his true face. Exquisite, but I’d felt fear slicing through my heart all the same. His true face was a divine vision not meant for mortals.
Now, I heard only the sound of my own breathing, and the droplets of water hitting the floor.
I didn’t have any dry clothes yet. I stumbled into a sofa, and felt around until my fingertips brushed over what I thought was my cloak, until I realized it was dry.
At last, my eyes adjusted. I saw that he’d left a soft blanket out for me, draped over the sofa.
Stark naked, I lay down and pulled the blanket over me. So soft and comfortable here, like a dream.
But there was one burning question in my mind—one that maybe spoke to the heart of his mystery. “Why did you fall?” I asked. “What did you do?”
He let out a sigh that sounded forlorn. In the next moment, the fire was burning once more in the hearth. I sat up, holding the blanket up to cover myself. My hair fell loose over my bare shoulders, and I waited to hear what he would say.
He was sitting at the edge of his bed, staring at the floor. “I drink tea, sometimes, at night. Herbal tea.”
I frowned, completely confused. “Sorry, is that why you fell, or …”
He looked at me like I was mad. “No, oddly enough, I wasn’t cast out of the heavens for the mortal sin of drinking herbal tea. I just wanted to drink some while I told you about the most painful memory I have. Will I be pouring a cup for you?”
“Are you trying to beguile me?”
He arched a quizzical eyebrow, then stood and plucked the kettle off the mantel. “Absolutely not. If I were trying to beguile you, you would know it. And you would likely not recover from the experience.”
He hung the kettle from a hook over the fireplace. I watched as he pulled herbs from a tin, and dropped them into little silky sachets.
“Okay. Noted. Just tea then.”
The flames wavered, warm light and shadows dancing over the perfect planes of his face. It was no wonder he thought highly of himself, which was bloody annoying. “It’s a medicinal tea,” he said. “It soothes the soul. Fenugreek, mugwort, sage, and something very secret. It’s a blend I learned to make from a woman named Yvonne.”
“A mortal woman?”
“One who I regarded highly. Or so I’m told.”
“Told?”
“Angels do not remember our lives before the fall.”
I felt a bizarre and very unexpected twinge of jealousy of this woman. And that was insane.
I frowned. “Is she the woman in the painting? The redhead?”
He nodded, staring at the kettle as it warmed. “Yvonne was a healer, alive a thousand years ago.” He leaned against the mantel, his head resting on his arm. For the first time, I sensed a sort of weariness in him. When the kettle started to whistle, he pulled it off the hook—not using a cloth or anything, just his bare hand on hot metal.
He poured the boiling water into the cups, and the steam curled into the air around him. He handed me a cup, sat in his chair, then peered at me over the rim of his mug, steam coiling before his face. Even his tea was a way to hide.
“I’d been in a battle when I met her.”
“With mortals?”
He narrowed his gray eyes. “Are you going to keep interrupting?”
One hand held my hot tea, the other clung to the blanket over my chest. I waited for him to go on.
“It was a holy battle—angels fighting demons.”
I stared, and dread swooped through my heart. This was new information.
There was something worse than angels?
26
Lila
“Wait—demons?” I sputtered. “Demons are real?”
Glaring at me, he went very still, and let the silence settle in the air.
“Go on,” I muttered.
“Thank you. I was on the Island of Wrens, fighting the army of the great demon Lilith, and she nearly managed to kill me. She left me bleeding out over the stones and soil, my head nearly off my body entirely.”
I wanted to hear more about her, but I wasn’t going to interrupt him again.
“Yvonne saw it happen. She’d been hiding in the forest, watching the battle. We lost, badly. But when the battle ended, Yvonne crept out of the trees where she’d been hiding. She started to heal the wounded angels, one by one. But I was in the worst shape, and it took me months to recover. We stayed friends after that.”