Of Consuming Fire (17 page)

Jayden shrugged at Jericho helplessly as he re-sheathed his sword. The sorrow that his attempts to avoid the inevitable had done no good was too great to allow Jayden to speak.

A loud boom sounded directly behind him. They all froze. It took a fraction of a heartbeat for Jayden to realize that someone — a
lot
of someones if the thoughts were any indication — were attempting to breach the rubble of the cave-in.

Helplessness settled in on Jayden’s shoulders like a burial shroud. He realized with a pang that he did not wish to stop them. They were a group of soldiers whose goal was to rescue the three humans from their captor. It was something that Jayden had just been attempting himself.

Jericho approached him and laid a hand on Jayden’s forearm. Jayden tensed, expecting an attack from this side of the rubble as well, but when none came after several seconds, Jayden read the man’s thoughts.

He was using the Knowledge on Jayden. Was hearing the word
good
. Jericho looked into Jayden’s eyes and smiled. “It will be okay, angel,” he said gently, squeezing Jayden’s arm before removing his hand. “What would you have us do?”

Jayden stared at the man in amazement. He was in earnest. Another boom sounded from the rubble, and several of the smaller rocks fell from the pile and pinged off of the floor. A few seconds more and they would breach the medical wing.

“Capture me,” Jayden blurted out. Jericho’s eyes widened. “Quickly,” Jayden said, falling to his knees and crossing his wrists behind his back. “Put me some place secure.” As the Compulsion bellowed inside Jayden’s head, he allowed himself to look at Grace once more, and could not keep his eyes from raking her body one last time, knowing all he felt for her was written plainly on his face for all of them to see. Knowing he was revealing his weakness. “Just promise me you will keep her away from me,” he said to Jericho while not taking his eyes from his Temptation. Her eyes widened. Her hurt flooded over him. “And make sure I can never get out.”

It might work. Lord of the Most High, it might work. If they were able to secure him, he could save her. The impending separation from her knifed through him with a pain so sharp he winced and looked away from her.

“You mean it?” Jericho asked, doubt dripping from his voice.

Another boom. They were nearly here.

“Now!” he ordered.

Dahlia rushed down the hall and returned with a length of rope from the utility closet. Jericho quickly bent and tied Jayden’s wrists together. He felt as his sword changed color, the flames growing hot where they flicked against his back as it anticipated trouble.

“Grace,” he barked at her without allowing himself to look at her, “take cover.”

She hesitated. “Jayden — ”

He turned to Jericho. “Drag her away from the rubble if you have to.”

That got her to move. She brushed past him to stand by Dahlia in the shelter of an open door, trailing her fingers along his shoulders as she did so, causing Jayden to shake. The last time she would touch him. Why she would even do so given his behavior, he had no idea, but he was grateful.

The rubble exploded outward, and Jayden turned his face into his shoulder as pebbles of all sizes hit him, cutting flesh that immediately began to mend.

The soldiers charged in, but stopped in their tracks as they caught sight of him. He was positioned on his knees right at the medical wing entrance, his hands bound behind him, Jericho standing at his shoulder.

Jericho laid a hand on his shoulder, and gave an indiscernible squeeze meant to comfort. “The angel has surrendered,” he said in the voice of a soldier not to be questioned. “He is ready to be taken into custody.”

Eli stepped forward, an apology in his eyes. A quick scan of his thoughts told Jayden he had tried to stop this rescue attempt. Had thought Jayden would not hurt his friends. The man’s faith in Jayden humbled him. He looked down as Eli and Jericho communicated with the wordless language of true friendship, and then Eli said, “Okay, men, take him to a cell.”

“The most secure we have,” Jericho said with a meaningful look at Eli.

The other man nodded, and then two soldiers moved forward. One reached for his wrists, ready to wrench him to his feet. The other reached for the hilt of Jayden’s sword, meaning to disarm him.

Jayden immediately began to struggle. He did not know why he had not anticipated this move. Prisoners were always disarmed. But they could not take his sword. Not with Grace standing feet away. He was already at the edge of his control with holding off the Compulsion. Taking his sword would trigger it. He could feel it down to his bones.

He broke the rope binding his wrists with one swift tug, and launched to his feet. The soldiers who had been standing behind Eli immediately rushed him, piling on top of him one by one. Jayden remained on his feet, a dozen men hanging off of him. He turned in panic to Jericho. “They cannot take my sword.” He tried to convey all the disaster that would ensue if they tried with his eyes. “They cannot.”

Jericho quickly barked, “Let him keep the sword. Who can he hurt in a cell?”

Eli quickly corroborated the order, and the large pile of soldiers on Jayden’s back slowly slid off, each one looking sheepish. As soon as they stepped away from him, Jayden once again crossed his wrists behind his back, turning them toward Jericho and allowing the man to bind him once more.

Then, without a word, Jericho himself began to march Jayden out of the medical wing.

“Jayden!” he heard Grace yell from behind him. There was a brief scuffle, and Jayden knew Dahlia was keeping her from rushing to him.

He turned his eyes to Jericho. “You must keep her from me,” he whispered urgently. “Forever. Send her away if you can.”

Jericho smiled sadly and gave a reassuring nod. And then he walked Jayden through the open atrium where the trees stood and into a prison ward. They arrived at a cell so secure it would keep any human prisoner without the possibility of escape. With a swift perusal, Jayden knew it would not hold him if he did not wish it to. His shoulders drooped.

He had one hope left. That somehow, when the Compulsion struck, Jayden could maintain enough hold on his free will to keep from harming her. From harming them all.

One Week Later

Grace was losing her mind. She’d been apart from her angel for only a week, and she was losing her ever-loving mind.

She spent all of her free time in the observation room overlooking Jayden’s cell. Jericho pressured her to leave the facility, but Grace had nowhere to go. She’d cultivated a nomadic lifestyle for herself — going wherever the work was. She had no new job. She had nowhere new to go.

After catching her in the observation room two days in a row, Eli even agreed to let her write up a much-edited findings for the language on the sword.

It was the career-making opportunity of a lifetime. And still, she was here, looking down through mirrored glass at an angel. She hadn’t thought of her career in over a week. She couldn’t ignore the possibility that she wasn’t leaving the facility because this was where Jayden was, and she couldn’t stand to be apart from him.

Losing. Her. Mind.

But, if Grace was losing her mind, it was nothing compared to what Jayden was going through.

That first day of his imprisonment, when Grace sneaked into the observation room while everyone was sleeping, she had found Jayden huddled in the corner, his body slumped on the floor. From her position above the room, she has gazed at his head where it was resting on his bent knees. He didn’t move all night. And she couldn’t miss the way his wings constantly trembled.

The next day, however, things changed. Jayden paced his cell with an impatience that was so thick, Grace could nearly see it. His hand kept jerking toward the hilt of his sword where it peeped up over his shoulder. And then he would growl and pace faster.

The next day, his eyes lost their focus. His pacing turned frantic and no longer followed a straight line across his cell.

He was in distress. That much was more than obvious. Not for the first time, Grace began to ponder the possibility that he had no choice in carrying out his mission to kill them all. It would explain so much: his reticence to have a relationship with her, his attempt to train her to disarm him, his plea that she be kept away from him.

The hurt that last part had caused had long since vanished as Grace had watched him struggle with himself.

Something much more disturbing was taking its place. The warm, desperate longing she had been feeling for Jayden while his hostage had been morphing over the past week. Several times in the past few days as she had been glued to the reflective glass, she caught herself feeling something very close to …
love …
for the angel.

She was falling for him. Alarmingly quickly. Time and separation were only making the feelings stronger.

Now, a full week later, she was again observing him as close as she could get to him in the middle of the night while everyone else was asleep. Her heart was in her throat as she watched him pace. His movements were primitive. Those of an animal. Whatever precipice he perched on, he was close to going over. He was frightening, and yet, Grace was not afraid of him. She was done being afraid.

As she watched, he changed the direction of his path again. He walked toward the door, his wings completely unfurled, and rested his forehead against the metal of the cell’s top-security door. His entire body started to shake. His sword started to glow even brighter, the flames turning an ominous black.

But then he whispered. Spoke for the first time since his imprisonment. The sound was picked up by the hidden microphones in the cell and broadcast into the observation room. In a tremulous voice, Jayden whispered, “
Grace
. Where are you?”

His voice, broken and hurting, shot through Grace’s body. She was running out of the observation room before she realized she left it.

The halls were blessedly absent of personnel, and Grace raced to Jayden’s cell, the route burned into her memory from all of the times she’d traveled it in her mind. When she reached the hallway where his cell was located, she absently grabbed the master key from the guard’s room, and then peeked around the corner.

The roving guard was just walking away from her, on his way past Jayden’s cell. He would make a circuit of the square-shaped wing and be back at Jayden’s cell in less than a minute.

Grace kicked off her shoes, and jogged silently on stocking feet to Jayden’s cell. She arrived at the door just as the guard turned the corner. The key slid into the lock with an audible
snick
, and Grace held her breath, expecting the guard to have heard it and return any second to investigate.

Instead, Jayden’s voice sounded from within. “Who is there?”

“It’s me,” Grace whispered as she turned the key.

“Grace? You are still here?” His voice was panicked. The lock clicked. “For God’s sake,” Jayden said urgently, “do not let me out!”

She had precious seconds left. Even now, she could hear the guard’s shoes clacking in the hallway. Any moment, he would turn the corner and spy her breaking into the angel’s cell. Without another second to waste, Grace pushed the cell door in, rushed past the doorframe, and shut the door behind her as quietly as possible.

After a few seconds of tense silence, Grace turned slowly to find Jayden right behind her. His eyes were focused for the first time in days, and they were staring at her with unidentifiable intent.

For a moment, Grace was nervous. But then Jayden’s expression cleared, and he reached for her, jerking her into his body and crushing her against his chest. “Oh,
Grace
,” he whispered fervently into her hair. “I thought I would never see you again.”

His heart thundered in his chest, and with his touch, Grace felt her world shift into focus. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him close, breathing easily for the first time since watching him hauled away with his arms bound behind him.

• • •

He could not stop pressing kisses into her hair. He knew he was squeezing her too tightly, but she was
here
. In his arms once more, when he had thought to never have such an experience again. She was returning his embrace. Rubbing her face against his chest. He felt like he was going to burst apart.

Even the gut-wrenching fear he felt when he discovered she was still in the facility was no comparison to the joy he felt at having her returned to him. She gave him sanity. For the first time since his imprisonment, he was thinking clearly. The Compulsion, which had been racking up and down his spine and clawing the inside of his head for days, was now humming in the distance. She was centering him. Bringing him back to himself. He felt as far away from
weak
as he had ever been.

All of the times he had wished to lay with her and denied himself now reared up in his memory, and he cursed them for the missed opportunities they were. Why?
Why
had he kept himself from her in that way?

She cleared her throat and spoke into his chest. “Dahlia put — I’m on — ” She sighed, and Jayden stroked a hand down her back to sooth her. “I am safe,” she finally said. “I’m taking something that will keep us from creating life together.” She buried her face further into his chest, and Jayden froze.

That
was why he kept himself from her. His Fall. He should feel relief. He could be with her and not get her with child. Would that keep him from Falling? Obeying the letter of the law but not the spirit?

Jayden did not know. In fact, he only felt a painful pang at the thought that she would not carry his young — the proof of his love for her.

He loved her.

His body’s lack of any surprised reaction told Jayden he must have loved her for quite some time. Peace — the last emotion he would have expected in the face of such a revelation — settled down into Jayden’s soul.

Unable to keep himself from tasting her any longer, Jayden placed a finger beneath her chin. He raised her head.

She looked at him with those beautiful gray eyes, and he saw the same desire he felt echoed in her gaze. It was a flame licking up his spine.