Chapter Forty-Two
CHAPTER
FORTY-TWO
The journey back to Veritas was long and tedious.
Yuri’s entire body crawled with discomfort from the silence that hung between him and Aurelie, broken only by the steady clomping of hooves and the occasional sigh of wind threading through the trees.
The wagon he’d hired rocked gently as it rolled over uneven ground, but Yuri felt no peace in the rhythm.
They hadn’t been able to fit all the wings.
He’d had to move many back onto hallowed ground with a promise to return for them, much to Severin’s annoyance.
Still, there were so many packed inside the wagon that Yuri had to make himself small.
He was hunched across from Aurelie, knees drawn into his chest and wings folded tight against his body as he sat among his dead brethren.
Aurelie lay curled nearby, her fingers trailing along the wings that Vex napped upon, stroking the silken vanes. The sight made something ache behind his ribs.
He should have said something hours ago. Should have broken this tense silence and been done with it. But every time he opened his mouth, words caught on his tongue like thorns.
Severin sat outside on the driver’s bench a comfortable distance away, reins in hand. And still it was not far enough to settle the rage that burned within him.
The angel looked up just as Aurelie tilted her head to stretch, and for just a breath he allowed himself to study her. The soft parting of her lips. The curve of her throat.
It doesn’t matter what she does, he tried to remind himself. She’s your bonded. She was always going to be with someone eventually.
But why was it him?
Severin was wrathborn, the most vicious type of demon. He’d turned someone into ashes before their eyes and had very likely killed a hundred more without mercy.
Not to mention that if he played that damn lute one more time, Yuri was going to lose it.
“What happened between the two of you last night?” The question escaped before he could stop it, restless in his frustration.
Color bloomed up Aurelie’s neck, and that was answer enough.
“We were swayed by the vespers,” she said too quickly. “It meant nothing.”
“I can feel when you’re lying.”
Her guilt seared like wildfire through the bond, and Yuri shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, willing away the tight band forming behind his temples.
He couldn’t stop picturing the two of them together, their bodies entangled.
“He’s a demon, Aurelie. Even now, we’d be fools to trust him. ”
She didn’t answer right away. When he opened his eyes again, her mouth was set in a thin line, defensive.
“Severin and I had to pretend we were together when we went into Kieran’s camp to find you,” she told him. “I was anxious, so I drank something that was meant to make me feel more comfortable.”
Yuri’s hands curled tighter around his knees. So this was his fault, then.
“Nothing happened,” she added quickly. “Whether you believe me or not, Severin was the one who stopped things before we went too far. But that night…” She cut off, nerves rampant as her silvering eyes lifted to his.
“Haven’t you ever wondered what it’d feel like to be touched, Yuri? To have someone desire you?”
The words lanced through him, and for the briefest moment, all his carefully constructed walls threatened to crumble.
He should have lied. Should have told her no. That’s what a proper angel would have done.
Instead, he whispered, “I may be an angel, but I’m also still a man, Aurelie.”
Aurelie’s hand twitched in her lap, fingers curling tight as she looked upon him in a way that made his stomach pinch.
He was supposed to be above this yearning. Supposed to be a perfect Soldier, shaped into discipline and purity and restraint. He had memorized every tenet. Spent decades honing every impulse.
He had always been fragile, he knew. But this?
His thoughts were not of duty. They were only of her. Of the way her voice softened when she spoke to him. Of the curve of her waist when she’d slept beside him. Of how her lips must have felt, and the bitterness he suffered knowing that Severin had been the one to taste them.
Shame made his chest burn hot.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” His voice was barely loud enough to be heard over the creak of the wheels. “Forget it.”
But Aurelie was too stubborn for that. She shifted closer, reaching so that her fingers brushed against the edge of his knee.
“I’m beginning to feel like a terrible burden has been placed on us,” she said.
“Some horrible standard that we can never live up to. I try, and I try, but I am not clay, and I will sooner break from the effort than mold myself into what everyone wants me to be. Do you ever wonder if maybe it’s not you who’s wrong? If maybe it’s the world?”
Her touch was tentative as she reached out, and yet it seared through him, setting every nerve aflame.
Yuri stared at her hand, wanting to reach back for her.
Wanting it so badly that his entire body ached.
He yearned to tell her that he felt the same, that this was something he’d been questioning for a long while.
There were so many things the Divine demanded that he questioned, and yet still he followed them like a tin soldier.
He had to.
And so, although it broke his heart to do it, Yuri pulled himself free from Aurelie’s touch.
“I made a mistake when I was younger.” His voice held the kind of quiet that belonged only to confessions.
“I believed the angels were fair and just. That they would rule and judge with kindness.” The memory coiled behind his teeth.
He forced a slow breath, each word a steady march over old wounds.
“But there is no leniency for breaking our rules. I learned that the worst way imaginable, and I will not make the same mistake again. You and I are sworn to duty, Aurelie. We have oaths that cannot be broken. So I suggest that you do the same.”
Yuri drew as far from her as he could, his nerves knotting as he forced himself to let the silence stretch until the first blush of dawn stained the sky. Beside him, Aurelie had flinched back as if he’d struck her.
He might as well have. He knew what it felt like to have his every action scrutinized. To feel like he was constantly chasing some arbitrary perfection that would never be his to obtain. There was nothing he struggled with more, and now he’d cast that very same judgment onto her.
Aurelie’s hand lingered a moment too long in the space where his knee had been, then slipped back into her lap as if his touch burned.
She didn’t look at him, just bowed her head and shifted farther away until she folded in on herself.
Yuri felt her pain and embarrassment before her walls went up completely, the bond suddenly muddied and impossible to parse.
“Aurelie,” he pleaded, but she ignored him.
Vex had roused and was curled up in her lap, patting at her while glaring daggers at the angel.
Silence rose between them once more as Aurelie turned her attention to the curtains covering the exit while Yuri replayed the past twenty-four hours in his head over and over, thinking of all the things he wished he could do differently.
Not getting captured by demons and forcing the two of them together would have been a good place to start.
“We’re nearly there,” Severin called from the front some time later. “Stay inside until I tell you it’s safe to come out.”
Aurelie gave no sign that she’d heard him. She was squinting out the curtains, listening to the quiet chattering of the vespers as the wagon slowed to a crawl. Her brows furrowed as if she heard something she didn’t care for.
“Do you hear that?” she asked Vex, sitting straighter. Her voice was tight with confusion, though there was an urgency to it, too.
Yuri leaned forward, instinct prickling sharp along his spine. “What is it?”
She didn’t so much as spare him a glance.
The vesper was buzzing by her shoulder, her ears flat and face curled with distaste.
Without warning, Aurelie shoved the curtain aside and leaped from the wagon, hitting the ground at a sprint.
Vex followed behind her, flickering in and out of view as they disappeared through the trees.
“Aurelie!” Yuri scrambled upright, lunging after them.
Severin twisted around, reining in the horses. “What is she—” He went rigid, and Yuri saw the moment Severin heard it, too—whatever it was.
“Fuck,” the demon hissed, dropping the reins and scrambling from his seat. “Aurelie, stop!”
She didn’t. Light, she didn’t even look back.
Yuri moved to follow after her, wings half-flared, but stopped short. His hands clenched around the wooden frame of the wagon just as Severin disappeared into the trees.
Yuri stared after them, heart hammering, instincts screaming to follow.
But he couldn’t abandon the wagon. He couldn’t leave the wings behind and risk something happening.
And so Yuri sank back, his teeth grinding as he was left to watch, once again, as Aurelie and Severin disappeared alone into the woods.