Fallen Embers (Fallen Guardians #9)

Chapter 26

Chapter

Twenty-Six

Footsteps crunched through the snow, stirring Nia from the pit of despair.

Lore? Her heart thudded hard as if it would escape her.

“Hey.” A hand gently pressed her shoulder, and Echo rounded the bench.

Nia’s heart sank to her belly. Why had she expected him to come after her? He was leaving. Hell, he was probably already gone.

“You okay?” Echo brushed the snow off the wooden seat and sat next to her.

“Okay as I can be.” Forcing a smile, she met her sister’s troubled stare. “I didn’t mean to rush out like that. I-I…” Nia didn’t know what to say, so she lifted her shoulder in a helpless shrug. “It doesn’t matter?—”

“Yes, it does!” Echo faced her. “You just found out you have a family. It’s overwhelming for me, too. This is all on Michael and Lore for keeping this from you, from us.”

Tears welled, and she tried to blink them away. “To be fair, Lore did try to tell me, but I was so mad at him, I wouldn’t listen…”

Echo pulled the ends of her sweater sleeves to cover her hands, her gaze skating over Nia’s face. “I still cannot believe this is real. I’m a twin. It’s like a miracle.”

“For me, too.” Nia’s smile wavered. “I’m so sorry for what happened to you and about your foster family?—”

“Don’t apologize. Blame those damn angels.” Echo’s mouth tightened. Her fingers released her sleeves, and she rubbed her palm with her thumb.

Nia frowned at the tattoo there and grasped Echo’s hand. “What happened?”

“This?” She grimaced. “You probably already know that we are the descendants of the Watchers. So, yeah…” She traced a finger over the pattern of some kind of stylized eye. “It happened during my studies about our ancestors. It’s an angelic rune. Lore calls it a locator sigil.”

Hearing his name, the air in her lungs escaped in a harsh breath, so sure an invisible fist was squeezing her chest?—

“What is it?” Echo asked as if sensing her pain. Nia just shook her head, her throat tight.

Frowning, her twin continued, “During one of those lessons about a year and a half ago, this rune lifted from the angelic scroll I was going through. I nearly had a heart attack when it settled on my palm?—”

“What?” Nia gasped. She grasped Echo’s wrist. “Look.” She put her hand next to her twin’s, revealing the curved mark. “I accidentally broke a glass, probably around the same time, too—my hand suddenly stung so bad that the piece I held dug into my palm, and this scar remained.

It looks more like half an eye…”

Echo stared at Nia’s palm, then at her own. “Even apart, you felt me…” She blinked several times, tears wetting her eyes. “I’m not surprised. It hurt like nails were hammered into my palm at the time. At least the others weren’t painful when they appeared.”

“You have more runes?”

“Yep, I’ll show you later.”

“So…” Nia clenched her fingers and finally asked the question burning a hole in her mind. “Lore’s your tutor?”

Echo drew her sleeves over her fingertips again, her attention on the glassy surface of the gray lake. “He was, then just before Christmas, Michael okayed me not continuing. It seems I know all I should for now.”

So, she would never see Lore again? Her belly dipped.

A sudden sense of awareness took hold of her as if he were close, and warmth swept through her. She glanced over her shoulder, her heart tripping anxiously as she searched for him. No one was there. Only the snow-covered plants and shrubs witnessed the hope fading from her eyes.

“I’m glad to ditch the studies.” Echo laughed, shoving back her overlong bangs, revealing a star-shaped scar near her hairline. “And I won’t miss my pain-in-the-ass tutor.”

“What do you mean?”

“Surely Lore must have driven you batshit crazy with his ‘ I’m an angel, therefore superior ’ attitude? I mean, you told him off before you rushed outside. Can’t blame you…”

Nia bit her lip and stared at her hands on her lap. No matter what had happened between them, the bottom line was she’d fallen for her angelic assassin-slash-protector so damn hard.

“Oh, shit!” Echo gasped. “You and Lore?” A grin started. “Man, I was so caught up in my discovery of you that I missed the dynamics between you two. Wow! That’s wonderful!”

“No, it’s not.”

“Wait. You and Lore are together, right?” she asked, her brow furrowing.

Nia sighed deeply. “No.”

“Why not? From your expression, I can see… Hell, I feel there is more.”

God, she wished it was so, wished there wasn’t such a great divide between them, namely the Celestial Realm. How did one even fight something like that, fight Heaven?

“Are you telling me he never kissed you?” Echo asked.

Heat swept through Nia’s cold cheeks at the memory of Lore asking her to kiss him. She had to force the words out through a throat swelling with emotions. “Regardless, there is no him and me, Echo.”

“I don’t believe that. Now, when I think back, the tension between you two clogged the room, and even when you railed at him, it was like he couldn’t stop watching you.”

Nia fingered the slash on her sweater where the throne had made her stab herself. Tears blurred her eyes, remembering Lore’s cold fury as he healed her…and her remaining anger faded because none of it mattered anymore, not when his actions revealed the truth.

He always came out saving her, protecting her.

Pain shimmered. “I-I can’t talk about it, not right now.”

“It’s all right.” Echo patted her arm.

“So…” She swallowed past the lump in her throat, trying not to be a dark cloud when she’d just met her twin. “You’re with the blue-haired guy who thought I was you, huh?”

A tender smile curved Echo’s lips. “Yes, he’s my mate. He makes everything in my life so much better. Not like what you saw earlier, though,” she hastily added.

Nia smiled. “You mean the tiff?”

Echo huffed. “I love him more than life itself, but he’s too protective. If something’s wrong, he wants it put right immediately. How can I explain what’s wrong when I don’t know?”

“What do you mean?” She searched her twin’s wan features. “Are you ill?

“No…” Echo slumped against the backrest. “It’s more a sense of nagging that something’s not right. It’s hard to explain.”

“Maybe it was your subconscious preparing for our shocking meeting?” Nia teased.

She shot upright, eyes widening with disbelief. “How can you say that? Us finding each other after all these years could never be wrong. I think my mind’s just messed up a little after healing the veils in another realm?—”

“Nia?”

His voice was barely more than a whisper, but it resonated like a thunderclap within her.

Echo glanced behind them, then leaned forward with a smile and hugged her. “Talk to him,” she whispered. “I know it’s none of my business, but tell him how you feel.”

She rose, and Nia stood, facing him as Echo hurried away. Her heart careened around in her chest. Tell him how she felt?

It’s not like he didn’t know.

His footsteps crunched through the snow as he closed the distance between them. His quiet stare skimmed her face, and she rubbed her arms, trying to calm her racing heart.

“You’re cold. You should be indoors.”

“You came all this way to tell me that? I thought you already left,” she croaked out, her voice sounding like rusty nails on concrete.

“I needed to see you first.”

One last time?

While he might have wanted her, and her stupid heart longed for more, he never promised her forever.

“Why?”

A deep sigh escaped him. “Angels are not as mortals make us out to be?—”

“Yeah, I get it. Some are assholes wearing a halo.”

Humor flashed in his otherworldly eyes. She desperately searched his face for anything more?—

“I must go…”

His words were like a bullet to the heart, and she stumbled back a step, powerless to stifle the pain rupturing through her from the very core of her being.

Unable to watch him leave, she wheeled away.

He was in front of her, his expression pained. “Don’t cry, habibti .” He cupped her face in his palm, large enough to cover most of the left side, and he wiped her damp cheek. She didn’t even know she was crying. “I cannot bear that. Remember us as we were in the abbey…”

Lore gently brushed his fingertips along the slope of her cheek and down her jaw to trace the shallow dimple in her chin as if memorizing her features with his touch.

Oh, please, please…

He lowered his head and pressed his lips to her brow in a soft kiss. In a seamless shimmer, he vanished, leaving only his footprints in the snow. And her tears fell at the heart-wrenching reminder of the angel who couldn’t love her.

No matter what she said, she would have waited if he’d given her some hint he cared and wanted more.

But Heaven won.

Choking back a sob, unable to face anyone, she sprinted between the snow-covered shrubs toward the looming forest. Those few minutes with him made her pray so fucking hard he would’ve chosen her…

Nia finally halted somewhere in the dense forest, concealed by complete darkness, and wrapped her arms around her waist, a bone-freezing chill settling inside her. Even the moonlight abandoned her. She had no idea where she was. Didn’t care as she slumped down against a tree trunk. Shutting her tear- drenched eyes, she drew her feet up and buried her wet face in her knees…

“Nia!”

Her name cracked through her fog of anguish, and she lifted her heavy head. She had no idea how much time had passed, but she was chilled to the bone and could barely feel her limbs. And her head hurt.

Echo appeared in front of her like a ghost.

“Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. When you didn’t return, and I couldn’t find you, I grew worried. So, I used this to locate you.” She flashed up her hand, revealing the rune on her palm, the glow fading. “I just thought about you, touched this, and here I am. Usually, I need something belonging to the other person—never mind.” She removed a wad of tissues from her jacket pocket and handed it to Nia. “I guess it didn’t go well with Lore,” she said softly, crouching next to her. “I’m so sorry.”

Nia wiped her still runny nose and damp face. “There was nothing I could say. He…he said goodbye.”

Her face softened with sympathy. “Come, let’s get out of here?—”

“No. I can’t go to the castle, not like this.”

Echo shoved back her overlong bangs, eyes troubled. Then they brightened. “Of course!” She fumbled out her cell phone from her jeans pocket, typed something, and hit send. “This will definitely perk you up.”

Nia didn’t think so, not with devastation consuming her.

Why, why couldn’t you love me, even a little?

Cell back in her pocket, Echo shot to her feet. “C’mon.”

All she wanted to do was curl into a ball. Inhaling a shuddering breath, she pushed up, her cramped muscles protesting the movement.

Echo hooked an arm around hers, a spark to eyes. “Maybe we should dematerialize there. It’s quite a distance, and I’m too impatient. Man, you’ll love this surprise, I swear.”

Nia barely heard her, moving on autopilot, her world reduced to the crunch of snow beneath her feet and the agony in her chest. For the first time in her lonely life, she dared to open her heart, only for it to be crushed and left in pieces.