thread of optimism. “But it’ll take him some time to get there, right? Let’s search now. Head him off before he can meet with this Ereshkigal.”
A smile that was all bitterness, no amusement, crept onto his face. “We’ll search. But Ereshkigal is no laughing matter.”
“I’m not laughing.” I rose up on my toes and kissed him. “You can look for him more clearly now. Let me help you.”
He broke away, glancing at the massive orb behind him. “This isn’t the sort of art you should be present for.”
I leaned to the side, getting in one tiny, full-on look at the orb before he covered my eyes with his hand.
“Don’t look into it,” he said, not ungently. “What’s in there is not for you to see.”
I frowned. “I’m not waiting outside. This involves me, too.”
Azazel’s exasperated sigh ruffled my hair. “You don’t have to sit outside. Just keep your distance, and don’t look directly into it. Try to keep it out of your peripherals, even. I’m going to search Irkalla for his power signature, and you sit over there.”
He took his hand off my eyes and pointed to the chair the library had helpfully procured for me. Doing my best not to grumble like a thwarted child, I sat down in the chair.
It spun around of its own accord, forcing me to face a wall of books instead of looking directly at Azazel. I had only the vaguest sense of him moving around, but the emotions coming through our mate bond were more than a little troubling.
He was worried. Very worried, and there was a tinge of fear in there, the same look I’d seen in his eyes.
My skin prickled as magic began to rise in the air, a cloud of pure energy that reached out and touched me, dancing against the fire inside me.
It took every last drop of willpower not to turn and watch him, even when the magic in the room reached an uncomfortable degree. I felt like ants were crawling all over my skin, biting and stinging, even though Azazel’s magic was usually friendly towards me.
Many long minutes passed in silence, only the sound of shuffling pages and my own breathing reaching my ears. My legs were starting to get stiff from sitting so still when the magic around me popped, sending a sharp pain through my ears.
I spun around. It was impossible to sit still through this.
Azazel was bent over the orb once more, his fingertips pressed to the dark stone, but his eyes were completely devoid of life.
Shadows rose from him, curling around his arms and legs and vanishing into the air. Even as I watched, a thin film of ice spread from his fingertips and began to grow over the surface of the orb like a lacy spider’s web, holding his hands in place.
“Azazel!” I took a step forward and stopped myself in my tracks. What if I looked into it, and I was caught too?
But he wasn’t coming back or breaking away. The shadows grew denser, forming shapes like dark hands that twined around him, tugging on his clothes, running over his face. He exhaled shadows on his breath.
And his eyes. They were no longer violet, becoming the pits of electricity they only became when he unleashed the monster within.
I stepped forward, trying to keep the orb out of my line of sight, but it was impossible if I wanted to see Azazel, too. I tried as hard as I could to keep my eyes on his face, but the reflection in the orb wasn’t what stood in front of me…
I glanced at it for only a second. I could’ve sworn it was only a second.
But when I tugged my gaze away from the creature in the orb, the several pairs of electric eyes and the mouth full of fangs, the dark feathered wings studded with eyes that blinked in a frenetic pattern, I felt like I’d been standing there for a hundred years.
Something else moved within the orb as I moved towards Azazel, mimicking my movements.
Something tall, with six enormous wings. Something with a blackened halo spinning over its head, sucking in all the light and spitting it back out as pure darkness.
My heart jumped into my throat. I ripped my eyes from the orb and squeezed them shut, reaching out blindly for Azazel.
“Wake up!”
I shook him hard, getting two fistfuls of his shirt and tugging him away with all my might.
Ice cracked, and we went flying backwards together.