I jerked my gaze back to her. “I’ve known him all of four days.” An intense four days, butstill. . .
“But you likehim?”
“Yes.”
“So, what happensnow?”
“I don’t know, Celeste. I don’t know what todo.”
She slid her hands into her skinny jeans’ pockets, her oversized blue plaid shirt flapping like a piece oftarp.
“What should Ido?”
“Don’t ask my advice, Leigh.” Her attention was on the dust billowing around her black combat boots, which she wore come rain or shine, winter and summer alike. “Because I’mbiased.”
I nodded, then went right back to brooding silently as I followed Celeste out of the park, across the river, and all the way back to the guild. Even though I wanted to lose myself in the maze of twisted streets for a few more hours, I entered our celestialsanctum.
The air was alive with the twittered arias of the rainbow-winged sparrows perched on the quartz fountains and the tinkle of feminine voices. Three Fletchings were moving on the other side of the Atrium, laughing about something one of them had said. How I envied their carefreemanner.
Their laughter faded, replaced by a series of rapid-fire whispers, “C’est elle, non?” “Je n’arrive pas à croire qu’elle a réussi.” “Incroyable.”It’s her? I can’t believe she succeeded.Incredible.
They were talking aboutme.
About my startlingexploit.
News traveledfast.
One of the girls—the blue-eyed, pixie-haired blonde I remembered from the Ranking Room the night after my disastrous dinner with Jarod—looked straight at me. “How did you doit?”
Respectful of the archangel who surely didn’t want the news of a wrongful score traveling the halls of the guild, I said, “I didn’t giveup.”
Celeste glanced at me, then back at the girls, who seemed to be waiting for me to add somethingmore.
When I didn’t, the blue-eyed girl said, “Your friend Eve was looking for you. I think she’s in thecafeteria.”
The scent of the heavy pink blooms blanketing the quartz walls becamestifling.
Eve washere? I gaped at Celeste, wondering if she’d known, but her eyes were as wide as myown.
For several heartbeats, I barely moved. Only my fingers twitched, creasing the hammered purple silk fabric of my dress. There were only two reasons Eve would have come—either she’d completed her wings and had traveled to Paris to say goodbye like she’d promised or she’d heard I’d earned a hundred feathers and had come to . . .what? Congratulate me? Check that I hadn’tcheated?
Whatever her reasons for using the Channel for a visit, I realized I didn’t want to see her. I was afraid of what I might say to her. Sure, her plan had backfired, and I’d won, but what was it I’dwon?
Awareness that angels weren’t virtuous, meincluded?
Doubt as to whether I wanted to spend an eternity in Elysium or a single lifetime onEarth?
Lucidity that I couldn’t marry a man forstatus?
A broken heart, because I cared too deeply for an emotionalcripple?
I started to back out of the Atrium, suffocating on the smell of petals, when my name echoed against every single slab of translucent quartz. Jaw clenched, I looked over my shoulder at the girl with the heavy black hair and sharp hazel gaze who’d been the bearing wall of my childhood. Where had she been when my house crumbled? When I was left in therubble?
“Congratulations,” she said. “I just heard thenews.”
I searched for a glint of genuine happiness but found only uncertainty. Which was new forEve.
“I trusted you,” I said tonelessly. “And you played me for a fool,Eve.”
