Page 81 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
Ediye turns her attention to Cole. “Get Wynter, have her bring the same supplies she used for Eryx to stop him from burning here. Tell her what happened and that I need my healing materials, she’ll know what to bring.”
Cole motions for two guards to go with him and they take off running for the residences as Ashen moves to Aloros’s uninjured side and heaves the angel’s heavy arm over his shoulder. Aloros is the taller and broader of the two, but Ashen’s formidable strength keeps him steady with ease as he pulls the angel to his feet. When the two are balanced, Ashen focuses on the corridor ahead and they start to limp in the direction of the Throne Room. Aloros steals a puzzled glance at my husband as though he never expected to receive the care he’s being handled with, and a little surge of pride balloons in my heart for Ashen. He feels it and slides a scowl in my direction. “If he touches you with those wings, I will tear the other arm off myself. Wings too,” Ashen says, and I smile, if only for a moment.
We walk in tense silence as we return to the Throne Room. Of the Council, only Imani dares to come close to the angel in our midst as she brings Aloros a glass of water after Ashen heaves him onto the table. The other demons of the Council keep back from the table, watching with both curiosity and suspicion.
“How did you get here? How did you know where to go?” I ask, using my dagger to cut a strip from my tunic and then a slice through my hand, letting my blood saturate the fabric so Ediye can press it to Aloros’s wound.
“Cole,” he replies with a grimace as Ediye starts working as best she can on the angel while we wait for her supplies. Hotaru lets out a disapproving growl, but I put up my bloodied hand in a request for silence. Aloros glances at her but continues. “He managed to get a message through for how to seek you out if we experienced difficulties. I never thought…” he says, trailing off as his gaze falls to the floor.
“You said they are contained for now?”
“Yes.”
“How long?” Ashen asks.
“Maybe a day at most, unless we can close the last portals in house Shabarra. I closed two before I was injured,” the angel replies. “We believe they have come for the Soulfate stone. They are attacking House Esagila, targeting the main pathways leading to the ziggurat. That is where the stone resides, in the lowest level.”
“The Nephilim would need an immortal capable of taking it. Have they found someone?”
“Possibly. I recognized an apothecary named Lazarus from the Guild of Gilgamesh Council among them. He has access to our realm. Do you know him?”
Ashen shakes his head. “No, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the ability to travel here. Perhaps the former leadership here had somehow granted him unchaperoned access.”
Aloros nods, and his gaze drops to the floor once more. His hummingbird heartbeat quickens. He swallows. “Shortly before I left, the enemy began mobilizing toward the gates to the House of Virtues. We believe it is an attempt to divide our attention, to draw us away from their target,” he says, his voice strained. “House Esagila and House Borsippa fight to keep the Nephilim from the House of Virtues. They are weaker there. They have few fighters. The souls of many children and youth reside there. If the enemy gets in, many souls will perish in everlasting death.”
Silence descends on the room. Aloros’s head drops. His eyes are pressed closed. Ashen looks to me, his lips set in a grim line.
I smell Aloros’s tears as they slide across his skin to tap on his stained linen pants. His expression is every facet of agony when he opens his eyes and looks right into me, as though he could pull my soul free with nothing more than a desperate glance. Without breaking the connection between us, he pulls a heavy chain from around his neck, withdrawing a hexagonal gold pendant set with rubies and lapis lazuli stones. “The key to access the hidden portals of the Realm of Light.” He holds it for me to take. I remove the square that hangs around my neck, holding one in each hand. I can already see how they fit together, the divots in the Shadow Realm pendant made to fit the stones in the hexagon for the Realm of Light. “Long ago, before most of us even existed, our realms were not enemies. We were halves of a whole. And now we need your help. We call for the mercy of the Shadow Realm.”
I close my fingers around the gold and gems, imprinting them on my palms.
“And we will come,” I say. No one argues, but I see the wariness in their eyes when I look around the room. I gaze back into Aloros’s soul, just as he’s looked into mine. “We will fight for the Realm of Light.”
CHAPTER31
“I’m quite capable of dressing myself for battle,” I say as Ashen kneels before me next to the bed in our greenhouse bedroom of the cliffside manor. My hands lay on his shoulders as I balance on one foot, the other resting on his bent leg. His fingers trace a slow path across my skin as he pulls the first leg of a pair of leathers up my calf, his tattoos glowing with gentle light as the war draws ever closer.
“I know, but it’s more fun when I do it.”
“Actually, it’s more fun when you take them off.”
Ashen smiles, his eyes not straying from the steady work of his hands. “I intend to do that too,” he says, placing a kiss against my knee. “After we win.”
“If we do.”
Another kiss embellishes my flesh with a whisper of Sumerian, this time to the inside of my thigh.Kianga gasan,he says, those words warmed by the core of his soul. There’s another kiss, then another, each a little higher, the leather following the heat of his lips. “We will win,” he says.
There’s a long pause of silence as Ashen works his way further up my leg, his procession full of fire and reverence. He takes his time, slowing as though the world outside this room does not exist. But it does. This time, it’s not the past that haunts my every thought. It’s the future.
“What if we don’t win?” I whisper, but Ashen continues his worship of my skin, undeterred. “What if we fail? What if the Realm of Light falls?”
“It won’t, vampire,” he says between kisses. “You are too stubborn to lose.”
“What if you and I fall when we’re there? Do we still resurrect here?”
Ashen stills this time. His eyes meet mine as his palm heats my thigh. He leans back a little as he watches me. “I don’t know.”
Fucksakes. Why couldn’t the damned demon just lie? That is one potentially large wrench in my backup plan of ‘sex in the resurrection chamber,part deux’. The grimace creeping through my face must be worse than it feels, because Ashen releases his hold on my leg and grips the back of my neck with his calloused hand, his gaze latching to mine.
