I smiled at his brusque and unromantic gesture. “As much as I appreciate your selflessness, I cannot accept. And one day, you’ll thank me for having turned youdown.”
His gaze hardened. “Thank you?” He snorted. “Your death—because without wings, youwilldie—will forever be on my conscience, so I don’t see how I’ll bethankingyou.”
I dragged my gaze off his face and stared at the wisps of lavender smoke puffing from the white canyon beyond the Arch. “Please take mehome.”
“Youarehome.” The pain in his voice made me want to reach out, but Ididn’t.
“This is your home, Seraph, notmine.”
“Have you considered how seeing you wingless will make Jarodfeel?”
Jarod’s words swelled inside, filled the void he’d left when he’d sent me away:I want you here. With me. I need youhere.
I smiled. “Angry. He’ll be terribly angry that I disregarded his wishes.Again.”
Asher stared at me as though I’d already lost a piece of mymind.
“Celeste, too. She’ll bite my headoff.”
Asher kept staring, dumbfounded by my eagerness to feel their wrath, not understanding that some furies were fueled by love. “Let’s get it over with then,” he saidgruffly.
My heart lightened as though it, too, were made offeathers.
He dove, his massive wings creating a current that pushed me higher. My wings strained to keep me in place, and then they, too, pumped the air, sending me hurtling toward the Arch and the future that awaited me beyondit.
Chapter 65
“Ican makeit quick but not painless,” Asher said, as I dusted myself off after landing a tadbrutally.
Inodded.
“There is no reversing this once it’sdone.”
Thin ropes of lavender smoke twined around my ankles, as though trying to carry me home. “Iunderstand.”
He shut his eyes, and his nostrilsflared.
I stared around me one last time. Perhaps I hadn’t given this world a fair chance, but how could I when it wouldn’t give Jarodone?
“Stretch your wings out and kneel.” Asher’s deep voice drifted to me on the breeze. “I don’t want you to fall and hurtyourself.”
I was touched by his concern. “You’re a kind man,Seraph.”
He grunted. “My kindness cost you yourwings.”
Ifrowned.
“If I hadn’t listened to Jarod . . .” He let his voice trail off, but I heard all the unsaidwords.
I would still have lost them, but their demise wouldn’t have weighed on his conscience. “I’m sorry you got tangled up in our story, but please don’t blame yourself. None of this was yourfault.”
“Allof it was my fault.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “If I hadn’t entered Jarod into the system, you wouldn’t be begging me to burn off yourwings.”
“If you hadn’t entered him into the system, I would’ve missed out on meeting my soulmate.”
His hand arced toward his thigh, smacking the brown leather ensconcing it. “There is no such thing as soulmates!”
I didn’t want to waste any more time fighting with Asher over our diverging beliefs, so I chose silence and knelt, pressing my palms into the warm stone and offering the archangel myback.
