Page 91 of Angel of Water & Shadow

By remembering how my dad betrayed me, that was how. I looked at the twinkling ceiling. The pain was an ice pick that chipped at my heart. The more I thought about it, the more it broke. My mouth curved into a snarl.

“He knew—my dad.” My fingers curled into the wood. “He knew this whole damn time.”

“That you’re Nephilim?” Ryder guessed.

Teeth clenched, I nodded. “Ask me why he kept me in the dark for eighteen years?” I gritted out, staring at the girl across from me. Translucent glass bottles framed her strained face, her nostrils fuming as a reddish hue bloomed in her cheeks. And her eyes were a cold, abyssal blue that could freeze hell itself over.

It was me. I was staring in a mirror.

Between the racks of liquor, I saw Ryder lift his gaze in the reflection. “Why…did he keep you in the dark for eighteen years?” he asked softly.

“I have no fucking clue.” I whipped my head towards him. “But who does that!?”

He didn’t flinch at my anger, even as I slammed my palm onto the counter.

“You know what’s even more messed up?” A round of applause muffled my voice as the band ended one song and dove right into another. “He played a role in my mom’s death. And I know he struggles with that guilt. We could have…” I bit back the tears. My dad didn’t deserve them. “We could have bonded over that.”

“What do you mean? I thought your mom died in a drowning accident.”

Straightening my shoulders, I took a deep breath, but the words came out fast and harsh. “Angels can’t have relationships with mortals, right? Well, my mom was an angel, and my dad was clearly a mortal and what do you know, she ended up dead—actually worse, she was sent to the Fall. Did you know that’s where they take them?”

Ryder shook his head no, his eyes narrowing as he processed what I said.

“Yeah. She was sentenced to an eternity of dropping for betraying Empyrea, where she gets to relive her agony again and again. I just don’t understand why they waited so long to take her.” I scowled, the memory of that fated day at the beach muddied by my mounting frustration. “Was it even a rip current that got her?”

I glanced at his hands, which stayed slack at his sides, waiting for one of them to inch forward and hold me. “I think it’s the most realistic possibility,” he said, “because we don’t have enough evidence to say otherwise. I mean, she could have been in hiding all those years and that’s when the Sainthood found her—that’s what happened to my…” He stopped himself and clipped out a sigh. “You saw what you saw. It was a rip current…right?”

I tugged at the hair closest to my temples. Honestly…it could have been a storm or an angel or my mind playing tricks, and instead of being a big girl and addressing the trauma, I’d spent ten years hiding from it.

“I don’t know what I fucking saw!” My outburst earned a glare from the bartender. I swallowed the fire building in my throat, my voice shaking with the effort it took to remain low when I spoke again. “What’s gnawing at me is that I shrugged off the people who actually cared, the ones who’ve been trying to tell me everything. The Voices.”

A subtle tension that only I would notice furrowed Ryder’s full, dark brows.

“They’re not just voices, Ry,” I continued, my voice low. His back went rigid at the nickname, but I was in such a frantic train of thought it had honestly just rolled off my tongue. “They’re the archangels tasked to guard Mortal Earth—the ones you said were legend. My mom didn’t just leave Empyrea; she left her place among the Watchers. I saw how it all started when we were at Madame Myrian’s. That’s how I know what the cost was for her to leave.” Tears burned against my squinched lids. I hated the sensation so fucking much, but I hated how Ryder just sat there even more.

Touch me, I begged him with my mind. Hug me. Comfort me.

“River.” He made sure to annunciate every syllable. “You didn’t make it inside Myrian’s house. I told you this. A piece of plywood knocked you out when the earthquake hit.”

My entire body stiffened. I blinked once. Twice. “That’s what you took from what I just said?” I threw my hands up in the air. “Why are we arguing about this again? I did make it inside, I saw the past, I saw the Fall, I saw their wings, I saw my mom choose love. I saw everything.”

Ryder turned his focus to his drink, like he was purposefully avoiding my glare.

“Oh, is our fighting make you uncomfy?” I snorted, matching the scowls of the dwarves who had posted up next to us. “I thought you got off on it.”

He shifted in his seat. “Why would you think that?”

“Because you’re always pissing me off.”

He rolled his eyes, and that just provoked me even more. Digging into my front pocket, I pulled out a tiny scrap of paper and placed it on the counter. “Look.” The crinkles from being shoved into my shorts distorted the writing. Whatever, it was still legible.

He peered at the numbers. “What am I looking at?”

“Coordinates,” I said with no room for hesitation. “I found them written on the back of an article about a lighthouse that shares the same coordinates as the first row of numbers.”

He tilted his head. “Where’s the rest of it?”

“Um…” A hot flash of embarrassment rushed me as I envisioned myself ripping the page to shreds earlier. “Doesn’t matter. Anyways, there were also dozens of patterns scribbled on the back, but not just any patterns, the Empyrean symbols for the elements. Like the ones we traced onto Madame Myrian’s door.”

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