Embrace, Entice, Emblaze (41 page)

“And the best thing is,” Onyx continued, “what
has
he been so busy doing to you since he’s had this little advantage? Would you like me to tell you?” He raised his eyebrows.

Phoenix stepped forward. “NO!”

I looked to him again, but he still wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Yes,” I said.

“Very well. He has given you hate, little rainbow. So much hate that eventually it would have built to the point where it ruined you.

He has clouded your judgment and dulled every other emotion

with anger, planted it deep within and given it a target.”

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mind was churning as surely as mine, adding everything up. When my eyes fully took him in, it was like I hadn’t seen him in weeks.

The urge to throw myself into his arms was almost overwhelming.

I looked back at Phoenix. “You made me hate Lincoln.” My

bottom lip shook and a tear slid down my face.

“I didn’t know the connection would form until after it happened.” Phoenix’s voice was grave. “Even after we…I could
feel
what you felt for him when you healed him. I couldn’t risk losing you.”

“And my feelings for you? Did you influence those?” Even as

I asked the question, I knew the answer. It wasn’t just because of Onyx’s revelations that my feelings for Phoenix were now dulled.

He didn’t answer.

“I thought you said that was cheating,” I said, waiting for him to tell me I was wrong. He didn’t.

Onyx started strolling around us, reveling in the results of his malice. “Now, now, Phoenix, don’t be coy. It was quite the feat, given her power. She must have relinquished her body to you

completely. Dare I guess she gave you a unique sacrifice?”

“That’s enough,” Lincoln warned in a threatening growl.

“Jealous, are we? Or is it just denial? Tell me, Lincoln, will you ever look at her in the same way? Knowing she first surrendered her body to an angel of dark?”

The last of my stomach plummeted to the ground. The bad

plummet. The kind you don’t come back from. A hand went over

my mouth.

“Yes, dark! You stupid girl.” Onyx was grinding his teeth with

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anticipation. “Oh, but, Lincoln, you must have wondered yourself.

Tell me you didn’t have your own suspicions?”

“Don’t,” Lincoln warned again, but it only encouraged Onyx.

“He
is
powerful, our Phoenix. With a mother like his, how could he not be?”

My mind was racing. Mother? Angels didn’t have mothers.

“In your defense, he is actually more difficult than most to sense.

Phoenix is one of a kind: son of the Goddess of the Night and of immortal Man. He mingles well, using his human heritage when it suits his purposes.”

Onyx walked around Phoenix and then meandered his way back

toward me again. I tried to keep my eyes on him; I knew Lincoln was watching Joel, and Griffin had the others covered. Phoenix

remained still and silent.

“Phoenix?” I looked at him, begging him to tell me what I knew

now he wouldn’t.

He looked from me to Onyx, anger flaring in his eyes. “I never

had a choice, Violet. All the rest”— he tossed his head toward the circle of exiles— “they made their choice, but I…I was judged

before I even began, stuck in the realm, handing out punishment until it consumed me. When it did, they threw me to earth and left me to rot.”

Onyx had told me this story. All the pieces were falling into

place.

“You have a mother.” I could barely say the next word. “Lilith.”

“The Mother of Dark,” Onyx whispered in my ear. I flinched;

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he was standing right behind me. I hadn’t been watching him. As I realized my mistake, he drove his blade into my back, driving it all the way through until I could see its point emerge from my stomach. I screamed in pain— both for Phoenix’s betrayal and

Onyx’s blade.

He drew the sword out in a clean movement and I released

another blood curdling scream. I felt the vibration of the blade as it scraped against the bones in my spine. Blood poured from my

body, warming my skin and leaving my insides cold.

I heard Lincoln shout my name and looked up to see him in full

battle with Joel. They were all fighting. My eyes panned the room as my legs gave way beneath me. The glamour still held. People

were laughing and dancing on one side of the room while on our

side there was all- out war. Even Phoenix was fighting, though I wasn’t sure whose side he was fighting on.

Onyx stood over me as I writhed on the ground. His smile

had changed from amused to ecstatic. The thought of my death

brought him pure joy.

“You know, for one so powerful, you’re not very smart. I really thought I’d given you enough to connect the dots when I first

delivered the tale of Lilith.”

He knelt beside me and my thoughts flashed back to the night

I had seen the dead bodies that had been ripped apart from the

inside. He was rolling up his sleeve. My vision scanned the battle around me. We were losing. I could barely see Lincoln, now buried under at least three exiles.

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I thought back to the desert.

My
virtue
will
be
my
devotion
to
never
give
up.

I was free of the chink in my armor. I was wounded— beyond

wounded— but not dead yet. I reached up and grabbed Onyx’s wrist.

I felt the power course through me. He looked down at me, smug.

“I admire your fight, but you have no dagger and those trinkets you wear on your wrists will do me no harm.”

Wincing with pain, I leaned over and pushed back my bracelets,

revealing the markings that swirled like a reflective river of mercury around my wrists.

Onyx’s eyes widened. “You still have no dagger and you cannot

leave me only human unless I will it, and I do not.” But his voice wasn’t so carefree now.

I could feel my power, and this time I didn’t reach inside of

myself to draw it out. I simply released it. I knew now what it could do. Uri had told me: my will had the power to overcome another’s.

“No, but
I
do.” I held my voice as steady as I could, delivering him my own dramatic smile through lips now dripping with blood.

My mist surrounded us like a bubble and I tore Onyx’s angelic

powers away from him. He fell beside me. No longer angel or exile, just powerless and human.

“I would rather be dead than left to become rancid in flesh!”

he cried.

I spat blood. “Yeah? Well, welcome to the world of not getting

much choice in the matter.”

I turned my attention to Joel, who had Lincoln on the ground

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and was pummeling him with a fist of iron. I wasn’t close enough to touch him, but I didn’t need to be. I dragged my arm across the floor and pointed it in Joel’s direction. My wrists burned with hot ice and I felt the link form between us. He was locked.

He stopped attacking Lincoln and turned to me savagely— but

I already had him. Just as they had controlled my body with illusion, I could control theirs with the power of my will. I could feel it building. I released it, searching the room and clinging onto all the exiles— all except Phoenix. I stopped them, froze them in a way, but I couldn’t drain them all. I could barely hold them for long.

Griffin was close to me, working his way toward me.

“I can’t hold them much longer,” I spluttered through more blood.

Griffin took in the scene, registering what I was doing with

astonished eyes. “Return them!” he yelled to the other Grigori.

One by one, I felt the links drop off as Grigori drove daggers

into the exiles, returning them for judgment. I watched as Onyx slowly crawled away, cowering and pathetic. He was the least of our concerns; without his angelic powers, he could do no harm.

When only Joel was left, it was Magda who stepped in front

of him and drove her dagger into his side. She smiled as his eyes went wide. “I bet when you walked into Hades tonight, you didn’t realize you’d never leave.”

She pulled out her dagger, blood spraying in its wake. Joel fell to his knees, disappearing, melting into the surroundings. Right at that moment, I almost liked her.

With Joel’s departure, the glamour lifted. The mass of drinking, 350

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dancing humans suddenly became aware of the battlefield, littered with wounded Grigori. Luckily, I was in the back corner and Griffin quickly dropped beside me, covering me up. But not before I heard a high- pitched scream I recognized instantly.

Steph ran over, dropping to her knees beside me. “Oh no, oh

no, oh no, Violet. Oh my God. Tell me what to do?”

Griffin tried to put pressure on the wound, until he saw I

was also bleeding from my back. “It’ll be okay. Do you have any strength to heal yourself?”

I gave a weak smile. Even if I’d had the faintest clue
how
to heal myself, the fact was, I’d used everything I had to take care of Onyx and hold the others.

“Lincoln will be here soon; he can heal you. It’ll be okay.”

Griffin wiped blood from my face and smiled at me with some-

thing like paternal pride. It was weird, given that he only looked about twenty- five.

“You were amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it. You saved

us all.”

I tried my best to smile back. I knew that in making the sacri-

fices I’d made, in becoming Grigori and doing my duty, I now had Griffin’s respect…and friendship.

I turned my head in Lincoln’s direction. I could see him on the ground, not moving. Magda was shaking him. I knew he was okay,

though, could feel his heart beating strongly. I looked up at Griffin.

“How old are you?” I asked.

He half laughed. “Eighty- two next August,” he said in his

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country twang. I was willing to bet he’d been raised on a farm. It suited him too.

“The aging thing could’ve b- been an upside, I guess.” My insides tightened and my vision started to go hazy. Griffin shook me by the shoulders as my eyelids grew heavy, tired.

“Violet, you have to stay awake. Lincoln is starting to move;

they’ll have him up in a minute. Come on. You know I’ll slap you if I have to.”

But we both knew. He wasn’t going to slap me, and I didn’t have a minute.

Steph was at my side, brushing hair back from my face and

mumbling. She was praying.

“I thought w- we agreed…no Sunday school,” I said, my voice

barely audible.

“Well, every- frigging- thing else seems to be real—why not

God?” she said, sobbing. The theory held up. The question was,

what kind of God was he?

I felt a pressure on my stomach and groaned at the pain, unable to muster the energy to scream. I looked down to see Phoenix

kneeling by my side. Shadows moved around him, and tiny lines

of gold encircled him. I saw his mist of power flow from him and enter me. I could feel the bones in my spine knitting back together, the muscles in my stomach reattaching. He was healing me…painfully. As I grew stronger, it hurt more and I began to scream. Then the pain just…stopped.

I didn’t need to inspect the wound when Phoenix let his hands

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slide away. I knew he had healed me completely. Though weak

from the blood loss, I was fine. Steph started on the Hail Mary.

I lay on the ground and tears leaked from my eyes. Phoenix sat

back on his heels.

“You healed me,” I said.

“Yes.” His hands, which he had been holding in midair, dropped

limply to his sides. Defeated.

“You told me it wasn’t one of your powers.”

“I told you not all exiles had the power to heal.” He looked

down rather than at me.

The veil had been lifted; truth surrounded me. Ugly, painful

truth. And even worse, the awful, unchangeable consequences.

“You…you could have healed Lincoln. You let him lie there

while he was dying. You let me become a Grigori even when I

didn’t want it.”

“I knew they’d find you and destroy you. Embracing was your

only chance.”

“Why did you heal me?”

“Does it really matter now?” His eyes darted to mine for a brief moment before dropping to the ground again. I noticed some

blood on his shirt, above his stomach. I didn’t know if it was mine or his.

I looked up and saw Lincoln standing behind him. He had

a dagger in his hand. He’d heard everything, but I knew he was

looking to me. Once again, the choice was mine.

“No,” I said softly, looking at Lincoln.

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Phoenix spun around and Lincoln grabbed his shirt, dragging

him to his feet.

“No!” It was Griffin. “I gave him my word of safety. He has

won freedom today.” He looked at Phoenix. “But my word is no

longer yours.”

Lincoln released him roughly, pushing him away. “Leave. You