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So Shawn was gay. It made sense, but I hadn’t been a hundred percent sure. The signs had been there, like the way he’d looked at Thomas tonight and the conversations we’d had about my love life, but I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about it.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly because I didn’t know what else to say.
“It is what it is. What do you do for work or whatever? Or are we still not talking about the details of your personal life?”
I chuckled. “There’s not much to talk about. I’m taking classes, volunteering here and there. I still haven’t figured out my long-term plan. The only thing I’ve ever been sure about is that I love children. I want to be a mother, and I want to help as many other children as I can manage.”
“It sounds like you have more figured out than you’re giving yourself credit for.”
“But I don’t have a plan. I just have a feeling like there’s something I’m supposed to be doing, but I don’t know exactly what.”
“You’ll figure it out. We have the whole rest of our lives to get it right.”
“Maybe I should just marry Freddie like my parents always wanted and start popping out babies.”
“And what about Samuel?”
“With any luck, he’ll disappear again and I can make it another eight years without seeing him.”
Eight
Samuel
I shot upright in bed.Sweat dampened the hair that hung in my eyes. Dark red silk sheets were twisted around my waist, and I couldn’t get my fucking heart to stop pounding like it was trying to beat its way out of my chest.
Pull it together, asshole. You’re too old for this shit.
I shoved a hand through my hair, pushing wet bangs off my forehead.
I was in the bedroom of my apartment a couple dozen floors above Youngblood. I wasn’t nine years old anymore. She wasn’t here. She’d never be here again. But all the assurances in the world couldn’t erase the image of icy blue eyes from my memory.
After untangling myself from the sheets, I got out of bed and headed for the bathroom. I bent over the sink and splashed cool water on my face. It took a couple of minutes of gripping the edge of the counter before I found the strength to force myself to look up into the gold-trimmed mirror that hung above the sink.
Water dripped from the ends of my bangs, and my face looked ashen. I wasn’t wearing anything but a pair of drawstring pants that hung low on my hips, and I knew if I glanced down, I’d see the scars. They were faint, invisible to the human eye, but any angel could see that my chest was covered in faded marks. My back was too. At least I couldn’t see those scars, but I remembered getting every one of them.
I glared at my reflection in the mirror. I wasn’t that boy anymore. I hadn’t been him in a long time.
Seconds ticked by while I forced myself to stay still, forced my breath to go back to normal and my heart to slow down. I’d left that boy and his fucked-up life behind when I joined the secret order.
Get over it. Stop staring at yourself and go do something useful.
I padded out of the bathroom and back to my bedroom. I pulled on a shirt and shoved my feet into a pair of boots.
The gym on the third floor was empty and dark when I entered. Dummies lined one of the walls. Mats covered part of the floor. Punching bags hung from the walls. I walked past all of it, heading for the locked room in the back, right beside the medical room.
Micah and I had built this space as a replica of the secret order’s training room in Heaven. It looked simple and boring enough with its plain white walls and wooden floors. It was the technology that made this room special.
I fiddled with the controls, setting up a simulation with a mix of demons and humans. I walked into the middle of the training room and took a breath, letting go of the world and focusing only on the fight to come.
Most angels of the second order learned to fight with swords, spears, or scythes—long weapons that were meant for distance fighting. Most princes trained in those as well. I was unusual for choosing a spiked club. It wasn’t long, nor was it elegant. But I’d always liked the intimacy.
I unhooked the club from the holster at my waist, watching it expand from a small cylinder to a weapon a little shorter than a baseball bat. Heavenly fire wrapped around the club and shimmered in the spikes studding the business end.
The first demon materialized a few feet away, followed by another and another. It took only seconds for them to surround me. This would be more fun if my brothers were with me. Brothersand sisternow. Danielle had joined us over six months ago, but it was still weird to think of her as one of us now.
When I’d first been recruited to the secret order, it had just been me and Micah. But when Joriel, and later Nathaniel, had joined years later, it was so easy to fall into the pattern of fighting side by side. They became my family, and I cared about them in a way I’d never cared about my birth parents.
But I wasn’t here to think about my birth parents. I was here to kick demon ass until all the nightmares and memories got back into the lockbox in the back of my mind where they belonged.
