Darksoul (19 page)

“Oh,” I murmured in surprise. Sielae looked like a futuristic, considerably neater version of Earth.
Spires pierced the clouds. There were pearly roads. Grassy fields. Bulbous, perfectly green trees. A pristine castle loomed on the hill overlooking the city, its pale walls reflecting the sun.

The image flickered and shuttered away
. A colder land took its place, just as stunning as Sielae—if not more. It had a less futuristic feel, making it more welcoming than the angel world. Snow. Everywhere. The buildings looked as if they were made of ice, much like Ash’s inhuman arms. Far off, in the midst of a white-leafed forest, a castle with crystal walls rose out of the ground.

Another flicker. This time, an empty plain welcomed me. Endless grasses
; emptiness; an astounding lack of life. I blinked with surprise. The sky was split into two: dark and light. The division was hazy and riddled with clouds, but there. And on either sides, the land abruptly turned into day and night, a lonely castle plopped in the center, as if to unite the jarring edges.

“What is this?” I
asked.

“Aiere,” said Hunter.

“Why is it…” I wanted to reach out. Touch the air. “Separated like that?”

“They say the first battle between an
gels and demons happened there, and that it was so destructive it split the land and sky in half.”
They also say our diplomacy was born out of it,
he finished in my head.

The image faded and I was treated to the sight of Hunter’s tattooed collarbone, which was way too damn close
for my liking. He leaned down to look into my eyes. His were crinkled at the corners. “Good?”

“Thanks for showing me,” I said, taking a
wary step back. “How did you do that? Put images in my mind?”

“I can do anything I want with your mind.”

I stopped and stared up at him. He returned the stare.

“Like what?” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

Jolt.

—nothingness—

“Like what?” I heard myself say, and then, stricken, screeched to a halt.

“Like that,” he said, stepping
past me.

“What the—” Following after him, I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, trying to blink away the dull throbbing between my brows. A blur flickered over my
vision, a quick little thing. “What the hell was that?”

“It’s called reversion.” He approached
the floating
ceahel
and grabbed the knife I’d been supposed to use earlier. He didn’t look the least winded by the mind trick. I thought it’d take some energy, some serious mental wits. But he stood there like he’d always stood: relaxed, calm, almost indifferent. “It feels uncomfortable afterwards, so usually I wipe my victims’ memory of my brief manipulation. In case it wasn’t clear, I didn’t do that this time.”

“Can…” I swallowed. “Can Ash do it, too?”
Because if he could, then the red-knuckle incident would be partly explained. He could erase my memory, revert my own actions, and had wiped all recollection of me punching him—
Hunter pursed his lips, and two perfectly placed dimples surfaced on his cheeks.

“What?” I said.

“You can call Asher…”
He held the knife out to me. “The king of reversion.”

Warily, I took it. “Why do you say that?”

He stared down at me. Then, without a word, he reached up and tapped his lips. Sunlight danced along the edges of his ring.

I scrunched up my eyebrows
and touched my mouth. “What?”

“Nothing.” He
nodded at the blade in my hand. “We need to get moving.”

“Hold on.”
I studied him for a second. Narrowed my eyes. Then, letting out a contemplative
hmm
, I closed in and got up on my tippy toes until his chin was in line with my gaze. He didn’t stop me. “Hmm,” I murmured again, and reached to the back of his neck, twining my fingers into his silky white-blonde waves.

“What are you doing?” he asked, watching me.

I ignored him. “Do you like your hair?”

He blinked at the sudden question.

“I’ll take that as a ye
s.” Reaching farther up, I grabbed a soft lock and, with my other hand, angled the blade toward it. “It’s such a lovely shade. Hard to pull off, but you’re a model, so you can pull off anything. Now.” I smiled sweetly. “I know Ash messed with my mind, and I’ll eventually confront him about it. But have
you
played the stupid reversion trick on me? Don’t lie, Slade, because I
will
cut it off.”

Instead of threatened, he looked amused. “I’m not a coward, Hazel. If I wanted to kiss you, I wouldn’t erase your memory of it.”

My smile dropped. “What?”

And then, before I could stop him—

There was the sudden flash of movement, the momentary feel of getting turned over and the unmistakable bite of bark against my back. Suddenly, I was pinned to a tree, both of my wrists tacked above me, Hunter’s scarred hand keeping them in place. Somewhere in that mess, he’d gotten ahold of my knife, and he flipped it once before leaning in, his hair an unfitting white-blond halo around his head. How could he look so angelic and be a tasteless devil at the same time?

“Let’s see,” he murmured to himself, tipping my chin up with the point of the blade. “I’m doing this to see it from his point of view. If I kissed her, how would she respond?”

I struggled against his hold. The tips of my boots hardly cleared the ground. “What are you talking about? Let go of me!”

He leaned
down, lashes falling and shadowing his eyes. I turned my face and kicked out with a foot, barely catching him in the knee.

“Kiss
me and I’ll punch you!” I clenched my teeth. “Goddamn—”

He
closed the distance between us and murmured, “Here?” His lips pressed against the corner of my mouth, a light little thing.

I recoiled. “
Damn it, Hunter—”

“Here?” A gentle
peck against my jawline. This time, he lingered, then made his way to my neck. His lips were soft and warm and my stomach turned over. With centipedes.

“I’m—I’m going to kill you—” I gasped.

“Hmm,” he murmured,
kissing the pulse in my throat, his hair tickling the underside of my jaw. “Racing heartbeat, but I’m almost one hundred percent sure that it’s due to anger. Cold skin. No warmth, and certainly no expressed desire for more. Interesting.”

I strained against his hold on my wrists. “What are you doing? Let go—”

Almost as soon as it began, it was over. My arms fell and I realized he’d flashed away, putting a good amount of distance between us. “Unfavorable response,” he decided, taking out a pen and a piece of paper from his back pocket.

“What the—” I slumped against the tree, stricken. I didn’t dare come closer. He was halfway across the clearing, right in the center, and even that didn’t seem far enough. “What the hell was that?”

“A test,” he said without batting an eye, scribbling something down.

“Are you—” I couldn’t believe this. “Are you serious? I’m going to—”

“Kill me. I know. But before you do that, why don’t you get the knife and show me what you’ve got?”

The knife. Which, now that I checked, was tucked into the waistband of my pants. Put there by him, I was sure. I frowned. How did he do things without me noticing?

“Look, listen,” I said, meeting his eyes with a sigh. “I really don’t have any skills to show. So—”

“I know.”

For some reason, that made me bristle. “Okay? So why don’t we skip to the teaching part?”

He looked so nonchalant that I wanted to punch him. “Because I don’t feel like it.”

“Oh?” I ground out.

“Because you’re going to throw that knife and get it wrong. Because I want to show you that it’s going to take time, learning how to fight, and
that it won’t come easy to you.” His eyes were steady. Unreadable. His voice, cool. “I want to see how frustrated you’ll get when you use that knife and fail. I want to see if you’re willing to keep trying. Because if you’re not, I’ll take you home. And that’ll be that.”

I stared at him.

“So you won’t do it,” he said, seeing the look on my face. “Would you rather strip for me, then? That would be quite entertaining, despite your lack of—”

I threw the knife.

He tilted his head to the side and it sailed past his ear, smacking against the tree behind him. It clattered to the ground. Useless. A weak throw. But what did I care?

“Now,” I said, crossing my arms. “What were you saying?”

Hunter didn’t look the least affected. “I still stand by my opinion that you’re quite under-gifted when it comes to the chest area.”

I wished I had a second knife to throw at him. “You always talk as if you think I’m trying to make myself attractive to you. I’m not trying to make myself fucking attractive to you. To anyone.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t need a guy ogling my
boobs to survive.”

“Of course you don’t.” He regarded me through hooded eyes. “
But don’t tell me it wouldn’t boost your confidence a little.”

“Shut up,” I said. “
I’m a Victoria’s Secret model. I have all the confidence I need, and then some.”

He considered me for a moment, and then turned to get the fallen knife.
“I’d recommend changing that statement,” he said. Deeming it safe to come closer again, he edged past the abandoned
ceahel
, wings stirring and settling against his back. “Not only because it’s highly delusional, but—well.”

“Really, you asshole? Are we really back to this?”

But it was as if I didn’t speak. “How about: ‘I’m Nephilim, so I have all the confidence I need—’” He must’ve seen something on my face because he paused. Softly, he said, “Ah.”

I pressed myself
against the tree. As if I wasn’t doing it hard enough already. “What?”

“You don’t really
think you’re half-angel.”

“The—” I swallowed. “The evidence points to—I’m starting to get used to it. Okay? I don’t really—it’s—”

“You need to quicken it up and accept the fact. If you don’t believe you’re not human, then you won’t learn as effectively.”

“I think—listen, my blood—”
I slumped. “Fine. So I don’t really—whatever. But you don’t understand. I’ve never been remarkable. I’ve never been outstanding in physical activities—”

“You’ve never been remarkable at anything because you didn’t think you could be. You never thought to push yourself. I’m sure that if you’d had, you would’ve discovered sooner that you’re Nephilim.”

A prickling of annoyance. “Yeah. Okay. Blame it all on me now.”

He spun the blade
. “I’m not going to waste my time on you if you keep acting like you can’t do it. You have to realize that you’re physically, mentally, and physiologically superior to human beings.”

“But I haven’t—” Damn it. “I’ve never had, like,
great healing abilities, except for the times when I cut into my arms to kill the demons—”

“
Have you ever broken your leg?”

“Uh—” What? “No.”

“An arm?”

“No.”

“Ever gotten sick?”

I scratched the back of my head. “Not that I remember.”

“Allergies, flu, fever—?”

“No. Okay? No.”

“Then how
would you know whether you have superior healing abilities or not?”

I stopped. He stared down at me.

“I hate you,” I said.

The side of his mouth twitched. He ran
his palm up the length of the knife, turned it into a glimmering feather and flung it into the air. It burst into a million tufts that faded away within seconds, their edges glinting bright gold as they rose into the sky. A baby black plume grew in place of the old one, the sharp tip of it fading into silvery white.

Without a word, h
e turned to the
ceahel
. I followed after him, watching the small feather. It was now halfway silver, its fine hairs glinting like mercury in the light. How fascinating.

And then I realized. He was turning the weapons into their original forms.

“Why are you…” I started. “What are you doing?”

He said nothing
. Only continued sheathing the swords. A slew of dark feathers grew on the tip of his right wing.

I reached out to stop him. “
Wait, I thought you were going to teach—”

“There’s been a change of plans.”
He turned to me. “You’re not ready for lessons yet. If you’re not going to accept the fact that you’re Nephilim, I’m going to have to make you see it.”

Erm
. “What?”

“Trust me.”

I decided to trust him.