CHAPTER 9
Isadora felt fragile in Rook’s arms, terrifyingly breakable as he gripped her ribs and knees. A deep need to wrap her in his wings and shield her from the world ran in his veins, commanded him to keep her safe and do whatever it took to protect her.
She wasn’t weak though.
He could feel the power in her, stronger than before now she was free of her shackles. It hummed inside her and into him through where they touched, a buzzing that felt like a warning to him.
One that was rapidly building.
“Put me down.” She stared at his hand where he gripped her knee.
“Not going to happen.” He took three strides through the deep snow and kicked off as he spread his scarlet wings and beat them, lifting into the air.
“Where are you taking me?” she snapped as her arms looped around his neck and she curled up against him.
Fuck, that felt too good.
He held her closer, calling himself a bastard for taking advantage of her like this, when she was afraid and in need of comfort.
“I found a place to stay, out of the way. We can rest there and then we’ll head to Paris.” He scouted the route ahead of them, charting the mountains and the trees, making sure they didn’t have any company.
He wasn’t sure the Devil would send men to retrieve him, or whether other witches might be in the area and see him taking Isadora, but he wasn’t going to risk it.
He wasn’t going to risk her.
If he spotted anyone en route to the cabin, he was taking them down.
“Paris,” she breathed, her voice distant again, losing the strength that had been in it just moments ago.
Was she slipping back into her daze again, or just thoughtful? He wanted to glance at her, but he had always found it hard to fly and focus elsewhere. He tended to go in the direction of his gaze when that was happening and he was sure she wouldn’t appreciate it if they suddenly dropped a few feet because he had been looking down at her.
“You don’t remember me… but do you know an angel called Apollyon?” He couldn’t stop his gaze from flitting to her as he asked that, unable to deny the need to see her reaction to that name.
She perked up again and pulled a thoughtful face, was silent for a full minute before she uttered, “Apollyon. I know that name. I know him.”
For some reason that really pissed Rook off.
She had forgotten him, but she could remember the other angel. He silenced the voice at the back of his mind that hissed this was all a trick, an act to lure him into a trap, because he honestly didn’t believe that anymore. If they had wanted to kill him, he had given them ample opportunities to take him down.
“You don’t remember me though?” He couldn’t stop himself from asking that, from wanting her to remember him and not because he wanted to ask her questions about himself.
Hell, maybe in part it was because he wanted her eyes on him again too.
It worked, because she gazed up at him, reigniting that warmth that had flared to life inside him when she had been pressed against him in the snow.
He banked right, spreading his wings to carry them effortlessly across the lake, towards the far side of it.
Her gaze lingered on him so long that he wanted to look down at her, felt a soul-deep need to stare into her eyes again and get lost in them. Maybe she was casting spells on him, making him want her.
Impossible, since she didn’t need a spell to make that happen. He had yearned for her from the moment Apollyon had given him the drawing of her.
Not impossible. She could have cast a spell on him centuries ago, when she had apparently known him. There was a chance it would still be in effect.
Maybe she was the reason he couldn’t recall things about his past, about the early years of his life in Hell and what had come before. Forgetting spells were in her repertoire after all.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured quietly. “I don’t remember you.”
“That’s alright.” It wasn’t, not by a long shot, but he didn’t want her feeling bad about it.
He shook his head at that. What was she doing to him? He was a battle-hardened warrior, a black-hearted and vicious demonic angel who only cared about climbing the ladder in the Devil’s ranks.
He risked a glance at her, unable to stop himself.
Maybe climbing that ladder wasn’t the only thing he cared about anymore.
He was beginning to feel he cared about her.
Her eyes widened and she gripped his breastplate. “Pull up.”
He growled and dropped his feet, beat his wings as trees came at them fast and cursed himself for getting distracted by her. His boots collided with the top of one of the pines and he struggled to avoid hitting it with his wings, twisted away from it as best he could and flew harder. The trees dropped away again.
“Mother Earth! Is this your first time flying?” she bit out, a hefty dose of sarcasm and bite in her voice that he found he liked.
He scowled at her. “No. I just didn’t see them.”
Because he had been too busy staring at her.
Was still too busy staring at her as they collided with another tree.
Rook pulled her against him and grimaced as they crashed through branches that restrained his wings, making it impossible for him to use them. He fumbled with one hand, trying to grab hold of something other than Isadora, and cursed as the branch he managed to snag slipped through his grip and they dropped together. His back struck a thick branch, knocking the wind from him, and he grunted as they rolled, falling towards the next one.
This wasn’t going to go well.
He growled as he wrapped both arms and his wings around Isadora to protect her. She squeaked, her heart thundering in his ears as her fear flooded him.
He swore to the Devil they hit every damned branch on the way down, and every jagged broken one stuck him in his legs, his back or his wings, sending fresh fiery pain rolling through him. He twisted beneath her as they cleared the branches and spread his wings, trying to slow their ascent.
His breath left him in a rush as his back slammed into the earth and Isadora ploughed into his stomach, landing on top of him.
He closed his eyes, his wings stretched out at his sides, his right one bent at an awkward angle against the trunk of the pine that had just massacred him, and just lay there. He would move in a minute, when he could breathe again and the pain ricocheting through him faded.
Isadora wriggled in his arms, rubbing against him in a way that fired him up and flooded his mind with thoughts he really shouldn’t be having given the situation.
“Are you alright?” Her cold palms framed his face as she moved so her body was flush against his, pressing down on it in a damned delicious way.
He nodded but kept his eyes closed.
She huffed, shoved up and sat astride him, and he had to bite back the groan that rumbled up his throat and wanted out. She had to know what she was doing to him sitting like that, her hands pressing against his bare stomach, scalding him despite their coldness.
“You need to learn how to fly,” she snapped.
His eyes shot open and he fixed them on her as his eyebrows dipped low, the corners of his mouth turning downwards. “I can fly. I was just distracted.”
“Distracted?” She tilted her head, causing her silver hair to shift across her breasts, and he squeezed his eyes shut before she distracted him all over again.
He wasn’t going to answer her question. Evasion was the best recourse. The last thing he needed was her being aware of what a serious distraction she was and how he couldn’t concentrate for shit around her.
“Are you hurt?” He mentally checked himself over, charting all the new puncture wounds on his legs, the shattered bone in his right wing, and the hole in his side that was leaking blood.
“No.” Her gaze raked over him. “Are you?”
He chuckled at that. “I just hit every fucking branch in that tree and you need to ask me if I’m hurt?”
She scooted off him and he opened his eyes, pressed his elbows into the dirt and pushed himself up on them so he could see her. Her blue eyes skimmed over him, growing wider as they reached his legs.
“You’re bleeding.” She was definitely growing more lucid, and he liked it, not because he had been worried about her when she had been lost in a daze but because he liked the sound of her voice.
It was smooth like honey, took the edge off his mood whenever it caressed his ears, and quietened that niggling inner voice that kept telling him he was going to get into serious trouble for helping her.
“No shit.” He sat up, not sure whether he was talking to her or that inner voice. He focused and waited for his wings to shrink into his back. They were reluctant to go, but he needed them away so they would heal and not cause him pain. He had enough of that to deal with. When they were gone, he clutched his right side, stemming the flow of blood, pressed his free hand into the earth and pushed himself onto his feet. “I was bleeding before I took a tumble through a tree.”
She averted her gaze. Ashamed? Because he had been hurt rescuing her? It hit him that she was like him. She didn’t like not being able to take care of herself. She didn’t like being weak and having to rely on others.
“It’s nothing I won’t heal.” His mouth twisted in a grimace as he moved and every muscle ached in protest, the wounds stinging as they pulled.
She moved towards him anyway, closing the gap down to only a few inches, and lifted her hands. She hesitated, drew down a swift breath and placed her palms against his stomach.
He tensed. “What are you—”
“Shh,” she murmured, her brow furrowing as her eyes closed, and heat flowed into him, pleasant at first.
Until it reached the wound in his right side.
It gathered into a white-hot pool and he growled through his gritted teeth as pain arced through him, bolts of it shooting outwards from the wound. He loosed a string of obscenities, unable to clamp his jaw tightly enough to contain them as the fire built and spread, attacking other wounds on his body. He was glad he had sent his wings away, because he could well imagine how painful it would be to have her spell fixing them. It felt as if it was ripping him apart to put him back together again.
Isadora swayed towards him, her silvery eyebrows pinching, and her hands shook against him.
“Enough,” he barked and stepped back to break contact when she didn’t move.
He caught her arms when she fell forwards, stopping her from hitting the dirt, and held her upright. Her rapid breaths fogged in the icy air, her skin paler than before, and he wanted to rail at her, to curse and shout and demand to know why she had hurt herself in order to heal him.
But he couldn’t, because he already knew the answer.
She felt responsible for what had happened to him.
So rather than barking and snapping at her, he settled for murmuring, “Thanks.”
“I can do more,” she whispered, breathless, her voice barely there.
He shook his head. She had exhausted herself by healing the worst of his wounds. He didn’t want her to attempt to heal the others, not when he felt sure she would collapse if she tried. It would only flip their roles, making him feel responsible for what had happened to her. He felt responsible for her enough as it was.
“Can you stand unaided?” He kept his voice low, hoping it would sway her into forgetting about healing him.
She snatched her arms back, horror flashing across her pretty face as she stared at his outstretched hands. Had she only just noticed he had been holding her? An equally as pretty blush followed, staining her cheeks and bringing some colour back into her complexion.
He was right about her. She didn’t like being coddled. She didn’t like relying on another’s strength.
Tough shit for her, since she was going to have to get used to relying on him for a while.
Starting with him providing for her.
He scanned the forest floor for the bags he had lost during the fall and huffed as he found one had ended up torn open, some of its contents scattered across the dirt, useless to them now. The other was dangling from a branch several metres up, a bread roll poking out of a tear in its side. He couldn’t let his wings out again, not without damaging them further, so he leaped up, gripped a low branch and hauled himself into the tree.
Isadora’s gaze followed him as he moved from branch to branch, stealing the pain from his body as it heated him. Or maybe it was the lingering effect of the spell she had funnelled into him.
He grabbed the bag, gripped the thick branch it had been hanging from and dropped. He swung and let go, falling to land in a crouch on the leaf litter beside Isadora.
She tensed when he rose to his full height before her, her blue eyes widening slightly as they locked with his.
He stared into them, mesmerised by how the moonlight changed their colour, making them colder despite the banked heat that flickered in them.
When she began idly rubbing at her bare arms, he shook himself free of the spell she had placed on him and jerked his chin towards the woods beyond her.
“It’s not far to a place we can rest.” His gaze fell to her again as she looked over her shoulder in the direction of the chalet. “We need to get you warmed up.”
Because as far as he knew, witches could get sick, and she was wet from her tumble in the snow. Coupled with the fact she needed nourishment, there was a high chance she would get ill if he kept her lingering in the cold much longer.
When her eyes finally roamed back to him, they were duller than before, and he could almost see her slipping away from him again.
He didn’t want that to happen. “Isadora?”
She blinked at him but didn’t respond. Her eyes fell to her wrist and she grazed her fingers over them, a distant edge to her gaze. What was she thinking in there? He wanted to ask her but he wouldn’t get an answer.
Her pale fingers pressed against each bruise on her arms, and the thin lacerations that streaked up them from her wrists.
“You did a spell,” he murmured, not sure if she knew what had happened to her.
Her eyes leaped to his and then dropped back to her arms. “Spell.”
A crinkle formed between her eyebrows.
“I think it made you forget me.” He pushed those words out, ignored the pain they caused as they fell from his lips, hung in the silent night and lingered, awaiting her response.
She looked at her arms, holding them out in front of her, and then tilted her head back and sighed. “I can’t see the moon.”
He shoved the disappointment down before it could surface and took hold of her left arm, carefully cradling it in his hand. She was cold, chilled to the bone, trembling beneath his touch.
“Let’s get you warmed up.” Because maybe it would make her more lucid again.
He wanted her back with him.
He started walking but she didn’t move. He looked over his shoulder at her and tugged on her arm. She glanced at him and her eyes lingered on his, and fuck, he hated how far she was from him, shut away in a place he couldn’t reach.
It had an ache forming in his breast, one he didn’t want to understand, or acknowledge. She couldn’t mean something to him. She just couldn’t. He would take her to Paris, and then he needed to return to Hell, and face whatever punishment his master had in store for him.
He couldn’t fall under her spell.
“You can see the moon better from the cabin.” That seemed to break through the fog that surrounded her mind and she started walking.
He led her through the woods to the chalet, opened the door for her and guided her inside before she could even think about lingering outside to look at the moon. He would let her see it once she was warmed up.
He settled her on the floor by the fireplace and set the bag of food down next to her. Her eyes tracked him as he moved around the cabin, as he broke apart some of the wooden furniture to form kindling and gathered some logs that had been left beside the hearth.
It had been decades since he’d had to make a fire, but he could remember the basics enough that he had a blaze going before long. He stoked it with the rusted tools, trying to ignore the way Isadora’s gaze burned into him, had him hotter than the flames that flickered and danced on the grate before him.
She shuffled closer and held her hands out to the flames. A little too close.
Rook grabbed her wrists to ease them back.
“Get off me. Don’t touch them!” she barked as she twisted her arms free of his loose grip.
She shoved at him, knocking him on his backside, and scrambled away, breathing hard, a wild look in her eyes as they darted around the room.
She was looking for an escape route.
His heart lurched at that.
“Isadora,” he murmured softly and held his hands up at his sides, hoping to calm her. “I wasn’t going to hurt you. I just… you were too close to the flames.”
Her chest heaved beneath her black t-shirt as she breathed faster, panic flaring in her blue eyes.
“Cannot let you see,” she muttered under her breath and began rubbing at her forearms. “Cannot let anyone see. They’ll come for me again.”
He frowned. “Who will come? The witches?”
She rapidly shook her head, her eyebrows knitting hard. “Demons on dragons wings.”
Cold swept through his veins, numbing every inch of him.
Hell’s angels.
He sank back on his ass. His kind had targeted her before? Why?
He needed to know, but he wasn’t going to get answers from her. She wrapped her arms around her knees and began rocking, shaking her head, her eyes on the fire. Foreign words left her lips, whispered quietly, so low he couldn’t make them out, but he could feel the power in them as it flowed around him.
It was familiar.
She was so afraid that she was trying to shield herself, to form a protective bubble similar to the one the other witch had cast.
She was terrified of his kind, more than she was of witches, and damn, he wasn’t sure how to process that.
It certainly screwed up his plans. He had intended to cast a portal to take them to Paris but he couldn’t now. He wasn’t sure whether she knew what powers a demonic angel possessed, but he wasn’t willing to risk her freaking out on him and painting him in the same light as the ones who had evidently traumatised her.
Angels who had been after the same secret as the witches?
He focused and produced a blanket, a soft fluffy beige one that would be enough to warm her as she sat by the fire. She didn’t acknowledge him as he carefully placed it around her shoulders. She kept chanting and staring at the flames.
He fixed food for her, turning the bag inside out and setting what he hoped was a suitable meal for her out on it.
“You need to eat.” He unscrewed the cap of the water bottle, placed it beside her food, and picked up the sandwich.
She took it from him, her gaze following his hand, tracking it when he moved to sit beside her and grabbed his own sandwich.
He kept his eyes away from her, unsure whether she would react badly if he stared at her. Was it better to let her look at him, to pretend he didn’t notice the way her eyes lingered on the cuts on his thighs and the remaining ones on his stomach? He wished he could pretend he didn’t notice the way he burned wherever her gaze touched, his skin heating and a hunger rising within him, a need to have her hands on him again.
Her eyes reached his shoulders. “You’re an angel.”
His gaze leaped to meet hers and he lowered his sandwich from his lips without taking a bite, an unsettling feeling running through him as he waited for her to say something else, something he feared.
Did she know Hell’s angels flew on crimson wings when they weren’t in their demonic forms?
“You have wings.” She took a small bite of her food, chewed and swallowed it. “What colour are they?”
He didn’t want to answer that, so he bit into his own sandwich. It tasted good, the combination of meat and cheese quite pleasing, and his stomach growled for more.
Isadora’s soft voice filled the silence.
“Silver-blue.”
Rook stilled.
He hadn’t had wings that colour in a long time, if Apollyon was to be believed and he had been a guardian angel in his former life.
His gaze drifted to her, and that feeling hit him again, that sense she was the key to unlocking his past and that Apollyon was right about them.
He had known her, had been something to her.
Something that left him shaken to his soul and conflicted, confused and unsure of himself as he stared at her, because whoever he had been, he wasn’t that male now. He was something else, something she would despise if she knew.
He wasn’t her guardian angel anymore.
He was her Hell’s angel.
Would she still look at him with heat in her eyes if she knew that?
Or would she run from him?