Page 77 of Sleeping Redemption
“No, I don’t think she’s lying about it. Kin is a lot of things, but a liar? Not about something like this.” Dropping his hand back to rest on the bulge of his bicep, he watched the slow dance of flames just beginning to peek up over the tip of the woodpile.
Great, so we still knew jack shit about the location of the one thing that could easily destroy her. My frustration grew quicker than the fire before us.
“Okay, so if her sword isn’t lost and she’s not lying about it, what the fuck happened to it?”
The muscles in Sy’s jaw ticked under the consideration of other limited scenarios.
“I think the only other possibilities are that either her sword was given away, stolen, or destroyed.” As the last potential circumstance was spoken, he moved his gaze from the growing fire to me.
“Is that even possible? That her sword was destroyed?” It seemed far-fetched, even to me.
“I don’t know,” he responded in a quiet tone.
“How the hell do younotknow? Didn’t you make the damn thing?!” I asked incredulously as the volume of my voice rose in turn with my frustration. I didn’t proclaim to be the most knowledgeable about the topic at hand—given my relatively new existence as an angel—but fuck, I expected Sy to have a clue.
That was when Sylas’s short-fused temper reared its ugly head. He stepped closer to me with his chest puffed out and his clenched fists dropping to his sides.
“Yeah, I made the damn thing, Atlas! But we’re not exactly dealing with shit found in a goddamn handbook right now!” His words came out hotter than a branding iron.
Sylas and I stood there, staring each other down with the buzzing of tension in the space between us.
Surprisingly, Sy backed off first. His fingers ran through his short-cropped brown hair.
“Look,” he began. “This isn’t just about a missing sword or deranged demon.”
I lifted a brow at him as my anger was diluted by a sense of concern and confusion.
There was a moment of hesitation as he propped his hands on his hips, glancing down at the ground. I could tell the man was deliberately picking his words with care in his head by the concentration written all over his face.
Blowing out a stream of air past his lips, he finally lifted his head to meet my eyes.
“I’m worried that all of this is beyond our control.” His voice was thick with concern.
Knitting my brows together, I ran my hand down over my mouth as I tried to wrap my head around what he was trying to say.
“Look, I get that Kinley is her own force, but I wouldn’t say that she is unyielding enough not to listen to us,” I offered up as a sliver of hope.
Sy shook his head. “That’s not what I mean.” He hefted out a sigh, his face growing somber.
In a rare instance of emotion being displayed by the typically stone-faced warrior, he looked at me and barely whispered out his fears. “There are some old texts that speak to what’s been happening. A fallen angel becoming a victim to a state of complete psychosis. It’s not totally by the letter, though these things normally aren’t. But from what I’ve read, it doesn’t end well.”
To say I was stunned hardly did justice to what I felt. Sylas must have misinterpreted something along the way, or maybe this was some sick joke. Internally, I braced myself with a surge of denial.
“It could be talking about any number of fallen angels. Kinley has been doing so much better. She’s been seeing reason, and her casualties have decreased dramatically,” I pointed out to him.
We both stood there with the gravity of the situation smothering us.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said in resignation. “I just can’t lose her after finally seeing pieces of her former self coming through like sunlight slipping through a set of dark curtains as they blow in the wind.”
Placing a hand to his shoulder with a firm grip, I looked at him square in the eyes. “We’re not losing her, none of us. Between Rook, you, and me, we will keep her in her right mind. She’ll be safe and sound in all meanings of the phrase. You talk about faith all the time; I think now is the time to have some.”
Seemingly, my words got through enough that the muscles in his shoulder loosened under my palm.
Sylas straightened, pulling back some of his steely exterior in the process.
With renewed determination, he spoke firmly. “You’re right. Nothing is ever set in stone, and we can’t let some vague scripture falsely lead us down a path of paranoia.”
I gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze before releasing him and reverting the conversation to our current predicament. “Let’s just focus on getting her sword back and sending this saliranimum demon back to Hell.”
