Page 79 of Grave Revelations

“Strange weather and people disappearing. A lot of them. Incidents of crime across Europe. People are saying it’s the end times.” She laughed as she said the last bit.

Odd, no doubt, but in his current condition, Simon could do nothing about any of it.

He opened Gmail, making a show of checking email as Valentina stood watching over his shoulder. He tapped the screen, opening spam email after spam email, scanning each benign bit of correspondence.

After an interminable amount of time, she left his side, going to the dining room table to straighten something. She was always doing that, moving things a fraction of an inch to the left or the right. Everything had to be just so.

Simon drummed his fingers on the side of his laptop, waiting.

Finally,finally, Valentina left the room.

Finding the app on his desktop, he clicked the security alarm app.

All devices offline.

That wasn’t right. He clicked each camera feed, but just as it said at the top of the screen, every device was off. He clicked the living room feed.

Playback disabled. To reactivate service, contact us at 800-866-9133.

That wasn’t right. The service was paid annually. He ground his teeth, going back to the top of the page. A red triangle with an exclamation point inside it was displayed across the page banner.

There was a moment of dread when he wondered if something horrible had happened. Something bad enough to turn off all the cameras. A fire? Something worse?

Picking up his phone, he typed a quick message:Rebecca, please tell me you’re okay. Please respond.

Three dots appeared on the screen, and he let out a whoosh of air, sighing in relief.

I know what you did.

The words sent a jolt of fear straight through him. Claire? Had she found out about Claire? He raised trembling fingers, but three dots appeared again. He froze, blind panic seizing him.

I found the camera in my room.

More dots.

I never thought you would do something so vile. Don’t text me and don’t spy on me anymore.

Some of the ice leaching through his veins thawed even as her words twisted something sharp and painful in his chest. Rebecca didn’t understand, but he could explain it.

He just needed to get to her, to see her, and he could put things right.

Chapter 49

Azazel

When they’d laced their fingers together, and Azazel had shared every drop of magic with Rebecca, her soul sang to life. He’d long since stopped thinking of it as his. If anything, the half of his soul resting in his chest belonged to her, too. It was all hers, and he would give her every piece of him if she needed it.

When her seraph side had awoken, the part of him that had been wrenched free and flung into the ether all those millennia ago, awaiting the day she would come and claim it, stretched for its other half.

Warmth radiated from the center of his chest, pulsing in time with her heartbeat. After more than one hundred years, that feeling was enough to send him to his knees. But even as their unified soul sang with the rightness of joining, fear stole through him.

Unlocking her seraph side hadn’t made Rebecca immortal. She could be killed, and when the end arrived, they would find themselves on opposite sides of eternity. Still, he would do it again, sacrifice anything, even his sanctity, to ensure she found her place in Alaxia.

Her skin nearly glowed, a soft hum coursing through her veins, bursting with the new energy flowing through her.Hisenergy. It had been restrained before, locked down to ensure he never hurt her, but now he could release it, let it flowfreely. It was akin to stretching his wings wide or taking a deep breath for the first time in centuries.

When Adalaide had unlocked that side of herself, using Dina to do it, a rage such as he had never known had stolen over him. She’d robbed him of something that didn’t belong to her. Even now, it hurt to look at his sister and remember what she’d done.

She’d argued he couldn’t have been convinced to unlock his mate’s other side, and she’d been right. Two centuries without Sanura on the mortal plane had been a blessing, but not one worth the cost of his analogous umbra. For that, he would never fully forgive Dina.

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