Celestra Forever After (17 page)

Why the fuck is that so hard for her mother to understand?

That ring pops through my mind.

That’s why.

Logan

Dudley’s living room jumps three feet to the left, and I cut a quick glance to Liam and Ellis who offer one another a congratulatory knuckle bump because each one believes the other committed the ultimate bodily function.

“You’re both full of shit,” I assure them while finishing up a text and burying my phone in my pocket.

I finally tossed the piano bench at that damn mirror earlier and caused the quickest exodus of long departed spirits known to man. The darn thing was like a vacuum for lost souls the way it sucked them out of the room in ten seconds flat. Of course, the haunted speculum bounced back into shape, but it hasn’t spit out a hooker in twenty-four hours, so that’s a win.

“Oliver.” Marshall calls to me from the kitchen, and I head over. “I’ll be stepping out this evening.” He’s all decked out in a three-piece suit—with enough frankincense and myrrh to shut down my lungs for a week.

“Cool it on the cologne, would you? Chicks dig it when they can breathe. They prefer this new fangled thing called oxygen. Besides, you can’t go anywhere. I just called Ezrina and Nev over.” I glance behind him into the kitchen. “And where’s dinner? I thought you were whipping up a wild goose or whatever creature’s blood you managed to splatter all over the walls.”

He glares into me a moment. “It was squirrel, and it was a dinner for one. Do I look like a personal chef to you?” He adjusts his golden cufflinks each with a twin blue stone set in the center that looks startlingly familiar.

“Is that the same stone as the protective hedge?” I gifted the protective hedge to Skyla, and I hope to God she never takes it off.

“Twice as nice, don’t you think?” He holds one up to the light, and it winks at us.

It would figure. Skyla and I had to go to hell and back just to wrangle it from Chloe’s resurrected hands, and here he’s had a drawer full all along.

“Where are you off to all spiffed up?” I smack the dust off his shoulder as if I cared. “1812 having a mean kegger?”

Dudley huffs before shooting a look of disappointment over my shoulder.

“You’re off by half a century, but you’re often wrong about things aren’t you? Like the fact it was a bright idea to pull your brother from paradise so he can systematically destroy his brain cells while syphoning off Harrison’s
stash
.”

“At least you’re paying attention.” I hate it when Dudley is right.

“Yes, well, I’m picking up on more than the lingo—I’m picking up the disgusting scent of this place. Do you know what one of my esteemed colleagues inquired of me this morning? Whether or not I had any ‘reefer’ on me.” He gives a wry smile. “She even offered to engage me in a game of crotch Yahtzee in exchange for the goods.” His features harden, pissed as shit.

I give a little chuckle. “You know she offered to—”

“I know what she was inferring.” He gives a bleak smile. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve a date with a woman six thousand years my junior. I believe you people call that robbing the cradle.” He walks right out the door, and I follow.

“More like she’s robbing the grave,” I mutter. “Who’s this date with?”

“My wife.”

My stomach cinches because we both know who his “wife” is.

“Your spirit wife,” I whisper. “My wife.” It comes out with defeat because she’s anything but that anymore.

A bottle-rocket of emotion spews from me, and I slam Dudley up against the side of the house for the hell of it.

A jolt of electricity spasms through me, hot and biting.

“Shit,” I hiss as my body goes airborne. I fly over the porch—landing hard on my back. “Can’t breathe,” I hiss as the air struggles to filter back into my lungs.

Dudley strides over and kicks me in ribs, full force.

“Now if you’ll excuse me—my wife and I have a rousing game of crotch Yahtzee to tend to.”

5

Gage the Revelator

Skyla

“Gage and I were two angels dressed in white—the moon washing us alabaster,” I whisper, lying prone, staring up at the starless sky of the ethereal plane. My clothes have been returned to me, my sweater on inside out.

“Is she reciting poetry?” My mother asks one of her cohorts as she glides to where I’m stamped in the ground. She extends her hand, and I refuse the offer, struggling to stand on my own.

“What?” I throw my hands in the air and glare at the two Sectors by her side with their matching Marshall faces. “What are you staring at? I know for a fact Sectors are nothing but sexed-up beings just waiting for the right millennium to pounce on their prey.” I poke the nearest one in the chest, and it’s like striking steel. “And
you
—” I glare into Rothello with his long black hair, his glass eye that now belongs to Ezrina because in the twisted world I live in, people can actually run around with another person’s body parts—my Chloe arm being a prime example. “You landed me in a war that cost me everything.” I stop shy of spitting in his face, only because it would be stooping down to Chloe’s level, and, God knows, I’d never want to do that. Not to mention the potential of starting another war—literally. “Be gone all of you. I want to talk to my mother alone.” I seethe into her as the wind blows back her hair—her feather-light gown clings to her skin like wet paper as the breeze picks up with ferocity. The air grows increasingly frigid, much like my mother’s heart, until the three of them evaporate right out of existence in a hard bite of icy wind.

“Is that all it takes?” I snap. “A little
demanding
?”

“On occasion.” My mother swallows down a laugh as her lips curl on the sides. “Sometimes it just takes asking nicely. I would have thought you knew better.”

“And I would have thought you knew better than to pluck me from an intimate moment with my boyfriend.”

“Your boyfriend was aggressively procuring intimate relations with someone outside of the bonds of a covenant—with
my
daughter no less.” Her nostrils flare as she glowers at me.

“Is that what this is about? Just because two people want to have sex with each other doesn’t mean they have to do something drastic like get married.”

“It is the very reason.” Her voice cuts through Ahava like a straight razor.

“But Coop and Laken—”

“We’re not talking about Coop and Laken, we’re talking about you and
him
.”

“His name is
Gage
.” I toss my hands up in frustration. “God, you can’t even say his name.” I get up in her face. “Gage, Gage,
Gage
.”

She pinches her eyes shut a moment as if she were in pain. “Here.” She tosses my necklace over to me with the protective hedge and Logan’s mirrored heart clanking against one another. “It looks like you’re forgetting important things—important
people
.”

“I know you preferred, Logan.” I soften into her while pulling the necklace over my head. “I get it. But he’s gone, remember?” My mother openly gave Logan her blessing then proceeded to let him die. Typical. “But you know what? I love Gage. I love Gage,
deeply
.” I take in a breath and hold it because I know what I’m about to say next. “In fact, I’m going to do everything I can to keep Gage safe—alive.”

“You’ll never succeed.” She closes her eyes, and the light in all of Ahava dims for a moment.

“Watch me.”

“And how are you going to do this?”

“You’re in charge, you tell me.” And I’m hoping she will.

“I am in charge.” She gives a sly smile. “I’m in charge of knowledge, civilized societies—mathematics.”

“That’s funny because I sure as heck didn’t inherit your math gene.” Marshall can attest to that.

“You did, but you never utilized it, so it went underdeveloped. You, Skyla, can do anything you set your mind to.”

Is she suggesting I can actually save Gage?

“I can’t eat a car.”

“You can if you put it in a blender one piece at a time and make a smoothie out of it. Where is your creativity, dear girl?”

“I’m a woman.”

“Then act like one.”

A burst of adrenaline rushes through me at the thought of saving Gage—of
having
Gage for the rest of my life right by my side.

“You’re saying I can do this.” And, in a fraction of a second, I suddenly feel responsible for Logan’s death—far more responsible than Chloe ever was. What I’m about to do is far more personal. Chloe murdered him out in the open, and here I am killing him in secret—saying that we can never have our time together because I refuse to let Gage die. Ezrina bounces through my mind as a thought comes to me, but I shelve it for later.

Her eyes narrow in, the same washed blue as mine. “Do you know who Gage is?”

“
Yes
. We’re very close. He’s my soul mate, and I don’t have it in me to let anybody else die. If I can stop it, I will.”

“Do you wish to be his bride?” Her eyes soften, as if she were about to tell me a very sad story.

“Yes. More than anything.”

Her hand rests gently over the back of my head. “Would you love Gage without the restraints of your world or the next?”

“Of course.” Not that I’m fully grasping the celestial spin she’s putting on it, but I think I get it. This is her way of letting her baby girl go.

She narrows in on me disapprovingly. “Despite any false pretenses that may have presented themselves?”

“I plan on loving Gage no matter what the circumstances are in our life. This is it—the two of us forever—the way it was prophesied from the beginning.”

“Prophesied by you?”

“By Gage.” I avert my eyes at her head games. “I hate to break it to you, but I don’t have the gift of prophecy.”

“What makes you so sure
he
does?” She brushes me away with the flick of her wrist. “Nevertheless, I see you’re determined to bind yourself to him forever.”

“And how does forever fit in with Gage dying?”

“In God’s arms, forever in our heart’s—time heals all wounds and all that good stuff. Take your pick, mix and match. I’m sure you’ll find some adage to make you feel better once the time comes. Now, be gone. I’m having dinner with your father. I’ll be sure to fill him in on your intentions with what’s-his-name. And you, my love, have your first appointment as the overseer.”

Ahava shifts beneath my feet, and I’m transported to a cave-like dwelling lit up with a roaring fire, as tall and violent as a tornado twisting in the back. A circular stone table is set near a wall of rushing water, and it’s only then I realize I’ve been here before. This is the cavern behind the waterfalls, right here in Ahava. The exact place where the faction war came to a close—and that is the exact fire I walked through to secure the win for Celestra. Marshall was with me then.

“I’m here with you now.” He appears by my side just as I note dozens of people seated around the enormous table. Marshall holds out an empty crystalline chair, and I’m quick to take it while he sinks down next to me.

Nicholas Haver sits across from us. He’s the guy that runs the faction meetings back on Paragon—not that I was ever really allowed at those since I’m not on the flip side of thirty, but, well, here I am right where destiny wanted me all along.

He pounds a ruby gavel into the stone, and the entire room vibrates with the ricochet.

“Welcome to the Council of the Superiors. Representatives of the factions, state your presence.”

“Noster.” A tall, moody looking woman calls from my right. Her dark hair has a blue cast, and her lipstick is just this side of black. Cool—Noster has a Goth representing.

“Deorsum.” A redheaded gentleman with a lisp speaks up, making it sound more like Deor
thum
in the process. He’s adorable. I already like him. “What are you looking at, blondie?” He snaps right at me.

Crap. It looks like Emma isn’t the only one of her kind that can’t stand the sight of me.

“Celestra,” I say, proud.