Dark One: One for Sorrow... (The Khiara Banning Series Book 1) (23 page)

Well shit…

Nineteen

Cara, Cael and I are sitting on Cael’s couch. I just explained to Cara pretty much everything she missed – which admittedly is a lot more than I wanted to keep from her and it feels great to finally come clean about what’s been happening to me.

The television is on low, playing an old black and white romance movie.

Cael made us some hot chocolate because by the time we got to his place, the rain turned into hail and we were already soaked through to the bone. Our clothes are currently in the dryer, and Cara and I are wearing borrowed pyjamas from Cael’s closet.

“So, about your accent, you’re obviously not really Irish are you?” asks Cara, voicing something I’ve wanted to ask since I figured out what he is.

“No, I am not technically Irish,” he says, “I sound like this because it was the site of my Fall. It’s simply coincidence that Khiara’s two incarnations were born in the same country. It could have been anywhere the second time ‘round.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” says Cara in a mater-of-fact kind of tone, crossing her arms. “I think something happened when you held her first incarnation’s spirit.”

“What do you look like as an angel?” I enquire, curious.

He takes a sip of his hot chocolate and smiles. “Pretty much like I do now, except I have wings and glow,” he replies. I smile, remembering something he’d said to me after our first date.

“Can it overpower evil simply by looking at it?”

“Yes,” says Cael, his eyes full of laughter, “that would be my Glory. Its shine overcomes evil.” He turns to Cara and says, “I shit you not.” She bursts out laughing and Cael smiles his sheepish smile, and I know everything is right in the world again.

“Can we see your wings?” I ask, tentatively.

He shakes his head, “No. They’re made of spiritual matter. You can only see an angel’s true form if you are dying. Let’s hope you never see them.” He whispers the last part solemnly.

“Where do they…go. Like, how do you walk around and not hit things with them. Can I feel them?” I ask, and he laughs at my round of questions.

“They exist in two different places at once, I guess, kind of like myself. In this particular plane, I appear human, but to other angels who also inhabit both planes, I appear in my true form. I don’t know if you could feel them,” he replies thoughtfully. “Every shirt I own has very thin slits in the back so I don’t have to bind them; the slits are so thin you can hardly see them. Why don’t you give it a try? I mean they’re
here
, you just can’t see them because you’re human.”

He stands up and turns his back towards me. “Give it a go,” says Cara, eagerly waiting to see if I can actually feel them.

“You can try too,” he states. “I’m curious if it affects you.”

“If I can feel them, Cara probably can too,” I say, stating what I assume is the obvious.

Cara frowns, but nods her head, and I wonder what those secrets she mentioned are. Cael’s head whips around and he says, “She’ll have to tell you herself.”

“It’s very rude to listen in on people’s thoughts, you know.” I say. Cael laughs and turns around again so we can resume our little experiment.

Cara reaches out towards his back and the disappointment she exudes is palpable. “Shit,” she mutters. “I can’t feel anything! Cael, can you feel me touching your wings?”

He shakes his head no. Cara’s phone rings, and she excuses herself to the bathroom to talk to Tristan, and I think to give us some alone time.

I reach out expecting not to feel anything, but instead my fingertips meet with the softest thing I have ever felt. Cael stiffens under my touch but doesn’t push me away, so I run my fingers across the silky-soft feathers of his wings and try to imagine what they must look like.

Under my touch, I can feel his wings quivering; he is visibly shaking as well. “Are they curled up against your back?” I ask. He nods his head. “Are you comfortable with them that way?”

“It’s…” his voice cracks and he has to clear his throat, “it’s kind of like having to consciously flex a muscle, or suck your stomach in all day. Eventually you forget how uncomfortable it is and you grow used to the feeling, and when you’re alone you just let it go. Whenever I’m alone, I can unfurl them, but in public I have to keep them close to my body. You can’t
possibly
understand how good this feels right now.”

“Why don’t you unfurl them now?” I suggest. He takes a second to think the idea over, and he nods his head.

“Okay,” he says as I take my hands off his back, “but you should probably prepare yourself for it.” He turns around to face me, and he cups my cheek with both of his hands. “Are you ready?”

I nod.

“Alright then,” he whispers, and all of a sudden a current of heat rushes into me, a small gust of warm wind that picks up my hair for only a moment. The T.V turns off, and then back on again and the lights flicker.

Cael takes my hand and places it seemingly in mid-air, but I can feel his solid wing beneath my hand; it’s unmistakeable. He closes his eyes in pleasure.

“Turn around,” I whisper, in complete awe. “I want to feel them both.”

He sits down next to me and presents his back to me, his wings brushing up against my body as he gets situated on the couch. “Sorry,” he says. “They’re kind of big. Usually I have the whole couch to myself.”

I reach out and run both my hands along each wing, taking in their delicate softness. “It’s alright. They’re beautiful.” I breathe.

Cael chuckles, “You can’t even see them.”

“I don’t have to,” I say. “I just know. I can feel it.”

I continue to explore the invisible expanse of his wings, and I feel him lean into me, ever so slightly, encouraging me to continue. “You don’t understand how good this feels. Imagine the best massage you could ever get, and then multiply that times one-hundred, and you wouldn’t even be close to how amazing this feels.”

Of course, Cara picks this time to interrupt us. “Holy shit!” she exclaims. “The air around you guys is tinted blue!”

I look around the room, but I can’t see what she’s talking about, but Cael laughs, deep and rich, and wonderful. “Oh,” he says. “That’s an after effect of unfurling my wings, my Glory shines through. Humans can’t see it because it’s a part of my true form.”

Cara looks as though she’s a deer caught in the headlights of a car. “I uhh,” she says, looking between Cael and I. “Err, well, the thing is, I’m only
half
human. The other half is Faen; Nymph, actually. Specifically my identifying element is fire. Hence the red hair,” she points to her head.

“Don’t be mad,” she pleads with me when she sees my surprised expression. “I’ve wanted to tell you, but we’re not usually supposed to tell humans what we are unless we have a good reason, and I haven’t found one until now.”

“What’s the reason?” I ask, somewhat hurt by her admission. Everybody seems to be keeping things from me.

She sits down next to me, and Cael turns to face us, his wings curling around my body in a hug-like gesture long with his arms. “Because,” she says, “my dad used to tell me bed time stories about this human girl who would change the fate of
everything
one day. She would rise up as a warrior of the Gods, and it was our people’s job to make sure she reached her goal. My mother thought they were just made up fairy tales because she didn’t know what we were, no pun intended on the fairy part, but I realize now that they were meant to prepare me. My dad and grandma used to take me to these gatherings where all of the adults would talk to us about it to keep us quiet.”

My eyes grow wide in astonishment. This can’t mean what I think it means…“To prepare you for what?”

“Protecting
you
. There are no truly Dark Fae, Khiara; only Light. And you, you are
pure
. I can’t believe I never noticed before. I guess I should have known, it’s just, you’re so…”

“Boring?” I supply. Cael’s wings tighten around me, and he brushes a piece of hair from my forehead with one of his hands, while reaching down to hold one of mine with his other.

Cara snorts. “No, not
boring.
You’re just
you
. We met by pure chance. I never expected that I’d be fighting along my best friend. Or at all. This makes my awesome fictional bed time story task so much more appealing now that I know it’s legit. I never expected the girl from the story to be real, let alone turn out to be you! I just thought it was some bullshit elitist Fae story the tell kids to make them feel special. Every race has them.”

“Does Tristan know you’re half Nymph?” I ask, and she shakes her head. Fleetingly I wonder if she knows he’s Nephilim, but I figure that’s for him to tell her. Cael squeezes my hand in what I take as a silent agreement, and I realize it’s nice not to have to voice my thoughts for him to hear them.

“I know I have to tell him,” she says. “I just don’t know when. I don’t want him to react badly, you know? My kind, we’re pretty sexual…hence the word nymphomaniac. We have an allure, and in my case since I’m half human, I just come off as extra flirty…and you know, kinda promiscuous. I’ve always tried to tell you it’s just in my nature. But when we mate, we mate for life…and I don’t want to scare him. I feel like he’s the one.”

“I don’t think you’ll scare him off,” I say as I crinkle my nose in thought. “He really likes you.”

She smiles, and then suddenly she makes the face that I have grown to love over the years. It’s her I-have-an-idea face. “I could invite him over,” she says. “That way he’d have you guys here, and you could tell him everything too! We’d all be in on it, like a team.”

I turn to look at Cael, who shrugs. “He’s welcome to come over, if he wants. I’ll put the coffee on.”

I smile as Cara picks up her phone and begins violently texting, her fingers flying across the screen of her smartphone.

The doorbell rings, and suddenly Cael’s warmth disappears as he gets up to answer the door.

“Hey,” says Victoria’s voice from the front door. She walks right in and sits down next to me as if we’re best friends, and Cael looks helpless to stop her. I remember her mentioning that she’s been here longer than him, and I assume her hierarchy is higher up than his. “Can I join your little party? I’m sick and tired of babysitting Damien. I’ve got a friend watching him currently, so I’ve freed up a substantial amount of time before I have to go crawling back to that pathetic idiot.”

I nod my head and open my mouth to say something when Cara says, “What’s she doing here?”

Victoria turns to her and says, “Any problems you have with me, know that I am not who I have presented myself as. I am known as Verchiel, Angel of Affection. I fell in love with a human who lived Egypt in 500 BCE, and I was banished to this realm because of it. I did not know it at the time, but I was betrayed by one of my own. The man I loved took me in and cared for me, and we eventually had a family together; one daughter and a son. That’s all I’ll say on the matter.”

“What were their names?” I whisper, and she turns to me.

“It doesn’t matter now. They’re all dead.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “That’s awful.”