Demon Fire (Angel Fire #3) - Marie Johnston Page 0,6

it was. Bryant Vale stopped by every day he was able. Bryant and Leo were close, but she tried to hide how stark her and Leo’s existence had become.

“Bryant, come in.”

His stern gaze bored into her like she could hide nothing. Why did she even try? He’d seen for himself how despondent Leo was. His mate, Odessa, wasn’t with him today. Millie missed her talks with the director’s wife. Odessa’s youthful enthusiasm was a dose of sunshine in a house that had become a tomb.

“How is he today?” Bryant kept his voice low. Leo would hate that Bryant checked on him with her first.

Defeat hung on Millie’s wings. Hate would be welcome. Anger. Righteousness. Any emotion beyond the nothingness that consumed her mate would be welcome.

“Right. Odessa picked these up.” Bryant held out three brochures. Prosthetics.

Millie gave him a sad smile. “I’ve looked at them all, but I haven’t brought it up.” Bryant had made the comment to Leo that humans survived amputation and learned to adapt. But Leo had ignored him, and to her he’d pointed out that humans’ lives were poetically short.

She had wanted to say that to humans, life felt inexorably long, but definitively short. They were innovative and their prosthetics would continue to improve. But Leo had retreated into his mind and she didn’t have the heart to speak up. He’d been kicked while he was down enough.

Her mate had loved his job. He’d lived to serve his people. His work had defined him. When he’d lost his legs, he’d lost his position. She often wondered if she should tell Bryant that his visits might be harder on Leo. But the person responsible for the incident had been on Bryant’s team. His own guilt drove him to visit, and if she said something, would it hurt how he did his job? They needed a strong director now more than ever.

She wished it could be Leo again. She wished Leo would be something again. Like a male who didn’t have to be coaxed to eat. Or a male who did more than stare at the bedroom wall. A mate who let her back into his bed.

“He’ll come around.” Bryant had been saying that for months. Would he be saying it for years?

“I wish I could get through to him.”

Bryant’s brows pinched, and if Millie didn’t know him so well, she’d be terrified. He was a harsh-looking male. “Listen, Millie. I know he doesn’t get news if I don’t tell him.” Leo’s only visitor was Bryant. Her mate had scared all others off or they’d given up. “But there’s change coming.”

Bryant often filled them in on what was happening outside of the manor. She clung to news, to the gossip Odessa whispered to her, jealous of how the realm moved on while the inside of her manor was in stasis. But how could she live her life when her soul mate wanted to give up on his own?

Heaviness weighed down Bryant’s steely wings and his whiskey eyes were grim. She feathered her fingers against her chest. He had bad news. Bryant was like a brother to Leo. He’d become family to her and she knew that look.

“Oh? What sort of change?”

“We’re going to push some topics with the senate.”

She shivered, like a cold wind licked across her neck. “That sounds ominous.” And futile.

“It’s about the fallen.”

Her inhale was sharp. Emotions roiled inside of her, pushing the needle higher until she didn’t know when she’d explode. The fallen. One in particular was the reason why her mate was all but lifeless in the bed they used to make sweet love in. Her mate who’d doted on her every chance he got to make up for the long hours he spent at the warriors’ barracks.

The fallen who hadn’t told anyone why she’d done what she’d done but had willingly paid the price. Falling was supposed to be a fate worse than death.

Millie hoped so.

“What about them?” She managed to keep her voice steady. It was getting hard not to shout. To yell. To holler at the world and demand to know why she’d lost her mate. Wasn’t it enough to have tried for years to have a child and be without, now she had to lose her mate too? He avoided looking at her. Any thoughts of a family had evaporated with his legs.

“Jameson Haddock showed us how ignorant we are of them. He showed us that they may not be as powerless as we think when we take their