Chapter 1 #3
“I don’t want to hear your apologies, angel,” Alistair hisses.
“But I want to hear yours,” Ciprian grunts. “You just knocked me into gods know what, asshole. Get a grip.”
“Celine has no reason to apologize,” Ali insists.
“Duh.” Ciprian pulls me close again. “But that makes one of you. You can’t go around bowling people over. It’s dark as fuck, and we have no idea what’s in here with us.”
“Shh.” Malach’s whispered warning is clipped. He lowers Luca to the ground as it begins to shake. It’s ten times worse than before and spaced evenly. Footsteps.
“Ciprian—” Luca says.
“On it. Keep quiet.”
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Alistair drops his forehead to mine. I slide one hand up to cover my own mouth and grip Ciprian’s thigh with the other. We’re being hunted. There’s no denying it. Someone is searching the pet store enclosure for us—the trapped mice.
I generally think of myself as hard to scare. Horror movies are usually too dumb or gross to frighten me, and I’m secure in the knowledge that I could beat up most creatures I might encounter: human or supernatural.
But whatever is above us right now is terrifying. My heart slams against my chest erratically. Each beat is unbearably loud. Will it give us away? Shut up, I beg.
My fear makes Ciprian stronger, but that’s a hard silver lining for my brain to sell when my body is shaking. The more he consumes, the longer he’ll be able to hide us from whatever is out there, assuming it has a brain for him to trick.
Oh gods, what if it doesn’t have a brain?
The beast circles our hiding spot for what seems like forever before bellowing with rage. The footsteps retreat, each one shaking the ground a little less than the one before it. I imagine them long after they’re gone.
A few more minutes pass in tense silence before Ciprian sags against my back.
“I can’t reach its mind any longer,” he says.
I slump against him, relieved to have my thoughts confirmed. “Are you okay?” I ask.
He buries his chin in the curve of my neck and breathes me in deeply. “Tired,” he admits. “There were a lot of them.”
Alistair stiffens against me. “How many?”
“Thirteen.”
“Could you tell what they were?” I ask, both needing and dreading his answer.
I could only hear the big one, but my father must have gone to a lot of trouble to make this happen.
It stands to reason that our welcoming party would be more than one person—even if that person was big enough to shake the ground.
“No,” Ciprian sighs. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“You did good,” Luca tells him. “Now bundle up. The eclipse will hit any minute now.”
Silently, we shuffle around, rifling blindly through our bags for warm clothes that we all know aren’t there. Once I’m as bundled up as I can be, I search for Luca. “You were amazing,” I whisper. “We’d be frozen without you.”
“That may still happen,” he grunts.
“Not if we huddle up,” I say. “Malach and I will sit on the edges and wrap our wings around everyone.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Baby . . .”
“I’d rather be the big spoon, hot wings.”
I sigh as they talk over each other.
“You’re all being foolish,” Malach snaps. “Our wings will insulate us too.”
I roll my eyes at their grumbling, glad that Malach is as pragmatic as I am.
Luca and Alistair make their decisions based on emotion—although both would deny that.
I’m still figuring Ciprian out, but from what I’ve seen, he relies on his ability to read situations, then adapts to match the pre-existing dynamics.
It’s an incredible talent, but it relies on charisma, not logic.
They settle in an awkward, uneasy clump. Luca is wedged between Alistair and Ciprian, a basilisk-shaped buffer for their ongoing feud. The two of them need to sort their shit out, but now isn’t the time. That fight will be loud, and that’s the last thing we need.
I can’t see a thing, but I plop down on my backpack and wrap my legs around them as best I can.
Once I’m mostly comfortable, I release my wings, then freeze.
They’re bladed. Of course, they are. I’m stressed.
But this is the worst possible time to have knives shooting out of my back.
They’ll slice right through Malach’s feathers.
“Give me a minute,” I mutter. It’s only worry. If I concentrate hard enough, I can make it go away. Except every time I try, I feel the ground shaking again.
Alistair shivers, and I grit my teeth. He’s cold, and the longer we wait to lock our wings, the more body heat we lose.
I’m failing them because I can’t be brave. It kills me. Pull it together. The thought echoes in my mind, bouncing off the sides but doing absolutely nothing to calm me down.
“The first time I saw you, I thought you looked like trouble,” Luca says quietly. “Your hair was shorter then—do you remember, baby?”
I forget to yell at myself and focus on the huskiness of his voice.
“Anyway, you were a shitty dancer, but no one dared say anything about it. You were too intimidating, even then.” He chuckles.
“Then we got to know each other, and I didn’t think you were trouble anymore.
Instead, you became this constant presence, squatting in my head, my heart—all of me, honestly.
And I thought, if she lets me stick around, I’ll never be bored again. ”
I smile and cradle his jaw in the dark. “I’m sorry, Luca,” I whisper. “I know you never wanted to come here.”
“Shh,” he whispers. “Alistair’s going to get stabby if you start apologizing again. I guess I wanted to tell you that past me was right about you. I haven’t been bored once since you walked through the door of the Fang. You make me feel alive, Celine—you always have.”
I kiss him. How can I not? The metal of his lip ring is ice-cold.
My wings turn back to feathers, and I wrap them around us before they can change their minds and decide to stop cooperating again. Malach mirrors me immediately. His wings are bigger than mine, reaching halfway around me.
Shivering, I hunch forward, relaxing incrementally as our collective heat builds.
Then the tree groans, and a frigid draft rushes through the holes in my sweatshirt. It’s crisp, piercing, and I don’t even want to know how it would feel to be caught outside in this.
“How long should we stay down here?” I ask. This position is painfully intimate.
“The eclipse won’t last long—three to five minutes at most,” Luca says. “But I think there’s only an hour of daylight left after this one. We should stay here until morning.”
“We’ll take turns sleeping,” Malach says. “I’ll keep watch first.”
“Wake me if you hear anything,” Ciprian adds. “If they’re close enough to be heard, they’re close enough for my magic to reach.”
I don’t know how I’ll sleep.
It’s too cold, too strange, too uncomfortable.
Despite the odds, my thoughts get heavy.
I snuggle into Luca, and he tucks my head into the space below his chin. “Get some sleep, Celine. I’ll wake you when it’s your turn to keep watch.”
Something about his words is off, but I must be more tired than I realize. By the time I process the fact that Luca Saratelli told me a lie, it’s too late to call him on it—I’m already drifting off.