit, Lucille.”
My cheek rested against his bare chest, his skin smelling of fresh rain and floral soap. His fingers threaded through my wavy locks as the hungry hiss of my flames filled the quiet.
“You have to tell them.”
“I—”
“No. No I. We.” His hand paused in my hair.
“Have you heard how powerful Miriam is? Have you seen the state of Hell recently? I’m not discrediting your mother.
Maybe Lucifer does want to kill you. But there’s a possibility it’s something else.
Someone else. And I officially want the two other males who would brutalize this world if anything happened to you to know and be watching. ”
“Okay,” I conceded.
He resumed playing with my hair and massaging my scalp.
“Do you think your mother knew about the guardian bond and placed it on you to protect you?”
“Except I’m the guardian.”
“Maybe the rune malfunctioned. It’s not like we have much information on the bond.”
“We don’t. But my mom might’ve…” I sat up. “She had an entry on it.”
“And?”
I stood, and my feet sank into the soft rug as I paced.
What did it say? What did it say?
“Born… to balance? No. Born of imbalance.” I tried to picture the passage, but the words were blurry. “Destined to… to…”
Come on. I’d read it!
But not just read it—heard it. From Aspen.
“Right the wrongs of the past.” I waved my hands in time with my words, excitement crackling through me. “A force written in ink shall emerge. Sacrifice will pave the way as voices whisper secrets of the fallen!”
“I don’t believe that was the definition of a bond. That sounds like another prophecy.”
He was right. It did.
“Sacrifice will pave the way as voices whisper secrets of the fallen,” I repeated slowly.
That one, I didn’t know what to do with.
“Fallen as in… angels?” Oliver asked carefully.
Something about the word sat wrong in my stomach.
“My mother was a fallen angel.”
Oliver said nothing. He didn’t need to.
I cleared my throat, pushing past it.
“The only part we know for sure is a force written in ink. The tattoo on Aspen’s back only I can see. And I suppose the one Ronen had on his.”
Oliver chewed on his lip.
“Your mom had the Guardian Rune in the margins of a page with Miriam’s prophecy. Then she had another book that listed the rare bond with potentially another prophecy instead of a description,” he mused.
“You think they’re connected?”
“Maybe. Or maybe your mother thought so, and she was wrong. I don’t know. But if the passage is a prophecy about the guardian bond, who was it written for? You, Aspen, or Ronen?”
My excitement whooshed out of me, and I sank back onto the couch.
“I’m so sick of all her secrets, Oli. And I feel terrible for that because she’s dead, and her soul has less than two months before it’s gone for good.”
He hugged me.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“Might be sacrificed before we do,” I mocked bitterly.
“I’ve lost enough, Luce. I don’t plan on losing my best friend too.”
I held onto Oliver like he was my only flotation device in the ocean of my problems.
We fell into a quiet, somber silence. I stared unseeingly into the waning purple-black fire, cuddling deeper into him. My thoughts revolved around my mom.
She was the last thing on my mind before my eyes closed.
I stood on a dimly lit path in what looked like a park. Purple haloed my vision, signaling a dream-walk. I assumed I was somewhere on Earth from the electric lamp posts and the city peeking through the trees in the distance. But it was nowhere I recognized.
A nippy breeze snapped across my face, and I pulled my coat tighter around me.
No, I realized. I didn’t.
But whose body was—
“Staying warm in there, honey?”
My mom.
I had invaded my mom’s body, somehow using Inviso without having read the chapter.
She lowered her gaze to her belly, her amazed contentment overpowering my sudden shock.
She was pregnant.
With me.
She looked ready to pop. Even the discomfort in her swollen ankles attested to that. This was utterly surreal.
“Don’t worry, not too much longer, and we’ll go find some food. I’m feeling soup and a big box of chocolate truffles.”
A cloaked figure moved in the distance, avoiding the splotches of light cast across the path.
My mom tensed, then something strange happened. I felt her power flow through her, a zipping energy bubbling beneath her skin. She reached out with it, and we instantly felt the figure’s emotions. Curious, wary, but mostly at ease.
Straightening, my mom fingered something hard in her pocket.
A weapon? Most likely.
Beneath her feelings of caution lurked ferocity and a tempest of power waiting at her fingertips.
She stepped forward.
“The darkness shrouds us.”
“Just as the light exposes us,” the figure answered in a feminine voice.
It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place who it might be.
She stopped a couple feet away, keeping her face hidden beneath a large dark maroon hood.
My mom relaxed the moment the female finished the code phrase, pulling her hand from her coat.
“Do you have what I asked for?”
The female pulled something from the folds of her cloak, then raised her hand, displaying a necklace I knew very well.