“They were our first leaders, and they are now our Guardians, watching over us, guiding us. We act in their name, carry on the mission the magic gave them, and trust they will keep us from the impurities of the power that corrupted them.”
I snapped back to the present, the noise within the room swelling again.
Slumping back against the bench, I pulled my glass toward me, eyeing the thin sip of rum lining the bottom. I tipped it back as the Storyteller’s words flooded my mind. There had been scores of legends passed down about the ascension of the Angels, who they were before, where they had come from.
But Aimee’s dripped with antiquity, words bolstered by unseen Spirits. A layer of validation wrapped around them.
The solidifying of magic within the Angels stood out to me, but I wasn’t sure why. It was a tale I had yet to come across, the implication nagging at my brain. The notion that they left something behind when they turned from warrior to Angel…well, my pulse pounded with strands of that legend.
Angelblood.
But magic taking solid form? I’d never heard of such a thing.
Aimee’s rendition of the Angels’ lives stirred a dim sadness within me, though. It sounded…lonely. Did Damien feel isolated in his desolate existence?
“How did the Angels ascend?” asked a small woman wrapped in a draping blue cloak and silver jewelry, seated in the front of the room. A hush returned to the crowd.
“Ah, my star-searching child, it is through the power of that who surrounds us. The great creator of it all…”
I scoffed, tuning her out. There was no being above the Angels. The six gods and goddesses were their equals, and that was it. Thirteen sacred beings.
It seemed the Storyteller did not always have reliable information.
“You don’t believe her either?” The man at the table next to me asked, lifting one dark, neatly trimmed brow.
“I enjoy the stories.” I pulled my hood tighter around my face. “But sometimes that’s all they are.”
“I think she is full of tainted Spirits.” The woman with him spoke in a lilting accent, her words lifting slightly at the ends. I couldn’t tell which clan they belonged to. “But it certainly makes for a fun evening.”
“I beg to differ.” That voice. I knew that voice.
Though the stranger who had spoken kept his hood tightly drawn around his face as he pulled back a chair to join my table, I’d recognize the gruff tone anywhere—had heard it in my nightmares.
His hulking frame and commanding presence. The dagger at his hip.
He’d changed his clothes since I last saw him, the current leather pants and blue linen shirt blending in much better, but I didn’t need to see the elongated canines or pointed ears shadowed beneath his cloak to remember the fae male that had held a knife to Santorina’s throat—Lancaster.
“What are you doing here?” I ground out, hands already reaching toward my weapon.
But his brows lifted, eyes flitting about the room, challenging me to fight him here. Where so many would see. Where so many would realize who I was.
Once my hand fell back to the table, he said, “Looking for you,” and fell into a seat beside me.
Me? Why me?
But I couldn’t ask now—not with so many listening.
“Well, it is a pleasure to see you,” I said with saccharine sweetness.
“Is it?” Lancaster smirked. Slipping a hand around my glass, he lifted it to his lips. Where it had been empty before, he now tossed back two fingers of liquor. The subtlety of the magic went unnoticed with the others, but I tucked away that little skill of his.
“You believe in thisgreat creator, then?” the woman asked Lancaster, trying to peek beneath his hood.
He pulled it tighter. “I’ve studied many different denominations in my long lifetime. Which I succumb to is beyond the point. I believe it is foolish to rule any out.”
Briefly, I wondered how fae texts conveyed the histories. Warped, I was certain, but curiosity still bloomed within me. And Lancaster couldn’t lie, which made his theories on power even more intriguing.
The woman brushed her long brown curls behind her shoulder and leaned forward, her low-cut green dress shifting with the movement, but before she could respond, her partner interrupted, “It’s a load of shit.” His voice was less kind, but his attention dropped to the woman’s breasts pressed against his arm.
