8. Chapter 8
Izzy hovered outside her own Spirit Cavity, not fully submerging herself into her human chest. Her shell lay in a coma because it lacked an integral part to function—her spirit.
Her Cavity tugged at her more than usual, welcoming her with warm, impatient arms. But she couldn’t relax. At least, not yet.
Daxton’s presence heated her spirit, and her heart leaped in her human chest.
She wished she could go back to the time before her punishment, when she had no experience with emotions. Fotios always believed it was the strongest way to live.
Excitement, anticipation, and longing thrummed through her, a dangerous cacophony she couldn’t fully identify.
The tightness in her chest and the shortness of breath as it transferred to her hovering spirit form tormented her.
This was the type of raw, uncontrollable chaos that Fotios’s spectral voice warned her against daily—the precise mental break that haunted her.
She couldn’t let her emotions spiral out of control like this, not now, not when she was just beginning to control the delusions.
A life with little emotion or relationships made her long existence bearable, but Daxton disrupted her carefully maintained equilibrium.
She might have made it back in one piece, but she needed distance from this link and the way he made her feel.
“Why isn’t she waking?” The desperate tone in Daxton’s voice tingled along her spine.
“She finished healing as we arrived here and mentioned it might take time for her to wake up,” Sarah said.
The conversation filtered through her human ears. So close to reconnecting, she perceived everything around her.
Sarah’s loud yawn interrupted the silence. “I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. I need coffee.”
No…don’t leave me alone with Daxton.
Shoes squeaked against the tile floor before the door clicked closed.
Izzy’s breathing quickened, and the tendrils of her Spirit Cavity hugged closer.
Her humanity was desperate to escape its coma.
That’s strange. The longing had never been this strong.
She struggled to keep herself from connecting and willed herself to be calm.
Daxton’s hot, forceful presence dominated the room, pressing on her mind.
A prickling washed over Izzy’s skin like someone’s hand hovered above her arm. He must have moved closer. Her heart briefly stalled, echoing in her spirit form. Drumming fingers thudded against a nightstand at her right.
“I don’t know if you can hear me. But I…
” Something that sounded like scratching against sandpaper caught her attention.
She pictured him rubbing his hand over his five-o’clock shadow.
“Thank you for trusting me with the knowledge of your kind. I know we aren’t in an ideal situation with the link between us, but I do want to keep you safe.
Would you wake up and talk to me, please? ”
Something pulled at her spirit. The sensation came through the link, as though his dragon pawed at her.
The longing to unite with her body escalated, growing with an intensity so great it tingled her skin.
Izzy felt lost at the sensation and needed room to process the emotions his proximity caused.
The heart monitor beeped louder, each sound wave getting quicker.
“You’re hiding from me, then?” he asked.
A staccato of beeps. Damn monitor.
He chuckled. “Can’t say I blame you. It scares the shit out of me, too. But I want to figure out why the link happened.”
The monitor gave three spiked beeps. She also wanted that.
As she reached for her body, she prepared for the impact of immersion.
A woman’s tone cracked like a whip. “What are you doing in my daughter’s room?”
Izzy reeled back from connecting.
That voice belonged to Darcy, her biological mother—or Camilla Andrews’s mother—since the woman knew nothing about the Fallen. Izzy flinched in her Cavity. Darcy shouldn’t have known Izzy’s location.
Before Daxton could speak, Darcy asked, “Are you a professor working with her?”
Izzy cringed at her mom’s tone when using her current human name, as if Camilla was a product to own.
“No, ma’am. My apologies. I’m Daxton Dupont.” Daxton fell into character like a professional actor. His voice charmed in its lowest register.
Izzy’s heart monitor broke into clipped beeps. She might have thought he was attractive, but his confidence was a hook in her, drawing her closer.
“What are you doing here?” Darcy asked, her voice growing louder as if she had walked farther into the room.
“Camilla’s been interning with us at Prater Properties for a while now. And I wanted to check in on her.”
Her tone rose in disbelief. “The Prater Properties? You have an office in Tennessee?”
Izzy groaned. Darcy wouldn’t appreciate her daughter working at another corporation when she refused to take over the family business in the scientific instrument industry.
“Yes,” Daxton said. “There’s one in Memphis.”
“Ah, I see. You’ve actually worked on a building for us.” Her heels clicked on the floor, getting louder as Izzy assumed she went to shake Daxton’s hand. “I’m Darcy Andrews of Andrews Precision Systems.”
“It’s nice to meet you.”
“As for Camilla, she’s been suffering from these episodic comas ever since childhood.
” Izzy pictured Darcy rolling her eyes and shaking her head.
A decent mother might keep the confidential information to herself, but Darcy was a narcissist, always looking for a way to garner sympathy.
“Doctors haven’t found a reason for it. It’s nothing to fret about.
She usually comes out of it within a week, then she’ll be back to interning. ”
“I hope she recovers soon, then.”
A heavy pause filled the air. “Yes, well, excuse me. I would like some privacy with my daughter.” The words sounded nervously rushed for Darcy’s usual demeanor.
“I am sorry to have bothered you. Have a good day.”
With an impersonal tone, she said, “Goodbye, Mr. Dupont.”
Izzy needed calm to think, so the moment his presence left the room, Izzy leaped from her emotionally charged body and transferred into her spirit form, dimming her energy so Darcy couldn’t see her.
She conjured an image of herself in jeans and a shirt to give her spirit an appearance.
Wings tucked to her back, she paced as a humanoid figure.
A thread of agitation coursed from the link to Daxton. The link grew taut, as if he were pulling the string tight between them. Moving to the other side of the bed from her mother, she placed her hand over her chest.
This link between her and Daxton was strong.
The heart monitor sounded off in another rapid succession of beeps.
Her spirit felt constricted, a pressure squeezing her from all sides.
An unfamiliar loneliness crept through her.
She grabbed hold of the link with her mind, as if it was the only floating object in her lonely sea.
She took meditative breaths and mentally blocked herself from the link.
“I hate when you do this,” Darcy said to Izzy’s unconscious body. “Do you enjoy punishing me?”
The words pricked at Izzy’s nerves. She stopped pacing.
Darcy stood with her phone in front of her face, staring at the screen.
She crafted her image with skill, from her tailored suit and pinned-back hair to her brilliant, masking smile.
The one she used to steal companies from under people.
Though her mothers had different faces from generation to generation, they always had the same cold personality.
A Fallen’s punishment not only locked them in a family line but also seemed to force them to live the same life on repeat.
And Izzy’s family had been full of money-hungry tycoons.
Ones who knew nothing about her identity.
Izzy couldn’t complain; being born into wealth had its perks, especially for her gaining the knowledge she craved.
Darcy’s heels clacked against the floor as she adjusted her weight. “I have more important things to do on a Saturday.”
The words jabbed like a needle. Countless neglectful mothers pounded at her memory. The compartment where she placed the pain of abandonment burst open.
“Why are you even here?” Izzy asked, knowing her voice didn’t break into decibels Darcy could hear. “And how did you find me?”
Darcy’s eyes swiveled to Izzy’s body. Her lips peeled back into an unrecognizable grimace.
Ugly. Full of hatred. Izzy returned to her pacing, determined not to let Darcy get to her.
But it was hard when an emotion-amplifying machine was so close.
And the worst part was, she yearned to pull him back into the room.
She wasn’t an addict who needed his self-assuredness or his protection.
She’d survived many lifetimes without him around, and maybe he was part of the solution to her immortality problem, but she needed distance from him to recoup and figure out her next steps before the distraction of him became too much.
An eerie quiet tugged Izzy from her thoughts.
Darcy held a syringe with the tip stuck in the puncture port of Izzy’s IV.
Izzy froze. What the hell? Is—is Darcy intending to kill me?
“Take her down,” Darcy said in a trancelike monotone.
Izzy flew across the room and dove over her bed. Forcing energy to her spirit fingertips, she pinched one clamp on the tube closed. The resounding snap echoed in the room.
Izzy glanced up, spirit form hovering over her body.
Darcy stared at the floor, eyes wide as if searching for something she thought she’d dropped, sweat glistening over her tidy makeup. “What the—”
A piano ringtone interrupted her, muffled from within Darcy’s purse. Pulling the empty syringe free and capping it, Darcy swapped it for her cell phone.
“This is Darcy Andrews,” she said into the phone, bending to look under the bed.
Izzy didn’t move, panic restraining her mind. Darcy must have assumed the sound was something dropping to the floor.