Grace and Glory (The Harbinger #3) - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,106
sat on the couch, holding me close. The whole time he spoke with her, he smoothed his hand through my hair and down my back. Every so often, he would stop and drop a kiss on my temple or my forehead, and I... I soaked up the affection like a happy little sponge. He seemed to need to be as close to me as I needed the same from him, and I imagined the trauma of the last several days drove the desire. Stacey wanted to see Zayne, and I couldn’t blame her for that. I could tell just from what he was saying that she was shocked, but Zayne felt it was too risky. He was right. Gabriel might not know Zayne was back yet, but he would, and I wouldn’t put it past the archangel to go after anyone close to either of us.
After the call, we’d decided it was best if we went ahead and removed one of his feathers while in the apartment. That prevented Zayne from having to do the show-and-tell with his wings with the Crone and any other witch present. It wasn’t that we didn’t trust her...
Okay, we didn’t trust her.
It wasn’t anything personal. We just didn’t trust any witch.
Of course, when he tugged his shirt off and his wings unfurled, I got a little distracted staring at them. Dragging my gaze from one graceful arch, I got down to business. “So how do we do this?”
“You can just grab one,” he offered.
“Wait. What? You want me to do what?” My brows flew up. “Just yank one out?”
He shrugged. “Or I can do it.”
“Yeah, you should do it.” I wrinkled my nose. “Because nope, I can’t.”
“It’s not like I’m suggesting that you pull off a toenail.”
“Ew,” I muttered as he swept a wing forward.
Laughing softly, he ran his fingers through the underside of his wing. “Just one?”
I nodded. “Make it a small one.”
He shot me a grin as he curled a finger around a feather. “You may want to look away.”
Not even bothering to pretend like I could stomach it, I focused on the somewhat decluttered kitchen counter. “You know when we were in the pool and I went to touch your wings? You didn’t seem to like it then.”
“That’s a random question.”
“Yeah, well, I’m trying to not focus—” There was a soft snapping sound and I flinched. “On that.”
“Barely even hurt,” he replied. “You can look now.”
Peeking over at him, I saw that his wings were folded back. He held a feather the size of his palm in his hand. Could’ve just been my eyes, but the feather appeared to glow faintly.
“The reason why I stopped you in the pool had nothing to do with my feathers,” he told me, drawing my gaze to his. “Grab a ziplock baggie for the feather.”
“There’s something extremely wrong with putting a feather in a ziplock baggie.” Pivoting, I walked over to the small pantry built into the cabinets. “So why did you stop me, then?”
“When I was with you, in the pool? For a few minutes, I didn’t feel...exposed to all that hate and bitterness. All I felt were my own emotions. I was quiet. Calm,” he explained. “But then I started to feel those things again. It was insidious, like a snake slithering through my veins, and I didn’t want to hurt you.”
My heart twisted as I opened the pantry door and grabbed a baggie out of the box. I turned to him. “Do you feel that now? The hate and bitterness?”
“Not like that since I came to after you used the Sword of Michael. But I can still feel others’...intent. Their darkest secrets. But it’s controllable.”
“What do you mean?” I walked the baggie over to him.
“It’s hard to explain.” He took it from me. “But it kind of reminds me of what Layla can do with seeing auras—the color of people’s souls. It’s like that, but I just feel their intent if I want to.”
My brows lifted. “Like how? You just look at them, and bam, you know if they’re good or bad or something in between?”
“I just have to focus on them—I have to want to know.” He slipped the luminous feather into the baggie, then sealed the top. “One of the angels explained that I would be able to feel the true intentions of mortals. That all angels can. I guess that is a part of the reason that when an angel Falls, that sense is overwhelmed. It wasn’t until we