Eternal Sin (Primal Sin #2) - Ariana Nash Page 0,4

with demon blood.

She flung out a hand. “Stop!”

Mikhail lowered the whip. They both panted. His wings expanded with each breath and shrank again with each exhale.

She peeled her shredded wing back from her face and revealed a smile so broad it brightened her yellow eyes. “You took his wings and made him stronger.”

Mikhail freed a growl and brought the whip down again, making the church ring with the crack.

Her skin glistened with blood, she shivered in a pool of it, but laughter still bubbled from her lips. “He’ll come for you, guardian.”

Crack.

Laughter filled the church now. Hers. “He’s already taken your heart. Next, he’ll take your wings!”

Mikhail threw the whip aside and snatched an angelblade from the guard. He grabbed her torn, flailing wing by its ridge, yanked her chest-first into the church floor, and slammed a boot into her back, between her wings, holding her pinned. His own wings arched backward, shifting his weight and poise.

“Your Grace?”

The new voice hooked in, freezing him rigid. The demon squirmed beneath him, her wings flapping, spraying blood. He looked at the angelblade in his hand, and horror rolled over him, knocking him backward, away from the demon. The blade fell from his hand and clanged to the floor, ringing like this church’s now-silent bells.

“Mikhail?”

The guard who had spoken looked back at him, his eyes a startling green and hair a deep red. He knew him. Solomon. One of the elite. Solomon knew. They all knew how Mikhail had loved a demon with all his heart and soul. Loved him so much he’d performed the allyanse. Mated them.

Mikhail’s gut heaved.

“Sire?” Solo reached out a hand.

He batted him away and staggered for the door. “No food. No water. Until she talks.”

“But she’ll die?”

“Then let her die!” He tore from the church, spread his wings, and took to London’s gray skies, beating higher, fueled by rage and pain and regret and shame and all the things no angel should ever feel. He flew into the clouds, numb to their damp kiss on his skin, and stumbled into Aerie—into his chamber and the gallery where the wings hung on the far wall. He almost made it to their great expanse before his legs gave out and dropped him to his knees.

It was too much.

All of it.

Everything.

He still loved him, even now. If he could rip out his own, treacherous heart, he would. He fell forward onto his hands and sobbed, unable to hold the immense pain inside. His wings, spread wide, shuddered, their feathers dislodging the moisture gathered from the clouds like tears.

Crossing his arms over his chest, he clenched his hands into fists and rocked back on the balls of his feet. The severed demon wings towered over him. Two great monuments to everything that was wrong in the world.

“I will find you. I will kill you, and that will be the end of this madness. For us both.”

Chapter 3

Severn

There were voices and hands on him, but it was different this time. The pain faded and kept on fading, reducing to an ache he could ignore. He woke in a strange room, adrift from reality. The air smelled of demon, like home, but he hadn’t been home in years. The room wasn’t one he knew. No bright sunlight bouncing off sharp surfaces, no polished floors and glass walls. No echo of voices. Everything here, from the drapes to the bed he lay in, was soft and warm and dark. His memory told him this was a safe place, but why then was his pulse racing and his body strung so tightly, readying to flee?

He threw off the sheets and ran a hand down his smooth arm, across his naked chest, and over a thigh. No wounds. No scars. Like the torture had never happened. He’d been trapped in a nightmare for so long, he no longer knew if this was real or fantasy.

The effort of walking to the shower almost dropped him to his knees. He propped himself against the tiled wall as warm water patted against his cool skin. Like rain.

Kisses in the rain on a London rooftop…

He rested his forehead against tiles and withstood the onslaught of memories. Mikhail on his knees, weeping. The soft, protective touch of feathers. Mikhail’s cock between Severn’s soft lips. How the angel would sigh and shudder and come undone beneath Severn’s hands.

“You’re up?”

Severn gasped out of the daydream and fell against the tiles. “Shit.” Through the fogged glass, he saw how Samiel’s concerned smile slipped sideways.

Samiel folded