“Nia—”
“No.” She lifted her head and glared at him. “If you had even a smidgen of feelings instead of that empty vault in place of a heart inside you, you’d understand what I’m going through. My whole life is falling apart, and you care nothing at all about any of that. As long as I’msafe!”
“Your heightened emotional state will make this harder on you.”
“Heightened emotional state?” She shot to her feet, her entire being trembling. “At least I have empathy. You wouldn’t even know what that is even if it bit your angelic ass?—”
“No!” Lore leaped across the kitchen table and grabbed her arm.
“What the hell are you doing?” she shrieked, trying to yank free, but his hold remained unbreakable. “Release me!”
“I cannot take a chance with you in this state?—”
“State?State?” Anger erupted. She whipped out the blade from her boot and pressed the point into his sternum. “Let. Me. Go. Or I swear on all that’s holy, I will stab you?—”
“Go ahead if it makes you feel better, as long as it keeps you here. You were dissolving.”
“W-what?”
“Your molecules were dispersing.” His sharp gaze searched hers, as if looking for more anomalies. “You could have reformed midair and crashed to your death.”
She blinked, fear leaching away her anger. Her fingers slackened, and the weapon fell with a clang.
“Nothing this potent comes without a price, Nia,” he said softly. “Nothing. You have to learn how to master this ability, to summon it and reform whereyouchoose.”
She could barely speak past the emotions clogging her throat. “I-I don’t understand?—”
The outer door opened, and Lore stepped back.
A tall, enormously built male wearing only drawstring black cotton pants entered, distracting her. Or rather, his hair did. All that silver, broken by a streak of ebony in front, flowed like yards of gleaming satin down his bare torso of braided muscles. He sauntered over—barefoot—as if he had all the time in the world.
“Well done.” A smirk rode his mouth as he clapped, causing his huge biceps to bulge and abs to ripple. “Don’t despair, oh,Pious One. You’re good at shielding. She was the one who drew me.”
Lore’s flat expression took on an edge of granite. “Could you not dress?”
Oh, so stone could feel when his heavenly self was slighted?
“Be grateful I wear this.” The guy waved a hand over his pants. “Unless you want me here naked.”
Another angel? Was this Michael?
He was as striking as the emotionless angel at her side, to whom she was sadly drawn and who saw her as nothing but a job.
The stranger ambled closer, stopping midway in the kitchen. He scratched his chest, and something black flickered beneath his skin and vanished. Nia blinked, so sure she must have imagined the scales.
“Michael?”
“Nah. I’ll pass on the angelic genus. I’m far superior. But you, pretty female, may call me Oh Mighty One.”
Nia rubbed her clammy palms down her pants, laughter bubbling up her throat. Maybe she was losing her mind. Heck, if he told her he was the Heavenly Father, she’d believe him. “Then you aren’t an angel?”
He snorted, his eerie wine-red eyes studying her.
“Race is a Guardian of the mortal realm,” Lore said, back to his usual detached self. “This is Rania Deveraux.”
Oh, so he did know her full name?
“Guardian?” Nia frowned. “What do you mean?”
