CHAPTER 20
Anais tried to focus on what Sable was telling her as she explained how she had gathered intelligence on the dragons with Olivia and Thorne’s help. She couldn’t take her eyes off the silver cuff that Sable wore around her right wrist. The black-haired woman kept playing with it, her fingers constantly twisting it around. A nervous trait?
What did Sable have to feel nervous about?
Was it because they were both standing in the black-walled observation room waiting for the guards to bring Loke into the other brighter white room beyond the one-way glass?
Her stomach churned and she had to breathe slowly to stop herself from running out of the low-lit room to intercept the guards who would be bringing Loke to the scientists. She settled her hand on the short sword sheathed at her waist. She would put her plan into action soon enough. All she could do right now was bide her time and somehow find a glimmer of patience.
She focused back on what Sable had said when the huntress looked at her, golden eyes expectant, as if she was waiting for an answer to a question. Anais hadn’t heard one, so she did the only thing she could. She changed the course of the conversation in the hope of finding answers to some questions of her own.
“Isn’t it better to study them in their natural environment?” She swallowed the sudden surge of nerves as Sable stared at her.
Sable remained silent for so long that Anais was close to losing her nerve and halting the conversation altogether by the time she did speak.
“Olivia feels the same way.” Sable returned her golden gaze to the window.
Anais eyed the two men in the next room as they prepared all the tools on the metal trolley next to the gurney.
Sable shook her head and twisted the silver cuff again. “Olivia doesn’t want to see a dragon on the chopping board. She’s changed.”
“Have you changed too?” Anais weathered the cool gaze of her leader and refused to let it silence her. “Does falling for one of them change you?”
Sable’s expression shifted, her golden eyes gaining a knowing but shocked edge, and Anais averted her gaze. She didn’t want Sable to see her feelings for the dragon they were about to place into the other room. Her stomach turned again and a need built within her, an urgency that she couldn’t ignore.
Her time to strike was coming, but she had no escape plan.
She wouldn’t make it out with Loke without help.
Nerves joined her colliding emotions, fear of what she was about to do. Archangel had been her home, her family, for close to a decade, and she was about to turn her back on them. She flexed her fingers at her sides, trying to loosen up her tight muscles and shake the sudden surge of adrenaline.
“It does, and it doesn’t.” Sable’s soft voice filled the quiet room, laced with understanding and a touch of unsteadiness that sounded like nerves. “I have to lie more these days.”
Anais looked across at her, seeing the emotions that had been in Sable’s voice shining in her eyes as she stared into the room beyond the glass, a distant but sharp edge to her expression, as if what was about to happen didn’t sit well with her either.
As if she didn’t want Loke to end up hurt because of what they had done.
Anais had felt the strength in Sable, power that went beyond anything a human was capable of. Sable had mated with a powerful demon, and it must have affected her. If Anais could convince her that what was about to happen was wrong and they had to stop it, she might have a shot at saving Loke.
But in order to convince Sable to help her, she would have to play on Sable’s feelings for her mate by confessing her feelings for Loke.
“This goes no further than this room, Anais.” Sable turned deadly serious eyes on her and Anais nodded. “After the war ended, I filed a report through those returning here, but I didn’t come back. When I returned with you, I was detained and questioned, and I lied through my teeth. I said that I had been looking for you and the other huntresses the whole time.”
“But you hadn’t. You were gathering information on the dragons so you could search for us… but you had been staying at the castle with Thorne.” Anais’s eyes slowly widened as Sable’s reason for weaving a huge lie dawned on her. “Archangel doesn’t know that you bound yourself to him.”
Sable shook her head, causing her sleek black hair to sway across the shoulders of her black t-shirt. “They wouldn’t understand.”
“What are you going to do?” Anais wanted to ask more questions but movement in the next room caught her attention and her heart lurched as two heavily muscled guards dragged Loke into the room and dumped him unceremoniously on the inspection table.
She covered her mouth with her hand and stared at him, unable to breathe as guilt ripped at her and her heart demanded she do something now to help him.
“I’ve seen the way he looks at you… and the way you look at him.” Sable’s voice was distant in her ears as she forced herself to watch the guards strapping Loke down. He tried to resist them, weakly pushing them away and growling at them through sharp teeth.
They had drugged him, but it wasn’t the only reason he didn’t have the strength to fight them. He was pale and gaunt, as if all of the life was leaching from him, draining right before her eyes. It was all her fault.
“Did I do the wrong thing? Did I step in when I should have stepped back?”
Anais did look at Sable now. The guilt in her amber eyes turned to pain as Anais stared into them, searching for something to say. She should have spoken up when Sable had found them. She should have told her, because she knew that Sable of all people would have understood.
Would understand.
She turned her cheek to Sable and fixed her gaze on Loke where he lay strapped to the table, the two scientists hovering around him. She forced herself to stand where she was and see what was happening to him because of her and everything she had once stood for and held dear.
“I’m in love with him.” The words slipped easily from her lips and some of the weight pressing down on her heart lifted, easing it and restoring a sliver of her strength, enough to boost her resolve and her courage. “I should have spoken up when you came… and now I feel it’s too late but I have to do something. If he stays in this world much longer… he’ll die… because of me. It will be all my fault and I hate myself for it.”
Her hand went to the hilt of the blade strapped to her waist.
Sable’s hand clamped down on it. “It is never too late.”
She looked at her superior.
Sable closed her eyes and rubbed a black and silver band around her left wrist.
“What are you doing?” Anais frowned at her fingers as she kept rubbing the band. It wasn’t a nervous trait this time. Sable was up to something, and whatever it was, there was power behind it.
It charged the air in the room, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
“Calling in a favour… well… I’m requesting help in exchange for a favour as right now I’m a little low on favours to call in,” Sable whispered as she frowned, her eyes still closed. Anais opened her mouth to ask whether she was calling for Thorne just as Sable added, “The elves will help us.”
Her hope soared.
Elves could teleport, were agile and swift, and had armour that Archangel’s human-made weapons couldn’t penetrate. If anyone was strong enough to help her save Loke, it was that species.
The static charge in the air grew stronger and a spark flickered out of the corner of her eye.
Anais turned her back to the window at the same time as Sable did, coming to face the white-blue arc of light as it flashed again in the middle of the room, brighter this time.
Blinding her.
She flinched away and waited for the light to fade before opening her eyes.
An immense and beautiful man with a thick head of onyx-black hair and incredible silver eyes stood in the room opposite them, his presence sucking the air from it.
But he wasn’t an elf.
Loke had been right.
Angels existed.