Chapter 19

NINETEEN

COLLINS

Bash had some audacity to fall asleep while I lay there looping in misery. My mind and heart were a broken, muddied mess. No thoughts were safe at this point. I went round and round between overwhelming fear and grief over the angels taking my brothers away and Bash’s behavior since we were tortured. My only reprieve was to think about the daunting task of going into some stranger’s subconscious mind, and what kind of disaster was I that that was my least hurtful thought.

I didn’t even know how long I’d been lying there in the dark silence while he slept. It felt like I was being eaten alive by an invisible parasite, screaming and begging for help while no one heard a thing. I was just looping, and looping, and looping.

Does he not love me anymore? Does he wish I died? Does he blame me for getting captured and that’s why he’s being so cruel?

I know Mom and Phil broke the law, but what good was taking three five year old boys going to do? And where did they take them? What are they going to DO with them?

Is Augustine going to feel anything while we do this? Will WE feel anything? Will it hurt any of us?

Maybe Tephine broke something inside of him while she tortured him? She’s been breaking him down piece by piece for eighty years. It could have finally snapped.

Are they scared? Are they sad? Will we ever see them again? It doesn’t seem fair to punish young children for the wrongdoings of their parents. How could they be so reckless to get pregnant knowing what it meant?

What if we get stuck in Augustine’s mind? What if we don’t find an answer in her mind?

A soft knock on the door made me gasp and bolt upright while Bash lay unmoving on his stomach. I pulled the blankets up to cover my bare chest and tucked my hair behind my ears. “Come in,” I called out.

If it woke him . . . good.

But no one entered or spoke. I frowned just as another knock tapped on the door. Then I realized what was happening. Bash had put us in one of his sound bubbles so no one in the house could hear what we were doing, which meant whoever was knocking couldn’t hear me answering. I cursed and lifted my hand out in front of me. My magic responded instantly to my demand and shot out a thin green vine that wrapped around the door handle. It opened with a soft click and a narrow streak of soft golden light poured into the room, shining across my face. A dark shadow walked inside but I knew by the shape and the way they walked that it was Jada.

When she stopped beside my bed and crouched down, the light made her hair look like freshly fallen snow. Jada held her arm up but there was nothing written on her skin anymore. “Sorry to wake you. I just heard from Gaston. He refuses to leave Florida but said we can meet him in the same place we met him before.”

“Okay—”

“Now.” She stood up straight and nodded. Her hazel gaze glanced to my right, then back to me. “He won’t wait but for a few minutes. We must go.”

“I’ll meet you downstairs in two minutes. I need to get dressed.”

Jada arched one eyebrow and glanced to Bash. She smirked and then walked back out of the room, closing the door behind her. I cursed and dropped the blanket. When I looked to Bash, I saw what Jada had . . . him lying on his back shirtless with one arm draped over his face and the other resting on his stomach. One of his legs was bent at the knee and entirely uncovered by the blankets—or clothing.

Whatever. I could hook up with my soulmate if I wanted to, even if I low key wanted to strangle him.

A huge part of me wanted to just leave in the cover of night and not tell him where I was going but that would make me a hypocrite and that I refused to be. So, I reached over and shook him, yet he just swatted my arm away. I used both arms to shake him violently, but he growled viciously and flipped onto his side, turning his back to me.

“FINE.” I threw the blankets off and jumped to my feet. My white magical catsuit was on the floor so I quickly snatched it and pulled it on. “I hope you wake up and freak the fuck out, Bash.”

I zipped the front zipper, then shoved my feet into my boots. We were just going to Florida, so I didn’t need the fur suit Ellie had made me. We’d be right back anyway. Without another glance in his direction, I opened the door and walked out. And left it open—both for safety and to annoy him. I walked to the next room to grab Ellie and Stellan, but when I poked my head inside, I found them out cold. Stellan was snoring so loud the windows rattled. The furniture in the room lifted off the ground with each roar, then settled back onto the floor. It was funny to watch the bed move up and down. Ellie was draped across Stellan’s body with one hand dangling over the edge of the bed and little purple lightning bolts flickering from her fingertips. It reminded me of those glass orbs in science museums that teach people about static electricity—and it was that reason alone I did not dare walk inside their room.

With a chuckle, I shut the door and hurried down to my mom’s, but when I gripped the handle to open it, I heard a violent sob through the wooden door. I froze. That was my mother crying. She was sobbing. Like the kind of sobbing where you had to gasp for air because your tears were drowning you. I swallowed through a rush of my own emotions and rested my forehead against the door. Suddenly, I felt chilled to the bone. Inside, I heard Phil consoling her with calm words, but his voice cracked all the same.

I spun away and ran down the stairs. My parents were having the worst night ever. They’d earned a little privacy and a break from the war I was involved in. I’d assumed Vic was in there with them, but when I got to the living room in the guesthouse, I found her curled up in a ball on the couch, buried under fuzzy blankets with crumpled tissues all around her. On the glass table in front of her, a potion bottle was tipped over on its side, but nothing was pouring out.

“She drugged herself.”

I jumped at the sound of Jada’s voice, but then her words registered and my heart sank. “What? How so? With what?”

“Sleeping potion. Nothing to worry about.” Jada gestured toward the main house out the windows. “Peggy brought it and some others over a little while ago.”

I frowned. “Did you sleep, Jada?”

“Yes and no.” She shook her head. “I’ve spent nearly my whole life living in Third Realm where sleep is a risk. My body only requires two to three hours a day.”

Before I could stop myself, I wrapped my arms around her in a hug. “No matter what happens, Jada, I want you to know how grateful I am for you and everything you’ve sacrificed for us.”

She let out a deep breath. “Thank you,” she whispered over my shoulder.

I stepped back and cleared my throat. “Okay, that’s over now. We can be fierce again.”

She laughed. “No Bash?”

“He wouldn’t wake up. Stellan and Ellie are out cold. Mom and Phil—” I shuddered and walked into the kitchen. “Let me just leave a note for everyone in case they wake and find us gone.”

“There’s a dry-erase board on the fridge with a marker.”

“Of course there is.”

I pulled the marker off its holder and scribbled a note on the whiteboard that read, WENT TO ST AUGUSTINE WITH JADA TO MEET GASTON. @ CASTILLO. brB.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

We rushed out the front door into the snow. By the time my feet actually hit the snow, Jada had her big turquoise-tipped white angel wings spread wide. She scooped me up and we shot into the sky. The nice thing about flying in the arms of a Nephilim was their wings were much thicker and heartier than fae wings, so I basically felt none of the cold. We were inside The Emerald and flying through the First Realm portal within minutes.

When Jada landed and sat me on my feet, I took a deep breath, inhaling as much of that salty air as I possibly could. The heat wrapped around me, chasing away every last chill in my bones. The sky was jet black and clear, with only stars twinkling in the sky and a golden crescent moon. I stood on the roof of a building made of stone. In front of me, the ocean danced under the moonlight. Behind me, the city of St. Augustine sparkled with golden lights. The night was quiet.

“Wow,” I breathed.

Jada chuckled. “That’s what Ellie said.”

I spun in a slow circle, taking in the three-sixty-view of Heaven on Earth. I’d researched St. Augustine once in high school so I knew exactly where we were and what this building was. The Castillo de San Marcos was the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States built at the end of the seventh century. I’d never been here before. Tallulah and I had been talking about visiting once we turned twenty-one so it hurt my heart to be seeing it firsthand without her. I looked at the shape of the fort. From an aerial view it was the shape of a square with the middle cut out giving the grassy lawn a clear shot to the sky. At each corner of the square the fort stretched out in the shape of arrowheads. The muscles in my back that controlled my wings yearned to fly me up into the sky so I could see it myself, but until I figured out how to get my wings back, I had to settle for the view from the ground. To my right was the bay, with the dark horizon blending into the black sky. The twinkle of lights on the boats anchored in the water matched the stars above. On the other side of the fort was the small, historic city that I suddenly realized reminded me exactly of the buildings in Megelle Island.

The Vaunteros’ castle could have been right in front of us and blended in.

There had to be a story there.

I sighed. “Jada, if we survive this war, we are moving here.”

“Somehow I doubt Riven and Gaston would appreciate that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I’d rather be on the beach anyways. Hey, do you think those cannons work?”

Jada narrowed her eyes at me. “Why?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Could be fun to shoot someone out of one.”

“Someone?” Jada smirked and cocked her head to the side. “Or Bash?”

I bit my lip to try and stop myself from grinning.

She nodded. “If the cannon fits, shoot him.”

“We may have more in common than I realized, Jada.”

I gasped and spun around to find a man standing there who definitely hadn’t just been there. My pulse skipped. I knew this had to be Gaston just by the aura pulsing around him. It reminded me of Riven’s. I hadn’t been with the others when they met this vampire-Nephilim so I wasn’t prepared for what he looked like . . . As in, I wasn’t expecting him to be as pretty as he was. Which was silly, that was basically rule number one for vampire lore—you had to be fucking gorgeous. And so far, every vampire I’d met was .

Jada chuckled deep in her throat. “That’s a lie. You knew damn well my proclivity for violence.”

Gaston grinned, showing off two sparkling white fangs that looked sharp enough to cut skin just by grazing them. He had short silver hair that looked disheveled, as if he’d been dragged out of bed, which given the time, was probably the case. Despite the pale shade of his hair, the scruff on his jaw was black. He wore all black like the Vampire Prince did, but it was an entirely different vibe. He wasn’t anything like Riven, not really. Riven was cold, dark, and menacing while Gaston looked like the kind of guy Taylor Swift would write songs on the Red album for. Loving him was definitely red.

I looked up to his golden eyes and found them watching me. My face flushed. “Hello, I’m Collins Elliott.”

He arched one black eyebrow and nodded. “Gaston Gaultier.”

“I’m sorry we woke you in the middle of the night?—”

“Oh, you didn’t,” he said with a smooth, warm voice. “I wasn’t asleep, I was merely . . . busy.”

Jada snickered.

My face flushed hotter. “Oh.”

Weird flex, but okay.

“I received the message when I was done.” He crossed his arms over his chest and rocked back on his heels. His aura was tense and impatient, like a bomb waiting to blow. He was annoyed. “Now, why don’t you tell me what it is you think I need to do for you this time?”

“Well, you can drop the attitude for starters.” I tossed one of my braids over my shoulder. “You’re a Nephilim. Your job is to help save the realms. And before you preach to me that this isn’t your fight, there are three mage -Nephilim in the trenches with us willingly. Two of whom are currently in Third leading a revolution against Tephine. So, you’ll have to excuse me for not giving a rat’s ass that you deem yourself beyond our problems.”

He arched one eyebrow.

“ Collins, ” Jada hissed.

“No. I’m so sick of this. What part of if Tephine wins she’s coming after you don’t you understand? The least you could do is wait until we make our request and then give us attitude. That’s what Riven does.”

“Do you speak to him so boldly?”

“Yes. A few times now.” I reached into my catsuit and yanked out the silver necklace that held the piece of raw hematite. “For example, if you’d just nicely asked why we were bothering you in the middle of the night—because that’s definitely not normal, right? You would’ve found out that our request of you requires minimal fucking effort.”

His golden eyes locked on the crystal. There was a sharp edge to his glare and his aura radiated suspicion. “Fine. You’re right. But try to remember you’re not the only one in the trenches right now.”

“Fine.” I arched my eyebrows. “And when you need a hand out of the trenches, assuming we’re still alive, we’ll be happy to help any way we can. Is that settled now?”

He stared at me for a moment, then nodded. “What is it you need, Ms. Elliott?”

“Before you freak out, hear me out?—”

“You can’t talk to her?—”

“I know.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You know you cannot speak to my Stone Keeper?”

“Yes. MoVaun was very clear and adamant that us speaking to Augustine was strictly forbidden by law of Zuriel himself.”

His eyes widened. “You know her name. MoVaun knows her name?”

“MoVaun knows more about her than you’d like, I assure you.”

He cursed and scrubbed his face with his hands. “That’s lovely. Okay, so if you know you can’t talk to her, then why?—”

“For this.” I held the necklace up. “According to MoVaun, we must dive into her subconscious mind to look for a memory locked in the closet of her amnesia. From before she lost her memories.”

His jaw dropped. “How do you expect me to not freak out at that?”

“Oh, you can freak out, but we still need to do it.” I lowered my hand. “Look, we know this is dangerous for her and us. I’m not thrilled about it either. Right now, Peggy Bow and Maren, Queen Savina’s wife, are brewing the potion Eloise and I must use to do this.”

“Why . . .? I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, honestly, but apparently Augustine knows—or knew—something that was integral to severing the bond between Tephine and Third Realm. This is the rock and the hard place we’re trapped between.”

He cursed again and started pacing the roof of the fort in front of us. “And how does this involve me?”

“This crystal is the catalyst we need to do what we need to do. And since we cannot go near her, we need you to give her this necklace and make sure she puts it on. It’s raw hematite. It’s safe. It’s for grounding and protection. Crystals are my thing and I got this from Crystal Henge itself.”

He stopped in front of me. “I really don’t like this?—”

“Yeah, neither did Riven.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

I shrugged. “I’ll save you the play-by-play but know that Zuriel is the one who told Riven to set us on this path, so I assure you that Zuriel and Araqiel know this is happening.”

He cursed violently, then looked to the sky. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them, he turned that golden gaze right to me and held his hand out. “Okay. Fine. I will give it to her as a gift tomorrow and ensure she puts it on. When will you start?—”

“When she’s asleep with it on.” I dropped it into his open palm. “So as soon as she’s wearing it and falls asleep, you let us know. We’ll probably do it up here so we’re close but nowhere near her at the same time. I assume this is a safe location since you chose it to meet?”

He nodded and hooked the necklace over his head, then tucked it under his black shirt. “Understood.”

“Do you have a cellphone on you?” When he pulled an iPhone out of his pocket, I grabbed it and dialed my phone number. Then I dialed my mother’s number. “There, now you have both mine and my mother—my Nephilim’s—cell phone numbers. Just give us a call or a text when she’s ready.”

“That’s all?”

We nodded.

He nodded—and then vanished into the night sky.