Page 68 of Reapers Don’t Ride

“It took me years to track you down,” Richard the Team Leader said, giving me another twinkling smile. “As soon as I got Ever to verify that he indeed had a wife that he lost during a war, and that’s why he turned so cynical and solitary—although he was never particularly rosy—I searched the world for you. Or was it that I was curious about you, and then searched for his verification? It’s so hard to remember these details.”

“You mean hard to remember your lies. That’s why angels shouldn’t lie,” Ever said sternly.

Richard the elder’s smile was so warm. “Nonsense. Angels shouldn’t lie because it wears away on the soul, unless the lie is inspired by a cause greater than truth.”

“As Commander of the Holy Order of the Swords of Truth, I can’t believe you just said that,” Ever said with a dark scowl. Yes, that was my scowl.

“Commander of what?” I asked, feeling like I was falling off a house again, only this time it was angels sucking me into an abyss.

Richard sighed heavily and then patted my hand. “The HOST’s. It’s a small organization that some angels like being part of.”

I pulled my hand out of his grasp, then stared at those fingers. I’d held the hilt of Gavriel’s sword with these fingers. How were they not melted into nothing? “Explain. What’s going on?”

“It seemed like a good idea to kill two birds with one stone,” Ever said after a beat while the Commander of the Holy Order of the Swords of Truth, the single most powerful and terrifying organization in the entire world, perhaps any world, stared at me looking slightly sheepish. That’s what he meant about having friends in high places. Himself. Terrifying.

“What’s that?” I asked Ever, while a buzzing started in my ears.

My father looked concerned. “Mirabel’s his daughter. Ruined the chances of Gavriel Hartshorn continuing the angelic line, like my wife’s death ruined mine. He used you to lure Gavriel into marriage.”

“We aren’t married.”

He slumped back, crossing his arms. “That’s what you have to say? You aren’t married? You swore your heart to him, and he swore his heart to you. Your love was already trying to bring you back to life, and that was before you involved Tranquility.”

“Tranquility?”

“His sword. You bonded to his sword after you bonded to him, and that’s the only reason your heart is beating. The magics and potions we’ve been putting into you have helped, but without his love restarting your heart, making it want to beat, what could we do?”

I stared at Ever and then at Richard. I mean, the Commander of the Holy Order of the Swords of Truth. “I thought you’d turn to ashes if you lied.”

“There is capitalized Truth, and lowercase truth.”

Ever snorted. “He’s a commander of the HOST’s. Manipulation of words and ideas is what he does to inspire and lead. He is absolutely trustworthy, or he wouldn’t be a member of the HOST’s, but he is absolutely diabolical and can’t be trusted because he’s the commander.”

I scratched my neck. My nails felt strange against my skin, delicate, like me. None of what he said made sense. “I’m transitioning to alive? How does that work?” I should stick to the basics. It couldn’t be true. Couldn’t be possible, but neither could loving two people so much in one life.

Richard the Commander said, “You’ve been drinking from an angel, bindings that tie the two of you together. As you near life, he nears death, and vice versa. Not that he’ll die without you, he’ll just become like this miserable, lonely, cantankerous soul,” he said, smacking Ever’s chest. My father? He looked bored by the insults. They’d known each other for a long time, or they wouldn’t be so comfortable speaking like that, touching each other, but if my father was comfortable with someone like the commander of the hosts, what did that make him? I’d known he was terrifying.

I licked my dry, cracked lips. “Ever is my father?”

“Yes.”

I looked at the dour man with enormous shoulders and wings like steel. “That explains why we have the same taste in chocolate.”

The Commander smiled slowly. “Yes. He is your father and has already become very attached to you, from the moment he saw you, looking like your mother, only undead.”

Ever laughed, harsh and irritated. “She looks like my mother, not hers. Her mother was…” He trailed off with a sigh. “And she named you Louisa, after my mother. But she never wrote to the HOST’s asking about me.”

“She said that you died, that you would have found her otherwise. Why didn’t you?”

His face was grave, stiff with emotion he didn’t know how to express. “When I returned, everything was gone. Bombed out by another platoon of angels. She was gone, and her whole village with her.” Pain burned in his eyes as he stared at me, and I stared back, feeling his pain and needing to help him deal with it.

“She left before that happened, smuggled me and boxes of books on a boat with the money you gave her as soon as she realized that she was pregnant. You helped her find a better life in a better place.”

Some of his pain eased as he nodded.

The Commander exhaled and then took my hand and patted it, holding it in his warm hands while I stared at him, the feel of him wrong, strange. “I know you don’t like holding hands with a dangerously diabolical angel, but it will help you not die while Gavriel is off on his mission. When he comes back, he can hold your hands to keep them warm.”

“Ever doesn’t want to hold my hands? I must take after him, the undead version of me.”