Chapter 34
A scaly slab of lichen-riddled bark hung off the giant white oak tree as yet another mark of shame against the hundred-foot-tall behemoth. Over the past several weeks that Rhode had come to visit the thing at the North Woods Arboretum, the poor tree hadn’t improved much. At least, based on what he knew of trees, which was not a whole lot. The silver-tinged bark looked more flaky than fertile, but judging by the dieback on some of its lower branches, mites or other insects had been having a field day on its insides.
The giant fucking red X spray-painted across its midsection also served as a massive giveaway that this sucker was slated for the chipper.
That was new. Hadn’t been there the week before, nor the temporary placard detailing what would be coming into that part of the exhibit come springtime.
Because, of course, the mortals had to wait until the ground thawed before they could remove the tree and replace it with whatever pretty things people loved that didn’t need to be sullied by complicated feelings about longevity, perseverance, and acceptance despite appearance that the old tree conjured up.
Never had Rhode sympathized with a plant before or seen so much of himself in how hard the thing was fighting, despite getting constantly kicked between the roots just when one of its struggling branches had managed to show a bit of green for the first time in years.
But efforts didn’t matter, only actions, and just like the old oak slated for execution, longevity meant jack shit, as Chrome would say, if cancer decided to join the party.
Rhode fingered the peeling, dying bark and ripped it free of its tether. There wasn’t even a faint suggestion of green beneath. Nothing to offer appreciation for him removing the scab so the fresh stuff below could get its fair shot at some sunlight. If there was any health left in the thing, the oak had little interest in making him aware of it.
Even the damn tree couldn’t trust him with its secrets. What a theme his life had taken on.
Two sets of approaching footsteps crunched through the hard pack of snow behind him. “Do you want to buy her a drink first before you start feeling her up like that?”
Chrome’s question was the sandpaper rubdown his skin had been avoiding since Neela had declared not only to his enemies but also his brothers that her trust did not go both ways.
“I wish to be alone,” Rhode replied.
“Too bad.” Iron’s curt exclamation was delivered with the authority of one used to being simultaneously unchallenged and also one who was really, really good when some fool did make the mistake and stepped up to challenge him. Either way, those two words held an expectation that Rhode was so not in the mood to debate.
Chrome hinged over at the hips and squinted to read a nearby placard on what Rhode thought was a red maple, but then the sentinel shook his head in surrender when he got to the genus’ Latin name and popped a square of peppermint gum into his mouth. “Neela’s moving out.”
Rhode looked to the sky and clasped his hands behind his back to keep his composure at the mention of her name. “I can see why she would want to.”
“Into her own apartment.”
Rhode had to pause to check that his spine was still attached to his neck when he whipped his head in Chrome’s direction. “What?”
“The den wasn’t for her, she said.” Chrome held his palms up to stop the questions Rhode had at the ready. “And before you go grilling me for details, I’m telling you right now that I don’t have any. I only know it at all because Drea asked me to do a background check on the property management company that runs the apartment complex Neela’s interested in. Aside from that, I’m spectacularly out of the loop except for, and I quote, ‘when it comes to lifting the heavy shit on move-in day.’ Seriously, those two have developed some sort of secret code language that even I can’t decipher.” The flush of red tingeing his complexion was the only giveaway to how frustrated the angel was over that fact.
To hell with it. Rhode let his shared aggravation come out in the question he’d just been told was pointless to ask. “Why are you letting her leave?”
Chrome scoffed. “I’m a thousand percent certain no one’s letting her do anything.”
“Why do you care?” Ever the astute asshole, Iron was brutally direct and deserving of one of those marksmanship badges the American military gave out to its most lethal snipers.
Rhode dodged the question about as well as he’d been dodging every thought of Neela since she’d revealed, while in his enemy’s arms no less, the personal role she’d had in his torture and how she hadn’t bothered to share any of that with her soul bond. All the times he’d been with her, around her, fucking inside her, and she still kept secrets from him. About him.
As a spy, he would have appreciated her ability to hold out on dispelling information if not for the fact that he was at the center of said information.
No, she’d waited to air those particular gems until she had no other choice. Until she’d been exposed and had nowhere else to turn except toward the truth.
“I care that she’s well. That’s all,” he said, schooling the emotion from his features.
The large angel folded his arms over his chest and stared at him blandly. “Bullshit. You’re more butthurt over how she ripped the Band-Aid off, rather than why she might have had it on in the first place.”
“Escape and evade, Iron. That’s what she was about. The rest of it is just a bunch of pretty pictures. Lies. More smoke and mirrors.” Neela had proven as much when she’d flung out that sad sack story about wanting to escape with him.
And the worst part of it all was that he’d wanted to believe her, as ludicrous as it sounded. But no matter how many times he tried to picture his steel-backed soul bond sneaking through Cyro’s compound to try and save them both from what was coming for them, another image weighed equally hot and heavy in his mind.
One of Neela telling Cyro exactly what he wanted to hear to save herself.
Which was the lie?
Rhode waved the image away. “Look, I appreciate the welfare check, but I prefer to be alone— Oomph !” Hard-packed snow found its way into every orifice responsible for getting oxygen to the more vital parts of him. Shaking his head and spitting out the cold stuff, he turned, nostrils flaring, only to lunge behind the dying oak when a snowball the size of a small watermelon careened toward him. “What the fuck, Chrome?” he yelled, peeking his head around the trunk.
But the angel was already bending down, grunting beneath the weight of—goddammit— another snowball. Or to be more accurate, a snow boulder.
“You keep saying stupid and hypocritical shit, I’ma keep heaving this white stuff at you with the goal of eventually packing in your backward brain with so much cold that it has no choice but to shut down the hysterics and see things through the eyes of survival.”
“Avoiding you two is survival!” Rhode threw himself behind the oak again when Iron double-fisted two snowpacks and sent them flying at his head. Wonderful . Despite the worst of the snow hitting the tree, there was still plenty of impact to make him grunt and cause his back teeth to clench. When it was clear those two had no intention of giving up, Rhode threw his hands up and spit out words of surrender. “All right already. Enough! I get it, okay? I get it.”
When Rhode finally came out from behind the tree, arms behind his head like some hostage, it was to the soured and thoroughly pissed-off expressions of two sentinels who clearly would have had no problem burying him beneath the snow just so they could come out on top.
Mages, he was so tired of this. Tired of questioning everyone’s intentions, including his own. For once in his life, he’d happily carve out key organs just to be told the truth without coercion or tricks.
What a lousy spy he’d become, expecting the truth so easily from others while being too exhausted to serve it up himself. Irony was the karmic bitter pill that was constantly getting shoved down his throat, and he’d never quite developed a taste for the stuff.
Rhode wasn’t entirely surprised that Chrome was the first to step forward, hands blessedly empty of snowballs, thank the mages.
“Since we’re on the subject of survival, let’s pick at that scab for a bit. Here’s a newsflash for ya: you can’t survive without your soul bond. Period. End of story.” Then the angel jabbed a blunt finger at Rhode’s chest. “You, more than anyone, know how important secrets are to survival. I wouldn’t have branded you as my seraphim commander if you didn’t know that truth.”
Iron cracked a jaw and grunted his agreement. “And if it wasn’t for you and your secrets, Rhode, Chrome might not be here. Hell, none of us might even be here if you’d been one breath weaker.” Dark sincerity floated in the shadows of the sentinel’s mismatched eyes, conjuring up memories and alternatives none of them wanted to contemplate. “But you weren’t. And neither was Neela.”
Aaand there they were again. Back at the beginning of the very ride that had made him so goddamn nauseous that it’d seemed safer to stick to the carnival games than to go anywhere near the subject and admit how chickenshit he was.
But coward or no, some things still hadn’t changed.
“She lied to me.”
“To save herself. To save you ,” Chrome pointed out.
“But that’s just it. I have no idea what’s truth or fiction. Do I believe that Cyro’s own get had a plan to rescue me all along? That she merely got caught and that was why I had to face the consequences of her farce-turned-reality? Or was it all part of a plan to finally win favor in the eyes of the one being who never returned it? For weeks, I have come here and spun all sorts of stories and scenarios of what could have been, what she may have known and when. The web of my mind is so tangled with possibilities, and to hear more lies from her would completely?—”
“Does it matter?” Iron asked, serious as a heart attack.
The gears in Rhode’s mind ground to a halt, because in no way had the angel just asked that question. “Does. It. Matter ? How the hell can you even ask me that?”
“How the hell did any of us get to a point where you’d make me ask it?”
At a loss for sense and next steps that didn’t involve stabbing his kama into Iron’s ear canal, all he could do was shake his head in disbelief.
“Let me clarify things, because, for the most part, we can give you the benefit of the doubt as to why you don’t have your head screwed on straight. But the statute of limitations on said benefit expired, oh, I don’t know, the minute your soul bond said she was about to sign a lease on an apartment that had nothing to do with you.”
“Careful,” Rhode ground out.
“We’ve all had secrets,” Iron said, impressing upon him the full weight of Rhode’s position. “The why of them was never as important as the execution, because at the end of the day, we always trusted each other and knew that whatever words we had to say were always said in service of the Empyrean. What came out of our mouths didn’t matter. Betrayal doesn’t come from words. It comes from actions. So I’ll ask you again, does anything Neela said when Cyro’s blade was at her throat actually fucking matter?”
Rhode’s chest pumped air through his lungs at jet-engine speeds. For the first time in too many weeks, he sifted through memories, not of that snowy evening at the park but of every other moment he’d shared with Neela. The day he found her, tangled and frantic beneath a charmer’s cargo net. The evening she found him at the animal shelter and took exactly zero of his brooding bullshit. The intoxicating joy on her face as she flitted from tree to tree in this very arboretum.
The photo booth where all she wanted was a memento to take home, and she gave him one his mouth had since memorized.
He tried damn hard to find the kernels of betrayal, the telltale signs of off-color questions or coming and going at odd hours.
And then shame, hot and defacing, rose up in his gut when he found none.
“Holy shit.” Rhode stumbled back against the nearest tree trunk both wide and alive enough to support him as the reality of the past few weeks walloped him with the steel-toed end of his size-fifteen boot.
He had exhibited all those things. The accusatory javelins he’d constantly heaved at her. The anger. Pawning her off on other people. Downright abandoning her, leaving her alone at every occasion from meals with his family to this very arboretum.
And what had she done in retribution?
Comforted him. Sought him out when the warrior in him wanted to be alone while the prisoner of war inside his head screamed for companionship. Warmed his bed even though he’d given her very few reasons to return to it.
Then his mind stopped whirling long enough to break down on the exit ramp of their earlier conversation. He’d given her very few reasons to return period . So she wasn’t.
“I’ve been such a fucking asshole.”
Iron nodded. “Yup.”
“And she’s leaving,” he breathed out, hating the panic that clutched his heart.
“Yeah,” Chrome replied, leaning forward on his hips and smiling his trademark shit-eating grin. “So what are you going to do about it?”
Rhode’s wings were out and connecting with the nearest thermal before the sentinels’ booming laughs shook any more snow from the trees.