Page 41 of Live Like Legends

Morgan hummed, disregarding Natalia’s words all together. “Until I personally see that she’s good enough for today, then you won’t be leaving early. Another hour should suffice.”

“Watch your tone.” Zane stepped up behind Natalia as the High Priestess, pressed her lips together in an unamused smile.

She lifted her hand towards Zane to stop him from having anything to say to Morgan. “Alright. Another hour.”

“You are quite literally the worst.” Reese yelled from across the room, shaking his head.

I pulled away from Nick, after pecking him quickly on the lips. I blinked over to Morgan, innocently. “Fine by me. I would stand back though; I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

After some very vivid descriptions of her sparring fight with Elise and then a shower that consisted of me burying myself so deep inside of her that she nearly cried when she came, she told me all about how she wanted to proceed.

Her brown eyes had looked so determined when she’d said, “I want to go tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” My eyebrows raised in question.

She nodded, scooting over in my bed to burrow her face into my chest. “Yes. Whatever that is,” she’d pointed to my window where the sky was calm and uneventful, “I want to end it.”

I squeezed her, trailing my finger along her arm. “You will. We will. Can you just take a minute to consider that maybe you need one more day of figuring your power out?”

“No.” Her voice was unwavering.

I’d groaned and shifted to my side, waiting as she readjusted herself. I’d placed my hand under my head and looked at her. “All I’m asking for is one more training session with Natalia.We will let everyone know what you want to do, and we will all follow you into whatever is waiting for us.” I grabbed her hand and brought it to my lips, kissing her knuckles. “If you haven’t noticed, I worry about you.”

She’d brought her index finger to my lips, tracing them. “I worry about you too. You worry sufficiently more than me, so if waiting a day will put some pep in your step then fine. Only a fucking day though”

I leaned in to kiss her nose. “Good girl.”

She wrinkled her nose and started to make her way back over to the comfort of my body. “I know you don’t want to talk to him, but do you think you’ll regretnottalking to him when we go there? The outcome of this entire thing is so up in the air, I just…”

I knew her words trailing away meant she felt my body tense up, she felt my halted breathing. I would have been lying if I’d said that I hadn’t even thought about the fact that I would actually leave without saying anything to him. The last time I left, I’d made him promise to tell me everything when he came back. He honored that promise. It wasn’t his fault that the things that he told me… broke my heart.

I didn’t know how to piece that back together. I didn’t know how to involve him in the reconstruction.

“I really don’t know.”

She’d let out a sigh. “I think you will.” She didn’t look at me when she spoke again right before she went to sleep. “You lost someone that you didn’t even know you could miss, and he should have told you about her, but I think you tend to forget that he lost someone too. You are so quick to absolve Jonah of all his faults but why can’t you give that same grace to your father. They were best friends who have a shared history when it comes to your past, when it comes to your mother and anything else. You don’t have to forgive him entirely but go scream at him,stomp around your house, something…. he’s given you all his love and attention for twenty-four years, you owe him at least some of yours back.”

Every second I spent with Morgan gave me a better understanding of why we weren’t together anymore. Her incessant need to casually touch me or make flirtatious verbal hints were enough to make me want to shake her and scream that I wasn’t interested anymore. I knew I didn’t need to do any of that because she was well aware; Morgan just liked to play games and be, yet another person, to get under my skin. She looked at Dani like she was the superior of the two of them. In the context of The Skies, she probably was, but when it came to my attention and heart…

She was no match for how I felt about Dani.

Now that….that was a feeling I knew I would never find again with anyone else.

“Nick, are you listening?” Morgan waved her hand at my face. I shook my head, suddenly remembering where I was and why I was here.

I had gotten here with the knowledge that today was it. Everyone had been on board, Elise especially, with us leaving tonight. Dani had promised me one more day and she’d given me that, so I was ready to stay true to what I’d said.

“Yeah, sorry, what did you say?”

Morgan pointed to the far-left wall of the giant ballroom we were in. I knew this space was used for big parties or for when the new incoming class of angels finished their introductory training and got their specific positions. I’d seen this roomtransformed in so many ways, but Ariel’s ceremony was not something I thought I’d ever see, let alone be helping with.

Lights were strung along the stone walls, unlit. I walked over, leaning down to place my hand at the bulb at the very bottom. My light dispersed from my hand into the bulb, moving from each one until it reached the top. I had been doing manual labor ever since I’d been coming here with her, and I was getting annoyed with how unnecessary this was.

“Once Ariel gets here, he’ll want to show you how things will go so that you are knowledgeable on the day of.”

I scratched the top of my head. “Why would that matter?”

She slapped my bicep, playfully. “Come on, Nick. You can’t make sure the ceremony is secure if you don’t know the rundown.”

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