Chapter thirty-seven
That blood-red sunset that has lingered, eternally it seems, abruptly begins to darken, and I double-step to catch up with Micah. “What are you trying to keep out of Elysium? What the heck is going to jump out at us as we walk?”
“Nothing. You’re with me. Which is exactly why I told you to wait on me.”
“How many times are you going to insist you said that to me when you didn’t? You told me Elysium is safe. Why wouldn’t I go to the beach when generally humans, which I thought I was most of my life, consider it a comfort spot?”
He grunts, a hollow sound of guilt. “Read first. Explore later, with me, as I can teach you how to protect yourself.”
“Why spellcast the beach?”
He halts and turns to look at me, a grit to his teeth that tells me he’s not even close to being over his crankiness.
“We have creatures called Mokie. They’re part sea, part land, and they’re brutal, irritating little fucks.
They’re like weasels on Earth, but they have wings, and they can rift.
They also have big teeth and travel in clusters of mischief-making bastards who like to bite you. You were better off with the crab.”
I gape at him and then lift my hands in the air in disbelief. “Is there any place in this world I don’t have to be ready to fight for my life?”
“I told you the house is safe. I also told you to treat outside like a forest filled with wild animals and a sea swimming with sharks. And to be clear, wildlife doesn’t even begin to compare to demons, which is why you’re learning to fight here, not on Earth.
Try not to get killed before you graduate from Elysium, how about it? And you do that by—”
“Do not finish that sentence by telling me to listen again,” I snap, stepping closer to him and poking his chest. “The main issue here is you refusing to share information. Maybe you’re just pissed off that I blew one of your battle challenges.
You didn’t get to shock me with that crazy giant crab. ”
He catches my wrist and drags me closer. “Why must you be so damn defiant?”
“I don’t know? Maybe because I’m the Aza, and it’s not in my nature? Or perhaps it’s just because I like control and so do you, and we can’t both have it at the same time.”
“I’ll let you have control when I know you won’t get yourself killed.”
“It might make your life easier now, wouldn’t it?”
“It wouldn’t,” he surprises me by saying.
“So, stop trying to get yourself killed.” He releases me and takes one of his damnable wide steps backward.
It’s like he’s always pulling me close and pushing me away, and every time he does it, I’m reminded of the serpent he forgot when we were beside that lighthouse.
But he hasn’t forgotten now. Of that, I’m crystal clear.
It’s right then that a shadow encroaches from above, and my gaze jerks upward as darkness tugs across the skyline, drinking up the blood-ish red and leaving only impenetrable ebony in its wake. It’s suffocating and terrifying, as if the world of Elysium is being sealed off.
“Micah,” I whisper, a moment before there’s nothing but that ebony. I can’t even see my hand in front of my face. Oh my God, what is coming at us? Is it Jeremy? “Micah,” I call out urgently.
His arm slides around me from behind, and he folds me into his hard body, leaning in close, his breath a warm trickle on my neck. “It’s okay. Wait. Just wait.”
I swallow hard, hold my position, and will my sight to cut through the suffocating darkness. “What is happening?” I whisper. “Are we being attacked?”
“No attack. Every seven days, we have a blood-red sky followed by a two-minute blackout.”
Logically, I hear him, I do, but I’m essentially blind right after being attacked by a giant crab when I now know there’s more of them out here.
I find myself trying to sink deeper into Micah, trying to ground myself in something other than the inky black surrounding me.
“It’s making me want to scream or run for light. And that sounds really stupid.”
“It’s a different kind of darkness than you would experience on Earth. Everyone feels the way you do the first few times they experience it.” He reaches around me and settles his arm around my chest, holding me securely to him. “It’s strange at first, but it’s almost over. Look to the sky.”
I tilt my chin upward and gasp as I watch a red moon appear out of nowhere, and immediately after, stars splatter across the darkness as if thrown, settling into random clusters and illuminating the sky.
Red stars that glisten like diamonds. “Why are the stars and the moon red?” I ask, not quite ready to relax into the incredibleness of the sight before me, my hands resting on his powerful forearm where he holds me.
“Even our sun is red, but it’s not easy to tell from down here, not until nightfall. I’ve always looked at it as if it’s symbolic of the blood of the humans we are tasked to protect.”
The blood of humans we are tasked to protect, I repeat in my mind. Now that I know there are demons in the world, I want to learn to fight. I want to do more than survive. I want to conquer, but if knowledge is power, depriving me of that knowledge is ridiculous and, in my book, dangerous.
I rotate out of his arms and face off with him. “Why am I the one?”
The glow of the starlight highlights the handsome hard lines of his face, his expression unreadable but no longer etched in reprimand and anger. “You were chosen. There’s no other answer. It was decided before you were even born.”
“There has to be a reason it was me.”
“You’re strong enough to find the light even when the darkness calls you, Ember, and you have to start believing that.
And don’t say you do. If you did, you wouldn’t be asking me that question.
Doubt is dangerous.” He doesn’t open the topic up for discussion, shutting me down with a motion to the left.
“We need to leave. We have others waiting on us, two of whom just returned from meeting with Knowledge Keepers.”
I forget everything else. “Who? When? What did they find out?”
“I don’t know yet. They arrived right as you called me for help.”
“You actually heard me?”
“I heard every gut-wrenching scream. And the house needs to stay the fuck out of your training. Do what I say, and only what I say.” It’s an absolute command, and before I can bristle, he’s grabbed my hand, and he’s dragging me forward as if he now feels he needs to keep me under his thumb.
I’d be offended and fighting back, but I feel the burn of the real emotions in him. Under all the bluster of reprimand, I do believe I scared him, and maybe, just maybe, he really cares about me.
Once I’ve fallen into step with him, he releases me, but considering the battle that’s behind me, I’m not exactly trying to run away from him, either. “Will the Mokie come after us?”
“Not when you’re with me. This is my land. They won’t cross me. It’s your land, too, but they need you to show them that by taking control. Once they understand survival means following you, they’ll follow.”
“And I do that how?”
“By actually listening to me,” he snaps, casting me a sideways scowl.
“If you keep this up, I might prefer the crab over you. I was punished already, Micah, but for the record, you push me to do more and be more and get mad when I try.”
“When humans learn karate, they are not pitted against a black belt on day one,” he says.
“That doesn’t mean the instructor doesn’t push them.
It means the instructor pushes them in an appropriate way for their knowledge.
I left you reading in the library, and you ended up fighting a crab on the beach. You could have been killed.”
“But I wasn’t, and I improved my ability to wield my own skills.
I reached out to you through our mental connection as if it was second nature.
It just kind of happened. And as a bonus, I made the water boil.
” That statement, that reality, sinks in, and I’m blown away by the sheer magnitude of what I’ve achieved.
I race forward and step in front of him, facing him.
“I made the water boil, Micah,” I say incredulously. “Does that mean I can make fire?”
“Yes,” he confirms, the muscle in his jaw tensing to a thick band. “But don’t expect me to celebrate with you. Fire’s far too close to Hell for my comfort.”
“Are you suggesting I’m more demon than angel?” I demand, the fire he’s referencing is nothing next to the fire he just evoked in me. “Did you really just say that to me?”
“It’s the truth, Ember. You need to know that.”
“If I’m more demon than angel, why am I here?
” I hold up my hands to halt his reply and answer for him.
“I know. To bind the demon inside me. Why don’t you just lock me away?
” I demand. “Or kill me?” My hands fly up again.
“Don’t answer. I don’t want to know.” I try to turn away from him, but the damn sand piles around my feet.
Micah catches my arm, the heat of his touch scorching me inside and out, and when he rotates me back to him and steps close, so very close that the heat of his body burns my own, I want to hit him. I want to kiss him. I want so much he never gives me, and I know why. “You believe—”
“—in you,” he supplies, his voice roughened up with emotion. “I believe in you, Ember.”
“Do you, Micah? Because I can feel the wall between us. You want me, but you don’t want me. You kiss me and walk away. You touch me, but you fear me.”
“When I touch you, I can’t think, Ember. And we both need me to be clear-headed.”
“So you can remember I might be the end of the world?” I demand. “So you still have the will to kill me?”
“What I fear, Ember, is losing you to him.”
“Jeremy will never own me.”
“No one owns you but you, but he’ll try to prove that wrong.”
“And you? Will you try to prove me wrong? Is this all a battle to see who controls my powers?”
“It better be you who controls your powers, or we’re all fucked.”