Any Envoy foolish enough to admit they were infected with human emotion risked death. Not a century ago, the Envoys had shredded one of their own for just such an offense: for loving a human. It was an assassination, an abject slaughter, borne of intolerance for the corruption they all felt clawing away at them…the human emotion that was driving the Envoys insane.
Also, the girl—this one girl—had to die. For when her soul and body parted, her energy would open the Aether, and the Envoys trapped on Earth could finally go home. This design was centuries in the making. Asher wanted this; he’d helpeddesign it. He wanted her to die. At least, heshouldwant her to die, and he shouldn’t care that another Envoy moved to hasten her demise.
But he did.
And as he marveled at how his first tear slid between his finger and thumb, and how his second twinkled in the starlight, he realized he was not the only Envoy evolving. He was not the only one corrupted by feelings. All of the Envoys trapped on Earth were changing—going mad, perhaps—and these creatures who once valued balance above all else were now tipping the scales to one side or the other. While some experienced emotions, such as love, others chose behavior that was simply, as Woodfork had so eloquently put—evil.
Asher envisioned the fate that awaited his girl—the excruciating pain of having her soul ripped from her body, the hands of another Envoy touching her—
Asher felt his teeth gnash, and in that moment, he resolved to go to her.
Chapter two
A Guarded Girl
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” - Bertrand Russell
Hailey stared at the empty can on her tray, silently willing the caffeine to kick in. The last thing she needed was to fall asleep, dream of monsters, and have an “episode” in front of her 200 closest non-friends.
No way she’d let that happen.
Now if only her droopy eyelids would cooperate, because the hard plastic chair under her butt sure wasn’t. The dang thing was teasing her and feeling mighty comfy, like a puffy armchair, and she was sinking fast. Thankfully, though, just as her head bobbed, the bell rang, jolting her into a wide-eyed, full-body spasm.
Great. Real smooth, she thought, rubbing her face with both hands as a few gigglers shuffled past.
She groaned, rising with all the enthusiasm of a mushroom, not at all looking forward to another two hours inside the social torture chamber, or as everyone else referred to it, South Side High School.
She was so intent on avoiding the students there for the rest of her senior year that she rarely looked up from her books anymore, and those last two hours dragged. When three o’clock finally rolled around, she bolted outside, took the first open seat on the bus, rested her head against the window, and let it bouncethere. She was just about to make it through another day of school very happily unnoticed, when Tage Adams smacked her on the back of the head.
“Ah!” she yelled, startled from a doze.
The bus was waiting at their stop, like normal, and Tage was waiting for her in the aisle, politely—not normal.
Tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, she hurried off the bus.
Tage followed.
“What’s up with you today?” he said nonchalantly, adjusting his pace to match hers.
He’d never donethatbefore.
“Nothing,” Hailey said, side-eyeing him. They’d been catching the bus at the same stop for four years, and he’d never so much as looked at her.
“You’re usually not like that, that’s all.”
“Like what?”
“Nodding off in class, falling asleep on the bus…you know, slacking off. It’s just, you know, you usually have your nose in a book.”
“Oh,” she said, immediately recalling every awkward thing she’d done in the past four years, which Tage had no doubt seen, remembered, and was also at this very moment envisioning—
“Guess you were working late last night…St. Paddy’s Day…”
“Yeah.” Of course she was working late. Her family owned the most popular Irish pub in Pittsburgh. Hailey pressed her lips together. Small talk was so not her thing. Especially not with him.
Her mind went blank.
Searching the pavement for a thought, she chewed her lip as too many seconds stretched the silence. Finally the pressure forced her good sense aside and she opened her mouth to say…anything.
