Page 10 of Mantle
What thehellwas going on?
“You are better,” Ketheron spoke, his voice having no real force behind it, just hollow precision, like he knew well that he didn’t need to raise it to be heard.
I shuddered as his short, deep-brown hair, mussed tufts, really, brushed across my cheek as he breathed me in, scenting me deeply in a wholly unsettling way.
I reacted, now cognizant enough to do so, and slammed my hands into his chest.
He didn’t move.
Not a single inch.
His glowing black eyes narrowed at me—but not in anger that I’d struck him and tried to shove him off me, but in what appeared to be confusion.
He dropped his hand, drawing his gouged wrist away, and I watched it heal in a mere instant—faster thanmyhealing ability.
And then his arm slipped from my waist and he stepped back on his own.
“I helped you,” he told me. “I crushed your throat earlier. Mistakenly. I’m not used to… touch. Not familiar with physical contact. I exerted too much pressure.”
Oh… what the…I didn’t know what to do with that.
“You didn’t mean to hurt me?”
He’d just stated as much, but it was obviously a little hard to believe.
He was the being that my shadow weaving had warned of. He was the perceivedthreatwe’d been worried about, that the Celestial Plane had been worried about—enough to bind me as their Champion for fuck’s sakes.
Something about his presence—the steadiness, the strangeness—stopped me from reacting aggressively again or attacking. He didn’t feel like a monster. He felt like a question I needed to answer.
“Of course not.”
A firm statement with so much conviction and like it was a given. Like it just was, with there being absolutely no other alternative for him.
I fought to take in the bigger picture as the heavy disorientation I’d awoken with faded away bit by bit—still not fast enough considering the severity of the circumstances.
There was a golden ward surrounding the two of us, extending for about a hundred feet, a shimmering dome.
I shifted my weight and finally looked past him, and that was when I saw Grandfather firing his silver magic so similar to mine at the dome frantically, grunting and straining.
He must have been firing for a while because he was drenched in sweat.
And he hadn’t even made a dent?
He might not be a True Celestial anymore, but even as an Immortal, a Fallen, he still held colossal power. Him being unable to breach a ward… it was unheard of.
Ketheron was… beyond him.
He’d been beyond Cassius, too.
Shit.
I turned, a little unsteadily, feeling lightheaded despite the healing.
But I forced myself to scan the area, searching out Cassius.
There, in the distance, amid several downed trees, he was sprawled unconscious, bloodied, with a thick branch driven through his shoulder.
“Drop this ward,” I told Ketheron. “He needs help. And my grandfather is worried about me.”
