My mother has the ability to bring my wings to life. I shake my head. That must mean I do, too. My eyes squeeze tight a moment as I do my best to harness all of the power enabled in me through her. All that belongs to my mother is mine. All that is hers is mine.
Those wings belong to her; therefore, they belong to me.
Come then, appear here and take me into the sky with your heavenly plumes.
You belong to me.
Appear.
An explosion of heat and light ricochet throughout my body as my chin thrusts back violently. And with a mighty spear of pain those wings I covet so much explode through my shoulder blades, expanding twenty feet in either direction at least.
“Geez.” Gage gives a little laugh, mostly mocking, but I’m as amused as he is at the moment. “Go big or go home.” His expression darkens, and in a violent burst a pair of dark wings expand from his body, grotesquely webbed, a time and a half longer than mine it seems.
A dull laugh of my own pumps through me. “You always did need to have the biggest baseball bat.”
“I always did need to get the girl.”
The ground evaporates from underneath us as Gage spikes us high into the sky, so fast, so very high, the Earth becomes a speck in a moment. The sky, the atmosphere around us, is at the exact point in the heavenlies where lavender meets navy. A thicket of stars shines around us in a display of fiery brilliance. I take in a quick breath, stunned by its beauty, and my lungs grapple for what little oxygen they can get.
“Don’t worry, Skyla.” Gage tightens his arms around me, his wings sweeping back and forth in slow, easy movements to keep us afloat. He holds my attention with that monstrous gaze. “I won’t let you go. And I won’t take you an inch higher. You’re still human enough. You need air.” His expression grows serious as he studies me. “You need the kids—Logan.”
“I need you, too, Gage.” I wrap my arms around him until it feels as if my nails are clawing into his back. “Make no mistake about it. I’m not holding on for dear life. I’m holding you because I want to. My wings are more than capable of landing me right back on my feet, on solid ground, right in front of Logan.” I glance down to the island that looks as if the Pacific swallowed it. If all goes well, Logan and the others are decimating Gage’s front line. A tiny smile flickers on my lips as I look into Gage Oliver’s stony blue eyes.
“I still love you so much,” I whisper. “It’s not a lie. It’s truer than every cell in our bodies combined, and I think you know it.”
His chest expands and deflates against me.
“I do know it, Skyla. And I love you, too. That’s not a lie either, and yet I’m not sure you truly understand just how much I mean those words.”
“You mean them enough to light the world on fire and watch it burn.”
The muscles in his jaws tense as his wings continue to maintain their pace.
“This is a controlled burn, Skyla. I just need your people. I need to cement my standing, and that of the Fems, forevermore. Until Kingdom come.”
“Bullshit,” I all but spit the words out into his face. “You and I both know you’re out of control. This pandemic is out of control. You’re trapped, so you’re smoking out my people—making it impossible for any living Nephilim on Earth to take the vaccine lest they find themselves locked in a government cage. Do you know they took Rory? This afternoon. She was the first.”
He glances past me. “So that was Rory.” A heavy breath comes from him, and I know him well enough to realize that was a sigh of relief.
“Yes,” I say. “She was the harbinger for my people. She is and always has been for Celestra—odd as her tactics might have been.” I give a long blink. “Gage, I don’t know the words to make you see that everything you’re doing is standing on the shoulders of Demetri’s lies. If you truly love me, and the kids, you’ll open your mind and your heart, and you’ll dig deep to find out which one of us is telling the truth—Demetri or me.”
“Skyla.” He winces as he pushes my name out.
“Don’tSkylame. You’re confused!” I riot in his face as a horrible noise begins to grow to our right, but I choose to ignore it for now.
“And I think you’re confused.” His voice is deep, angry, and just this side of ice cold.
“Then prove me wrong,” I say, letting go of him and holding my hands out as my wings do their best to hold me up, but I take a dip, a two hundred foot freefall, only to have Gage swoop down and pick me up again.
His brows twist against his forehead as he pulls me close, and we rise slowly into the stratosphere once again.
“You can’t do it, can you?” I all but shout. “You can’t prove me wrong.”
“Skyla, it was affirmed to me over a year ago—from Wes, from Demetri, from Marshall, and your mother.”
“I don’t believe it. Whatever Marshall and my mother told you was nothing short of skirting the issue. Don’t you get it? This is a stupid game. Demetri loves my mother. He’s obsessed with her. He wants to work shoulder to shoulder with her in the millennial kingdom. They have ridiculous rules in play. They’re not divulging the truth to you. None of them are. You need to find it out for yourself.” Gage looks at me as I grip his arms and give him a rattle. “If I could prove to you that you’re wrong—that all of this was the grand delusion Demetri promised he’d deliver—just tell me everything would go back to the way it was.”
“The grand delusion.” He glances to the planet below. “The grand delusion—the hardening of my heart that would be too strong for me to resist?” A small laugh pumps from him. “I’m sorry, Skyla, but that in itself was a manipulation of your mother’s. The only delusion that I had succumbed to was the fact that I was a simple Levatio. None of that was true. My truths were dark as night, no light, not a speck of goodness in them.”
