Authors: Laura Kreitzer
“
I’m sorry, Ella,” he breathed with a look of pure adoration on his face. “I got carried away.”
I shook my head. My heart leapt at my name coming from his mouth. Though I’d been called Ella in the past, it never seemed right, but on his tongue, in his rich accent, it was perfect. He was perfect.
“
We won’t go farther,” he barely whispered. His face was so close to mine, and I was ravenous. I had to have him.
“
Of course not,” I said breathlessly and brought his lips firmly to mine. And though his kisses were the best things I had ever tasted, I needed more. I deliberated kissing him fully, deeply, but then knew what the consequences of such an indulgence would be. I’d lose control; I knew I would. And I didn’t want that to happen here, amidst the dusty shelves in the library.
I broke away from his mouth and kissed the line of his jaw up to his ear and then down his neck. A low growl rumbled in his chest, and he pushed me against the bookshelf. A book toppled down, and Andrew reached out and caught it. Before he tossed it to the ground, I caught the title of the book:
Timeless
. Though the title wasn’t what I had been looking for, something told me we needed to open it.
“
Wait,” I barely choked out. “I think we need to read that.”
CHAPTER 27: POWER
Andrew held out the book to me. I grabbed it and rubbed my thumb over the title
Timeless
. It seemed to be suffused with a mysterious glow. That was what angels were—living in their timeless immortality. Or that was what I thought until Abelie died. Even she thought that death was a fate the angels would eventually endure. Unfortunately, she was right.
“
There was a part of your dream you left out earlier,” Andrew said, bringing me from my thoughts. “And I want to know what happened. You said you saw my death.”
I didn’t want to think about it, but he deserved to know since he couldn’t remember. Without looking up, I responded. “The Ladies turned Lucia into a human. I can only guess that was the same spell Abelie and Aiden used when they decided to turn me human. Anyway, this was the second time I had seen Lucia’s death. She was stabbed with a knife with the Definitive Sun symbol on it by a Lady of Light.” I finally looked up to see Andrew staring at me intently. “Ehno loves Lucia, doesn’t he?”
He nodded. “Always has; they’re kindred souls.”
“
You can imagine how livid he was, then,” I mused. “He ran after her, and you followed, probably trying to stop him from getting himself killed. The Ladies didn’t hesitate as they turned you both human and killed you alongside her.”
“
Anything else?” he prodded, not a single note of anxiety in his voice.
I shook my head. “No. But you know what this means, don’t you?”
“
No.”
“
It means I have to change the Shadows back—Illuminate them.” I sighed. “We have to find a way to return the angels’ minds. How else will we fight against the Ladies of Light?”
“
We’ll try to find the answers,” he promised.
“
Have you seen this book before?”
“
It looks familiar,” he said. His eyebrows knitted together. “Let’s take it downstairs.”
I nodded, my breath still heavy from being intimate with Andrew. He moved in closer, and I backed into the bookshelf again. He placed a kiss on my ear and whispered against my skin, “We’ll talk about this—” he moved his hand between us “—later.” My breathing hitched, and he pulled away, chuckling.
He took my hand, and we went back down to the first level of the library. Lucia was the only one down there, scouring through the bookshelves for something that could help. When she saw us, she stopped poring over the books to join us at the table.
“
What did you find?” she wondered.
“
Have you ever seen this book?” I held it up for her.
She snatched it out of my grasp. “Yes,” she breathed.
Andrew and I exchanged a look of surprise.
“
It’s about our history. It’s been more than a thousand years since I’ve seen this. Where did you find it?” she asked, a faint crease between her eyebrows.
With a smirk, Andrew said, “It fell from a shelf above Gabriella’s head.”
Heat rose in my cheeks. “Andrew caught it before it could knock me out,” I admitted. “I saw the title, and for some reason, I knew we needed to read it.”
She nodded but didn’t look up from the dusty bindings. Without speaking, she handed it back to me. “If you have a feeling there’s something in here that can help then you should be the one to read it.”
My eyebrows rose.
“
Because you might see something that one of us doesn’t,” she explained and shot me an inquiring glance.
“
Right.”
I sat down and placed the book before me as I stared at it. The binding was hard and a dusty grey. The only word on it was Timeless. There were no pictures, no author name, just
Timeless
. I blew dust off the cover and opened it to reveal yellowed pages that looked so fragile I wasn’t sure if I wanted to turn them. I looked up to Andrew who smiled back. He placed his hand over the page.
“
Proteggere
,” he murmured.
Protect. It was easy to understand him, and that weirded me out a little. There was a slight gleam to the pages, as if an electric force coated the paper, before it disappeared.
“
Thanks,” I said.
I flipped the first page over, looked at the writing, and squinted. “Um, this isn’t going to work,” I told Andrew as I pointed to the text. “It’s in Italian.”
He sat down beside me and put his finger to the first paragraph. “
Tradurre
,” he mumbled.
Again, I understood the word: translate. “It’s weird that I can understand you when you speak Italian, but I can’t read it,” I told him with a half smirk. “But, I wonder, why is it that I was able to use magic without using Italian . . . you know, earlier?”
He smiled. “The language isn’t important. Also, you’re far more powerful than you realize. You’re only learning about yourself. I personally believe it was your grief and anger that made you explode with power like you did,” he rationalized. “Plus, you don’t have to use words to wield magic. With practice you can just think it—will it to happen. Not many people bothered to learn that skill, but it’s one I would advise you to practice.”
I nodded. “Because it looks like I have a battle ahead of me?”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “I hope not, for your sake, but it’s better to be prepared than not.”
I looked back down at the page and started reading.
It was easy to hide ourselves in the mountains of Italy, away from the cruel and corrupt. As armies became more powerful, they also became greedier. After centuries of being left alone, an army finally found its way through the mountains to the small village of Divina.
This really was their history. I became intrigued, pulled the book off the table, placed it in my lap, and leaned closer to devour every word. Andrew chuckled next to me.
“
Try this,” he barely spoke in my ear. He grabbed my hand and put it over the page I was reading. “Close your eyes,” he whispered.
“
I don’t see how covering the page and closing my eyes is going to help me read this any better,” I said, amused.
“
Trust me,” he breathed.
“
I do. You know I do.”
“
Keep your eyes closed and will the story to be told to you.”
“
What?” I asked. My eyes flew open, and I shot him a skeptical look.
“
You can use magic to read this without ever looking at it. Trust me,” he smirked. “All the books in this place have been infused with memories. Memories can tell you more than the words.”
“
More than the words?” I raised my eyebrows.
“
Sometimes secret messages can lay hidden beneath the context of the words. My mother and father used to pass love notes to each other on the pretense they were making pottery when they were younger—before we became immortals.” His eyes blazed a more radiant blue. “If one were to try to pull the images from the pottery, they would see the messages, or images, that they were passing back and forth to each other.”
“
What happened to your parents?” I wondered aloud.
“
My mother became sick when I was twenty, and she didn’t survive the winter.” His chest rose under a heavy sigh before he continued. “My father lived until I was twenty-six. While hunting he was bitten by a snake. He was too weak to use magic, and the other hunters didn’t get to him in time. He was dead by the time they found him.”
I realized, all of a sudden, that I hadn’t asked him how old he was. “What age were you when you became immortal?”
“
I was twenty-eight.”
“
And so you’ve been immortal for four thousand years?”
“
Roughly. I suppose immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Eventually someone was going to snap; I just didn’t think it would have been the Ladies of Light.” His fist clenched above the table. “They were pure and good. They saved millions of lives. That’s what makes it so difficult to believe that they would go this route.” He looked up at the ceiling and shook his head. “Turning Halos and Guardians into Shadows? It doesn’t make any sense. You don’t think that someone is forcing them to—”
“
No one forces the Ladies to do anything they don’t want to do,” Lucia cut in. “We fought against them. And we both know the Soul Stalker isn’t strong enough to control them.” She snickered. “You saw what Gabriella did to the Soul Stalker—what she couldn’t do to the Ladies of Light. It’s obvious that they’re doing this on their own. They aren’t who they used to be.”
I nodded in agreement. “I didn’t see anything in my dream that would counter what we saw when they attacked us outside the underground laboratory.”
We lapsed into silence.
I closed my eyes and put my hand upon the pages of the old book. Who knew when this had been written? In the silence, I concentrated with all my being on trying to pull the words, the meanings, off the pages. Without warning, there was a sinking sensation. Like I was being squeezed into a small hole, or as if a big hand was pulling me down until I stood in a small sand-colored room. Five people stood around an elderly woman who sat like an ancient sentinel. Her eyes were glazed over like she had cataracts, and her face was radiantly wrinkled and dark.
“
Welcome, Illuminator.” She smiled at me. A few of her teeth were missing. “I’m Zola, the Prophetess.”
“
Zola?” I moved forward. It felt like I was in a dream, my movements slow. Every motion was magnified, as if I was a sleepwalker. For a few seconds I stared at her in complete disbelief.
“
I knew one day you would come.” She gestured for me to sit down. The five others, all dressed in white togas, moved away to reveal a stone chair. I strode past them and took a seat, wondering why they all looked like Greek gods.
“
Where am I?”
“
We are in Greece, but this is only a memory, placed in the
Timeless
book for you to find,” she explained in a throaty voice. Her face remained stony. “These are the Ladies of Light.” She pointed to three stunning women, their hair tied in beautiful knots around their heads. Beneath the white of their heavy togas were their tattoos that snaked around their arms and neck. “And these two are Halos.” Both men were tall and well built. The one thing that seemed to be the same with all five of them was the fact their skin looked like it had been carved from wood.
They all bowed before me, low enough that they were horizontal at the waist, almost kissing their toes. “Illuminator,” they greeted then rose.
“
The prophecy is a lie,” the Prophetess said, straight to the point.