Chapter twenty-one
Iwake staring into the most gorgeous blue eyes—eyes the color of a mesmerizing crystal blue ocean. “Now I know what everyone sees when they look at me,” I whisper, my hand lifting and brushing over the stubble on his jaw.
“And what is that, Ember?” His voice is a gentle wind, the kind one might expect to deliver a hint of salt and sea.
I blink and blink again, jolting to a sitting position, my heart thundering in my chest. “How did the doctors actually think my eyes were a birth defect? There’s nothing normal about those eyes.”
“A birth defect?” He chuckles low and deep from his fairly impressive chest, but I assume beauty and perfection are most assuredly requirements for an angelic Overseer.
I’m not certain honesty is, though. I mean, Nephilim are fallen angels.
I think. I’m not fully confident in anything at present, most certainly what he is and what I am.
His eyes, those damnable eyes that look just like mine, dance with amusement.
“Is that what they told you? And you believed it?”
Yes, I think. Yes, that is what they told me and what I told everyone else, but at this point, admitting that out loud will likely sound stupider than it does in my head right now.
I push to my feet, shaking off the haze of sleep and noting his dark hair lies in wet tendrils at his temple, and he’s now dressed in a fresh black tee and jeans that he’s paired with combat boots.
It’s his color combo of choice frequently, a uniform of sorts it seems, and I wonder if it’s about hiding the blood of battle or blending in with the darkness of Hell if he’s ever dragged there by the likes of Jeremy.
But that aside, he showered while I slept, and there’s an anxious energy about him. “What’s happening?”
“We’re leaving,” he says, the tiniest innuendo of amusement lingering in his tone. “He motions to his bedroom. “You have twenty minutes to get ready. There are clothes on the bed. Pack light, if you pack at all.”
As if I have more than a few small things.
As if I haven’t left my life behind. We haven’t talked about the longevity of my plight, either, and the current press for time hardly seems the best moment for questions.
At this point, I’d just like to know where we’re headed and why Micah, as Overseer, believes a middle-of-the-night escape is necessary.
But having learned he’s more coded messages than answers, I don’t bother to ask.
I head toward the bedroom—his bedroom—and once inside, I find a stack of clothes lying on the bed. Apparently, he’s not only dictating my comings and goings, he’s dressing me, too.
Twenty minutes later to the minute, I step into the living room, twinning with him in black jeans, a black tee, and combat boots.
I haven’t bothered with a bag. My toothbrush is in my pocket.
I left the extra clothing. Nothing else is mine.
Micah is waiting on me in the living room, the black zip-up jacket he’s sporting indicating his impatience to depart.
He motions to the couch, where another jacket awaits me.
“You’re going to need that,” he states. “It’s snowing, and we’re on a motorcycle. ”
Wonderful, I think. A motorcycle. Snow. This Texan is about to freeze her ass off, but if leaving this place keeps me alive, I can deal with the cold.
I don’t think Micah is worried about me, though.
I think he’s worried about his people, and if he’s right, if I’m a danger to his garrison, I will happily endure bad weather to get the heck out of here.
I bundle up, and without a word, he’s striding toward the door, expecting that I will follow in his actions.
By the time he’s in the hallway, I’m on his heels, biting back questions.
Even in a courtroom, silence is golden, and I can’t imagine that’s not true in a garrison with armed Nephilim who think I’m a Jeremy protégé.
With zipped lips, I follow Micah’s lead, in step with him as we weave through the hallways and eventually end at an elevator, no doubt leading to the surface.
We step inside, facing forward, and neither of us speaks, but the tiny box is an inferno in the thick jacket I’m certain I’ll be thankful for soon.
The car sways with the path upward, and it’s quite clear in my mind that logically, he could be delivering me to some kind of prison or my demise.
But how can I want to free myself when I’ve seen and felt the serpent inside me?
The elevator doors open, and he glances over at me. “Stay close.”
As if I’m going to run off in the middle of a bunch of Nephilim who might or might not want me dead, I think.
His lips quirk as if he’s read my mind, but if he’s doing so, it’s in a sneaky, undetectable way.
As if he knows exactly what I’m thinking, be it because he really does or he thinks he does, he counters with, “You should work on your facial expressions and hiding your emotions and opinions. You don’t. At all.”
I draw my spine straight. “That’s not true. My courtroom persona is well-practiced.”
“We’re not in a courtroom. We’re in a war between angels and demons. You’d be smart to remember that.”
A war between angels and demons.
Bile gathers in my throat, burning a path down and settling in my belly. This is my new life, and I’m not sure if the war is happening around me or inside me. Or perhaps both.
“You coming?”
I blink away my thoughts to find Micah standing outside the car and holding the door for me.
I double-step and join him, stepping out into what turns out to be the same open warehouse where we’d first entered the garrison.
At this late hour, the silence is thick, and the heavy overhead lighting has been replaced with floor-level soft beams of light illuminating our shadowy path forward.
We weave through a path of motorcycles and trucks until we reach a steel door.
Micah keys a code into a panel and opens it as a biting gust of icy wind greets us, a drastic contrast to the cloak of warmth that had enveloped me moments before.
While I shiver and dig deeper into my coat, Micah doesn’t react, seemingly oblivious to the shift in temperature.
He eases outside, surveys a bit, or so it seems, and then motions me forward.
I steel myself for the bitter cold and inch through the small passage of his body and the wall that he’s allowed me.
In my mind, I’m aware that he never shies away from our nearness, and in that moment, I believe this to be a strategic way to shelter his people and keep me out of the hands of his enemy.
I comfort myself with the thought that if he believed I was one with the serpent, he’d find a way to achieve the same while creating distance between us.
A short staircase leads me to a parking lot, while snow flutters about in tiny buttons, more ice than powder.
Micah is on my heels, and as promised, a bike awaits us—a Harley, actually.
I know it’s a Harley, as one of my clients favored them and talked incessantly about the varied makes, models, and mechanics.
I’d listened, as listening has always served me well, and it turned out that had been smart.
One of those tiny details the client had shared with me had been how I’d turned a liar’s testimony meant to demolish him into the way I’d set him free.
He deserved his freedom. He’d been innocent.
I hope.
For all I know, I’ve spent my career tricked into defending demons.
Micah hands me a helmet. “It’ll keep your face dry,” he says, pulling on his own before he straddles the bike, looking as comfortable as he would in the soft bed we left behind.
The man’s a rockstar on this thing, in his element, arrogantly confident and good-looking, while for my part, I’m thinking, How the hell did I not fall off the first time I did this with him?
Oh yeah. I know. I plastered my body to his and had not one ounce of shame over it, either.
I’m about to throw pride aside and flaunt my fear by doing the same thing now, when the door we’d exited bursts open.
My gaze jerks that direction to find Celine standing there.
Dressed in leather, her dark hair lifting in the wind, her eyes raging with anger—she’s the force of nature, not me.
The burn in her eyes declares her a gorgeous goddess about to strike me into Hell for standing next to Micah, and I wonder if this is about power, Micah, or me.
Could she genuinely think I’m about to drag him to Hell, and them afterward, and that Micah is blinded by me, maybe by whatever connection we share?
Maybe she knows what it is and I do not.
I also can’t help but wonder if she wants me dead before that can happen.
Micah dismounts and throws a command my direction. “Stay here.”
This is probably not the time to point out that I’m pretty bad at taking orders and that I’m freezing my ass off.
Not to mention the fact that a Crystal Seer, who, per Micah, is destined to kill werewolves and demons, among other gnarly creatures, should be more of a badass.
I doubt demons will care if I’m cold while attempting to kill me.
Jeremy sure didn’t, though he seems more intent on using me than killing me.
Celine waits on Micah at the top of the stairs, as if she expects he’ll come up there to her, but considering his dominant presence, I gamble on a big, fat no.
He’ll never allow himself to be dictated to, even in a nonverbal fashion.
Sure enough, he halts at the bottom of the steps, a wide berth between them, his back firmly my direction.
I have no idea what he says to her, but there’s a shift in her, as if she’s shrunk an inch, her body stiff.
Her expression tightens enough to crack like an icy pond being skated on.
Micah rotates away from her, and before I’ve hardly processed his movement, he’s remounting the bike with the expectation of me joining him. I climb on behind him, my hands on his waist, and when my eyes land on the door again, Celine’s gone.