Page 90 of Princess of Bael
It didn’t matter.
“You won’t be able to stay around me for much longer,” Ezra added softly, his eyes still closed. “Being near me will impact you via our bond. Hell rejuvenates you and hides you from my deterioration.”
I frowned at him. “What would happen to you if I left again and never returned?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied after a beat.
But something told me he was sure.
He just didn’t want to tell me.
And that had me narrowing my gaze at him. “Tell me the truth, Ezra.”
“It’s not your burden, Kayla.” His voice was soft, almost dreamlike. I suspected he was falling asleep again, or retreating into that healing state.
Or dying, I thought, swallowing. “Will you die?”
He didn’t answer for so long that I thought perhaps he’d either chosen to ignore me or was unconscious again. But he cleared his throat. “An angel-bone blade pierced my heart. It takes a lot of energy to heal an injury of that nature, energy I don’t have.”
Which meant he would die.
“Why aren’t you taking what you need, then? We’re not done fixing the balance. And that’s your job, isn’t it? That’s your purpose? The reason you took me to Hell in the first place?”
He released a long, shuddering breath. “I’m old and I’m tired, Kayla.” He didn’t say anything else.
“That’s not a response.”
He grunted but remained silent, his agony throbbing through our link. It wasn’t just physical pain but also a mental torment.
He didn’t want to fail.
He wanted to fight.
But the only way to do so was by healing our bond.
And he wasn’t going to force me. He wasn’t going to guilt me into it either. He was merely going to accept his failure, and probably die, instead.
I wanted to yell at him, to call him weak for choosing the cowardly way out.
Yet he wasn’t a coward. He was one of the strongest males I’d ever met. But he’d meant what he’d said—he wouldn’t use me again.
He wouldn’t use our bond to heal himself.
He wouldn’t put the balance first.
His entire life’s purpose… he’d just put second…for me.
Maybe because he was tired. Maybe because he was trying to appeal to my heart. Maybe because he wanted to invoke an emotional game meant to seduce me into helping him willingly.
Or maybe because he truly didn’t want to indulge in our bond just to heal himself.
He wanted me to desire him, tochoosehim.
To help him of my own free will.
Not to be duped into a bond that would give him the protection he needed in Hell.
My strong Archangel had truly fallen.
