Iridescent (Ember 2) (5 page)

Sebastian’s eyes flickered to him without conscious decision. Draven was barefoot again, his expensive leather shoes tucked away on the floor at the side of his seat. He was already aware that Draven preferred to go shoeless; this wasn’t news. It shouldn’t have made Sebastian’s fingers curl tighter around the stone in his pocket, but it did.

“As are ours,” Lofi added in her usual soft voice. Lofi rarely needed to raise her voice. Her tone possessed a quality of strength that in no way matched her exterior appearance. To the average eye, she appeared to be a regular, fashionable teen. However, her dyed hair showed she didn’t wish to conform. In fact, Lofi didn’t really care what anyone outside their small circle of friendship thought of her—they could take her or leave her. She had become his best friend since Brie, so there was no surprise that she spoke up when he didn’t.

Candra smiled and carefully removed Brie’s hand. She returned to Sebastian’s side and slipped her fingers around his waist, pulling herself close to his side. Some of the tension immediately left his body. The heat of her body permeated his and, in a way, grounded him. She knew what he needed before he did. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pretended not to notice the way the corner of Draven’s lip twitched upward.

“Thank you both,” Candra started in a deceptively steady voice. Sebastian could feel her fingers gripping his shirt to prevent them from trembling. “I do appreciate it…we both do,” she added, tilting her head to Brie. “Now, would someone please tell me who the hell that woman was?”

“You have no concept of hell,” Ananchel muttered under her breath before Draven lifted his hand to silence her. Ananchel rolled her eyes dramatically and crossed her arms over her chest, pressing her lips together.

“Wow, that almost looks like an apology coming from
you
,” Lofi snickered dryly.

Ananchel noticeably bristled with rage. Her hands dropped in the same fraction of a second Draven’s arm came up across her chest and Sebastian maneuvered Candra to his side. Lofi smiled and scooped pink hair behind her ear.

“Don’t,” Draven warned sternly. Black mist rolled down the length of his spine, heralding the appearance of his vast wings at any moment. They didn’t show. It was a warning to keep Ananchel in line. Sebastian couldn’t understand why he bothered with her; surely their bond couldn’t be any stronger than his had been with Brie, and yet Brie had still walked away.

“Keep her on a leash,” Sebastian ordered harsher than he needed to.

Ananchel’s anger pulsated all around, and her flame-colored hair seemed grow brighter when her eyes darted to Draven. Any second now, things were going to get very ugly. Sebastian pulled Candra a little more, ignoring that she removed her arm from his waist, and instinctively split his stance for balance. His wings tingled below his flesh.

“Enough!” Candra bellowed, shoving past Sebastian. “All of you, enough.” Her furious eyes passed over each of them. No one escaped her angry glare. She combed her hair away from her face with a shaking hand and swatted at a stray tear on her cheek with the back of the same hand. “I’m so sick of all this.”

“Candra—” Gabe began.

“Don’t, Gabe,” she cut him off. “Just don’t make excuses for anyone.” Her attention snapped to Ananchel. “If you don’t want to be here, go.” Candra swallowed hard, and a flush bloomed across her cheeks.

It was as if even the room reacted to her and the walls thudded with each beat of her heart. Potent strength and authority radiated from her in waves, bubbling through the thick atmosphere. This part of her both enthralled and terrified Sebastian. He feared she would one day overestimate her ability to face-off with a Watcher and end up dead. They were an ancient warrior race, after all, and whatever else Candra might be, she was also still just a mortal young woman.

As usual, Ananchel was brazenly unaffected by Candra’s threat. She threw her head back and laughed loudly. “Who is going to make me? You?”

Candra sucked in a deep breath and steadied her shoulders. Her lips curled up in a confident grin. Not one of the others spoke. Sebastian imagined they were thinking the same as him: best to let her get this out of her system. Although, for the first time, he was grateful for her temper—the room was at boiling point. Her outburst calmed it at once.

“I won’t have to. He will.” She lifted her chin and looked straight at Draven.

When Draven flashed her a full toothy smile, Sebastian would have been happy to kick his pearly whites in. They were on the same side, and he recognized they needed to work together, but it didn’t mean much when Draven looked at Candra in that way, impressed with her audacity and bravery…clearly beguiled and excited by it. Draven turned his head in profile to address Ananchel.

“Calm down, or leave. We’ve come too far for petty arguments.”

Ananchel’s slightly incredulous expression would have made Sebastian laugh another time. For years, he’d equally feared and craved her hold on him. Ananchel wasn’t someone to trifle with—neither was her ability to instill euphoria in unsuspecting victims. Her capability was…elegant. She could easily manipulate any person not familiar with her special brand of talent. Candra had marked her card early: she’d worked out that Ananchel’s gift was power, not pleasure. Ananchel had responded with something that verged on respect, or as much as Ananchel respected anyone or anything other than Draven.

Ananchel shook out her hair, burnt gold reflecting from her eyes, although she made an exerted effort to brush off the altercation.

Everyone seemed to release a breath at the same time. Sebastian caught Lofi mouthing “sorry” to Candra.

She nodded in return. “I need a minute.”

Sebastian took a step toward her. She stepped back to the door, keeping the same distance between them, and lifted her hands to stop him.

“I’m going to get some coffee. When I come back, I want answers.”

There it was again, the bad taste in his mouth, like curdled milk: rejection. Sebastian didn’t like it, a rather new sensation to him in the context of a relationship, and it made his toes curl in his shoes and his eyes tighten. If he allowed himself, he would release a smart retort and storm from the room. In many ways, his emotions were immature, more like that of a teenage boy than an almost immortal being, a consequence of never exploring them.

“Candra, you’re upset. Perhaps coffee—”

“Brie,” she exclaimed. “Upset, really?”

The lines between Brie’s eyebrows deepened when she frowned. She closed her mouth, looking every bit the mother holding back a scolding in polite company.

Candra sighed and shook her head. “Please, Brie, put the mommy mobile in reverse for just a while. I’m exhausted, my head feels like someone is dancing behind my eyeballs, and I need some caffeine.”

Brie nodded stiffly, but Sebastian suspected that conversation wasn’t over. “I’ll go with you,” he stated.

“No,” she said decisively. “I need to clear my head. I can’t do that with you around.”

His jaw locked. He sensed Draven’s gaze drilling into the back of his skull. Rejection was one thing; this stab of nausea felt more like humiliation. His fingers twitched, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose. Sebastian’s ego bruised easily; it disregarded reason and cursed emotional maturity. His nature was to be the rejecter, not the rejected, and coming from Candra, the dismissal of his company forced the air from his lungs like a hammer slamming down on his chest.

Chapter Four

N
OT
G
OOD
, N
OT
G
OOD
, N
OT
G
OOD
…the two words zoomed round Candra’s brain, leaving her dizzy. Her fingers gripped onto the edge of the kitchen sink. She kept her eyes on the steady streaming water flowing from the tap in an attempt to calm her thundering heart. The way Sebastian had looked at her…like some helpless little puppy waiting for rescue from a pound. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she had nothing left to give.

Candra watched the sink fill and then turned off the water, her reflection distorted to nothing more than a shaky blur of color. The clear liquid echoed precisely how she felt. She didn’t recognize her life or even herself any longer. She didn’t know who or what she was. She loved Sebastian. That was something she couldn’t doubt, but with everything in flux, how could she be sure this was part of the plan? She had begun to consider herself an encroacher inside her own skin. None of it should be important. Bigger things lingered on the horizon, she could feel it. Her skin prickled the way it used to in her early rebellious teenage years when she’d sat out in the sun, spurning Brie’s warnings about sunblock. She’d wanted a tan, but instead, she’d simply burned and spent several days itchy and peeling. She couldn’t risk another wrong decision costing someone their life.

“Hey.”

Candra closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. She needed to take herself in hand quickly; otherwise, they would say she wasn’t ready for the truth or she couldn’t handle being part of the discussion on Lilith. Sebastian would use any excuse to keep her in the dark; he would attempt some justification about it being for her own protection. Protection couldn’t be the true reason because, from the meager amount of information she’d gathered since the ball, she was here to protect them as much as they protected her. Brie wasn’t much better. She treated Candra like a little kid. Okay, maybe that wasn’t entirely true. Candra didn’t know a lot of young girls living at home and allowed to have a guy sleeping in their room. Brie never once asked what went on between them for all those months, although she appeared to be making up for lost time.

“Are you okay?” Lofi asked when she didn’t respond.

Of course she wasn’t okay. In the last year, she had found out her father was a banished angel and had broken a peace treaty when her mother conceived. It also made her one of the Nephilim, soulless monsters that had almost decimated humankind. She’d fallen in love with the leader of the Nuhra, angels sent to destroy the Nephilim. She’d agreed to pledge her life to his nemesis, who had secretly hatched a plan using her to bring the sides together. She’d lost her best friend to a botched robbery and found out she was some kind of weapon and her very own light source. Now to top it off, this Lilith person showed up. No, she was most certainly not okay. Where was God in all this? Nowhere. God, the Arch, was missing…destroyed…lost…gone. They were alone.

“Candra?”

Her fingers strained against the porcelain. “I can’t do this.” Speaking hurt. Thinking hurt. Candra’s thoughts spun wildly out of control, making it almost impossible to pin one down.

Lofi’s hand slid over her shoulder and squeezed in a reassuring gesture. The other reached around, sank into the water and pulled the stopper. “You want me to get rid of everyone? If you need some time—”

“We don’t have time,” Candra murmured, cutting Lofi off.

The water spun downward in a cyclone, slurping into the outlet.

“We have time for this…if you need it. Besides, getting rid of Ananchel would be my pleasure.”

Candra turned with a resigned sigh. The modestly furnished kitchen seemed sparse now, simple pale wood cabinets with a matching round table, a black marble worktop. In comparison to Draven’s well-used kitchen, the room was almost unwelcoming. The small herb garden-box in the window had lacked attention over the last few days, and the edges of the basil had rolled inward, tinged with brown. The cilantro hung limp and parched over the side. The chrome appliances all gleamed, as if new out of the wrapping or hardly used. They had been, but not often. There were no family dinners, no home baking. Candra couldn’t ever remember the aroma of fresh baked cookies or a roasting turkey in this room. The kitchen was used to prepare her favorite comfort foods of chicken noodle soup and oatmeal. She should have associated it with comfort, but she didn’t. It only reminded her of every time in her life she’d needed comfort. The house where she had lived for twelve years felt less and less like home as the days went on.

Lofi grinned at her. Clearly, she relished the idea of ejecting Ananchel from the property and was waiting for Candra to give the instruction, but what would it achieve?

“I’m sorry for freaking out.” The words made her meltdown seem like past tense, although Candra was still in the grips of a mild panic attack forcing adrenaline through her system at an alarming rate.

Lofi wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and scooped her hair back over both shoulders. Like all of them, she was stunning. But unlike the others, Lofi still possessed an almost child-like quality that seemed to put everyone around her at ease. She straightened her black shift dress, unwittingly reminding Candra that she was still in her mourning clothes. She looked down at the water stain spreading out across her midsection and making her dress stick to her skin.

“You don’t have to be sorry. We get it…” Lofi paused, her lips pulled up on one side with a hint of condolence. “Sebastian gets it.”

“That’s just it though, isn’t it?”

Lofi said nothing, waiting patiently for her to continue. Candra slouched a little and leaned back against the sink, using her hands to prop herself up.