Her gray eyes fly past me, searching for my ghost. They skim my left side, then my right, darting to my front and back again, and I realize that even though she senses E is with me, she can’t pinpoint his exact location. Not the way I can.
That’s a slim silver lining, but I’ll take it.
I can’t summon the courage to speak, and E remains eerily silent, too.
The gorgeous Fae finally squints at the space he occupies, “Ezra Hermes Lightbringer, stop playing games. I’ve waited decades to see you again.”
Ezra Hermes Lightbringer.
The name hits almost as hard as it did when he used it earlier.
Her eyes flick to the ground, and her hands twist around each other. “I forgive you. For everything.”
Does that make her Willow? Does that make this impossibly beautiful woman the forlorn wife he left behind?
“I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are,” E—or rather Ezra—says.
He shifts closer, standing behind me like I’m the only shield and sword he needs to slay his past.
The woman’s face slowly wrinkles in a devastated frown.
“I should give you some privacy,” I say quickly.
“No, stay.” Ezra grabs my shoulders to keep me from leaving, and I know he’s scared shitless of what he doesn’t remember.
A boulder pulses in my throat. “Are you Willow?”
Her eyes flash with anger. “I’m Iris.”
Bittersweet relief floods me. She’s not his wife.Alleluia.
Iris prances forward with her head tilted to the side. “Ezra,please. I need to see you.”
“He can’t. He’s invisible. He-he doesn’t remember anything about his life,” I stammer.
Her mouth hangs agape. “Why?”
“We don’t know,” I answer.
The wordweearns me a glacial stare as Iris eyes me up and down the way you consider a weed you plan to wrestle out of your garden.
“I’m sorry,” Ezra says softly. “It must be terrible for you.”
Iris falls to one of the stone seats surrounding the hawthorn, looking both sad, shocked, and incredibly annoyed. Tears well in her cloudy eyes, but she angles her face away to mask them.
“My memory was wiped away when I died,” Ezra adds regretfully. “And I don’t think it’s ever coming back.”
Her knuckles turn white around the edge of her seat, and she sneers as she wipes a fat tear from the corner of her eye. “I don’t know what happened to you, E,” she drawls, her voice breaking despite her best efforts, the sound heartbreakingly intimate.
It especially stings that she calls him E.
“I don’t know where you were the last fifty years, or why, but I know death,” she croaks. “I’ve lived death, breathed it in, and now, I rule over it. Hells, I’m still half-dead, burrowing into life against its will.”
The satisfied curl of her mouth clashes with the salty streaks running down her cheeks as she adds, “And you, my prince, are not dead.”
Chapter 39
Fallen Angel
