The thought of him sleeping with Lexy would have sent me in a rage in my natural body, but now I can see it for how—well, for a lack of a better word—infantilethat angst would have been. To be angry about Logan having sex with Lexy feels silly, unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
I don’t feel possessive over him the way I did on Earth. Somehow I understand that our time had come and gone and he was free to be with whom he wished, and yet that doesn’t dampen my affection or my strong as steel love for him. I do my best to shake that far too accepting feeling out of me. Because deep down, Irefuseto accept it. I want my fierce feelings of possession back where they belong—inside of me, boiling my blood.
I must hold onto how I would have felt on Earth, in my body. I must not acquiesce to death’s ridiculous demands. The other side is luring me, soothing my spirit, lying to me by telling me all will be well without me. And perhaps if I were anyone else, and the fate of the Nephilim didn’t hang in the balance, I might have believed it.
Perhaps if I were married to someone else I would have been able to give him away for as little as this sweet song death is humming in my ear, but I am married to Logan Freaking Oliver, the great love of my life.
Fate moved time, and space, and death out of our way. The deepest oceans of time were split in two so we could walk through them. I don’t die in a whimper at some kegger at Ellis Harrison’s house. This is not how I go down.
Perhaps some would call dying in the arms of the man you love a beautiful death, and I cannot deny loving Gage. If the circumstances were different, if he wasn’t the very reason I’m dead, yes, it would have been a beautiful thing to die in Gage Oliver’s arms, all of his affection being poured into me by way of his lips. But as I gleaned long ago, his love is a toxin that he loved to administer by way of his kisses. It was something I had become addicted to, his voracious, poisonous brand of love.
Even while I was fading, lingering in that precarious place between that world and this, he was filling my head with lies, telling me it was all for my benefit, for the benefit of our love, for our precious family, which he poured gasoline over and lit with the match of his rejection. He watched us burn for a solid year, and instead of putting out the flames, he extinguished my soul from the planet.
I will never comprehend the evil taking up residence inside him. How had this come to pass? How can this be? Who in the hell is Gage Oliver, anyway? It doesn’t seem plausible. None of it. Perhaps I too died the moment Gage Oliver had his head sliced off that day at the masquerade ball, and the rest of what I thought had transpired was some sick, senseless, twisted nightmare that will inevitably lead me to the throne room of God.
Gage.
My conscience cannot comprehend where everything went wrong. The harder I try to unravel this ball of knotted yarn, the farther back in time I go, right up until the night of his conception. Odd thoughts begin to claw at my conscience.
Why did Candace Messenger crawl out of the heavenlies and take up a corporal form to birth me?
My God, why did Demetri do the same to conceive Gage?
Not one celestial being dropped down from heaven for Logan—unless—unless that’s right—Logan was conceived in a sense far before us all. Of course, he was—through Marshall’s lineage.
Marshall had an offspring somewhere in that haunted seventeenth century. And Marshall is the key to Logan.
I am part Caelestis. Gage is part Fem. Logan is part Sector. And there it is. The holy trinity of celestial warfare. It’s as if I can see the pieces to the puzzle manifesting before my eyes. Yes. The triune Nephilim monster that I will never comprehend.
But why not have Marshall be Logan’s father?
Another thought hits me, strong as a thunderbolt. Marshall is determined to marry me. My mother all but sold me to him for a song.
Of course.
And my mother knows the celestial laws regarding marriage better than anyone. She was, after all, in the front row when the Holy Spirit taught the class. A woman is not to marry a father and a son. I’m willing to bet the body I no longer have, that Marshall and Logan are exactly as far apart in relation deemed appropriate by the Master for me to partake in marrying them both.
Yes. That is my mother’s game in a nutshell. I’m to marry Logan, then Marshall, and bear them both children. I’m not sure if Marshall was in on it the way she and Demetri were. Why do I get the feeling Demetri has more at stake here? I could feel it in the bones I no longer possess.
Something extra nefarious is going on with Demetri.
Something personal…
Demetri loves my mother—my other mother, Lizbeth. However, my celestial mother isn’t all that crazy about Lizbeth. But she does tolerate her. And I think she once mentioned that she handpicked Lizbeth for my father after her death. I was an infant when the Counts, driven by the Fems, set my mother, Candace, on fire and killed her. The only true way to ensure a Celestra stays dead is to burn their bodies. It leaves no room for healing.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
And that is the end of a Celestra’s story. Or in this case a Caelestis’.
Demetri is downright obsessed with my earthly mother. But why? Why her? Sure, she’s beautiful, but the world is rife with beautiful women.
My father loved her. Oh, how he loved her. And if Lizbeth Messenger Landon is anything, she is the epitome of loveable.
She is a Nephilim, so I can see the allure.
Demetri and my father seem indifferent to one another—no big rivalry there. If Demetri loves Lizbeth so much, why didn’t he shove Tad Landon out of the way when she was grieving my father? Surely she would have fallen under his spell way back when.
Tad is the equivalent of softened butter. Demetri could have sliced right through him with one wicked glance.
