Page 18 of Angel's Vengeance

“You don’t speak like them,” Rhode observed.

“You’ve said that already.”

“And you’ve yet to address it.”

Neela put her hand on her hip.“Why does my speech bother you so much?What about it needs addressing, exactly?”

Iron placed a hand on Rhode’s shoulder while he gestured for Neela to have a seat.“I think what Rhode’s trying to say is the charmers we’re familiar with don’t have a knack for a lot of the common mortal vernacular.They tend to learn what they need to in order to acclimate among mortals but not enough to blend smoothly into conversations for extended periods of time.You talk to one of them for longer than twenty minutes in one shot, and you start to notice something’s off?—”

“Like yourself,” Rhode interjected before taking his own seat.

“Thanks?I don’t know whether that’s a compliment or an insult.”Neela tucked a wad of hair behind her ear, only to have her shoulders sink when the heavy stuff broke free despite her feeble efforts to tame it.

Rhode tracked her hand but immediately snapped back to business.“We’re not here to offer either.”

“Obviously.”When neither of them elaborated, clearly waiting for her to explain once again the anomaly that she was, she sighed and took a bracing sip of coffee.Mmm.French vanilla creamer.At least she wasn’t so different from Molly that they couldn’t share the same taste in chemically altered and artificially flavored questionable dairy products.“You’d be surprised at the number of perks that come with being Cyro’s only aberration offspring who he can’t kill and who can also enjoy the light.I’ll just say that I’m not lacking comfort.I have my own suite of rooms hidden belowground, decked out with all the things any woman would want: high-speed Internet, streaming services, jetted tub, plenty of shelves for my plants and gaming consoles ...”

“Gaming consoles?”Iron asked.

“Well, yeah, I can’t play Baldur’s Gate with Sars Love if I don’t have access to his server.Sometimes I’ll tune in on Twitch if I catch him live, but he can drone on a bit.Editing is important, am I right?Oh, and just outside my apartment is my greenhouse.Technically, it only has night-blooming plants because it’s underground, but I still call it that nonetheless.”

Iron finally plopped onto the couch.“You have a ...okay, what?”

“A greenhouse.I used the old indoor ice rink from the Lake Placid Olympics and turned its foundation into a footprint for where I wanted to house my plants.It worked out perfectly, minus the ice, of course.The square footage was exactly what I was looking for.”

The two angels exchanged a look, and Neela worried whether she’d gone off course again, whether her elation at having someone to ramble to would scare away the intended audience.

Then Iron shook his head.“As far as I know, the Lake Placid Olympic Center is still standing.The 1980 games weren’t that long ago.How did the mortals not notice a missing ice rink, especially the one from the famous Miracle on Ice game between the Soviet Union and the US?”

Neela smiled into her mug.“I wasn’t talking about the rink fromthosegames.God, how would anyone even nab that?Isn’t it, like, a major tourist attraction in the area?”She took another sip of coffee.“I meant the ice rink from theotherLake Placid Olympics.The ones held in 1932.”

“Holy fuck.”Iron dropped his head into his hands, and Neela almost felt sorry for the guy.Almost.

“How?”Rhode’s question was almost accusatory.“How can you live among the mortals so freely, all while living underground?”

Then it was Neela’s turn to clam up.“I-I don’t.”

He quirked a silvery blond brow but said nothing.

“Cyro keeps me in comfort and gives me anything I want because he can’t kill me.But I’m also a prisoner as much as I am a charmer.The fact that I can go out in the light while he and the others can’t pisses him off more than anything else.So, I get to pay the price for his misery.Because I’m the only one who can handle the exposure, over the years, I’ve built my prison to accommodate my interests.It all changed when the Internet came into being, though.Since then, I’ve created countless online profiles, interacted with so many content creators, learned the ins and outs of every influencer, and, yeah, kind of acted like I was one of them.”

A sharp pain hitched within her chest.“You have no idea what that sort of connection means for someone who never hoped to have any.My entire existence has been one of shame, degradation, and extreme isolation.My plants, my online peeps, they’re all ...Well, theywerewonderful before I left, but they were only surface-level interactions.Essentially, faceless chats with binary codes.I never used a camera or microphone or anything like that.Couldn’t risk Cyro finding out I was connecting to the outside world in some fashion.So, yeah, while I can’t say I know mortals, I definitely knowofthem, if that makes sense.I doubt they give out honorary badges for being known by association, but I guess that’s why I come across more human than not.”

Holy hell, she’d never spoken any of that out loud, least of all to real living, breathing beings who could see her facial expressions and talk back.She couldn’t even blame her racing heart on the admittedly awesome coffee.

“Iron, leave us.”

A heavy beat passed between them.“You sure?”

Rhode’s stare held all the heat from the night before, when he was losing his shit in the restaurant, but was tinged with a bit more reserve, as if some sort of deal had been made in exchange for him to speak civilly toward her and he’d relented.“Yes.”

“Five minutes.”

After Iron left the apartment, Neela didn’t know whether to start up a conversation or wait for Rhode to say whatever the hell he had on his mind.Seriously, the secrecy was a bit too dramatic for the early hour, and if she wasn’t careful, she’d waste away all her available sunlight drinking in the man before her instead of hightailing it as far away from Cyro as possible.

“Did you live with Cyro?”

Neela blinked.Talk about direct.“No.My suite was not far from his holdings, but it wasn’t connected.He had charmers keep tabs on me because I’m immune to magic so he couldn’t use it to contain or detect me.I had a regular patrol cover my perimeter, though.That’s why I was able to finally sneak out.One of the guards was late to his shift.”

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