Page 71 of Reapers Don’t Ride

Chapter

Nineteen

Iwoke to the sound of Gavriel’s voice. I was in heaven.

What was he saying? He was reading. Was it poetry? No, it was a weapons guide. What kind of weapon? Something with multiple blades. Why was Gavriel reading an instruction manual for a weapon?

I opened my sticky eyelids and turned my head to see him. My neck ached and pain went down my spine, pain that made me feel like I was alive.

He was so beautiful. Gavriel was precariously balanced on two back legs of a chair, wings stretched on either side, feathers looking a bit thin but growing in nicely while he read that manual, lips moving in a low murmur. I blinked, and he was still there.

I drank in his beautiful face until he looked up from his booklet, eyes snapping to mine like a magnet.

He thumped to the floor and then stood, leaning over me with his blades of death twitching, stretching towards me before he pulled them back to his sides.

He licked his lips, and I realized how thirsty I was. Not for his blood, just water. How strange. I couldn’t smell his blood. I couldn’t hear his beating heart. I ached everywhere, but it felt gloriously real. I slowly smiled at him while his impassive eyes studied me.

“Good morning. Are you well?” he asked, words crisp and overly enunciated, like I was his great-grandmother who couldn’t understand kids these days.

He stared at me, face completely emotionless. I waited while my heart beat faster in my chest, alive, learning how to operate through this new flesh and blood.

I rasped, “Water?” My voice was terrible.

He inhaled sharply and then turned and poured water from a carafe into a glass while keeping perfect posture. “Can you hold it, or would you like me to assist you?” He was so stiff, so formal, so perfectly distant. Maybe he resented the Commander’s plan to marry him off and continue his line. Maybe his goblin wasn’t interested in anyone as dull as a mostly human weakling.

I tried to sit up and ended up flopping back against the bed. I was so weak. Would I keep waking up weaker until I couldn’t move at all? An active angel like Gavriel wouldn’t want to be tied to an invalid. But for me, even if I were entirely paralyzed, life was a gift. Still, it would be hard to live without the one I loved with my whole beating heart.

Gavriel pushed a button that slowly raised my bed until I was upright enough to drink, then he bent over me, holding the glass like an expressionless waiter. So polite, and he didn’t meet my eyes.

“I take that as the second,” he murmured.

My hands trembled as I covered his hands with mine. His hands were gloved, so I couldn’t feel his skin. Why was he wearing gloves in a hospital room? Was he cold, or did he not want to touch me?

The water wasn’t cold, just lukewarm, but drinking it was difficult. I felt like a baby bird while he poured tiny swallows into my mouth until I shook my head and pushed him away so I could breathe. Breathing. It was amazing how much I needed air.

Being alive was so difficult. I forgot how hard it was. I put my hand over my heart while it beat so fast, so fluttering. It hurt, but his coldness hurt more.

Maybe he really didn’t know what to do with someone who was so weak. He’d loved an angel who was part ogre. And I’d been a vampire with some angelic roots. But now I was mostly just a normal human with some angelic blood. Weak. And we had no blood ties, not anymore. I couldn’t drink his blood. I could barely drink water. I had no purpose. Except for the one the Commander of the Hosts had given me.

I looked around and realized that Ever was gone. “Where is…my father?” I ended it uncertainly. Did he know that Ever Storm was my father? Had he known from the beginning?

He looked up at me and blinked. “He’s resting. He put a great deal of energy into you. But he’s fine, perfectly well, just resting.”

“Can I see him?”

He stared at me. “See him?”

I nodded and swung my legs over the side of the bed, but when I tried to stand, I would have crumpled from my own weight if Gavriel hadn’t caught me and carefully put me back in the bed, pulling the sheet back over me.

“He’ll come and see you when he wakes up,” Gavriel said in a low voice as he glanced away from me. “You’ll have to stay here until you’re stronger.”

I frowned at that face, the one that wasn’t looking at me. “I can’t get stronger if I don’t try.”

He finally looked up at me, but his eyes were dark, tumultuous with death and pain. “You’re whole body and soul is trying to live. Let your necessary organs grasp life before you push too hard and set yourself back. You’re delicate. Still precariously perched between life and death.”

Delicate? That was an interesting word. I didn’t like it. He wasn’t wrong. But I didn’t like it. I stared down at my delicate hands over my aching stomach. My stomach growled, and I flinched, then looked up at Gavriel. Had my intestines ruptured?

“You must be hungry. Does anything sound good to eat?” He gave me a polite nod at the end of that, showing his interest in my order. Like a polite waiter, almost looking at me, but not quite. Why was he so polite? He’d been confessing his love the last time I saw him, and now he was taking my order as a dutiful angel that wasn’t even slightly interested in me personally. Maybe he didn’t have the same feelings for me, but at the very least he could tell me his feelings instead of pretending that he had none.