Page 21 of Sleeping Redemption
“If that’s the case, why am I here?” I posed. Yes, tracking Kinley hadn’t been without its challenges. Everything I had learned after my death and before my return had made it seem like this would be a much easier task. Nobody mentioned the unique and challenging nature of this assignment.
He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “Good question.”
Allowing the silence to dangle between us, I let everything Sylas had said sink into my brain. After several thoughtful minutes, I finally confessed to just how naive I had been going into this. “I thought if she remembered me, that she would come back into her own. You should have seen her face, she nearly hadmeconvinced I wasn’t me.”
I shook my head, still reeling from how things had gone so poorly over such a short span of time. Beginning to reminisce, I looked up at the stars looming above us, peppering the sky with various levels of brightness.
“When I first met her, she was unlike anyone else working under Lucifer’s reign. Cambions aren’t exactly embraced with open arms amongst his crew. But Kinley? Not once did she ever look at me as a lesser being. She always saw me for who I was underneath it all, just as in the way I saw all the things she hid from everyone else.” I sighed wistfully; Kinley had been hurting long before I was taken from her. Her fall from grace hadn’t been without its scars. I had hoped to continue helping to heal her bruised heart, but my aspirations and life had been cut short.
She missed her home, though she never would admit it, not even to me. Now, having been up there, I understood. There wasnothing like the warmth and sense of contentment that filled you while you were in a perfect paradise.
A thin layer of moisture coated my eyes. “Tonight, she saw no part of me.” That was what hurt the most.
The archangel at my side pushed against the tops of his thighs as he stood. “I tell ya what. Let me talk to her, see if I can’t calm her ass down.”
Shocked, I looked at him. “You’re going to do that for me?”
“Fuck no, I’m doing it for all the other people she might come across. Her tailspins haven’t been known to leave just a single body. But—” Begrudgingly he tipped his head side to side. “—it wouldn’t hurt to make sure you get on the right footing since you’re starting at a disadvantage.”
I grinned. “Thanks, man. I appreciate all the help I can get. Maybe you’re not half the ass everyone at the academy says you are.”
He continued to speak, giving me a disclaimer. “I’m not making any promises. Kin is about as predictable as two shooting stars on a collision course.”
Then, he abruptly paused as he caught my last statement. Glaring at me, his jaw clenched tighter before grinding out his next words. “Wait, who is going around saying I’m an ass? It’s Evangeline, isn’t it? Pfft, you put your foot down one time and she gets all bent out of shape.”
You could see the flexing of his muscles under his shirt as his blood pressure began to notch up. Despite the smirk threatening to spread across my face, I tried to play it off casually with a shrug. “I don’t know; people. You have a reputation amongst the newbies.”
Crossing his arms in front of him and widening his stance, he gave me his best look of indifference. “Oh yeah? What do they say?”
“It’s just talk, man. I wouldn’t worry about it.” I was enjoying watching him slowly simmer underneath the surface. Heaven forbid there was potential that someone wasn’t kissing his ass like he was the fucking angelic equivalent of Captain America.
Unsurprisingly, my half-hearted attempt to assuage his concerns was unsuccessful. You could damn near see the gears in his head spinning wildly at all the possibilities that someone out there had something bad to say about him. Shit, I hadn’t known Sy all that long, and even I didn’t disagree with what people said in hushed whispers.
“No, go ahead and tell me what people think they know about me.” He lifted a hand to wave me on.
Who was I to say ‘no’ to Heaven’s great warrior, Sylas the Stickler? “You’re crotchety and a stick in the mud. That you wouldn’t know how to have fun unless someone put it in a rulebook. All things said in jest. As I said, nothing worth worrying over.”
Given he was offering to help smooth things over with Kinley, I didn’t dare bring up my contribution to the long list of nicknames he had been given by others. Most spoke to his self-righteous attitude and inability to be flexible. He was wound tighter than Lucifer when the thermostat in Hell dropped a degree.
Scoffing at me, Sy seemed to believe everybody was off base. “When you’ve been along for as long as I have, you’ll get it. None of you have seen the darkest times of humanity like I have.”
He began to step away from the bench, before halting and turning back to me. “Just do me a favor, huh?”
“Sure, what do you need?”
Sy authoritatively pointed a finger at me. “Keep your distance from Kinley until we’re sure she’s not going to wipe out the entire planet thanks to your fuckin’ stunt tonight. No fake business deals, no fake dates, no fake agendas. Got it?”
“It’s not my job to keep my distance,” I countered.
Grumbling, he shook his head at me. “Then, make sure you cloak your damn presence so she doesn’t so much as breathe the same air as you. She’s not the same angel you knew in your previous…form.”
Not entirely fond of staying away from Kinley, I knew that I needed to give her some space unless I wanted to risk an even more dangerous mental break. “Fine, but all bets are off once she realizes I’m not a figment of her imagination.”
He gave a light growl in response, grinding his teeth together in the process. “Whatever, Atlas. But if she loses her shit because you are on some Shakespearean love mission, I will clip your wings myself.”
Chapter Eleven
Standing shirtless in the middle of Kinley’s living room, I held a can of whipped cream in one hand while snapping my fingers with the other. Her stereo came to life, blasting some of the best rock songs of the 1980s. Goddamn, that was an era I wish would repeat itself.
