31. Summer
Chapter Thirty-One
Summer
I sit bolt upright in the bed, the same way I do when my nightmares reach their gory end and then bleed into my reality, but last night wasn’t a nightmare.
I was with Connor. My Connor. He was here.
He held me, and the sensation of his touch still lingers on my skin.
It was so much more than a dream. It was a moment to say goodbye. Goodbye.
Looking around, I try to figure out what woke me up. His room is bathed in silvery moonlight, but nothing looks out of place.
Touching my lips, I remember each kiss, each touch, each moment with Connor, but his words are becoming fuzzy as I enter the realm of consciousness. I concentrate, knowing that they are important, but I am even more confused when I remember.
Watch after Rafe.
Why? Rafe is in Eden. I’m in Avalon. Michael withdrew all celestial beings from the school after last year. He wasn’t transferring back, was he?
A loud, near-deafening boom rattles the house. The windows shake violently in their panes, on the verge of shattering. The floor reverberates, and I grab onto the bed for something to hold on to.
“Summer?” Alice’s panicked call comes from downstairs, and I hurry out of Connor’s bed to her. She must have left the lab early, worried about me.
“Alice?”
She cups my cheeks. “Are you okay? What happened?” she asks, her eyes darting over me, cataloging me for injuries.
“I’m fine. I was sleeping and then?—”
Watch out for Rafe.
“Fuck!” I curse and turn, running through the kitchen.
I slide the back door open and gasp when I see that the perfectly manicured lawn, the beds of flowers, and the stone pathway are completely destroyed.
There is nothing left but a deep crater filled with billowing smoke.
Flames lick up the walls, turning the dirt a bright, glowing red.
Ash and a smell that I instinctively know is wrong clog the air, pluming in the wind created by the fire.
Alice grips the back of my shirt and walks with me as I cautiously approach the edge of the hole and peer through the smoke into the crater. My heart drops and panic sets in when I see the charred body curled up in the center of the blackened depths.
Alice steps up beside me and wafts some smoke away before pulling something from her pocket.
She pours it onto the ground at our feet, and an acrid stench that makes my eyes burn rises from it when it hits the steaming soil.
Through my tears, I see the flames flicker and die.
A wave of?.?.?. something ripples over the crater, and all the heat dissipates.
I take another deep breath and gasp, finally recognizing that smell—burning flesh, hair, and bone. It’s a scent that all sentient beings recognize on some primal level, and it sets off deep, visceral alarms.
“Is that?.?.?. ?” Alice asks, understanding beginning to creep in.
I scramble into the crater, slipping on the mud.
The melted stones are jagged now that they are cooling, and they slice at my feet and hands.
The wounds sting as I stumble toward the mass of charred flesh in the center, but I push on, uncaring of the discomfort because the blackened skin, hemorrhaging blood, and the remains of his feathers floating around him are the result of more than plummeting from one realm into another without using the proper safeguards.
“Rafe,” I whisper, fear and despair nearly choking me.
“Summer?.?.?.” Alice says, climbing down next to me, watching the feathers fall from the sky, some of them still smoldering. “He’s Fallen.”
I look down at him and crouch, gently brushing some of the soot from his face, searching for the recognizable features of the Morningstar boys, the blue eyes they share with Uriel, the tawny skin they inherited from their mother.
He whimpers in pain, and a similar noise of relief slips past my lips. He’s still alive.
“He’s alive,” I say to Alice, and she makes her way closer to me.
Rafe coughs weakly, and I try to take an inventory of his injuries.
His skin is severely burned, and his back is a mess, blood still bubbling from the two stumps that used to be his wings.
That is just what I can see. The Almighty knows what internal damage was done. Thank the gods he’s unconscious.
I slide my finger through his blood, drawing a healing rune on his chest. My skills won’t be sufficient to fully heal him, but I might be able to take some of his pain away.
The rune flickers, but melts and slides off his ruined skin.
I frown and try again as Alice rifles through her bag.
She hadn’t even had a chance to take it off before we ran out here.
I draw frantically, altering the healing runes to any iteration that I think might help, but they continue not to work.
No matter what language I try, they slide off his burned skin.
Alice pulls a small bottle from her bag and drips three drops onto his chest. The moment the liquid hits his skin, his torso lifts from the ground. I pause and frown up at her. “It’s a weightless potion so we can carry him. We need to get him inside,” Alice explains.
I nod, and we both carefully place our hands on his back, supporting his weight.
He groans in pain, and both of us freeze, our eyes locked on him until he settles again.
Being as gentle and careful as we can, we climb out of the crater, stopping each time he moans or whimpers, trying to spare him any pain we possibly can.
Inside the house, we navigate the stairs with the same care, and I nod toward the room that used to belong to Zach.
We lay him down, and my eyes fill with tears as I finally let myself truly look at his face. He looks so broken that my heart aches for him, for us both.
“Rafey?” I whisper, brushing my fingertips along his cheek. He grumbles something, his lips cracked and bloody, but he doesn’t wake.
Alice dives back in her bag, pulling out a mortar and pestle to start making some kind of paste. “Do you have a Demonology textbook, Sum? I need to check something.”
I frown and climb out of bed, going through to my room.
Looking through the bookcase, I know I have nothing specifically about demons, because they’re not a species on any of my syllabi this year.
But I remember there is a chapter about them in my realms textbook, so I pull it out and hurry back to Rafe, grabbing my phone on the way.
Alice is standing in front of the dresser, grinding herbs, and Rafe hasn’t moved.
“What do you need?” I ask, checking the index and flicking through to the sections on demons .
Alice waves for me to bring the book over. “I just want to know if any of these roots will be effective for his kind, so I’m hoping there is a toxicology section.”
I nod, prop the book in front of her, and open my phone to email the headmaster.
From: [email protected]
Headmaster Emrys,
There has been an issue at Morningstar House.
Summer
The reply comes immediately.
From: [email protected]
Miss Tuatha De Daanan,
An issue?
Headmaster Emrys
I reply quickly, wanting to get back to Rafe.
From: [email protected]
Rafe’s Fallen.
Summer
I chuck my phone to the side and move back to Rafe’s side, the smell of burned flesh and feathers singeing my nose.
His body is charred and raw, the patches of skin that remain, horribly blistered.
Wounds cover his arms and torso, and I can see the white gleam of exposed bone on his side.
The blood bubbling from the many lacerations is a hideous concoction of red and black as the demon takes root inside him and forces the angel blood from his veins.
Pieces of fabric cling to him, melted into his burns, and I know it’s going to be agony to remove them.
I can’t see his back, but the blood pooling around his body hints at the severity of his injuries.
There’s a knock on the front door, and Alice glances at me before running to open it. She returns quickly, followed by the headmaster. His brow is furrowed, and his silver eyes barely pass over me before they settle on Rafe.
I hardly breathe as he assesses Rafe. My gaze is locked on the head-master, desperate for any information he may have on Rafe’s condition and how we might help him. As usual, I don’t get anything, but I don’t know what I expected. The headmaster is always difficult to read and cryptic at best.
Without looking away from Rafe, he pulls a small vial from his pocket and holds it in Alice’s general direction. “For the paste,” he says, and Alice plucks it from his fingers.
The headmaster turns away from Rafe and slices his finger.
The walls are a bright, barren white, making the red of his blood stand out starkly when he starts to draw on them.
He’s drawing runes, but they’re not like anything I’ve ever seen before.
They’re not necessarily more intricate than Daoine Sith, but a different hum of magic fills the air as they activate.
After he’s drawn two, he pauses and glances at me over his shoulder. “Never a boring day since you enrolled, Miss Tuatha De Daanan.”
“Yes, sir,” I say with a sigh, shame flushing my cheeks. I hurry into the bathroom and return with a warm, wet cloth. I don’t look at the headmaster again as I kneel beside Rafe and gently clean his face.
We all work in silence for a while. Rafe’s ragged breathing and infrequent grunts of pain ease when Alice starts to smear a gray paste over Rafe’s body. The headmaster finishes and joins us next to the bed, looking Rafe over again.
“I’ll enroll him in the university,” he says, and then pauses for a moment, his jaw flexing as he thinks. He sighs. “But that will only delay his uncle for a short time.”
“Uncle?” Alice asks with a frown as she slathers more paste on Rafe’s wrist and his nearly severed hand.
“Lucifer,” I say. Why didn’t I think of this?
“The devil? He’s real?” she asks, sounding almost scandalized.