Page 65 of Angel of Water & Shadow

Pins and needles struck every one of my senses, harsh and jarring and heavy.

What happened to his sixth sense, his hunter’s instinct that had saved me more times than I cared to count?

I managed to whisper, “How did you not see this coming?”

The caress along my spine slowed. “What happened in there?”

When I didn’t answer, the ground slipped out from beneath me, and sturdy arms cradled my body, tucking themselves around my back and under my legs. Out of frustration I went rigid, but after a few steps I relaxed into his arms. Ryder really needed to stop sweeping me off my feet or he might think he was actually helping. But to make that point I’d have to actually stop him. I lifted my head to do just that, then let it fall back. I was too winded to argue, and this little nook between his neck and his shoulder against his soft cotton tee unfortunately felt nice.

He carried me through the garage, towards the back, past his car. I twisted in his grasp, eyeing the Chevy, his responding squeeze meant to assuage my confusion as he stepped onto an unmarked gravel path between the columns. It led to a courtyard nestled within the neighboring complex, lined with three concrete benches sheltered by individual arbors crawling in orange and pink honeysuckle. He gently placed me down on one of the benches and took a seat next to me, his eyes lightened by the vines breaching the wooden frames.

A fountain, sculpted into an angel of all things, stood in the middle. I grimaced, pivoting away from it. Water trickled in the background—calming, soothing. The peacefulness of this spot, at complete odds with the chaos next door, brought feeling back to my limbs and words to my mouth. I repeated my earlier question. “How did you not see this coming?”

“What?” he asked flatly.

Shifting to my side, I reached into my pocket, relieved to find the feather. Somehow, it hadn’t burned to a crisp like the rest of them. “What does this mean?”

Ryder took it by the quill. He held it to the light, and I was able to see the deep, purple lowlights to the onyx vane. It was stiff, unlike the flowy plumes I’d find spilling out of my down comforter.

“Is it from a Nephilim? Demon? Something else I don’t know about but can already tell you I don’t want to?”

He lowered the feather, twirling the translucent shaft between his fingertips. “Remember how I told you demons are the tortured souls of corrupted angels?”

This—this was exactly what I didn’t want to know. I bit down on my bottom lip.

“This is from one of their wings.”

“So. My therapist is a demon.” Any more pressure on my lip and I’d break the skin. “Fan-fucking-tastic.” Ryder’s mouth twitched and I swore if he laughed, I’d smack him. I gripped the bench’s roughened edge. “I couldn’t see any wings,” I told him, like that’d refute his claim.

It didn’t. “She has them, but they don’t manifest in this dimension. Here, they’re more of a shadow. Kind of like…phantom wings.”

Out of everything Dr. Finis had the potential to be, a demon was honestly the least farfetched. If he would’ve explained to me that she was an angel, or even just a mortal, that’s when I would’ve stopped believing him, because there was nothing decent or human about her.

As I stared at the chipped wings of the stone angel carved around the tiers of the fountain, my thoughts inevitably trailed to Dr. Fairmore. Her eyes a brown so rich at certain angles they were almost black, but nothing like the bottomless pits of Dr. Finis’s. Even if Fairmore knew or had a hunch about the Voices, even if she’d left me high and dry…There was no way she was a demon. No way.

“The only way you’d see her wings is if she was injured, by Source, that threatened to return her to her dimension or kill her. Which brings the question…how’d you get this feather?” He leaned in so close I could count the golden flecks in his eyes. “I’ll ask again, River. What happened in there?”

His gaze was so overwhelming I had to look back to the fountain, or I’d be spilling my whole life story. “She knew too much.” I ran my fingers along my hairline, sweeping away the shorter layers falling into my face. “About my mom, my episodes, parts of me I haven’t shared with anyone. Then she got super aggressive, tried to force it out of me, and I did that…thing.”

His voice was tight. “What thing?”

I scuffed my sandals on the packed gravel. “You know, that…yelling thing.”

Ryder raised his brows in understanding. “She got struck by lightning and exploded?”

“No, she got taken out by a beam of light.” Catching my hands as they flew to my mouth, he lowered them to my lap, his grip unwavering. “Which I’m…pretty sure I summoned.”

“How? Did you use the same words?”

“No, but I had…similar feelings.” And visions. Even fully removed from the situation, the anger still simmered. And the grief, well, it was unrelenting.

“Which were?” His thumb stroked my knuckle.

I wasn’t sure if it was Ryder’s subtle touches or if I was in that weirdly blissful, short-lived period between adrenaline and shock…For some reason the rawness of this moment, the surge of my emotions, it all stripped away my fears. And once the words left my lips…I couldn’t stop.

“Anger, frustration. Grief, guilt. So much of it, it overwhelms me. I can still feel it now, thrumming beneath my skin.” My digits curled over each other in an uncomfortable bend, but I continued. “I don’t think me literally yelling has anything to do with it. I think it’s the point I reach to actually get to that place, where my feelings don’t have anywhere to go…except out.”

When Ryder didn’t respond, I decided to shift my gaze from his fingers, still clasped over mine, to his eyes. They peered at me with such an intense yearning. I couldn’t tell if it was me, or the information I had, that he sought so badly.

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