Iridescent (Ember 2) (27 page)

“Has
he
done something to hurt you?” Draven asked carefully. The darkening color over his cheeks gave away that he wasn’t as impartial as he would have led her to believe.

Candra bit the inside of her cheek again, tasting coppery blood on her tongue, and finally averted her eyes, peering out at the small patch of daylight through the drapes.

“Candra?”

Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe and felt sure it was a bad idea to drag Draven into her personal mess, because that was what it was—personal. As long as Sebastian stuck to his side of the deal and sided with Draven against Lilith—there was no doubt in her mind he would—what happened was between them. This was all such a mess because the only impartial person she could have talked to about this was Ivy; everyone had a potential side to take as Sebastian’s friend or, in Draven’s case, his ally. Ivy had been the only one who wouldn’t judge her for being weak because she questioned what she did to make him turn away. Or for wondering if he had gone to a bar to get drunk because he hated what he’d done to them. But Ivy, or what was left of Ivy, remained trapped inside Lilith. Candra was alone.

Draven cupped her chin gently and encouraged her to face him. Candra resisted wrenching away.

“It’s personal.”

Draven sighed deeply. “Really?”

“Really.” Candra glanced at him.

Draven nodded sadly. “I know I haven’t given you reason to trust me…but you
can
trust me. You know that, right?”

She nodded, wishing she hadn’t finished the eggs now roiling savagely in her stomach. She badly needed a shower. All the crying from the night before had left her skin grubby. The thought distracted her so much that when Draven touched her arm lightly, she jumped.

“You have asked me not to call Sebastian, and I’m trying to do what you ask,” Draven started seriously. His thumb ran back and forth across her skin, making the fine hair rise and her skin prickle. “There are things at stake here, Candra. There are people relying on us to keep them safe. I need to know if Sebastian is jeopardizing that, and if you don’t tell me what’s going on, I won’t have any choice but to ask him.”

Candra pulled her arm away and cupped her hands in her lap, feeling like a reprimanded child and in no mood to be hauled over coals. “You should talk to Ananchel about what happened. It doesn’t concern me anymore.” She swallowed hard, trying her best to keep her emotions at bay.

“Ananchel?” His top lip curled back in confusion, and Candra guessed that for all his life experience, she was going to have to spell it out for him. Her heart seemed to be beating inside her stomach, sloshing everything around like a stormy sea.

She took a deep breath, looking down and picking at a rough edge on a broken nail. She kept her voice low, knowing she had to tell Draven. In hindsight, it had been an odd decision to run to the place where Ananchel lived too. It wasn’t as if Sebastian wouldn’t chase her there if he wanted to see her, but he didn’t. What did that say…that he didn’t want to see her?
Of course he doesn’t
, she told herself. Every moment around her recently had been torture to him. Her grief had been overwhelming, and she took every scrap of it out on him. Why had she run to Draven? Candra didn’t want to think about that yet, other than the certainty that Draven cared for her. She’d needed that when Sebastian rejected her.

“Sebastian slept with Ananchel.”

Draven’s lips parted slightly, revealing the edge of his pearly white teeth. He said nothing. He didn’t so much as take a breath.

“Did you hear what I said? Sebastian slept with Ananchel, and then he broke up with me.” The words were a blade lancing straight through her. Tearing into some part of her that she was sure had been damaged irreparably. It hadn’t hurt the way this did when Philip had cheated. It had never truly bothered her at all. As soon as she’d found out, she’d walked away and never looked back. It wasn’t like a chisel and hammer slowly chipping away at her spirit and self-esteem, making her into the type of girl she’d always hated. All those years, she’d laughed at girls who needed a guy to measure their self-worth.

“I heard you. I just don’t understand. Why would he do that?” His straight black eyebrows drew down, and his dark eyes narrowed. His jaw tightened, although his tone was so flat that Candra couldn’t tell if he was furious or simply didn’t believe what she said.

“Maybe Ananchel provides services I don’t, or maybe Sebastian likes trolling for skanks. Does it really matter why?”

“Are you okay?”

Candra shuffled away from Draven to the opposite side of the bed and pulled the covers back carefully so as not to expose herself. “No, I’m not okay. I’m confused, and I’m hurt, and I’m angry.” She was right about the T-shirt covering her upper thighs when she stood, and she reached for her yoga pants draped across a nearby Queen Anne chair. “This T-shirt isn’t mine.”

It wasn’t a question or an observation. She wasn’t sure why she mentioned it.

Draven kept his back to her and his head down. The fingers of both his hands bunched into the bedspread by his side. “It’s mine.”

“Thank you.” Candra blushed and decided she didn’t want to elaborate on how she’d found her way into his clothes as well as his home. “The worst part is I’m not angry at him anymore. I don’t know if I’m even angry at her.” She pulled on the pants and slipped her feet into her shoes. Her voice rose with each word, and her heart pounded faster until her face heated and flushed scarlet. “I’m angry at myself. I’m so angry, I could spit nails. I let him get to me. I let him get inside my heart and my head.”

“He told you this?” Draven’s tone remained even with an icy edge.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” Candra mumbled into the sweater she was pulling over her head.

“Of course you should,” Draven disagreed vehemently. “I thought I made myself clear on this. We are all in this together now, no matter what happens, and you have as much right to shelter here as anyone.”

Candra paused, watching Draven from behind. He turned his head, slightly in profile over his shoulder, although he didn’t look at her. “I want you to come to me whenever you need to.”

“Shelter. You make it sound like I was hiding.”

“Weren’t you?”

“Thank you,” Candra said again, this time with an unsteady quake in her voice.

The unanswered question hung in the air between them. The one he’d asked at the ball, and she had never answered. He’d let her go but had asked her to stay. There had been something between them from the beginning. Most of it, Candra had put down to Draven’s angel influence, but something lingered after. From Draven’s point of view, the attraction between them was always there, and he’d simply nudged it at the correct time. Despite everything that had happened, they had formed a friendship.

There was no denying Draven understood how the minds of people around him worked. He understood both her and Sebastian enough to manipulate them into falling in love. She found it impossible to hate him. Throughout their strange courtship, Draven had unwittingly exposed himself, his fears and weaknesses. He didn’t see himself as others perceived him. Part of Draven was insecure and constantly doubting himself. He didn’t enjoy deceiving her. Looking back, she wondered if it had hurt Draven to open himself up, knowing if his plans succeeded, he would end up cast aside in favor of his longtime nemesis. Had it hurt him more than she’d appreciated? A guilty shudder wracked her body. She hadn’t considered Draven might construe her sudden appearance the wrong way.

She fixed her sweater quickly and pulled on her jacket. “I have to get to class. I’m so late already.” She grabbed her bag and walked around the bed to face Draven.

Awkwardness descended on the room, making each step she took clunky and labored. Draven wore a guarded expression. His chest rose and fell in slow, steady breaths and gave no clues about his thoughts.

“Look,” Candra began in earnest, “this has nothing at all to do with what is going on with Lilith or the Watchers. It has everything to do with Sebastian and me not being able to get our crap together. The one thing I’m positive about is Sebastian doesn’t want anyone else to die. He’s left that part of himself behind. You don’t have to worry.”

Still, Draven said nothing; his eyes moved over her face, seeming to reach into her soul and burn with awareness. Candra flushed when Draven stood. His presence dominated the entire room and made him seem so much taller that he actually was. It occurred to her that this was the first time they had been alone since they’d kissed. Well, apart from a few minutes in a hallway. Candra wasn’t sure she could count that time since there had been hundreds of Watchers on the other side of the doors and guards roaming the halls.

“I have to go,” she said, a little wobbly on her feet all of a sudden.

“Come back tonight.”

“I don’t know if I should.” She didn’t want to mislead Draven. Just because Sebastian was out of the picture didn’t mean she was moving on, and she didn’t want to treat Draven like a runner-up. Everything could be different soon.

Draven reached out without warning and grabbed her wrist, holding her there with him. His tongue peeked out and stroked his bottom lip. Candra’s heart thudded harder in anticipation of whatever he was about to say, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he brought her hand up to his face. While Candra looked on and an inappropriate rush of exhilaration made her chest heave, he ran his nose back and forth across her wrist. Draven had done this the very first night they’d met, before she’d known who and what he was. The night the charming and slightly creepy stranger had swept her off her feet. It looked as if he was inhaling her scent and felt somehow deeply intimate. What she’d felt then and what she experienced now didn’t compare. The rush of heat making her blood boil came from knowing him for more than his startling navy eyes and chiseled features. He’d freely admitted that he’d never stopped using his influence on her before the ball, but she wondered if he’d ever needed to use it in the first place.

Chapter Twenty-One

“E
NQUIRING
M
INDS
W
ANT
T
O
K
NOW
, have you lost your friggin’ mind?”

“Shush,” Mrs. Byrne, the ancient resident librarian at Saint Francis, reprimanded Lofi.

“Oh, shush yourself,” Lofi grumbled in her general direction, pulling out the chair in front of Candra.

It scraped loudly across the wooden floor, earning another disdainful glance over Mrs. Byrne’s half-moon glasses as she pushed a cart by the table where Candra had been hiding out from classes. Like the rest of the school, the library was all dark aged wood with stack after stack of books deemed suitable for students. The slightly acidic smell of old paper, leather, and dust permeated the air, and it intensified every time a book was disturbed. Mrs. Byrne wasn’t big on dusting anymore. Arthritis had gotten the better of her, and it had been several years since the woman with a silver gray knot at the back of her head stood straight. Still, she liked to run a tight ship, which meant no late returns and no loud talking.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Candra whispered firmly across the long, narrow study table. She wasn’t ready to face anyone and still wore Draven’s T-shirt below her sweater instead of going home to change.

Fortunately, most of the students were in class. The last thing she needed was to be the object of any more gossip. Lofi’s cheeks flamed, and her eyes widened incredulously. She leaned her knuckles on the table instead of sitting.

“Okay, someone needs to tell me what is going on.”

Candra pursed her lips and looked down to her book, not seeing the words. She’d been turning pages for a few hours, but couldn’t so much as recall the title of the hardback volume.

“Candra.” Lofi stamped her foot.

Candra slammed the book and cast the heavy volume aside, opening up the next from the pile in front of her. All she’d assessed about this one was that it had a green cover. What did Lofi want anyway? She already knew the problem. If she wanted more details, Sebastian could provide them…if he managed to sober up. Wasn’t it enough that she was ready to sacrifice her existence to send them home? What else did Lofi want…to be friends? What would be the point?

“Leave me alone. I can’t do this now.” More than a hint of pleading unwittingly crept into her tone. A person could only take so much before they broke, and right now, Candra felt dangerously close to splintering into a billion pieces. Maybe she could be like the particles swirling through the air under the brass table lamp casting a yellow glow across the pages.

“Tell me, and I’ll go,” Lofi attempted to bargain with her.

Aggravated by her attitude, Candra picked up her plastic ballpoint pen and flicked the ends repeatedly against the pages. The rhythmic popping resounded through the library. She presumed Mrs. Byrne would tell her off as soon as she emerged from the returning books. For now, it provided adequate distraction, especially when accompanied by her tapping foot. The words before her blurred, as if submerged under water. Volcanic-level blood pressure threatened to pop the vein in her temple like an overblown balloon. Was Lofi so insensitive as to think she would brush this off? She’d thought they were friends, but then, maybe Watchers weren’t capable of real friendships. She wondered if it was like Sebastian with antiquated furniture: they weren’t capable of embracing anything new or as transient as a human life.