Chapter 9
N eela had heard about thread counts. There was some sort of metric associated with them, right? The higher, the better if she had to guess, but how high was the best? As she extended her arms above her and stretched every muscle to the farthest reaches of Molly’s guest bed, she figured the sheets surrounding her had to be somewhere north of average but just shy of too-fancy-to-be-comfortable. Whatever they were, they freaking rocked.
God, she’d miss this. For however long she had left in this bed, she’d take meticulous mental notes on not only the sheets but every mortal marvel around her—of which there were many.
The modest guest room was nowhere near as large as she’d seen other mortal content creators lounge around in. Often, they had king-size beds, walk-in closets, attached full bathrooms, and more sunlight than she’d ever seen in her life.
Not that she’d seen much.
But this— this was a bedroom she could melt into and surround with no shortage of sun-loving and completely pot-friendly plants. The fresh morning rays pouring in through the window left no amount of bookshelf unkissed. She smiled, mentally replacing every cookbook tome weighing down the particleboard with imaginary pots of early spring violets and pansies that would do just fine if she kept the temperature right. Or maybe even a bit of lavender.
The fantasy was the warm hug that gave her the courage to finally straighten her spine and crawl out of bed. A glance at the alarm clock told her she had roughly ten hours of daylight on her side before she had to worry about her sire sending any more charmers after her.
And he would. There was no question about that.
“Up and at ‘em, lazy girl.”
By the time she was dressed in her clothes from the day before and had tamed her hair enough to the point of a well-conditioned lion’s mane, she made her way out to the living room and nearly slammed into the back of the loveseat in front of her. Or, more accurately, nearly flipped over the cushions and sucked face with the buttery leatherette.
Across the living room, another set of couch cushions cried out in protest as they struggled to support the massive bulk of Iron and Rhode, who’d just been handed coffee by Molly. Brass, meanwhile, stood in front of the door, sipping from a travel mug and acting for all the world like one warning look from him was enough to keep anything and everything on the other side of said door.
But it was Rhode who stole the immediate words from her throat.
He was the first to stand but not the first to address her.
Crap .
Somehow, in the morning light, everything about him seemed so different, almost foreign, as if he didn’t so much as move through the sunlight but rather it moved around him. The effect was beyond eerie and so . . . wrong. His stance, his movements, none of them fit his powerful frame comfortably, and she wondered whether, like her, he was far more comfortable draped in shadows than sunlight.
“Hey! Did you sleep okay?” Molly rushed out of the kitchen, a piping-hot mug declaring Don’t forget, it all started with Smurfette in one hand and a bottle of some indiscernible dairy product in the other.
“Yeah, it was amazing. Thank you.”
“I’m so glad. And you know what else I’m so glad about?” Molly cast the stink eye to end all stink eyes in Rhode’s direction. “That Brass has assured me Rhode won’t go destroying any more of my stuff if I let him talk to you while my mate drives me to work. Right, honey?”
The auburn-haired angel’s stiff nod spoke volumes.
“Good. You’re all lucky it’s Monday and we’re closed to customers today. I’ve got a bunch of stuff to prep for tomorrow and, apparently, new chairs and glasses to order.” Then she leveled her finger at Rhode. “I’m serious. You’re still on the hook for that furniture.”
“Understood,” Rhode agreed.
“Wonderful. Neela, Brass will be back in about twenty minutes, and then he can help get you anything else you might need. Clothes, food, what have you.”
“Um. Thanks. Sure.”
The front door snicked closed about a nanosecond before whatever interrogation she was apparently in for began. Great. She hadn’t even gotten one cup of coffee in her yet, and from the sour pusses on the angels’ faces, she’d need a whole lot more than the drip stuff to get her through whatever she’d just been set up to deal with.
Because no matter what they had to say to her, it most certainly would be something that needed to be dealt with .
“You don’t speak like them,” Rhode observed.
“You’ve said that already.”
“And you’ve yet to address it.”
Neela put her hand on her hip. “Why does my speech bother you so much? What about it needs addressing, exactly?”
Iron placed a hand on Rhode’s shoulder while he gestured for Neela to have a seat. “I think what Rhode’s trying to say is the charmers we’re familiar with don’t have a knack for a lot of the common mortal vernacular. They tend to learn what they need to in order to acclimate among mortals but not enough to blend smoothly into conversations for extended periods of time. You talk to one of them for longer than twenty minutes in one shot, and you start to notice something’s off?—”
“Like yourself,” Rhode interjected before taking his own seat.
“Thanks? I don’t know whether that’s a compliment or an insult.” Neela tucked a wad of hair behind her ear, only to have her shoulders sink when the heavy stuff broke free despite her feeble efforts to tame it.
Rhode tracked her hand but immediately snapped back to business. “We’re not here to offer either.”
“Obviously.” When neither of them elaborated, clearly waiting for her to explain once again the anomaly that she was, she sighed and took a bracing sip of coffee. Mmm. French vanilla creamer. At least she wasn’t so different from Molly that they couldn’t share the same taste in chemically altered and artificially flavored questionable dairy products. “You’d be surprised at the number of perks that come with being Cyro’s only aberration offspring who he can’t kill and who can also enjoy the light. I’ll just say that I’m not lacking comfort. I have my own suite of rooms hidden belowground, decked out with all the things any woman would want: high-speed Internet, streaming services, jetted tub, plenty of shelves for my plants and gaming consoles . . .”
“Gaming consoles?” Iron asked.
“Well, yeah, I can’t play Baldur’s Gate with Sars Love if I don’t have access to his server. Sometimes I’ll tune in on Twitch if I catch him live, but he can drone on a bit. Editing is important, am I right? Oh, and just outside my apartment is my greenhouse. Technically, it only has night-blooming plants because it’s underground, but I still call it that nonetheless.”
Iron finally plopped onto the couch. “You have a . . . okay, what?”
“A greenhouse. I used the old indoor ice rink from the Lake Placid Olympics and turned its foundation into a footprint for where I wanted to house my plants. It worked out perfectly, minus the ice, of course. The square footage was exactly what I was looking for.”
The two angels exchanged a look, and Neela worried whether she’d gone off course again, whether her elation at having someone to ramble to would scare away the intended audience.
Then Iron shook his head. “As far as I know, the Lake Placid Olympic Center is still standing. The 1980 games weren’t that long ago. How did the mortals not notice a missing ice rink, especially the one from the famous Miracle on Ice game between the Soviet Union and the US?”
Neela smiled into her mug. “I wasn’t talking about the rink from those games. God, how would anyone even nab that? Isn’t it, like, a major tourist attraction in the area?” She took another sip of coffee. “I meant the ice rink from the other Lake Placid Olympics. The ones held in 1932.”
“Holy fuck.” Iron dropped his head into his hands, and Neela almost felt sorry for the guy. Almost.
“How?” Rhode’s question was almost accusatory. “How can you live among the mortals so freely, all while living underground?”
Then it was Neela’s turn to clam up. “I-I don’t.”
He quirked a silvery blond brow but said nothing.
“Cyro keeps me in comfort and gives me anything I want because he can’t kill me. But I’m also a prisoner as much as I am a charmer. The fact that I can go out in the light while he and the others can’t pisses him off more than anything else. So, I get to pay the price for his misery. Because I’m the only one who can handle the exposure, over the years, I’ve built my prison to accommodate my interests. It all changed when the Internet came into being, though. Since then, I’ve created countless online profiles, interacted with so many content creators, learned the ins and outs of every influencer, and, yeah, kind of acted like I was one of them.”
A sharp pain hitched within her chest. “You have no idea what that sort of connection means for someone who never hoped to have any. My entire existence has been one of shame, degradation, and extreme isolation. My plants, my online peeps, they’re all . . . Well, they were wonderful before I left, but they were only surface-level interactions. Essentially, faceless chats with binary codes. I never used a camera or microphone or anything like that. Couldn’t risk Cyro finding out I was connecting to the outside world in some fashion. So, yeah, while I can’t say I know mortals, I definitely know of them, if that makes sense. I doubt they give out honorary badges for being known by association, but I guess that’s why I come across more human than not.”
Holy hell, she’d never spoken any of that out loud, least of all to real living, breathing beings who could see her facial expressions and talk back. She couldn’t even blame her racing heart on the admittedly awesome coffee.
“Iron, leave us.”
A heavy beat passed between them. “You sure?”
Rhode’s stare held all the heat from the night before, when he was losing his shit in the restaurant, but was tinged with a bit more reserve, as if some sort of deal had been made in exchange for him to speak civilly toward her and he’d relented. “Yes.”
“Five minutes.”
After Iron left the apartment, Neela didn’t know whether to start up a conversation or wait for Rhode to say whatever the hell he had on his mind. Seriously, the secrecy was a bit too dramatic for the early hour, and if she wasn’t careful, she’d waste away all her available sunlight drinking in the man before her instead of hightailing it as far away from Cyro as possible.
“Did you live with Cyro?”
Neela blinked. Talk about direct. “No. My suite was not far from his holdings, but it wasn’t connected. He had charmers keep tabs on me because I’m immune to magic so he couldn’t use it to contain or detect me. I had a regular patrol cover my perimeter, though. That’s why I was able to finally sneak out. One of the guards was late to his shift.”
“But you know where his home base is located.”
“Yes . . .” Oh, she did not like this line of questioning. Not one bit.
Rhode stood, and Neela forgot just how breathtaking the full measure of this man truly was. Dark eyes and powerful muscles framed by steely contours were wrapped up in a silk shirt and dress slacks. He was the picture of seductive stealth, and her heart ached with joy to see him standing so tall.
“Can you access it?” he asked.
“I can . . . Why are you asking, though?”
“Can you move freely throughout his property?”
Then it was her turn to ask the questions. Neela abandoned the coffee on the table and shot up. “Okay, what’s all this about? I just broke free from that asshole. I’m not about to run back there.”
Rhode stepped forward. “You can, and you will.” The heat from his words thickened the air between them. “I need that relic, and I need you to get me close to it.”
“What? Are you insane?”
“As much as it pains me to admit, you and I share a common goal: Cyro’s destruction. If I can gain that relic, the sentinels and I will finally be able to return to the Empyrean and stop him from creating an army capable of invading Heaven’s highest realm and snuffing out all life as we know it.”
Neela shook her head. “That’s a literal suicide mission.”
“Not if you’re with me.” Then he leaned forward, and her muscles tightened with that strange tickling energy from when she’d touched him last. “Besides, I have a feeling you know more than you’re letting on.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do.” His deep eyes swirled with a dark promise, which quickly faded to the pearlescent silver of the wings she’d seen earlier. “Because you have seen me before, Neela. Somehow, you know me, and I intend to find out how.”
Her throat clogged with undue tension, but she gritted her teeth through it regardless. “I am not going back there. I can’t. Do you understand me? I can’t go back to that life.”
Rhode straightened, and an unreadable expression danced across his features. “How about an exchange?”
She regarded him and, dammit, hated that she was so intrigued, both by what he might offer and to keep listening to him talk. “What sort of exchange?”
“A story for a story.” His shiny black loafers made their way across the carpet until their heels clapped out a slow rhythm on the galley kitchen’s linoleum. On top of the windowsill sat a small aloe plant Neela had learned that Molly used for cooking burns. She’d snip off the tips of its leaves to source the cooling gel within as needed. Neela feared for the poor plant as Rhode caressed one shiny pointed leaf between his fingers, taking its sensory measure as one would a bolt of fabric. “You have a fondness for plants.”
“Yes.”
“There is an arboretum not far from here. Do you know what that is?”
“Of course I know what an arboretum is,” she rushed out before her limbic brain could settle her excitement. Be cool, Neela. Be. Cool.
“I will take you there in the daytime—today, even, while there is no threat of Cyro finding you.”
An arboretum. A botanical garden full of trees, shrubs, and other woodsy plants she could never hope to harbor in her small night-blooming greenhouse. To have one in New Hampshire that was still open in the winter was more than her frazzled mind could handle. Was he seriously offering to take her there? To see it in person ?
“I believe there is a year-round greenhouse there as well.”
Hot tears stung her eyes at the enormity of what he was offering her. “You would take me there? Really?”
“Yes. I will let the plants and wildlife share with you the story of this land, these mortals, and why their souls are worth saving. In exchange for a story of your own,” he added pointedly.
“And what kind of story do you want to hear from me?”
A sharp knock on the door nearly shook the apartment. The sound was only mildly louder than Iron’s booming voice. “Brass is back. You guys ready to go?”
“What do the mortals call it these days?” Rhode mused. “An origin story?”
“Origins of what? I already told you all about me.”
Oh, she did not like the way he looked at her, as if any of his remaining emotions got sucked into a frozen zone with no hope of or interest in retrieving them.
Then he fired that Arctic chill right at her, and she, as usual, was powerless to stop it.
“The origins of how you know me.”