His
resolve to face everything crumbled when he sensed someone step out
onto the balcony behind him, their footsteps silent on the
terracotta tiles, and then they stepped into view.
Amelia
stood beside him, a vision in her sheer white flowing dress that
barely concealed her body and her silver hair shining in the
moonlight. Her eyes were still a shade too close to silver,
brighter and more otherworldly than his Amelia’s had ever been. He
quickly cast his gaze downwards to the hem of her dress where it
turned blue and her bare feet, staring at them in order to avoid
having to look into her eyes and torture himself with the
differences between this woman and his lost love.
A breeze
blew the hem of her dress against her legs, revealing the cherub
tattoo on her ankle. Marcus frowned at it, pain spearing his chest
as he remembered the first time he had noticed it. She had been in
the hall outside her apartment, wearing that plum coloured slip
that had left little to his imagination and had sparked the
awakening of his suppressed feelings for her. He could still
remember the warmth of her hand on his as she had iced his
knuckles, and the heat of her gaze on his bare back. Everything
between them had started that night. It had been their beginning,
and now they had reached their end, and he would give everything to
go back to that moment and do things differently so she didn’t have
to die.
So she
didn’t have to leave him alone in the world with only an eternity
of suffering and loneliness ahead of him.
He tore
his eyes away, skipped over her and stared at the moon.
The
bright orb held his eyes but not his attention. That wandered back
to Amelia where she stood beside him and he ached inside. He wished
that everything would end so he no longer felt the pain burning in
his chest. The past day had been a nightmare and he hated what had
happened and hated that Einar had saved him. He would rather be
dead than face this torment. He couldn’t bear it. He tried so hard
to cope with everything and to be strong, to find his resolve to
continue his mission and protect the woman now standing beside him,
and when she wasn’t present, he could find it and some sense of
peace. The moment he set eyes on her again, it shattered, leaving
him weak, and his heart cried out for Amelia to return to
him.
He drew
in a slow deep breath and then forced himself to look at
her.
Amelia.
His heart
still called her that even when he knew she was no longer that
soul.
What was
she now?
Not an
angel, that was certain.
Was she
still Amelia?
The
temptation to raise his left hand and gently brush the backs of his
fingers across her cheek was overwhelming. If he did, he wouldn’t
get the reaction he expected. She wouldn’t lean into his caress or
look at him with love in her eyes as she used to. She would remind
him that she didn’t know him and his heart couldn’t bear to hear it
again.
He shut
down his emotions, forcing them away until he was cold inside, as
empty as the silver eyes watching him.
“What do
you want?”
***
Chapter 18
A deep
sense of pain in her heart woke her and it wouldn’t be ignored. She
stared down at her chest, confused by the feeling burning inside
her, trying to understand it. She knew nothing of emotions. Not
positive or negative. What sort of feeling was this? It drove her
to leave the bed although she wasn’t sure why and then led her from
the room. She regarded the mixture of mortals and angels gathered
in the next room with cold eyes, unaffected by their presence. They
watched her and when they looked as though they might speak, she
turned away, following the pain in her heart into another
room.
She
looked ahead of her and raised her eyebrows when she saw that her
knight was alone and the pain in her chest began to lessen. Was it
his doing? She didn’t understand it at all. How could laying eyes
on him alleviate the strange hurt inside her?
The air
was cool outside on the small balcony and she walked forwards,
desiring to see what it was that held her knight’s attention so
intently. The moon. It hung above them in an inky sky, surrounded
by bright pinpricks of stars. She stared at it, bathing in its
strong light, and then looked at her knight.
He
avoided her, choosing to look at her feet instead of her face, and
she recalled the pain that had been in his eyes and his heart when
they had met in that field.
He had
called her Amelia.
She
wished that she recalled that name but it was foreign to her, as
mysterious as he was and the others too. While she knew what they
were, she didn’t know who they were, and she had no desire to
either. They were instruments to her, three angels who would
eventually do her bidding or would die.
Three?
Four
angels.
She
looked at her knight when her heart hurt again and the pain eased.
Why couldn’t she think of him as one of the rest? Why did she want
to set him apart from them?
“What do
you want?” he said in a deep voice and she wasn’t sure how to
respond to such a demanding question. She wasn’t sure yet what she
wanted or what she needed to do. It would come to her in time. She
was sure of that much at least. “You should remain indoors where it
is safe.”
She
looked back into the apartment and through it to the living room
where the others waited. There was truth in his observation. He was
a single angel and there were three in the other room, one of which
was superior in strength, power and experience. Logically speaking,
she was safest there, surrounded by three angels.
But logic
didn’t seem to matter much in this instance. Something overruled
it.
“There is
nowhere safer than near you.” It was an answer she derived from the
fact that her pain had eased when she had laid eyes on him and that
it was almost gone now that she was close to him.
She was
certain that was what the feeling was about. She wasn’t safe
without her knight and he hadn’t been in the room when she had
awoken. It had shocked her and she had felt the need to find
him.
He turned
to regard her with startled eyes. “Why?”
His
silver-blue eyes were warmer for a moment and then turned hollow
again.
Amelia
touched his hand and felt his pain. “You are sad.”
“I am,”
he said without inflection, cold and emotionless.
“Because
I do not recall you?”
He
exhaled slowly and looked at the moon again. “Something like
that.”
She felt
different inside again, no longer cold or empty, and struggled with
the new feelings as she looked at his profile, her gaze tracing it.
The more she looked at him, the stronger the feeling became,
spreading through her until she could no longer bring herself to
see him as nothing more than a creature that was beneath her, one
who should sacrifice himself to protect her. A sense that she knew
him flowed through her in the wake of the first feeling and she
tried to grasp it but couldn’t.
The sight
of him in pain moved her to go to him and comfort him. She stepped
around him, a trickle of fear running along her nerves, confusing
her further, and cupped his cheek, her eyes meeting his.
“Did I do
something to upset you?” she whispered and his eyes widened. “Is it
the mortal soul that shared this body with me?”
His face
darkened and he pushed her hand away from him, scowling at her. “I
don’t want to talk about this with you.”
Amelia
frowned back at him. She wanted to put him in his place for
speaking so disrespectfully to her but she couldn’t bring herself
to go through with it. She had never witnessed such suffering. It
filled her with a sense that she should feel something for him or
do something to help him.
“There
must be something I can do to ease your pain,” she said and he
looked at her again, eyes soulful and full of hope.
“Do you
remember me?”
Amelia
thought about it as she stared into his eyes, searching her
fragmented memories for knowledge of him and his kinsmen. A flicker
of something beat in her chest again as it had done in the field
when he had posed that question to her before.
“I know
you… in here.” She touched her chest and then her head. “But not in
here. I wish that I knew more about you than just this sensation
within me. You are familiar to me.” She curled her fingers up and
then touched her chest again, focusing there. “Dear to me… or
perhaps I was dear to you. I wish I remembered you.”
“Why?”
His voice cracked and the pain in her chest increased as his eyes
searched hers.
Amelia
touched his face again and he closed his eyes and leaned into her
palm. She sensed the moment his pain eased because the ache in her
heart eased too. Whatever connected them, it was strong and fierce,
a bond that couldn’t even be undone by death.
“This is
not Amelia touching me now,” he whispered to himself and frowned,
his eyes still closed. The sense of sorrow and hurt in him
increased. “Whatever this divine being before me is, it is not the
woman I was falling for.”
“I wish
that I remembered you because then your pain would cease. I want to
ease your suffering.”
He opened
his eyes and looked so deep into her eyes that she felt as though
he was trying to see the answer to his question before he posed it.
“The others believe that in time you will remember things… will
you?”
The pain
that beat in her heart now was so intense that it stole her breath
and hot liquid rose into her eyes, threatening to spill onto her
cheeks. The feelings awakening inside her both confused and
surprised her. Whatever this angel had felt for the mortal soul
within her body, it had been strong. She had meant a lot to
him.
She
didn’t understand the emotions involved, struggled to grasp their
meaning, and had thought that angels didn’t bear such mortal
feelings.
They had
changed since her last life. She didn’t recall exactly what they
were like before, only that they were cruel beings fit only for
destruction.
Marcus
was anything but cruel. There was such warmth in him and affection,
and she honestly felt safest around him, as though they still
shared a bond.
He looked
at her, his icy eyes full of turbulent emotions that she could feel
through the point where she was touching him. He lowered his head,
causing his overlong black hair to fall forwards and caress his
forehead, and a desire to brush it back again so she could see his
face momentarily burst into life inside of her.
She
raised his head so he looked at her again, leaned in and tiptoed,
bringing her mouth up to his. He knocked her hand away and stepped
back before her lips could touch his.
“Don’t!”
he snapped and the anger that radiated from him and flowed into her
gave her a sense of the true depth of his power and how dangerous
he was. She had underestimated him. The dark angel wasn’t the most
powerful after all. There was something about Marcus, a hidden
strength that she hadn’t noticed before. Did he even know that he
had it? “It doesn’t work that way… you can’t just do something like
that.”
He
stepped back again and she didn’t like the gap that opened between
them or how it felt as though it was a vast crevasse rather than a
mere few feet. He glared at her, eyes void of warmth now and full
of unending darkness.
“I can’t
take it,” he growled the words and his power rose again, his fury
burning through her and warning her away. “I can’t… not if you
don’t remember everything that has happened between us.” He
clenched his fists and they shook at his sides. “You don’t remember
anything?”
His anger
faltered and hope flickered in his eyes again.
She shook
her head. “Perhaps I will in time. Perhaps the feeling in my heart…
the sense that you were dear to me… will revive the memories I have
lost and restore them. Would you like that?”
She
trembled as she waited to hear his answer, suddenly unsure of
herself and of anything. What had he done to her? Angels were
nothing but instruments. They were disposable. They were not
creatures that she sought to placate and soothe. They were beings
she had little care for. She had little care for anything. How had
this angel changed that about her?
Part of
her was afraid. The emotion was as alien as the rest of the ones
she had experienced since waking this evening and made her feel
vulnerable and weak. For the first time, she was aware of the power
an angel held, and it scared her. While she could take him in a
fight, she couldn’t defeat him in this war of feelings. They
stripped her of her defences and left her bare, exposed to him and
at his mercy, and she couldn’t grasp why they were flooding her.
She hadn’t asked for them, and couldn’t recall ever feeling
anything for one of his kind before. In the past, she had never
cared what they had thought of her, but now she stood hanging on
every breath he drew, waiting to hear the answer to her
question.