right for explaining what she’d done, but I had to use something. “She somehow managed to seize your essence and reforged the anchor. She reconnected you.”
Air whooshed out of Kian, a release of the pent up breath he’d been holding back. Silence followed, growing heavy enough to feel like a physical weight layered over all of us.
Finally, Kian stated, “So I did die.”
No one confirmed his statement or elaborated on it. He hadn’t been talking to us, anyway. He just needed to say it out loud, to see how the truth settled once he set it free. We waited, allowing him to adjust. When he grabbed my hand, the spell broke.
“Then I had to carry your heavy ass back here while dodging everyone in Orusian. Did I mention you’re heavy? Next time, you’re carrying me.” Trace laughed, but it sounded strained, and no one else joined him.
I didn’t want to even think about a next time.
To push the thoughts out of my mind, I offered a distraction. “Shadow’s back.”
“Where is she?” Kian asked, turning to me with a look of gratitude on his face.
He didn’t want to talk about anyone else dying, either.
“She’s taking a nap, I think. She says we’re all weird for fussing over you.” I shrugged and dropped my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Don’t let her fool you, though. She was just as worried. Kept tapping at your head to see if anything was inside of it.”
A faint smile barely tipped the corners of Kian’s lips before he turned back to his drink. Those lips curled, and his tipped nose scrunched up as he peered down into it.
“What is in this? It tastes like what shit smells like,” he asked, disgust coloring his words.
For the first time since we’d started, Grace spoke. She puffed up, looking comical. I wisely stifled a chuckle, but Trace didn’t and received a withering glare.
“It’s good for you. It will help you regain your strength, and that’s all you need to know. Now drink it,” she ordered.
Kian turned to me, his eyes wide and pleading. I couldn’t stop the grin that spread across my lips that time. My hand cupped the bottom of the mug, and I pushed it upward.
“You heard her. Drink up,” I said.
Chapter Sixty-Three
We got back to work on that binal. Well, everyone except Kian, obviously. He still needed time to return to normal. One of us remained with him until he could walk across the room without becoming winded and dizzy.
The argument Trace and I had before we left nearly ended in murder. He insisted that either he or Axton come along. I countered that would leave the other one walking completely alone, where I had Grace and Shadow both. His response involved us all going as a large group to our duties and finishing the binal with their work. Axton pitched in with an overly complicated, confusing schedule that didn’t include half of the things that needed to be done.
At first, I’d remained calm, explaining why they were wrong, but their anger rose, infecting me. By the time my frustration got the better of me, I’d already torn apart fifty or so of their emotionally driven ‘reasons.’ I understood his fear, of course, but he wouldn’t let it go. In the end, I froze their feet in place and departed with Grace, Trace’s muffled voice calling me a “fool female.”
Grace and I took the first batch of Angels to Earth. They’d reacted more stoically than the Reapers had, but despite their obvious effort to hide it, I spotted the signs of their discomfort and disbelief. It was in how they stared a touch too long and how they froze when they laid eyes on the Hollows. They hesitated when they reached for a pregnant Hollow human, and when we returned to the DNB, their solid forms walked with a little less stiffness, a little less arrogance.
Grace, of course, reverted to her hunched, timid self in their presence, and I wasn’t sure that the Angels would survive the encounters. They abused her without trying to disguise it. Cruel words, open sneers, and an air of disdain greeted her each time we had to interact with an Angel.
Despite Grace’s insistence that it was okay, I quickly dissuaded them of their preconceptions that they would be allowed to continue their horrid behaviors. Astonishingly, it usually took multiple corrections before the others fell in line. And there was always one; that one Angel that bristled when I challenged them.