Chapter 36
Pushing or Pulling or Just Holding On
I was the first to follow, desperate to escape the cafeteria where six hundred eyes devoured me with greedy disdain.
My blood threatened to steam through my pores, hot and merciless in its pursuit of retribution. I marched straight for Ezra’s office, each step forging a new path in the firestorm of my mind.
I’ll go back to The Tower without your help. I’ll figure it out on my own. Zade will help me. I don’t need you. And unless you all plan to shackle me with metal chains, you’ve lost any say over me.
I was leaving. Done with this charade, done being their puppet. I’d handle Azazel myself. I’d get back into the Tower by myself. I’d keep living for myself.
Ezra’s door was open when I arrived. But no one else was there. No candles lit the space either. The empty darkness of the room poked a small hole in my rage-swollen bubble, and the air began to leak out.
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” I said flatly, not turning around when I heard the footsteps.
Ezra strode past me without a word, clapped the overhead lights on, rolled out the chair behind his desk, and sat down like he’d been expecting this all along.
Then Veda came in, closed the door behind the two of us, and stood with her back against the wall beside me.
I looked from Veda back to Ezra. He was rummaging through something in his desk.
“I’m done,” I continued. “I’m leaving the guild tomorrow and not coming back. You all need to stop following me. Find a new Daughter of the Scepter.”
My pulse was keyed up, and my breathing was too loud.
Ezra placed whatever he’d been shuffling around flat on his desk. His withering gray eyes stretched upward toward me. Then his mouth formed a sympathetic line.
He didn’t say a thing. Just stared at me.
I turned to Veda. Her gaze was just as steady, just as unreadable.
I didn’t bother looking back at Ezra as I turned and headed for the door I’d migrated too far from without even realizing it.
I swung open the door and found Salah, Farren, and Matthias standing on the other side.
“We know about you using the Visex,” Ezra said evenly behind me. “You’ve put everyone here in danger.”
My eyes met Salah’s right as he said it. I watched her process his words in real time. Watched her pupils narrow. Watched the comprehension hollow her out.
She looked down. Anywhere but at me.
I clenched my jaw, fists, shoulders. Every inch of me tensed against the burn of shame that had budded when I’d called her a freak along with the other friends I’d made since arriving in their world.
Now, my self-loathing and regret were a hurricane under the knowledge that I had already stabbed them in the back.
I’d put them all at risk and then planned to bail, crushing their hopes of a savior.
I shoved past them all and through their swirling blend of expressions: horror, betrayal, worry.
There was no reason for me to sit around and debate with any of them. No more appeasing. No more indulging their fantasies.
I meant what I said. I was done.
One full night’s sleep, and then I’d be out of there.
“Ellie, wait up!” Farren’s feet met the marble with thuds nearly as loud as her shout.
I didn’t wait.
“I agree with you,” she said once she caught up, dropping her voice as she matched my pace.
“I know what it’s like to be the outsider here, and I don’t care about most of their prophecies, but,” she lowered her voice even more and stepped in front of me.
I pushed past her to keep walking, forcing her to speed along beside me as she spewed, “Just listen to me for a minute. There’s something you should consider.
I know you want to kill Azazel. And we can help you do it.
But a lot of these people, Ezra included, do not care about what happens to the other people inside The Tower. ”
My pace faltered. I glanced sideways at her.
“They want to destroy it.” Farren stepped closer, whispering now. “Everyone in it. I’m sure there are people in there you still care about...”
A lump rose in my throat, thick and sharp. They wanted to destroy The Tower and everyone in it? I knew some in The Way held that view, but I thought they were in the minority. There were innocent men and women in The Tower. People who meant something to me.
Children. Babies, even!
Astrid came to mind. Her younger sister, Isolde, and their parents, who had always been so kind and cared for me like one of their own when I visited.
Yu Ting.
Zade.
Heck, even the idea of Barrister dying sent cold shockwaves through my abdomen.
“What are you trying to say?” My voice shook before I could stop it.
We’d stopped just outside my room.
Farren looked both ways, then leaned in.
“I’ll help you get to Azazel, without destroying The Tower.
You can trust me. Just… be careful who else you decide to trust. I have no desire to murder billions of people.
You want Azazel? Even if you still plan to leave tomorrow, I’ll go with you.
Let me help. It will be a lot easier if you stay here a bit longer and don’t make these people your enemy, but just let me help you. ”
I groaned, turned toward the door, and shook my head. This was pointless. I was never meant to belong anywhere or with anyone. If I couldn’t trust the others, how could I trust her? I didn’t even fully trust Zade or Astrid.
“I don’t want your help,” I mumbled as I turned the knob. “Goodnight, Farren.”
I stepped inside and slammed the door behind me before she could say another word.
The light flicked on.
And a shadow moved.
A monster peeled away from the dark as the overhead potlights chased it out of hiding.
I screamed, but Soren’s hand clamped so tightly around my throat as he slammed me into the back of my door that no air could escape to vibrate my vocal cords.
“Are you using your Visex right now?” he snarled, his face inches from mine.
My eyes bulged, and my mouth gaped from shock, panic, and the cold knife-edge of fear slicing through me as I tried to breathe. No air came. Only fire in my lungs and darkness in my pores.
I clawed at his hand and arm, nails scraping skin. I tried to knee him, but the fabric of the ridiculous dress I was going to die in kept tangling my legs and breaking any impact I might have possibly had on him.
Soren’s eyes were twin pits of rage with no swirling. No silvers. No grays. Just black. Utterly, hatefully black.
He leaned in, his lips brushing my ear, his breath molten with malice. “Should I just end your life right now? Is that what you want? To throw it all away?”
The edges of my vision darkened, pinpricks erupting behind my eyes. My chest burned as my lungs screamed. My body thrashed, weak and useless.
I was drowning again.
“How selfish can you be?!” Soren’s voice was gruff and raw, but quiet. No one would hear him ending my life.
I would slip away, quiet and unnoticed, a comical conclusion for someone who’d always garnered so much attention everywhere she went. I’d be wiped out in the silent shadows while Azazel continued to reign in the public spotlight.
Soren pulled back ever so slightly, enough to watch the expression on my face as he murdered me. Icy tendrils started in the tips of my toes and fingers, licking their way up toward my oxygen-deprived heart.
His grip loosened just enough for a wheeze of air to snake in, but not enough for a desperately needed gasp. The ice continued moving in my veins anyway. It had nothing to do with the lack of oxygen making it into my body and everything to do with Soren sucking my very soul out.
Nephilim are able to absorb the souls of both humans and the Fallen in order to gain any powers or Charisms their victims may hold.
That was how the text I’d found on Soren’s kind described what he was currently doing to me, stealing everything from me, my very essence for the sake of power.
“You put everyone in danger again,” he said flatly. “There are innocent people here. Children. Do you want to see Zuri’s head on a spike? Riaan’s? Was it worth it? Talking to your boyfriend on Visex? Was it worth the risk?”
Finally, his hand released my neck, but he supported my weight with one arm around my waist as he wrenched my head to the side with his other hand fisting into my hair.
I desperately tried to take in air, but the gulps weren’t deep enough with the twisted angle of my neck.
Then Soren moved in again.
His lips met my throat.
He sucked hard. Deep. His teeth scraped against the delicate skin.
I choked out a half-moan, half-sob, the sound guttural and raw. The frost in my veins caught fire. Everything in me woke up.
He pulled back only to move a quarter of an inch to the right and do it again.
“Soren, what are you—”
“I want you,” he growled against my skin, “I'm sick of trying to be good.”
This time, something exploded in my chest, a sensation of nerves bursting free that echoed up and up and up until my ears popped with the overwhelming sensation.
His body pressed harder into mine. I could feel everything. The unforgiving strength of his arms. The sharp line of muscle. The heat of his fury. The part of him that must have ached with the same need spearing through me right where he rocked against my hips.
I was fast fading into him.
A sound of a gasp echoed in the room.
I didn’t realize it was mine until his mouth descended to perform the same torturous sucking on a patch of skin just below my collarbone and above my right breast, sucking another bruise into my skin.
Unlike what happened the first time he kissed me in this room, there would be no hiding this tomorrow.
He was marking me.
All those nerve endings under his touch erupted, shooting in opposite directions. A fierce burn ignited. It started in the way my nipples hardened and then ripped down through my stomach and in between my thighs, where my arousal pooled in my panties.
His hand had left my hair at some point. Long, thick fingers crawled over the hem of the bodice of my dress.