“Maybe I was trying to save my own ass by traveling to the wall. I saw what came out of that gateway and knew how much worse the Wilds were abouttoget.”
His small smile melted my heart a little further. “We both know you would have rather died than turn to thedemons.”
He was right; I couldn’t deny it. I didn’t care enough about saving my ass to agree to working with the demons, but there were children in the Wilds. When we’d first gone to the wall, we’d kept the children safely hidden from the civvies. As our trust in those at the wall grew, we decided to bring the children there to live with their parents, if they still had parents. The children remained at thewallnow.
“Probably,” Iadmitted.
“You may be my Chosen, but that is not why I want you. I want you because you’re beautiful. And not just on the outside, you’re also beautiful within. You can try to deny these things, but they’re all true. I know who youreallyare. I may even know you better than you knowyourself,Wren.”
My skin prickled at his words. They sounded so arrogant, so sure, but he waswrong. He didn’t know me as well as he assumed. As my memories had revealed to me recently,I’dforgotten who I was, so how could he possiblyknowme?
“That’s where you’re wrong, Corson,” I said as I braided my hair and knotted it around itself at the end to keep the braid in place. I was exceptionally proud my fingers didn’t tremble while Iworked.
“And why is that?” heasked.
Tossing the braid over my shoulder, I held his gaze as I replied, “You claim to know me so well, yet you don’t even know myrealname.”
He frowned as he stepped toward me. “What are you talkingabout?”
“Wren isn’t my name, not my real one, not the one my parentsgaveme.”
If I’d reached out, I could have pushed him over with one hand as he stared at me inconfusion.
“Get dressed,” I said. “I’ll be on the porch. We have toleave.”
I didn’t wait to hear his reply as I turned awayfromhim.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Corson
“There you are!” I didn’t glance at the fallen angel, Caim, when the raven landedbesideme.
The ebony bird stood at least three feet tall and weighed about a hundred pounds. With a flutter of wings and a ripple of movement, the raven went from ambling beside me to a full-sized man between one step and the next. At six-two, Caim was almost as tall as me and lean inbuild.
The fallen angel was the last creature I wanted to see right now. No, second to last, I decided. I preferred Caim toRaphael.
Caim the Fallen, or Raphael the Golden, as many whispered of the two very different angels. The two angels had proven their loyalty to Kobal, River, and the rest of us, but my hatred and distrust of angels were ingrained in me frombirth.
I especially didn’t like the angels who remained in Heaven. They were content to let the rest of us deal with the mess they helped to create when they threw Lucifer and his followers out of Heaven six thousand years ago. Lucifer would have destroyed Heaven if he’d been allowed to stay there. Without Heaven, Earth and Hell would have crumbled too, but the angels should have dealt with their shit instead of dumping it on the restofus.
I tolerated Caim more than Raphael because he displayed his emotions, whereas Raphael was often as emotive as stone. I also knew that Caim hadn’t chosen to follow Lucifer, not really. He’d gotten caught up in the battle the angels waged while in Heaven, and he’d been made to payforit.
“Here we are,” I murmured and glanced at Wren. She continued to walk ahead of me, her shoulders back, and herchinhigh.
The rainbow colors in Caim’s black eyes swirled as he studied her. Those same colors shone within his black hair and onyx wings. The foot-long silver spikes at the top of his wings were visible over his shoulders, while the spikes at the bottom nearly touched the ground as hewalked.
Unlike most of the other fallen angels who had regrown bat-like wings after they’d shorn them off, Caim’s wings had regrown with feathers. Despite those spikes and their ebony hue, his wings remained more angelic in appearance than the other fallen angels. Caim believed his bond to the raven he could transform into had allowed his wings to regrow astheyhad.
“We’ve been searching for you both for two days,”Caimsaid.
“We were gone for two days?” Wren looked back toaskCaim.
“Yes.”
She shook her head and focused forward again. When the motion caused her braid to fall off her shoulder, and tumble down her back, Caim’s eyes narrowed on the bite I’d left on her neck. My low snarl drew his attention quickly back to me. His mouth pursed to hold back hislaughter.
“You’re a bigger asshole than Raphael,” Itoldhim.
