Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
“Please,” I rasped, hating myself for begging, but having no other choice.
“Warder, you misunderstand,” the baron said as his hand slipped over my bare ass. “You are a great trophy for Moira and for me. You are as close to an angel as I will ever have at my mercy and will be treated as such. She wants your member after you’re killed so that Raphael will know, when he doesn’t receive that piece, that you were desecrated before death. I wholeheartedly agree with this plan.”
“Please,” I said again, and heard Moira laughing her head off. Seeing me, hearing me beg, was making her giddy.
“I cannot,” Dollo replied, patronizing me, and slapped me so hard, it would leave a handprint on my skin. “You are to be my special offering to the angels.”
Closing my eyes, I called on every reserve of strength I had, on my blood, on everything that made me a warder, but there was no power pooling inside me, no rise of energy. I wasn’t a warder in this dimension, I was a man, and there would be no salvation, no deliverance.
“It’s a pity that you…you… What is that?”
“What is what?” Moira asked through her giggling.
“It’s like… I don’t know. Something in the wind changed.”
“Whatever are you bab—” She stopped speaking suddenly, and there was only the sound of gurgling and sputtering.
There was a gust of wind then, blowing through the room, which was suddenly not lit by lantern light anymore, but by something as bright as the lights at an arena, turning night to day.
Farren dropped to the floor, and I saw his head roll away and hit a far wall, his neck cauterized, as though whatever had severed his head from his shoulders had been as hot as a welder’s torch.
Baron Dollo gasped and fell to his knees.
“If even your breath touched my mate, I will cleave you in half.”
I had never heard Raphael sound like that, so dead, so cold. And even as my heart leaped, I was terrified as well. What would he think, seeing me like this?
“I didn’t touch him,” Dollo lied.
There was a great sigh, as though Raphael was much bigger than he was, a beast, something immense, like a dragon. The second sigh, longer, deeper, shook the tower. I thought I would hear more people crying out in fear, but perhaps there was no one else left alive.
The tears were a surprise, hot in my eyes and then on my skin as they trailed down my cheeks. My relief was overwhelming, as were the tremors rolling through me.
“But how are you— You can’t be— You’re an archangel and can’t descend this far into—”
There was a sound like when a parachute opened, or the sharp crack of a sail hit by the wind, and the demon cried out in pain and surprise.
“This cannot be!” The scream of terror tore through me, made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and though I wasn’t scared—Raphael was there, after all—I was wary.
“The blood witch lied to you,” Raphael rasped, walking around the bed to where I could see him. “Or she didn’t know, but did you not wonder at the bracelet there?”
How strange that I hadn’t thought about it either, and only then did I remember that it had somehow changed, tightening and becoming the color of my skin. It had camouflaged itself, as though sentient, and that was extraordinary.
“What bracelet are you—that silver one?” the baron rasped, getting shakily to his feet, and I was guessing that suddenly he saw it easily on my bound wrist.
“Yes. That one,” Raphael replied in a flat voice devoid of anything but wrath and certainty.
There was only a stifled keening then, the cry of a man about to be ended.
“You’re right. I should not be able to be here. The depths of hell are shrouded to angels, which is how you kept Remiel from his love, from the incubus demon Vaya, but the moment you planned to kill my love, my mate…my spouse…that was your undoing.”
“Spouse?”
“The sacrament you missed,” Raphael snarled.
“No!”
“Yes,” he whispered, and his slight laughter was dark and twisted, almost evil, the sound carrying both resignation and pain. “It’s the wrinkle you didn’t perceive—that a warder with angelic blood, in thrall to an angel, pledged to one, married to one, can never be parted from the other half of his soul.”
“I didn’t know!”
“I don’t care,” Raphael husked, and then both my mate and the baron were gone from my line of sight. Something wet hit my back, and in the same moment I saw an arch of red droplets fall like rain, striking the silk sheets at eye level with me.
There was pressure on my arched back, and then hot breath in my ear. “Jackson,” he growled, low and dark.
“Raph,” I whimpered, loathing the helplessness in my voice. “Thank God you found me. I—”