Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
Iwoke to the sound of Gavriel’s voice. I was in heaven.
What was he saying? He was reading. Was it poetry? No, it was a weapons guide. What kind of weapon? Something with multiple blades. Why was Gavriel reading an instruction manual for a weapon?
I opened my sticky eyelids and turned my head to see him. My neck ached and pain went down my spine, pain that made me feel like I was alive.
He was so beautiful. Gavriel was precariously balanced on two back legs of a chair, wings stretched on either side, feathers looking a bit thin but growing in nicely while he read that manual, lips moving in a low murmur. I blinked, and he was still there.
I drank in his beautiful face until he looked up from his booklet, eyes snapping to mine like a magnet.
He thumped to the floor and then stood, leaning over me with his blades of death twitching, stretching towards me before he pulled them back to his sides.
He licked his lips, and I realized how thirsty I was. Not for his blood, just water. How strange. I couldn’t smell his blood. I couldn’t hear his beating heart. I ached everywhere, but it felt gloriously real. I slowly smiled at him while his impassive eyes studied me.
“Good morning. Are you well?” he asked, words crisp and overly enunciated, like I was his great-grandmother who couldn’t understand kids these days.
He stared at me, face completely emotionless. I waited while my heart beat faster in my chest, alive, learning how to operate through this new flesh and blood.
I rasped, “Water?” My voice was terrible.
He inhaled sharply and then turned and poured water from a carafe into a glass while keeping perfect posture.
“Can you hold it, or would you like me to assist you?” He was so stiff, so formal, so perfectly distant.
Maybe he resented the Commander’s plan to marry him off and continue his line.
Maybe his goblin wasn’t interested in anyone as dull as a mostly human weakling.
I tried to sit up and ended up flopping back against the bed.
I was so weak. Would I keep waking up weaker until I couldn’t move at all?
An active angel like Gavriel wouldn’t want to be tied to an invalid.
But for me, even if I were entirely paralyzed, life was a gift.
Still, it would be hard to live without the one I loved with my whole beating heart.
Gavriel pushed a button that slowly raised my bed until I was upright enough to drink, then he bent over me, holding the glass like an expressionless waiter. So polite, and he didn’t meet my eyes.
“I take that as the second,” he murmured.
My hands trembled as I covered his hands with mine. His hands were gloved, so I couldn’t feel his skin. Why was he wearing gloves in a hospital room? Was he cold, or did he not want to touch me?
The water wasn’t cold, just lukewarm, but drinking it was difficult. I felt like a baby bird while he poured tiny swallows into my mouth until I shook my head and pushed him away so I could breathe. Breathing. It was amazing how much I needed air.
Being alive was so difficult. I forgot how hard it was. I put my hand over my heart while it beat so fast, so fluttering. It hurt, but his coldness hurt more.
Maybe he really didn’t know what to do with someone who was so weak.
He’d loved an angel who was part ogre. And I’d been a vampire with some angelic roots.
But now I was mostly just a normal human with some angelic blood.
Weak. And we had no blood ties, not anymore.
I couldn’t drink his blood. I could barely drink water.
I had no purpose. Except for the one the Commander of the Hosts had given me.
I looked around and realized that Ever was gone. “Where is…my father?” I ended it uncertainly. Did he know that Ever Storm was my father? Had he known from the beginning?
He looked up at me and blinked. “He’s resting. He put a great deal of energy into you. But he’s fine, perfectly well, just resting.”
“Can I see him?”
He stared at me. “See him?”
I nodded and swung my legs over the side of the bed, but when I tried to stand, I would have crumpled from my own weight if Gavriel hadn’t caught me and carefully put me back in the bed, pulling the sheet back over me.
“He’ll come and see you when he wakes up,” Gavriel said in a low voice as he glanced away from me. “You’ll have to stay here until you’re stronger.”
I frowned at that face, the one that wasn’t looking at me. “I can’t get stronger if I don’t try.”
He finally looked up at me, but his eyes were dark, tumultuous with death and pain. “You’re whole body and soul is trying to live. Let your necessary organs grasp life before you push too hard and set yourself back. You’re delicate. Still precariously perched between life and death.”
Delicate? That was an interesting word. I didn’t like it. He wasn’t wrong. But I didn’t like it. I stared down at my delicate hands over my aching stomach. My stomach growled, and I flinched, then looked up at Gavriel. Had my intestines ruptured?
“You must be hungry. Does anything sound good to eat?” He gave me a polite nod at the end of that, showing his interest in my order.
Like a polite waiter, almost looking at me, but not quite.
Why was he so polite? He’d been confessing his love the last time I saw him, and now he was taking my order as a dutiful angel that wasn’t even slightly interested in me personally.
Maybe he didn’t have the same feelings for me, but at the very least he could tell me his feelings instead of pretending that he had none.
I grabbed my pillow and threw it at him. It hit his face before he caught it with the hand that wasn’t holding his water. That one simple throw made my whole body tremble. Who knew pillows were so heavy? Also, ouch.
He blinked at me as he clutched the pillow in his powerful hands. “Is it not soft enough for you?”
“No. I’m alive. Live girls need extreme softness while they’re recovering.” I glowered at him.
He blinked at me and then at the pillow, clearly considering. “I’ll get you another pillow.”
“I’ll throw that one at you too.”
He looked up at me, tilting his head to the side. “You already know that it’ll also be too hard?”
“No, that one will be too soft. Be honest with me. Are you distant because you preferred me as a vampire? It’s fine if you are.
But I’m not going to become a vampire again.
I don’t think it would work, and frankly, I’m not going to choose that however much you like having your blood drained by an exciting evil villainess. ”
He blinked again, eyes tumultuous darkness. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. You think that I would ask you to become a vampire so I could suck your blood?” He looked at me like I was certifiably insane.
I was getting there. I grasped the blankets and tried not to feel as delicate and small as I was. I hated being delicate, but it beat being dead. “Why are you acting like a stiff waiter in a ridiculously fancy restaurant?”
He blinked at me. “I’m just like this.”
“No, you aren’t.”
His brows twitched, showing some emotion that he immediately stilled. He took a deep, even breath. “Very well, as we are being very honest, I will say that the daughter of Ever Storm deserves an angel who can give her pure-blooded children.”
I squinted at him while my stupidly vulnerable heart panged miserably. Also my toes. Why did my toes hurt? “You are saying that I’m not dynamic enough to interest you and your streak of goblin? Fine.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, peering at me like I was definitely crazy. I’d had a lot of people look at me like that, usually when I was covered in blood and acting insane. Because I was.
He spoke softly, his eyes still roiling with inner turmoil that didn’t show on anything else. “Miss Storm, you are no longer undead. You have a true life ahead of you.”
I nodded. “I know. Life is so precious. But I didn’t expect my toes to hurt.”
He looked down at my feet where they were tucked under a pale blue blanket. “Your toes hurt? Do you need more pain killers? They said that you’d be all right without them, that it would be better for your recovery to not be so drugged, but if your toes hurt…”
I shook my head and then winced. “Everything hurts, but it’s nothing compared to drinking demon blood.
It’s not worth mentioning other than it’s weird.
Sorry. I’m not complaining. And thank you for being so sensitive to my feelings.
Between my toes and my feelings, I might burst into tears at any moment.
And I am hungry. Soup. I used to like soup.
And a plastic bowl so that if I drop it, it doesn’t shatter all over the floor. ”
He stood, nodded and then disappeared, leaving me alone in the room with my aching heart and my pounding head.
I closed my eyes, squeezing them shut so I wouldn’t cry.
I’d told him that I wasn’t going to turn for him.
I’d meant it, but at the same time, the way my chest ached at the thought of not having Gavriel, never seeing him again, maybe it would kill me.
I took a deep breath and opened my eyes.
I needed to focus on the present, on the positive.
I was in a nice room, very large, with a window that looked out on an ocean.
Where did they have hospitals by the ocean?
Angel City, of course. Where else would angels have hospitals?
And now I was an angel. No, my father was an angel, Ever Storm.
Maybe I’d find another nice angel even more beautiful than Gavriel.
I’m sure he’d be incredibly understanding about the century I spent drinking demon blood when I wasn’t killing for Tralcon.
And selling my soul for a man. Was anyone more stupid?
No. I’d love Gavriel forever. That’s the way I was built, but that streak of goblin wasn’t steadfast. At least he was honest about his feelings instead of feeling obligated to stay with me.