Grabbing my arm, Gage gently set me to the side so I wasn’t his human shield anymore. His hands turned to fists and I saw the muscles tic in his jaw. “How about you come say that to my face,” Gage retorted.
“He’s with us,” I growled. I called up my angel marks in case I needed to use force. The angelic script on my arms started to glow and swirl.
“That’s enough,” Aurelia’s voice boomed behind me, and I spun to see the master Lumen coming out of the armory. “Go back to whatever you were doing!” she snapped at the assembled crowd and clapped her hands.
They all hesitated for a moment, but eventually started to walk away. The two armed Watchers who stood before Gage and me sucked their wings into their backs and sauntered off, but not before sneaking a glare at Gage over their shoulder.
No. He just got back. I don’t want his homecoming to be like this!
“Gage, I’m so glad to see you are alive.” Aurelia approached him with a genuine smile and my spirits lifted. If anyone could fix this rotten mood, it was her.
“You might be the only one,” Gage ground out, and my heart sank. He swept his gaze over the retreating forms of the dispersing crowd. “I’m sure there’s more than one Lumen here who thinks it would have been better if I’d died.”
I saw the darkness swirling in the depths of his green eyes. Something really bad had happened to him in Avalon, or maybe he felt the Lumens had already rejected him. Either way, the old Gage was back, the one who counted on nothing and no one.
“I need some time alone, Tate. I’m going for a walk.”
“But, Gage…” He just got back—literally back from the dead—and he wanted to leave me again? Why?
I frowned. It was impossible to not be hurt by that. “Skye’s funeral is later. I thought…”
Reaching out, he brushed a finger across my lower lip. “I’m sorry I’m being so shitty. I just… I can’t be looked at like that every day, okay? LikeI’ma demon.”
My heart broke at those words. He turned, grasped the gate’s handle, and then left, mixing in with the crowd on the busy street.
There was movement at my back, and I turned, prepared to see Aurelia or Drea, but instead it was Dash.
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” was all Dash said before he slipped out into the crowd and disappeared as well.
The happiest half hour of my life had just turned into the saddest. Gage was back but he was still broken, and this time I wasn’t sure I could fix him.
I wish I had an angel mark to fix my broken heart.
CHAPTERFOUR
The rest of the afternoon passed with no sign of Gage. The evening came, and then Skye’s funeral was upon us. Dash and Gage were still MIA.
I checked my phone for the millionth time, hoping to get another text from Dash that was more than the “we’re good” he sent three hours ago.
“I’m sure he’s fine. It’s a lot to take in,” Drea assured me.
Yeah it was, and I was trying to be sensitive to that, but I’d also slept on the hard ground for two weeks for that man and I’d only gotten one stinking kiss. I needed at least a dozen more—one for every night on that stone floor.
“Did you guys know that the angels in Avalon work out like six hours a day?” Skye piped in from her place on the edge of Drea’s bed. “And they have weapons you wouldn’t even dream of. I could blink and your head would probably fall off.”
I rolled my eyes. “I highly doubt that.”
“Want me to prove it?” Skye got right up in my face with her eyes wide open and stared at the tip of my nose.
I squirmed. “No. I’m good. I like my head where it is. You’re intense. Dead Skye isn’t my fav.”
Drea and Marlow both perked up. “Skye’s here?”
“What’s she saying?” Drea asked.
I sighed, relaying the convo, and then spent the next ten minutes playing Telephone.
Although Skye was with us in ghost form, she’d said Cael had sent her here on some mission and then she would go back to Avalon for eternity, so I had to remind myself that I didn’t know how long she would actually be with us. Even so, it was hard to have sympathy and feel sad about Skye’s death when she was right in front of me telling me I needed to pluck my eyebrows.
