As if sensing my desperation—and lack of logical decision making—Tolek pulled back, placing one more kiss to my forehead.
“Hi.” He smirked, gaze traveling over my face. “I don’t like when they do that,” he added as our breathing evened out.
“Oh, but it’s so fun when you threaten them.”
How many times had something similar occurred since we’d been stationed here? I’d beenbehavingas demanded—awaiting Queen Ritalia’s arrival as an oh-so-patient warrior and wasting away the afternoons where anyone she sent to tail me could see. How many times had I begun a friendly conversation with other patrons only for it to end with them presuming more than I let on?
It had become a game of sorts between Tolek and me, lobbying this jealousy we each harbored and using it to spur on our own fire. The challenge soothed the riling energy within me, the agitation at being commanded to wait for the queen abating if only for a few moments.
“It wasn’t fun the day I nearly made good on one of those threats,” he reminded me. His hair drooped over his forehead, and I absently brushed it back.
“That man was handsy. He would have deserved to lose a finger.”
“More than that,” Tolek mumbled. “And that woman who draped herself all over me in the gambling hall two weeks ago?”
“I only threatened to cut off her hair.” I shrugged. “Jezebel taught me how. It wouldn’t have been that hideous.”Unless I intended it to.
He heard the words I didn’t say, and a laugh burst from him. “You’re ruthless when defending what’s yours, Alabath.”
Mine. As it did every time he said it, warmth spread through my chest.
Tolek Vincienzo was mine, and I was his. Infinitely. No matter what the Angels planned—what threats the fae queen brought down on us—that would always hold true.
So much had been uncertain these past months, but his steady presence settled a nerve. Still, the reminder of the queen had my teeth grinding.
“What’s wrong?” Tolek asked, swinging an arm around my shoulder and tucking me into his side to face the sea.
I dropped my voice. “What do you think happened with Bant’s Spirit?”
Tolek blew out a breath. “Can’t be sure about that one, Alabath.”
I toyed with the shard of my spear, Angelborn, hanging around my neck. The emblem of the Mystique Angel, Damien, containing a fossilized piece of his power. “It—he—disappeared into the mountains after leaving Kakias’s body.” I’d been rehashing the phenomenon ever since Barrett and I watched it happen—since the day he drove a dagger into the queen’s heart and the Spirit of the Engrossian Angel that had been shed into her emerged—and we had yet to figure out what it meant.
Because we werestagnant.
I closed my hand around my necklace. “We still have two more to find.” The Soulguider and Starsearcher tokens were out there somewhere. “And yet, here we sit.”
“Here we sit,” Tolek repeated, but he said it with an ease I didn’t feel.
“If we have to wait, I want to feel like I’m doing something at least.”
Tolek looked down at me and whispered, “We are, Alabath.”
He wasn’t entirely wrong. But restlessness buzzed beneath my skin.
“More than searching books and maps every night in the cottage. More than silently testing the Angellight I control. Even if I’m familiar with it, I haven’t learnedwhyI can manipulate it orwhatit’s capable of.”
Because Angellight was a substance of pure power known only to belong to the seven Prime Warriors when they ascended many millennia ago.
And now, it ran through my veins, too. Five distinguishable threads, one for each Angel emblem I found and bled on, all tangling together into a golden luminescence I was able to wield.
Tolek was contemplative as I went on, “Barrett is in Engrossian Territory, attempting to repair his tumultuous clan and earn his title again withsignificantpushback—Malakai with him. Cypherion and Vale are still off trying to solve the problems with her magic. And I’m”—I shook my head, facing the lazy tide and trying to be as calm as it was—“waiting.”
“Sometimes, knowing whennotto act is as wise as knowing when to,” Tolek assured, placing a kiss to my temple. “We’ll find answers to all of it. We just have a new challenge to work around. Wouldn’t life be so boring otherwise?”
I laughed reluctantly. How did he see situations in such hopeful light, even when life had not always been kind to him?
Tol’s voice was melancholic when he added, “Hopefully we’ll resolve this business with the fae quickly and resume our lives.”
