Chapter 10
A s far as mortal tourist attractions went, the North Woods Arboretum was as unassuming as they came. Rhode and Neela had agreed to kick off their outing during a common lunch hour. Though expansive in their own right, the grounds were not far from the town’s main drag that offered up food fare for the daytime workers. If Rhode had to spend the afternoon among mortals and a demon, he’d at least do it when the majority of onlookers were stuffing their faces during their barely thirty-minute lunch breaks.
And these people thought paranormal creatures were the supposed heathens.
Wrought-iron arches welcomed them into a world that was both serene and mysteriously haunting. Neatly manicured trails escorted them farther among arboreal sleeping giants who had been tucked in beneath thick blankets of snow and ice from winter’s earlier leavings. Every few steps, they’d pass by a placard describing the various genera of each shrub, berry, and infernal pine cone.
To be sure, there was immense beauty around him. Vastly scaled cypress and blue spruce trees were a few of the basics he’d recognized, but none of them commanded his attention like the bright white puffer coat in front of him that had been newly cleaned and was darting from sign to sign along with its owner like a child in a candy store fretting over which chocolate bar to choose before the store closed.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe it! An emerald sentinel juniper! Oh, and look, it even has berries. They’re so blue and pretty nestled in their green little needles. Kind of looks like a bird’s nest, don’t you think? It’s so stinking picture-perfect, I can’t even!”
Rhode begrudgingly joined her in front of the shrubbery bed. “Can’t even what?” While the plant was certainly alluring, he had a hard time seeing what about it would warrant her ear-piercing squeal that had nearly ruptured his eardrum.
The look Neela threw at him contained equal parts embarrassed teenager and impatient government employee. “I was saying that the plants are incredible.”
“Why don’t you just say that?”
Neela zipped her coat higher up her neck and leered at him. “I just did.”
He snorted. “Forgive me, but I have not had the opportunity to learn the plethora of languages the other angels have.”
“It’s not a language. It’s common vern— Oh, whatever.”
After summarily dismissing him, Neela continued to flit through the manicured forest, marveling over things he had to remind himself that he had once taken for granted. Dappled snow clinging to far-too-thin branches. The musk of earthy pine dampening down the subtle crispness of the cold air.
Cold air in general.
But he could hardly focus on it for long. Every time Neela danced from one patch of flora to the next, her trailing scent made him question his decision to hover so closely. Even among so much greenery, those earthy hyssop notes seemed to flare behind her every time that hypnotic riot of curls whipped in front of him.
Though he hadn’t developed much of a taste for the mortal food in New Hampshire, with the sole exception being Molly’s cooking, he had learned that licorice was not a flavor he wanted anything to do with. And yet, this woman carried with her a gentle mintiness that enveloped the harsher edges of the more abrasive hyssop scents he’d experienced. And he didn’t hate it.
Which was ridiculous. How could anything about the golden whirlwind before him, who was straining over a railing in an attempt to plunge what seemed like the more vital parts of her face into some other cypress’ similar golden foliage, spark anything but disgust?
The question had been slamming around his mind for the better part of their excursion and only fueled his frustrations at having so many damn loose threads to begin with.
And he, an Empyrean spy, for god’s sake.
Despite his unease, he had little interest in worsening his already precarious circumstances. So, when her remaining foot lifted off the ground, he pushed off the railing and called her away from the needle pit of whatever she was willingly throwing herself in.
“Walk with me,” Rhode remarked. “There’s a path up ahead that takes us through a more wooded area, away from the main gate and office. The privacy will allow you to speak freely.”
He was only slightly surprised when he heard her foot land back on the pavement, followed by both heels trailing quickly behind him as he headed toward the path.
“Okay, I guess we’re doing this, then.” Neela’s voice had dimmed so much from the brightness it held earlier, and he begrudgingly cursed himself for it. Clearly, he’d snuffed out all the wonderment that had kindled a new luminosity in her resplendent features only a moment ago.
Damn, but this whole outing was supposed to facilitate a trade, wasn’t it? Information for information. He’d let her roam the grounds wildly for an entire hour, after all. It didn’t matter that a part of him warmed just a little at how easy it was to give her the delight fueling each one of those dashes across the walkway.
They had business to discuss, and the sooner they got down to it, the sooner he could find a way to cut whatever ties had been established between them.
But then he caught her bottom lip jutting out, despite the frown weighing the rest of her smile down, and a new level of annoyance slammed into him. Oh, fucking hell.
It was such a small ask, wasn’t it? To meander through plants she’d not seen in the sunlight before? Even he was not so callous as to refute the simple pleasures he recalled upon regaining his freedom. Sunlight on skin. Clean clothes. Cool rain.
He lifted his eyes to the sky, asking for patience from mages knew whom, and sighed. “We can return.”
When she didn’t say anything immediately, he risked a glance at her and was pleased to see that she had taken up stride next to him.
He was even more pleased to see that full lower lip twitching as she fought for how to react to his offer. Was there a smile struggling to break free?
And more distressingly . . . Why the hell did he care?
His chest contracted with a strange sense of pride at the success of his tactic. Yes, it was his method for getting her to do as he wanted that pleased him. That fit, even if his logic didn’t entirely feel as right as it used to. Still, he had to remind himself why they were there and what real success would mean for him and the others.
Neela took a deep breath. “Okay, so . . . origin story. Well, for as long as I can remember, I’ve always lived underground, like the rest of my kind. And for most of that time, I viewed it more as a sanctuary than a restriction. Wherever Cyro and the others migrated to, it always came with a special secluded area just for me. I didn’t know any different, you know? Despite the circumstances of our living arrangements, whether they were prolific or sparse, I always had spacious accommodations with free-roaming access to any parts of the hideaway that I wished. But after a while, things just felt . . . weird. I began to question why there were no others like me. No females, I mean. I even wondered why I didn’t share any of the features common among the male charmers, outside of my eye color, that is, and even that is a shade or two off from the rest of my kind.”
Rhode nodded. “I noticed as much.”
“Yeah, kind of hard to miss.” She unzipped the upper part of her coat and exposed the bare column of her throat. “No gold bands either. Or swirling gold and dark teal tattoos covering every inch of my skin. And let’s not forget”—Neela grabbed a fistful of her curls—“I ain’t bald.”
A sharp traitorous chuckle pushed against the seal of his lips, but he managed to swallow it down. “No, you are not.”
“My conversations with the other charmers were always minimal at best. I got the sense they tolerated me as much as anyone who was forced to interact with neighbors in the same apartment building. But the relationships always just kind of hung there, you know? Real surface-level stuff. Still, I didn’t mind so much. We all had the same goals, the same understanding, the same way of life, for the most part.”
“You make it sound like some sort of nomadic colony.”
“In a way, it sort of was, I guess, except I didn’t have the same tasks as the others, nor was I treated the same. I never knew why. And then, one day, Cyro called for me.”
Rhode’s footing faltered, but he quickly caught himself and hid the misstep under the guise of adjusting his posture.
“It was not long after my inception that he wanted to speak with me.”
“Inception?”
“What you would call our birth. I would say it was about a year or so after that.”
“He waited that long to speak with you? As in, ever speaking to you?”
“We’re not a particularly chatty crew. Our existence is more utilitarian than that of the mortals. Don’t get me wrong, we conversed when needed to accomplish tasks or convey information, but beyond that, things were pretty quiet. Some charmers, however, show signs of disease in that first year following inception. We don’t know why, but not everyone makes it to their first or second year of life. Perhaps it has something to do with the part of himself Cyro chooses to create us from or the strength of the dark magic he uses during the casting. Who knows? But a year is kind of a big deal for us. So, shortly after I made it through my first year, he called for me.”
Neela stopped in front of a tall maple tree and ran her fingers over its brown and tan bark. The particular genus wasn’t one Rhode could even easily pronounce, but she seemed to recognize it instantly. “Cyro handed me a stone and instructed me to portal to the surface and place it at the base of the nearest tree. That was all. Once I did that, I was supposed to open a portal and return.” An errant piece of bark had begun to peel from the trunk, and she swiped a thumb over it, trying to reunite it with its home. “I couldn’t portal. I tried, in addition to other charmers helping me, along with Cyro himself, but none of us could get the magic to work on me. When he finally ordered me to take the stairs to the surface instead, I was elated because at least this was a task I could do. If I couldn’t portal, I could sure as hell climb some freaking stairs. So I scrambled up the stone steps, eager as anything, flung the door open, and immediately screamed my head off at the shock of it all.” She took a deep breath. When her voice returned, it resonated with heavy pain. “It was pure daylight outside. Before either of us knew my capabilities, he sent me into the heat of the sun with no warning, no explanation for how he expected me to complete this task without succumbing to the light or why I was even called upon to do so in the first place. None.”
Rhode’s jaw ticked. “He was grooming you.”
“You could say that, yeah.” Then she turned her back to the tree and let the great maple support her. “But at the time, I was just so eager to be useful, I couldn’t see beyond my sire’s disappointment or the disappointment of the others.” A flicker of hurt crinkled the corners of her eyes. “Then he tried to kill me.”
Rhode’s muscles stiffened. “What?”
“Over and over again.” The ghost of something harshly familiar danced within her eyes, but she blinked it away before he could identify it fully. “I’ve been set on fire, drowned, electrocuted, all by his dark magic. Charmers I knew my whole life were tasked with holding me down, forcing me to drink all manner of vile potions, you name it. At one point, he even tried to dissolve me particle by particle by placing me in some magical chamber.”
Somehow, even the forest knew to quell its tranquility, though Rhode hadn’t realized a thing was possible. The birds winter hadn’t yet managed to chase away even choked off their subtle squawks. It was as if no sound existed . . . except the thundering blood pounding a war drum in his ears.
“But my sire isn’t a fool and doesn’t tolerate failure for long. He figured out that something in my inception process had been different. Whatever object he’d nabbed from that battlefield and used to create me didn’t give him the end result he desired. He’d also learned, through lots of fucking trial and error, that not only was I not what he was hoping for but that I also couldn’t be killed, in the sunlight or otherwise.”
Rhode clenched his fists and stuffed them in his coat pockets. He would not say anything. He would not ask the thousand questions lighting his tongue on fire.
“It was determined that, ultimately, I wasn’t just power less , but power didn’t work on me in general. No magic, no spells, nothing. But because celestial angel fire is the only thing that can truly destroy a charmer, as you so helpfully pointed out earlier, and it’s not like Cyro can touch the stuff or even have access to it without torching himself, he was left with a wonderfully immortal and utterly worthless creation. Something that reminded him on the daily how much of a failure his highest hope had been. So, what does anyone do with their skeletons? They build a huge state-of-the-art decked-out closet for the suckers and shove them in there good and tight. And over time, if those skeletons are lucky and quiet and promise not to disrupt anything or get in the way, they’re given bits of freedom around the grounds but never more than that. I’m allowed to be helpful, so long as I never remind him of just how harmful I truly am.”
“Why?” Rhode breathed out, though he wasn’t entirely sure what he was asking. Why did you stay? Why didn’t you fight back? Why are you truly telling me all of this, despite my asking you to? You could lie. I’d know if you lied. And then . . . Please fucking lie to me.
Thankfully, Neela seemed to read his scattered thoughts. “I stayed because, even with my limited freedom, I still had my plants. Growing, breathing things that relied on me to keep going each day. When some would overgrow their pots, they needed me to transplant them into an environment they’d flourish in. When some branches or leaves would show evidence of disease, they needed me to prune away the pestilence for their flowers to bloom. To them, I was useful. I wasn’t some grand mistake that didn’t deserve to take up space. I was vital in a way, and to me, that feeling went both ways.” Her throat worked on a swallow, and his eyes snapped to the slender column that she hadn’t yet zipped back up from the elements. Tiny goose bumps dotted her delicate flesh, and his nostrils flared.
She took a deep breath, one that sobered as well as strengthened. “It took an eternity, but eventually, once Cyro realized I wasn’t going anywhere and, likewise, couldn’t interfere with his plans in any meaningful way, I begged him to let me care for something else, something that brought me a new type of joy that tending to my plants couldn’t quite achieve.” Then she flicked those golden eyes to him, and her attention struck him so hard, he had to take a step back. “Not something else, exactly, but some one else.”
His celestial senses roared within the cage of his body, shouting warning signs of a danger he could neither see nor hear.
Then she took a step closer, and, damn coward that he was, he couldn’t help but retreat a step farther.
“Have you ever cared for anything so deeply before, something where you know you’re the only being alive who could help the other in some way?”
Memories of his final mission with Chrome rose unbidden from the recesses of his mind. The night before the Sealing, his insistence on hunting down the cause of their intelligence breach, one that had resulted in his entire legion of seraphim scouts returning from Cyro’s camp in pieces.
Send me, brother. I will not fail you.
How many times had he turned that final phrase over in his thoughts, when other far more pressing matters pounded on his mental door for attention? Chief among them breathing, screaming, crying. Bleeding.
It was the last time he had truly called Chrome by the name of brother, despite the angel’s status as a sentinel and role as intelligence master.
They had been as one back then. Two sides of the same mind. Tyrus, as Chrome was known in the Empyrean, and Axtar. The officer and the spy.
But like any ancient civilization whose great enlightenment had stunned the world, only to fall barren to time and consequence, demise was imminent and guaranteed. Always. And sometimes, it needed to be so.
“Have you?” Neela asked again when his silence stretched on too long. “Cared for anyone like that?”
Yes.
“No.”
Neela narrowed her eyes. “What about your brothers? Don’t you care for?—”
“They are not my brothers,” he seethed, pushing forward on his hips. “They are sentinels, guardians of the Empyrean. I am a seraph. We are not the same.”
“And what about the soul bond? Why was that the first bit of magic I’ve ever been able to wield?”
“It’s a connection in name only, one that solely has celestial significance,” he remarked, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. “Nothing more. Outside of me accessing the power of angel fire as a result of that connection, it means nothing.”
Neela put her hands on her generous hips, and Rhode had to lift his chin to remember what truly governed his anger in the moment.
“What am I, then? Some kind of celestial battery?”
Then he sneered at her. “You’re a demon.”
The barb landed before he had a chance to adjust his aim. He’d only meant to warn her off, to frighten her enough so that she’d stop scratching at his wounds, for god’s sake. The shock-turned-retribution on her face was, unfortunately, one he was well familiar with—and one he was in no way prepared for.
“If I’m such a demon, why did I bother keeping you alive at all?”
Stunned, Rhode shook his head, convinced he hadn’t heard her right. “What are you talking about?”
But holy hell, was there a metric ton of immovable resolution carved into those captivating features. And like an explosion, he couldn’t look away. Self-preservation had gone out the window. All he could do was brace himself for the slice of the blade careening toward him.
“That’s right. The thing I was caring for in Cyro’s grotto? It was you, Axtar .”
The thunder in his ears ricocheted down his limbs until every muscle vibrated with an uncontrollable rage that was equal parts shock and petrification.
No. It’s not possible.
Brittle cracking broke through the silence, followed by heavy thuds of something wet, weighty, and abundant. Above, a giant and regrettably barren tree branch from a nearby oak snapped off the trunk a good ninety feet in the air. Coated in ice and burdened by dense snow, the branch plummeted to the forest floor—right above Neela.