Iridescent (The Ember Series) Page 2

  “It’s better if Sebastian doesn’t see me yet.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged dramatically. “What can I say? I know what I know.”

  It was all too bizarre for Candra. The last week had been confusing in the worst possible ways. Sebastian loved her, and she loved him; it felt so natural to her. The beginning of their relationship had turned out to be bittersweet when she discovered her courtship with Draven had been a ruse. He had set them up to finally make peace among the Watchers. To make matters worse, apparently an even more deadly menace loomed. Candra had also spent the past week in mourning. She’d attended her lectures in a daze and had accepted the condolences of her classmates with little acknowledgement of them. Now this.

  “I’m really not sure I can take any more,” she said wearily. She released her long hair from the tight clip holding it in place and fell back on to her bed beside the young woman…Ivy. Candra shut her eyes and tried to force her brain to accept the name and attach it to this stranger’s face in her subconscious. Her subconscious didn’t want to cooperate, and the name slipped away, leaving the woman’s face inside her head battling with Ivy’s for recognition. Like a new penny spinning on its edge, she saw Ivy, then the woman…then Ivy…faster and faster until they appeared to become one. Except they weren’t one. As soon as the penny stopped, it would fall flat, leaving only one of them on top.

  Candra sat up again and stared at her, pressing her fingers into Ivy’s cheeks. She squeezed them in the way she’d molded Play-Doh as a child, as if she could fix Ivy back the way she used to be.

  “Watcha doing?” Ivy asked, drawing out the words, her voice muffled by her distorted mouth and her eyebrows arching.

  “This is going to take a lot of getting accustomed to.” Candra studied her face, pulling the flesh this way and that, familiarizing herself.

  “Are we done now?”

  Candra brought her hand up to her own temples, rubbing circles to relieve the building tension headache. It was hardly past eight, and she was already exhausted. “How can you be so blasé about this?”

  The woman lifted her hand behind her shoulder and scooped her long, silken hair over to the front, where she began working it into a braid. “Believe me when I say that landing on your floor in this body was not the weirdest thing that happened to me this week.” She shrugged, looking up at Candra from under long black lashes. “Besides, you know me. I was constantly changing my appearance.”

  “Your hair, make-up, clothes…” Candra argued incredulously. “You never became someone else.”

  Ivy stopped and looked up from where she’d been gazing at the radiance her dark hair picked up from the muted light. “But I’m not someone else. I’m the same as always…with a few minor adjustments.”

  Candra shook her head, still struggling to reconcile this woman and Ivy into one being.

  Ivy smiled and rolled her eyes before she continued. “I know who I am. My identity isn’t tied up in my appearance. The outside—” she waved one hand around in front of her, holding on to the braid with the other “—is just decoration.”

  “You’re making me feel very shallow,” Candra joked lightly. “I would be seriously freaking out.”

  “You did seriously freak out,” Ivy corrected her.

  A wave of mixed emotions overcame Candra. Her life had become a cyclone of changes, a tempest of sensations she could barely register before one moved on to the next. They slowly managed to grind her down, piece by piece.

  “What was it like?” she whispered in a hushed voice, unconvinced she really wanted the answer.

  “Dying?”

  Candra nodded.

  “Baffling.” She snorted a laugh. Candra frowned. The woman sucked in a deep breath and went on. “Look, this is big. I’m not going to pretend like it isn’t, but I can’t be all morose about getting another go on the merry-go-round. The shooting was an accident. I know that much. The guy didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

  Candra pursed her lips dubiously; she couldn’t help blaming the guy who’d shot Ivy, regardless of his reasons for robbing the drugstore. He’d claimed he was hungry and the gun simply went off. In Candra’s mind, he should never have been carrying a gun.

  Ivy laid her hand across Candra’s, and her first thought was how smooth and warm the woman’s skin was…and soft—softer than even Lofi’s. Once again, the penny in her mind’s eye began spinning, and the whirling sound rang in her ears. Ivy’s face flashed in and out.

  “There are reasons for everything, even when we can’t see them. Me being here is not something that happened on its own.”

  Candra pulled her hand away roughly and scooted backward so she pressed her spine against the metal frame of her bed. She pulled her legs up to her chest and folded her arms tightly around them, pushing her fingers into her own arms until they stung. “Please don’t give me that,” she pleaded earnestly. “You, of all people! Don’t talk to me about destiny and plans and what’s meant to be. You were the one who told me we have free will and our choices are our own.”

  “They are.” Ivy pulled her legs up too, and in the process released the braid, which immediately began to fall loose. “Of course we all have free will, but it doesn’t mean we aren’t affected by what others decide. Sometimes, things are put in our path that aren’t as random as they appear, that’s all. Sometimes, things happen as reactions to what others choose. It doesn’t mean free will isn’t real.”

  Candra closed her eyes and turned her head to rest her cheek on her knee. “You’re talking in circles. I don’t understand.”

  “Where is Prince Charming?”

  “Still paying his respects at your funeral reception, I expect,” Candra mumbled against her knee. “He’ll be home soon.”

  “Home.” The woman repeated the word in a tone strongly laced with questioning. She paused for a moment. “Let’s get back to that one later, shall we?”

  Candra peeked up briefly. Curious green eyes gazed back at her. When she looked away again and ignored the slightly lower pitch of the voice speaking to her, she could almost pretend she was Ivy. She is Ivy, Candra scolded herself and forced her eyes up.

  “Remember the movie we watched where the husband and kids die in a car wreck and go to heaven?” Ivy inquired. “We spent the whole afternoon surrounded by ice cream tubs and tissues, bawling our eyes out over how amazing it all was.”

  “I remember.”

  “Heaven is nothing like that.” She grinned. “It’s so much more…I can’t explain. No words are adequate. Try to picture no struggle to accept you’ve passed or desire to hold on to what you were before. I mean, you remember, but it doesn’t hurt to remember.”

  It did sound wonderful, but Candra couldn’t wrap her head around it for one enormous reason. “What about the war? The Arch?”

  “It’s been over for years.”

  “How can that be?”

  Ivy grimaced, raising her eyebrows and pursing her lips, pulling them to one side, appearing to think deeply about her answer. Her nose scrunched up as if she smelled something rotten before she corrected herself. Candra suspected she was considering the details she couldn’t share about heaven. That made sense to an extent. None of the Watchers remembered much from before they came to Earth, but it also pointed out another glaringly obvious difference between the woman before her and them. How can she?

  “Time has no meaning in heaven, but do you know how long it takes to get here from there?”

  Candra remained stoic, knowing the question was rhetorical.

  “Years. The travel takes years.”

  Candra shifted and drew her legs under her, pressing one hand into her bed and holding the other palm out. “Wait, you’re saying there is no war?” Her heart thumped heavily, irritating the pain behind her eyes, causing a relentless tugging on the blood vessels in her head. A flash of relief built inside her, behind a floodgate ready to come crashing through. She could practically taste the possibility that they were wrong an
d nothing was coming to get them, nothing to separate her from Sebastian.

  Ivy didn’t answer. Her index finger leisurely traced a line over the delicate apple print on the shorts she wore, concentrating on them intently. Candra couldn’t breathe, as her chest burned with hope that instinct told her not to trust. The answer she wanted wasn’t forthcoming, and the woman wasn’t lifting her eyes. They probably only had minutes more before Sebastian decided he couldn’t let her be alone right now, regardless of her protests.

  “Tell me now, and tell me fast. What in hell is going on here?” Candra demanded, leaving no room for argument.

  “It takes eighteen years. Imagine what it would mean if the Arch was defeated around the time you were born. Now, imagine the victor finding a way out of heaven as soon as the conflict ended.”

  Relief drained away, replaced by a blood-curdling dread. Candra’s eyes widened. She predicted what was coming next. Eighteen years. She gulped down the lump in her throat. “The threat, whatever it is, it’s already here.”

  “The final battle is about to begin, and you are the key to stopping a war.”

  “How?” Candra asked.

  “You can send the Watchers home. No one has to die.”

  Candra’s mouth went slack. Ivy smiled benignly and reached forward to take Candra’s hand.

  “That’s what the Arch wanted, to save them from more fighting. That’s why you are here. Think about it. Isn’t heaven what Sebastian wants? And the others…they don’t want to be here anymore.”

  Candra tugged her hand away and slid off the bed. She dragged the drape back and wrapped her arms around herself, watching rain pelting down in heavy sheets, blurring the street outside. An icy sensation niggled at the back of her neck, making goose bumps rise on her forearms. The first wave of Watchers had come because they’d wanted a human life they couldn’t have. The second had followed to clean up the mess the soulless creatures born to the first created. They all wanted to go home after the war, but they couldn’t return ever, and when they died, they turned to dust. What if she was their way home? Her chest constricted, and she asked herself whether Sebastian would go if she gave him the opportunity.

  “What about the rest of them…humans? What about us?” Candra asked, peering out the window and trying to focus on the blurry figures on the rooftop across the street. Condensation made the glass opaque and practically impossible to discern anything beyond vague shapes. She wondered if it was someone she had met, someone who could die in another bloody war. Maybe an angel she might send back to the place they came from before here.

  “You have no idea what it was like for those who disappointed the Arch. The despair, locked away in darkness and forgotten.”

  Candra closed her eyes and listened to the rain and beyond it to the sounds of the city in the distance, trying to isolate the sources. Despite the violent downpour, she heard the shrill ringing of several fire alarms and the emergency vehicles on the way to them.

  “All because the Arch couldn’t be satisfied,” Ivy went on in a meticulously cool voice. “He had tens of thousands of adoring angels and an eternity to be idolized. Still, humans came to pass. What was wrong with us? Why weren’t we enough?”

  “Us?” Candra whispered the word absently, still focused on the figures perched on the rooftops. The great expanse of their outstretched wings looked black against the gray, cloud-filled sky. The months had worn on her, and it didn’t immediately strike her as odd that they seemed ready for flight…or attack.

  “Us?” Candra turned, gripping the windowsill behind her.

  The woman’s fingers worked deftly, re-braiding her hair, her head tilted to the side, and she peered up at Candra with a calculating smile. Her green eyes seemed flat, and in the darkness, it appeared the vibrant color had drained from them, leaving murky pools. Candra swallowed thickly as her mind raced to catch up with her thoughts and wrap around what her instincts were telling her.

  A loud thump from above caught their attention, and Candra’s heart galloped—Sebastian. His arrival meant Brie and Gabe wouldn’t be far behind. Lofi would probably also stop by before returning to the brownstone they called home in the city. They were about to have a very full house. Candra took several tentative steps forward at the same time Ivy moved toward her and gripped her hands.

  “You know it’s what he wants, Candra, even if he won’t admit it to you. Sebastian came here out of duty, a misplaced loyalty, later betrayed with abandonment. Here, he is nothing more than an outcast.” Her words came out rushed and anxious. Her eyes darted between Candra’s, pleading. “Come with me now. I know you. You will twist yourself in knots over this when the answer is simple. You and Sebastian were never meant to be. He is a creature of heaven condemned to live a half existence here. Send him home. Send them all home. This world belongs to others. Come with me, and I’ll show you how. All you have to do is choose it.”

  A terrible, earth-shattering crash from behind shook the room, and for an instant, time appeared to slow. Shards of glass and droplets of rain floated in the abruptly frigid air around them, reflecting the silver light from outside like tiny pieces of metal. Sebastian’s gold-tipped wings dominated the room. They spread out wide from his sculpted body like a giant swan, gleaming white in the darkness.

  The two young women initially cowered in the midst of the downpour, protecting themselves from the tiny crystals of glass. The speed of the gust accompanying Sebastian’s entrance forced Candra forward, knocking her off her feet by the side of her bed. It all happened so fast. She took a moment to regain her equilibrium and pulled herself up from the floor.

  Sebastian had already crouched over her, one of his immense wings acting as a barrier between her and the intruder. Rain glistened over his tanned skin and tightly corded muscle. His blond hair flattened to his head and darkened with the water dripping down his naked back to the band of his sopping black pants.

  “Are you insane?” he spat. “Why didn’t you call me?” He didn’t need to look at her for Candra to know his words were directed at her, and she deeply resented the razor-sharp edge to his voice.

  She stood up, watching Ivy brush sparkling shards from her arms. It had to happen eventually. Of course Sebastian would have to find out about this. Candra’s sluggish brain tried to come up with a reasonable explanation. How could she convince Sebastian the woman in front of him was Ivy when Candra herself struggled to accept it?

  “It’s okay.” Candra attempted to edge past Sebastian.

  His wings fluttered and contracted, bending at a joint midway and pulling in. Before Candra got a chance to move, he was in front of her, and she found herself experiencing a sensation of déjà vu. His fingers bit into her hips to keep her back. Her palms flattened against his bare skin under the folds of his impressive expanse of silken feathers. Ivy stood, arms crossed casually and her lips pulled up in a smirk.

  “Well, well, the great Sebastian. You look well,” she said with her eyes roaming over his body in a way that made Candra feel possessive.

  Every time she tried to move, Sebastian caught her with his cold hands, easily keeping her out of the way. He was strong, appearing eighteen to twenty in human years. Candra had imagined him fresh out of reform school during their first conversation. Sebastian never looked less human than when he displayed his magnificent wings and his wrathful ire verged on nuclear levels.

  “Wait, just wait, Sebastian. You don’t understand what’s going on here,” Candra berated him, not only for the way he was treating the woman; he’d destroyed her room. Shattered glass twinkled like diamonds across every surface, and relentless torrents of rain formed puddles on her floor. “It’s Ivy.”

  Sebastian’s entire body shuddered under her hands. “That thing is not Ivy,” he sneered with a deadly choler in his tone.

  Candra continued to fight him until she locked eyes with the intruder again. The mocking expression on her face caught Candra off guard.

  She sighed, a beautiful, long, drawn out s
ound accompanied by the dramatic rise and fall of her shoulders. “I tried,” she said wearily. “You can’t say I didn’t try. This could have all been so easy.”

  Candra ceased struggling. The nerves below her flesh began to oscillate, as if electrically charged. The surface turned icy, yet, at the same time, a heat so fiery she was sure it would singe her, galloped across her skin. She stepped back and initially put the sensation down to the rapid change of temperature, coupled with shock and exhaustion. Then she noticed the slight pearlescent sheen on the back of her hand. It started at a low shimmer and quickly intensified to a dim, translucent white glow that appeared to come from somewhere below the surface.

  “What’s happening to me?” she gasped, meeting Sebastian’s appalled brown eyes for the most fleeting of instants.

  He returned his attention to the woman holding the same defensive pose. His body leaned forward, his long fingers clenching into fists, ready to leap into action at any time.

  “Well, aren’t you resplendent?” the strange woman murmured almost in awe, scrutinizing as much of Candra as was visible behind Sebastian. “You are everything I expected you would be and more.”

  “What are you talking about?” Candra demanded. I can’t lose her again. The thought ricocheted inside her skull. Despite the fact her gut told her she had been duped right from the beginning, it didn’t make it any easier to accept she may have to let go of her best friend twice in one day. She wanted this to be real. She wanted the woman to be Ivy.

  “Go, or we finish this now.” Sebastian’s wings trembled and fluttered as further indication of his rage. A thin blue vein became visible at his temple, stretching from his hairline. It only appeared whenever he was truly furious.

  “As much fun as your company must be, Sebastian, I think it’s time I took my leave,” the green-eyed woman cooed provocatively, trailing her eyes down Sebastian’s body. Her tongue darted out and skimmed her bottom lip before she lifted her eyes again.