Wings of the Wicked
Page 29

“What do you want?” For some reason, I wasn’t afraid of him—though I really, really should have been. I couldn’t explain the feeling. He never made me feel threatened.
“To see you.”
I blinked. “Why?”
He didn’t seem bothered by my suspicion. “Why not?”
Was he serious? “Cadan, we’re enemies.”
“Who decided that?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious. He stepped around my chair to sit in the one across from me. “If we were enemies, then I would have tried to kill you already.”
“So far you haven’t.”
“But if you truly thought we were enemies, then wouldn’t you have tried to kill me by now? You hunt the demonic almost every night, so it’s not like you wait around to be attacked. You could have come after me, but you haven’t, though I can’t say I’m not disappointed.” He touched my hair the way he had the night we first met. I watched his fingers treat the lock as if it were delicate. The tips of his fingers brushed my neck and trailed across my collarbone, sending my heart pounding.
I wasn’t about to show any fear by backing away from him. “Don’t make me get violent.”
“Oh, baby,” he whispered, his voice husky and his smile darkening. “Please do.”
“You’re into that sort of thing, are you?”
“I’m into you.”
“This is extremely awkward,” I said, unsure of how to react to his blatant flirting.
“I disagree.” He let my hair fall, but he didn’t step away. “I very much like this.”
“It’s barely even nighttime,” I noted. “Shouldn’t you nocturnal types be sleeping at this hour?”
“What can I say? I’m an early riser.”
I was tired of being toyed with. “Why did you find me, Cadan? Besides to try to shower me with your charm. Last time I saw you, you came with a warning.”
His smile faded again. “I’m sorry to say that I have another. Bastian has a relic, the Constantina necklace.”
I frowned, thinking of Ava’s anguish over Zane’s death. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“So you located the relic’s guardian,” he deduced.
“What was left of him, yes.”
His mouth tightened. “I suspected that he must have been killed in order to take the relic from him. The guardians never surrender.”
“Who did it?”
“Vir,” he said. “Their names are Merodach and Kelaeno. They are the ones helping Bastian find what he needs. And once they do that, they’ll be coming for you.”
“If Orek fails, you mean.”
His gaze burned into mine. “Yes, I’m sorry. The situation is only going to get worse for you.”
I studied his face, my head spinning to come up with the answer of his true allegiance. He knew so much about Bastian’s plans, so they had to be close, but he was willing to risk everything to help me. “Why the espionage, Cadan?”
“I’ve already told you.”
“The risk is too great,” I insisted. “There must be something more. What’s in it for you? Are you going to betray me?”
That smile came to life again. “Even if I said no, would you believe me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s Bastian you’re spying on or if it’s me.”
“Why can’t you believe that I want you to stop him?” he asked earnestly.
I narrowed my gaze. “Why don’t you do it yourself?”
He didn’t answer me at first, and a strange look came over his face as his shoulders stiffened. His eyes broke away from mine and searched around us before returning. “It’s complicated.”
“No more complicated than our own arrangement.”
His brow flickered with amusement, the uncertainty washing away in an instant. “Arrangement? And on what terms is this arrangement?”
I ignored that. “Is it because you aren’t strong enough to kill him, or because you don’t want to?”
His gaze moved slowly over my mouth and back up to my eyes. “Both.”
“You’re still loyal to him,” I said. “And now to me, for some reason.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“You’ll have to choose a side, Cadan.”
He grinned and gave a single soft huff of a laugh, though his eyes looked sad. “That is also true.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of him. He was gorgeous and very mysterious, and I was indisputably drawn to him. Those things all made him dangerous, even if I believed he wouldn’t raise a hand to me. Simply being his friend was dangerous to us both. I picked my book off the floor and set it on the end table before I sank back into the soft chair. “What is this necklace supposed to do, anyway?”
He sat down in the chair opposite mine and dragged it closer. He leaned forward and spoke softly. “It was crafted by the Grigori Cardinal Lord of the East, Aldebaran. He tricked Constantina, the eldest daughter of the Roman emperor Constantine, into taking it.”
“I remember her,” I said, frowning as the memories flooded back to me. Constantina had been the driving force behind some of the earliest witch hunts, seventeen hundred years ago, executing innocent people and then taking everything valuable they owned for herself. The Grigori weren’t exactly like the Fallen imprisoned in Hell, and they were bound to earth to help humans in penance. That meant they were not entirely evil, but they were also not entirely good. Aldebaran knew of Constantina’s evil, and her underlings gave her the necklace cursed with angelic magic. Ever the greedy tyrant, she took it without hesitation, and within a month she was dead.