Page 183 of The King is Dead
~ YILAN ~
Melek was struggling, and things were growing dire.
I stood at his side, linked with Diadre who was buried somewhere in that chaos, fighting alongside Jann.
‘We can’t attack, only defend. We don’t know which Neph are on our side!’she said in my head.
I wanted to weep. Meleklooked like he might as he scanned the carnage happening below.
“How can we know?” I murmured. “God, help us! How can weknow?”
Melek glowered at the battlefield and shook his head. “There’s no way to know. It’s a conflict of ideology, not nation. I can’t know, Love. We’ll end up killing the very men who might have taken us into the future…” Then he looked at me and his eyes glowed with grief. Glowed green and bright despite his sadness.The fresh green of a new spring leaf.
My heart throbbed. If the eyes were the window to the soul, thenlifepulsed in Melek’s veins.
Deep in the back of my mind, something rang like a bell. A memory. Melek, in the early days, before I truly knew him. When I had just met Gall…
“His eyes are gold,” I blurted.
“So? Mine were also when I was born. That proves nothing—”
“No,” I said through my teeth. “Don’t start lying to me now. Your eyes are the bright green of a new leaf!”
“They are now. But when I was born, and even as a youth—”
“Bullshit! The yellow eyes are the sign of the irredeemable. If you were born irredeemable, you cannot change that—it is impossible!”
He’d been angry about the implication because of Gall. Told me I was “spouting drivel.”
It was a legend in my people. And it made sense. The Fallen had golden eyes. The Fallen could not be redeemed. Therefore, it was believed that those born to them could not be either. Hence the golden eyes. Yet Melek claimed his eyes had changed since his birth?
What if the eyes were a reflection of the state of the soul… not the other way around?
That bell of truth in my head rang again.
The cold fingers of fear gripped the back of my neck and forced me to turn, to survey the carnage before me. Then I sucked in a breath as my sight was consumed with a vision of Lucifer’s eyes, as if he stood right before me and leaned in so I could see nothing but his glowing, golden gaze.
‘Mine, Yilan. They’re mine. And this is what they’ll do toallof you as long as you resist me.’
“YILAN! LOVE! WATCH OUT!”
Melek’s roar snapped me out of the vision in the blink before a Neph with teeth bloodied and bared leaped straight for me—and was batted aside like a kitten by my mate in the last possible second.
We were left, both of us trembling as he rushed to me and grabbed my face. “Are you here? Are you with me?!”
“Yes, yes. I’m sorry, I—”
“Fight, Love. Fight for your life!”
“But Melek—I think I know who they are!”
He frowned. “What are you—”
He whirled as another Neph came roaring up from the battle below, snarling like a wolf. When he’d dispatched that man, I knew I couldn’t distract him again, so I stayed at his back as he prepared to meet the next, but I showed him in his head.
Lucifer, eyes of gold.
Melek, eyes of green. Despite his birth. Despite how golden they may have been when he was young.
