Iridescent (Ember 2) (10 page)

The real torment began for Sebastian the first time he’d spilled blood. Afterward, he’d spent years in a constant struggle to reconcile the man with the sleeping monster. He hated that part of him, but he couldn’t regret his actions. His determination to protect Candra was never about seeking atonement, as his family so often believed. The monster resided quietly inside him now; it had become part of him long ago. He supposed he was the monster as much as it was him, but who would want a monster dating their daughter? Who would lay their child at the mouth of a sleeping beast?

Sebastian asked himself the same question repeatedly as he paced back and forth by the stone boulders in the small park near Saint Francis College. They could have been some form of modern art, except Sebastian knew from memory that these stones were anything but modern. Over time, people sitting on them had worn some spots down. He made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a snort when his line of sight found the statue nearby, wide wings extended and its hands raised to heaven. Ambriel had made him swear not to tell Candra what he was, so he had shown her instead…standing in the shadow of the angel.

He spotted Brie approaching from the park gate in the distance, wrapped up against the elements in a long, padded black jacket. Her appearance was in stark contrast to the muted tones of winter around her, the faded greens and muddy browns. A nondescript shade of pale blue filled in with off-white cotton ball clouds made up the sky.

This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. In his wildest imagination, he couldn’t have dreamt it. Mostly because if they were never meant to have children, how could he have foreseen he would fall in love with Payne’s child?

Sebastian didn’t want Ambriel to think he’d ambushed her. He planned to put her at ease from the beginning; however, as she came closer, the prospect of that scenario seemed to fade quickly.

“Hey.” She smiled, her eyes guarded and suspicious. The skin across her face had pinked up in the cold breeze and tightened over her cheekbones. The same tension trickled down her back, making her shoulders rise almost to the point that she lost her neck behind the dark gray scarf wrapped around her.

Sebastian strained, searching for some part of him to pick up on her emotions, other than guessing them by looking at her. There was nothing but empty air between them.

“Hey.” He retrieved, from one of the stone grooves in a boulder, the two take-out coffees he had bought on his way here. “Cream and two sugars,” he said, handing her one of the cups. Steam rose in a slim ribbon from the hole in the lid, indicating he hadn’t been waiting for her long. It seemed like forever and a day to him.

“What’s going on, Sebastian? Why are we meeting here?” she asked apprehensively and then blew into the lid before taking a sip. She kept her gaze on him. He knew her well enough to suspect she already had an indication of the purpose of their meeting.

His stomach twisted, and nausea threatened to weaken his resolve. What made him think a cup of coffee would make this any easier? The several strong cups he’d had earlier gurgled inside him while the caffeine worked on his brain. It ticked over too fast for him to keep up, and his skull felt like it was shrinking. This had to be the equivalent of a migraine.
Man up
, he scolded himself.

“The setting seemed fitting.” His easy tone shocked him, not reflecting his insides in the slightest.

Sebastian gestured for Ambriel to sit. She continued to watch him dubiously, alternating momentary peeks at the stone, as if it might jump up and come to life. His heart boomed inside his ears, reminding him of the insistent ticking of the grandfather clock that once took up space in the study of the brownstone. With the wretched thing’s constant tick, tick, tick…how was he supposed to concentrate?

Should it be this difficult?
Yeah, because some things were worth standing up for, regardless of the cost.
Sebastian suspected today, the cost could include vital organs he had grown rather attached to.

“It’s about Candra…” he began and then trailed off.

Ambriel stiffened further. He wasn’t sure how that was possible and feared she would crack apart like glass under pressure at any moment.

Get a grip, Sebastian.
Talking to himself wouldn’t make this conversation go any smoother, since every time he did, all it achieved was stretching time out further. He considered the possibility he lacked whatever genetic code made it possible for beings to form and keep relationships, since Gabe never made love look this hard. The opposite, Gabe made loving Ambriel look effortless, although Sebastian knew it couldn’t be.

“She’s okay,” Ambriel pushed, visibly irritated with his stalling. Her jaw quickly twitched several times, suggesting she was chewing the inside of her cheek.

“Yes,” he assured her. Sebastian made a conscious effort to smooth the frown he knew she was fixated on, making her worry more that she should. He placed his cup back on the boulder, since it was nothing more than a pointless accessory, a useless prop. The taste in his mouth was bitter enough already without drinking more of the tar he called coffee. “I wanted to talk to you…I mean…I wanted to ask.” He paused and pulled in a lungful of cold air, forcing it back out through teeth firmly pressed together.

Ambriel lowered her head and flicked at the rim of the plastic lid with her thumbnail, the clicking growing more insistent with her exasperation.

“You want me to believe you are good enough for her when you can’t even come up with the words to tell me how you feel?” Her statement was blunt and direct, intended to cut him to the quick. She’d probably rehearsed it in her head, knowing this conversation was coming and knowing he would fall at the final hurdle before admitting his feelings out loud.

Sebastian recoiled from them internally, but stood his ground. “I love her.” Ambriel’s accusation shook him. He compared it to the moment light hits a blade and blinds the poor sap about to be struck down.

He didn’t need it pointed out to him; Sebastian knew he didn’t deserve her. Regardless, Candra had chosen him.

Ambriel shook her head and sipped her coffee without saying a word. Sebastian ducked down, trying to see her eyes under her dark hair and hoped it would give him some clue to what was going on inside her head. Her blank expression told him nothing, and his anxiety doubled up. Sebastian had no desire to offend Ambriel, but he didn’t have a back-up plan if she tried to put a wedge between them. He decided to give honesty a go. What would it hurt?

“I tried not to. I really tried very hard—”

“Not hard enough,” she broke in coldly.

“Ambriel, please don’t—”

Her anger ignited like a match struck against a wall, radiating toward him in waves. “Don’t what, Sebastian? You can’t tell me what to do anymore.” Her voice carried a weight absent on so many occasions lately, a weight that screamed, “You did not just go there.” She sprang up from the boulder, fast as lighting and, he suspected, just as dangerous.

Sebastian stepped back tentatively, more for her sake than his, abundantly aware of how his temper could explode. Ambriel got right up into his face and stared him down, eyes blazing with determination and jaw set in incredulous anger. It would have been easy for him to forget himself if she said or did the wrong thing. It seemed not long ago, she had been his sparring partner. Now, he might hurt her by accident, given the right provocation.

“I’m not—”

“You’ve always been this way. The Arch knows I love you, but your torment…it was crushing. You made your choice, Sebastian, just like the rest of us did. You carry this—” she waved her hand in a small circle around his heart “—this burden as if it was forced upon you. Now what, you’re going to tell me you couldn’t help yourself?”

“I…”

Her eyes grew watery, but she made no effort to look away or hide the emotions bubbling to the surface at a disturbing rate. Her obvious frustration and hurt made any words he wanted to speak quite literally catch in his throat. He swallowed and clenched his fist, distracting himself with the sharp sting of his nails biting into his palm.

Ambriel trembled when she spoke again in a voice devoid of any discernible emotion. “I should have stepped in—I know I should have. You made me feel weak and pointless—Sebastian, the great leader of the Nuhra, and Ambriel, his sidekick.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Sebastian told her softly. At least, that wasn’t how he remembered. Ambriel was always the stronger of them, always showing the control and self-awareness he woefully lacked. A powerful warrior—that was how he remembered her.

She rolled her eyes, and a small smile played at the corners of her lips but didn’t completely reach her sad gaze. “Oh, please.” She blinked and stepped back, keeping her eyes on his as if they were laser beams straight into his soul.

He felt exposed and more open than he’d ever been. Before Candra, he’d had bravado and a lopsided grin. He’d used deflection so others couldn’t look too closely, knowing if they did, he would too. Why hadn’t Ambriel mentioned any of this before? It seemed to him she’d saved it up for when she could damage him the most.

One hand found her hip—or where he estimated her hip would be under the bulky coat—and the other balanced the coffee cup at her other side. “But you know what? I’m not that weak sidekick any longer.”

No. No, she wasn’t. She was an angry lioness guarding her young from a vicious predator. Part of him saw straight through her deteriorating mortal exterior to what she had been before: formidable, fierce, and righteous. Sebastian didn’t expect the accompanying wave of relief that assaulted him, causing him to shiver and his lungs to constrict uncomfortably. Until then, he hadn’t known how much and how deeply the wounds created by her absence went, how utterly discarded and alone she’d left him. Seeing her now at least proved she still existed.

“I needed you,” Sebastian admitted, and it was a dagger removed from his back to say the words. “I was nothing without you. Didn’t you have some idea I would fall apart without you there to hold me up?”

“No.” She shook her head again. “You didn’t need me. You needed to go home. I couldn’t give you that, and I couldn’t stay.” Her voice hitched. “But I won’t let you punish me by hurting her.”

Her accusation was a swift kick to his ribs. Sebastian eyes widened and flickered between Ambriel’s. His heart punched through his chest with the force of a jackhammer, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose. The wind around them picked up, blusterous gusts whipping her hair around her face until finally, she blinked, breaking their standoff.

Sebastian spun away from her, dragging his fingers through his hair roughly. His boots slid easily on the damp grass squelching under his feet at the edge of the pathway. He would give Ambriel anything to get back to where they had been, anything except what he guessed she was about to ask of him. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to walk away.”

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back to face the sky as tiny droplets began to fall.
If only it could wash my hands clean.
“I can’t do that. She chose me.”

Ambriel’s dark laughter twinkled in the crisp air, taunting him with its lithe tones.

He opened his eyes and turned, caught unprepared for the pitying glint in her brown eyes or the way they crinkled with mirth. Was she mocking him? He scowled, clenching and unclenching his hands until she reached out to him and squeezed his fingers. His shoulders locked, and his spine straightened. Tingles flooded the tissue of his back, and every muscle in his body strained to relax, but adrenaline kept them tensed. He was a ball of elastic, flexing and stretching, ready for fight or flight. He sensed something grave was about to occur between them.

“That’s just it though, Sebastian. She didn’t choose you.”

He hastened to jerk his hand out of her solid grip, but there seemed to be some disconnect between his brain and his hand. All he managed was a feeble tug, which she resisted.

“She chose Draven,” Ambriel continued, either ignorant to his pain or disregarding it completely. “If Draven hadn’t set up his charade as a way of creating a dialogue between the sides, if his offer to lie wasn’t a ploy, she would be with him right now.”

“She only chose him to prevent a war.”

Ambriel slanted her head a little, and raindrops trickled over her jaw and down her slender neck. “Really, you are sure? You are positive she isn’t the slightest bit attracted to him? You don’t think she would fall for someone like him if you were not in the way?”

“Why are you saying this to me?” He wrenched his hand away and rubbed at his palm as if her touch had scarred him right down to the bone.

The rain grew steadily worse, and Ambriel’s hair began to stick to her face. She pushed dark strands out of the way, fighting against the wind. “Because it’s true, and I’m trying to show that you are not her only possibility. Believe me, I wouldn’t want her with him either. I need to protect her and—”

“From me?” Sebastian demanded incredulously, although his shaky voice betrayed his anger and sorrow. “
I. Love. Her
.” Cold rain beat down on them now, soaking their clothes and drenching Sebastian’s face. He tasted it on his tongue when he spoke, laced with pollution from the atmosphere, and batted moisture out of his eyes.