Iridescent (Ember 2) (9 page)

“She isn’t a Watcher or a human. Lilith is something else completely. You might call her a failed experiment. She and her kind existed before humans, but they had too much knowledge, too much awareness of life. If you look at humans as the Arch’s children, her kind were the rebellious teens so obsessed with their own rapture, they almost destroyed everything. The Arch started over, a clean slate, all except for Lilith, the first of them. Lilith was already strong enough to evade death, and soon, she realized she could sustain herself by absorbing human souls.

“She walked the Earth, but she was unable to procreate and remained alone except for the souls degrading and rotting inside her. The Arch instilled one of the highest-ranking angels to destroy her, but she couldn’t be destroyed, so she was banished…along with all the souls she consumed.”

“Who was the angel?”

“I don’t know. For all I know, it could have been me, could have been Draven… Among Watchers, the story of Lilith is the equivalent of dark folklore. What we know is gleamed from collective hints of remembrance. None of us really knows. Until today, I wasn’t sure I even believed the story at all.”

She glanced up. Sebastian’s thumb and forefinger rubbed his closed eyelids.

“How was she banished? How do we get rid of her?”

“We can’t. She can’t be here. She is supposed to be gone a thousand lifetimes ago. If I had thought for a second any of it was real… If such a thing as true evil exists, Lilith is it.” He chuckled humorlessly. “I never considered the possibility, not once. She’s—”

“She’s a demon,” Candra finished for him.

Sebastian’s mouth opened as if to say something, but nothing came out. He stared at Candra blankly, waiting for her to speak.

“Why did you let her go? She was there, right in front of you.”

“It’s not that simple,” he said. “She is only part of the puzzle. We need to know
how
she is here. You have to understand, Candra, that if the stories are true, Lilith is not just a demon. She is corruption.”

An icy chill slithered down Candra’s spine at the deadly tone of Sebastian’s voice.

“She is a temptress, Candra. She will try every way she can to win you over. She will try to separate us. We can’t let her. We have to figure this out together.”

“Exactly,” Candra warned him. “It has to be together. You can’t keep anything from me.” She stood up and took two steps toward him.

He nodded solemnly but made no attempt to approach her or leave.

“Is this it? Is she the thing I’m supposed to fight?”

He remained silent, his eyes roaming over her face as if committing every tiny detail to memory, and finally, the awkwardness began to stretch on. Candra wanted to crawl back under the covers. However, it didn’t seem like a proactive thing to do when the situation between them still felt unresolved. There were still so many unanswered questions.

He pulled in a deep, shuddering breath and shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. I swear I’ll kill her a million times over before I let her hurt you.”

Candra noticed he looked tired. It was unusual since Sebastian rarely slept, and when he did, he seldom slept deeply. She could count on one hand the occasions she’d seen him at rest and still have fingers to spare.

He had told her that every life he took fractured his heart a little more. He’d tried to convince her that he was the tempest, and as long as she was with him, she was merely sitting in the eye of the storm. He had warned her he couldn’t be her shelter or her protector, that eventually she would see him for what he was—a murderer. Another tiny piece of Sebastian chipped away right in front of Candra’s eyes as they both realized he intended to kill again.

“We need to go.”

“Go where?” Candra asked, scooting over to the side of the chair and placing her feet on the bare floor and standing.

“Back to the townhouse.”

Candra looked up at him, confused by him taking her back to the place Lilith had managed to slip by her guards. “What? Can’t I just stay here with you?”

Sebastian smiled and scratched his temple with his index finger. His brow wrinkled when his eyebrows rose and disappeared behind his ruffled blond hair. “Okay, you and I know that isn’t going to happen.”

“Brie,” they both said at the same time.

Brie had firmly placed her foot down on sleeping arrangements. Sebastian and Candra hadn’t spent a night in the same bed since the ball. In fact, they hadn’t spent a night inside the same house. Brie had relegated him to guarding Candra from the rooftops surrounding the townhouse.

Candra sighed and turned away from him, sitting on the end of the bed. “I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I miss you, and I’m not sure I want to stay there after what happened.”

She felt the bed shift, and Sebastian’s legs appeared either side of her. His strong arms circled her waist and pulled her toward his chest. She let her head loll back to his shoulder and closed her eyes, opening them again quickly when she saw green eyes peering at her from blackness.

Sebastian’s lips pressed against her hair lightly as he spoke. “I’ll talk to Brie. This isn’t about you and me anymore. It’s about keeping you safe.”

“Not as a Watcher, Sebastian,” Candra warned, stroking her fingers along his forearm and loving the way tiny goose bumps rose up under her touch. Sebastian’s role as leader of the Nuhra made him intimidating when he wanted to be. His return to Acheron had caused Brie to retreat into herself, convinced she had failed at protecting Candra. Brie had been unable to stand up to Sebastian after an eternity of following his lead. She still struggled but made a point about holding her ground over their relationship. She didn’t approve. “Talk to her as her brother.”

Sebastian chuckled somberly. “I’m not so sure reminding Brie of the slight age difference between you and me is the way to lead into this conversation.”

Candra lifted her hand over her shoulder and smoothed it around Sebastian’s neck. She turned her head a little to see his face. His warm breath touched her skin, mint and spice—pure Sebastian.

“Maybe if you were a human boy, age would mean something, but you are not a human boy, and I’m not a human girl. Talk to her as her friend, then. She knows how I feel. You need to make her believe you mean it too. I’m over eighteen, and I want to be with you. I don’t want it to cost you a relationship with Brie. I don’t want to defy her unless I absolutely have to. She deserves our respect.”

Sebastian’s arms tightened, and gold sparks flared in his eyes. His strong heart pounded faster and heavier against her spine. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“You make me feel worthy. You make
this
feel right, despite everything else.”

Candra laughed, fighting off the warm shiver prickling over her skin. This moment was another of the reasons she loved him. Candra was capable of appreciating the fine physical specimen of a man wrapped around her like a blanket, but her feelings for him sprang from somewhere deeper and darker. It was his sadness; his beautiful torment had the power to stop her heart in her chest, and his gentle touch made her ache. The same hand that had ripped monsters limb from limb caressed her cheek as though she was made from the most delicate china. His stubbornness kept her safe while grudgingly allowing her enough freedom to make her own decisions. The place where the warrior, the angel, and the stubborn young man met was the place where Candra fell in love with him.

Sebastian’s mouth came down on hers.

Candra giggled. “Morning breath,” she mumbled against his kiss.

“I don’t care,” he mumbled right back.

“I need a shower.” She wasn’t complaining about his lips peppering kisses. Her fingers curled into his hair, and her body automatically twisted toward him like a plant might open itself up to the radiance of the sun.

Without warning, Sebastian scooped her up into his arms. The air left her lungs in a great gasp of noise. Sometimes, his movements were a little disconcerting, faster than seemed possible, but no more impossible than the existence of angels and demons. She dragged a mental curtain across that particular thought for the moment. Right now, she didn’t want to be a solitary Nephilim with a soul. She didn’t want to think of the Nuhra or the Tenebras. She didn’t want to look at Sebastian as a light bringer—Lucifer.

No, what she wanted was for Sebastian to make her forget it all. Her insides churned delightfully, melting away her anxiety.
Only now matters,
she told herself.
If this is all we have, we have to make it matter.
The idea of his hands on her bare skin erased everything else. Candra believed Sebastian could make her forget her own name if he chose to. Which was why it confused her when he stood, carrying her as if she weighed nothing at all.

“What are you doing?” she asked, clinging onto his neck even though she had complete faith Sebastian would never drop her. She had flown with him, after all. If he hadn’t dropped her from the sky, he wasn’t going to do it on the way to his bathroom.
His bathroom.

Candra uselessly struggled against him. He was too strong and too fast. In a matter of seconds, they were both under the warming spray, fully clothed. Sebastian even left his boots on. Candra continued to struggle, simultaneously laughing and distracted by the way water ran in rivulets over his clothes, soaking them both.

“You smell like an Irish man,” he teased, placing her on the shower floor and pouring a musky-scented soap over her head.

In her bare feet, and with Sebastian still in his boots, Candra came up to eye level with his upper chest.

“You’re insane,” she scolded him, but failed miserably at keeping any sort of annoyance in her voice.

Sebastian lathered the soap into her hair, grinning down at her as the room filled with steam. She especially loved this part of Sebastian, the carefree part, the part of him that could be with her without the weight of the past crushing him. She so rarely saw it.

Without conscious decision, her hands trailed down the wet cotton, stopping when his stomach sucked in. Candra bit her lip and held very still. Neither of them seemed to be breathing, and the one sound was the constant tinkling of water against tile. Sebastian’s fingers remained in her hair, and Candra peeked up through wet eyelashes to see him watching her intently. His jaw set, and his cheeks flushed. Candra’s heart fluttered inside her chest. She felt like a small animal in the sights of a predator.

She had always known Sebastian might be dangerous. Something always simmered below his skin, a scorching, righteous passion forever on the verge of exploding into an inferno with the slightest provocation. He was a force of heaven with an exquisite, virile presence. A weak person could so easily lose herself in him completely. Sebastian would never allow her to be that person. Therefore, she balanced on the precipice of oblivion, where love provided both freedom to soar and security to keep her grounded.

Sebastian’s palms flattened tenderly against the side of her head, tilting her face to his. “I love you.” His soft lips swept across hers chastely before he pulled back to look at her again. His brown eyes were fierce and full of longing.

It made Candra’s chest swell and her blood heat. She circled his wrists with her fingers. “We will make this work.”

Sebastian smiled, his expression pure satisfaction, like the cat that got the cream. He straightened and angled her head back under the spray to rinse the suds from her hair.

Chapter Seven

S
EBASTIAN
N
EVER
S
PENT
M
UCH
T
IME
evaluating his relationships. They were always just there, like a heartbeat…or air. He didn’t share blood with his family, but they claimed him as their own, just as he claimed them. They shared something reaching beyond the bounds of genetic code. Their connection didn’t begin and end with the shape of a nose or hair color. They always showed up when he needed them to. They knew him inside out, for better or worse, and stayed by his side regardless. They called him on his faults, but never deserted him—at least, that had once been true. Sebastian accepted he only had himself to blame for what had changed.

Payne and Gabe had both been like brothers to him, despite parting ways for a long time after the war. None could bear to look in the eyes of the other and see the terror they’d reaped reflected back. As time had passed, the others seemed to heal. Gabe, Ambriel, Payne, and Lofi all moved on, and Sebastian felt left behind and jealous. He couldn’t let go the way they had. Part of Sebastian needed to cling to the past and to his distrust of the Tenebras. Without his history, what was he? A man without purpose or direction, a week-old newspaper scattered across an empty street by a breeze, something that once had worth but contained nothing of relevance any longer.

Ironically, when he’d returned to Acheron and found Candra, he hadn’t turned to his family. The first person he’d gone to for advice was probably the very last person on the planet who should ever offer him comfort. Sandal’s child had been the first to experience the steel of his blade. He hadn’t gone to her seeking forgiveness, only understanding, which she’d offered unreservedly.