Angel Fury (Immortal Legacy #2) - Ella Summers Page 0,55
smiled as I dug my toes deeper into the sand, remembering the peace of so many good memories here, drinking them all in.
All the while, Damiel watched me. He didn’t move.
“Take off your boots,” I encouraged him. “Join me.”
“I don’t like sand in my boots.”
“You won’t get sand in your boots, just on your feet.”
“And then the sand on my feet will get into my boots,” he said practically. “And I’ll never be able to get it out again.”
Laughing, I spread a picnic blanket I’d found inside the basket Jiro had packed for us. I set our dinner on the blanket and sat down. Carefully avoiding a tiny pile of sand, Damiel sat down beside me.
“Haven’t you ever had to march through the desert?” I asked him.
“Yes.”
“And how did you keep the sand out of your boots then?”
“I didn’t. I just endured,” he told me. “But now I’m an angel. I don’t have to march across deserts or beaches. I can fly over them.”
“What if you have to march with me?”
“You can fly now.”
“Yes, I can fly. But let’s say I couldn’t. What would you do? Would you let me march alone on the ground as you flew over me?”
“If you still couldn’t fly, then yes, I would do exactly that,” he replied. “Maybe a little sand in your boots would encourage you to learn how to fly so that you wouldn’t have to suffer from sand in your boots anymore.”
I smiled at him. “And what if I don’t mind sand in my boots?”
“Everyone minds sand in their boots.”
“True,” I laughed. “Well, if I had to walk across a sandy expanse, I suppose I’d just take off my boots.”
His forehead crinkled up. “You have an answer to everything, don’t you?”
“Absolutely. It used to confound my teachers, you know. Even if I didn’t know the answer to one of their questions, I could make my creative answer sound very convincing.”
“I bet that never happened.”
“What?”
“Your not knowing the answer,” he clarified. “You were always so clever. Always at the top of the class.”
“Read that in my file, did you?”
“Yes.”
I chewed on that nugget of information. Did my file really state that I was ‘perfect’, or had he simply concluded that from everything in there?
“Does that bother you?” he asked.
“That you’ve read my file?”
He nodded once.
I thought about it for a moment, then said, “No. At least not anymore. You know more about me than I do about myself, but only because I don’t really know myself at all. My life is a lie.”
“Your life is not a lie,” he said. “There have been lies in your past, but this here is real. What we’re doing is real.”
“It’s just another mission, Damiel.”
“I wasn’t talking about the mission, Cadence.”
Jiro’s words echoed in my head: during your first mission, Damiel fell in love with you.
I cleared my throat—and that thought from my head. “Are Jiro’s stories about you really so bad?” I asked Damiel.
“Mostly they are just embarrassing. I wasn’t particularly clever in my youth.”
I couldn’t stop the grin spreading across my face. “Well, now I absolutely must hear these stories from him. I bet they could keep me entertained all night. I should go back right now and demand that he tell me every story he has about you.” I reached for the Diamond Tear.
Damiel caught my hand before it touched the hilt. “You don’t want to do that.”
“No, you don’t want me to do it. I, on the other hand, can hardly contain my curiosity.”
“About me?”
I nodded.
“Why?” he asked.
“Well, we’re married. So we might as well learn all of each other’s dirty little secrets.”
He seemed to mull that over. Finally, he said, “There’s no need to bother Jiro. Ask me whatever you want to know.”
“Anything?”
“Yes.”
I rested my chin on my raised knees. “And you swear to answer truthfully and in great detail any question that I ask?”
“If you will swear to abide by the same conditions.”
“All right. I agree.” I rubbed my hands together. “That wasn’t very clever, Colonel. This deal is entirely in my favor. You already know all my secrets. You knew them even before I did.”
“We shall see,” he replied calmly.
I tried not to feel worried by his absolute serenity. After all, he did know all about me. And though I’d gotten to know him better than most anyone else did, there was still so much I didn’t know about him.
I uncapped a glass bottle and sniffed it. A sweet, potent magical scent flooded my nose. Diluted Nectar drops. Legion