Page 28 of Touched By Sin
The door is gone.
Mr. Kozlov’s voice rings out over the sound of chairs scraping on the floor. “Now you’ve had a taste of guided meditation. We’ll continue exploring your center next time.”
It takes me a moment to realize that I’m supposed to move. It doesn’t register until Ronan slaps me on the back of the head. It’s only gentle, but I whirl in my seat and bare my teeth like a feral animal. The boys laugh, but I don’t. I was seconds away from finding out what hid behind that door. It was something big and powerful, and it had waited a long time for me to find it.
“Come on, little angel. Let’s go.”
As I scoot my chair back, Daemon seizes my arm and hauls me to my feet.
“What the fuck is this?”
Confused, I look down.
Scratches line my arms. Fresh cuts that ooze with droplets of blood.
“I-I cut myself on the branches as I approached the door.”
“What?”
“The trees,” I start, but he shakes his head.
“The meditation wasn’t real. There’s no way your vision could harm you like this.”
“Well, it did,” I say, wrenching my arm free. Now that I’ve seen the cuts, they sting as I walk away, leaving the boys to exchange worried glances.
ChapterEight
ALARIC
Iflip another page in the book in front of me on Daemon’s bed and rub my face before blowing out a tired breath. “I can’t find anything.”
Ronan, lying on his stomach, is on a mission after he picked up every single book he could find on angels in the library. Now they’re stacked in a precarious pile next to him on the floor.
Daemon throws his book against the wall, leans back in his desk chair, and lets out a string of curse words. “I don’t like this!”
Ronan doesn’t look up from the page in front of him. “No, you don’t like not being in control.”
“Did you not fucking see her scratches?”
“I did. They were impossible to miss.”
Daemon sits forward with his elbows on his knees and rubs his face. “Fuck this shit.”
Blowing out a breath, I turn another page and scan my eyes over the drawings of angels with halos. “Have these authors ever met an angel?” I comment, closing the book. “Aurelia glows, but she doesn’t have a fucking halo over her head.”
“The fall was so long ago. How can we even know what’s true anymore?” Ronan asks, scratching his head while he reads over the page in front of him. Out of the three of us, he has the most patience.
“What I don’t get,” Daemon says, hands steepled and forming a point over his mouth, “is why she would leave Eden in the first place. She must have known she would never return, right? She can’t be that naive to think the gates would magically let her back inside after her first taste of darkness. Her odds of finding her way back in the first place were slim. Once you enter those woods…”
We fall silent, each lost in our own thoughts.
“I’m starving,” I comment, rubbing my tired eyes. “It’s been too long since we fed.”
“Think our little angel is up for watching? She’s curious about this world, right?” Daemon asks.
Ronan finally looks up, amusement shining in his dark eyes. “Do I think our little angel is up for watching you fuck and drain a human girl? No, I don’t—at all.”
He considers this.
