Page 16

Chapter sixteen

O n Saturday morning, Odelle still hadn’t figured out what she wanted to say to Antony when he woke, which was unfortunate since she walked into his room, only to pull up short at the sight of him sitting on the edge of his bed.

She froze in the doorway, mouth hanging open and heart hammering in her throat. Antony froze as well, looking for all the world like one of the statues in the courtyard: carved from marble and lovely in a way that endured through the ages.

The silence was broken by a gurgling noise, not unlike the call of a humpback whale, from the direction of Antony’s stomach. A mortified look crossed his face as he stared down at his belly. A laugh gurgled up the back of Odelle’s throat, and before she knew it, they were both laughing, the tension between them dispersed like fog in a strong wind.

“Breakfast time?” Odelle teased.

Antony nodded emphatically. “Thad told me I’ve been asleep for almost a week, and I feel like I haven’t eaten in at least that long.”

“What do you want?” Odelle asked, knowing he must be starving after only eating the broth Seraphina had spooned diligently into his mouth. Drew had offered to bring a feeding tube, but Seraphina had seemed horrified by the idea and insisted on doing things the old-fashioned way. “You can have anything, my treat. It’s the least I can do after you put yourself in a coma to save our lives. ”

Antony cocked his head to the side, considering.

“Waffles,” he declared. “I’ve never had them, but Adam has told me I would like them.”

“Then waffles you shall have!”

Odelle waited outside Antony’s room for him to put on street clothes, before leading them out of the Sanctuary and grabbing a cab to her favorite breakfast diner. Most of the awkwardness she had felt had been washed away by their wilderness adventure and the following week of his recovery. And as much as a small voice in the back of her head begged her to ask him why he had rebuffed her advances—to admit that she itched to grab him by his sweater and kiss him thoroughly—she couldn’t bring herself to disturb the camaraderie that now bloomed between them.

It turned out that Adam had been right. Antony did love waffles. He inhaled three orders of them as the waitress looked on in horror. He managed to ask a few questions about the operation of waffle makers between mouthfuls, but mostly he was too busy eating his breakfast doused in an unholy amount of syrup to talk, and Odelle was happy to fill the silence by chattering about everything that had happened while he was indisposed. She mopped up runny golden egg yolks with crusty bread. It was hard to feel negative about the future when eating brunch, and having Antony awake again made her hopeful that the situation with the Shadow wasn’t as bad as they had imagined.

After leaving the diner, they walked leisurely down the sidewalk, giving Antony the chance to stare up at the skyscrapers in wonder. Odelle was happy to revel in the winter sunlight, despite the fact that it offered no real warmth.

“I thought you built weapons, not buildings,” Odelle pointed out as Antony said something about the properties of materials needed to make such tall structures. She knew now that he could make jewelry and dresses, but skyscrapers seemed like a different thing entirely.

“I do,” Antony admitted. “But mostly out of necessity. I just like building things in general, and the Light made my abilities to create more versatile, especially before the Defeat.”

He paused, looking over the side of the moveable bridge they were crossing at the Wrigley building. Odelle stopped with him, stepping towards the side to let the other pedestrians walk around them.

“It seems white stone never goes out of style,” Antony commented as he admired the ivory clock tower.

Odelle opened her mouth to tell him about the Chicago World’s Fair when a piece of ice shimmering on the river’s edge below caught her eye. She brushed the distraction away.

“Actually, this was one of many buildings—”

Another jagged piece of ice below moved strangely, and Odelle squinted. She gasped. The ice formed into humanoid shapes, twisted and gnarled with serrated edges decorating every joint.

Before she could scream, a tug wrenched her leg. She looked down to see an icy claw wrapped around her ankle, but it was too late. She lost her footing on the slick surface of the bridge. Her back hit the ground with a bang, knocking the wind from her and keeping her from getting a grip on anything. It took just one more strong tug for her to slide over the edge of the bridge through one of the large triangular gaps in the metal. Just as she tumbled over the precipice, a hand grabbed fruitlessly at her coat and a panicked voice shouted, “Odelle! ”

Then she was airborne.

The icy water hit her like a punch in the gut. All her brain could process was the bitter cold. It pummeled the breath from her chest, overwhelming all her senses. If the piercing winds of the wilderness had been intense, this was torture. As the water closed over her head, she flailed. Her limbs seemed too preoccupied with the change in temperature to follow her commands. It was a few seconds before she could gain enough control over her muscles to get her head above the surface, made all the more difficult by the weight of her water-logged winter coat.

She had to get out of the water. The cold had already penetrated Odelle’s bones, and she knew she wasn’t going to be able to swim much longer at this rate. She lunged towards the bank of the river, relieved to see that this was one of the places with a walkway.

A yank on Odelle’s leg pulled her back so violently that she swallowed a mouthful of river water as she tried to scream. She flipped onto her back to see what was impeding her progress, only to immediately forget the rancid taste of polluted water in her mouth. Latched onto her ankle was one of the horrible ice creatures. It looked the same as the Shadow creature that had chased her and Antony a week ago but made of shattered ice instead of swirling darkness. This one was smaller too, but more terrifying for its proximity and the fact that it was trying to force her back under the icy water.

“Odelle!”

Antony’s voice came from behind her, in the direction of the riverbank walkway. She thrashed, trying to swim towards him, but she was quickly losing the battle against the ice in her veins and the weight of the Shadow insistently yanking her to her doom.

Just before her head went under again, a bright object whizzed past her ear. It didn’t hit the Shadow, but its horrifying face turned towards it as it splashed into the water a few feet away. The distraction gave Odelle just enough of an opening to pull her leg from its gnarled hand. The suction keeping her prosthetic on threatened to give, but it managed to stay attached as it slid from the creature’s grasp.

Odelle kicked out, propelling herself away from the Shadow and toward the bank behind her, but the Shadow was in hot pursuit. She wasn’t going to be able to keep it at bay long enough to get to shore.

Another bright object sped over Odelle’s head. This one struck true. A bronze dagger buried itself in the Shadow’s shoulder joint. It gave a screech like the cracking of a thousand sheets of ice and sunk under the surface of the water. She couldn’t tell if it was dead or simply retreating, but she continued flailing away from the spot where it had sunk.

Her shoulders hit the stone wall of the riverbank. Immediately, hands grabbed under her armpits, hauling her out of the water. Multiple other sets of hands helped lift the rest of her onto the bank. Odelle slumped against them, no longer capable of helping as her body failed her altogether.

It was odd, she thought distantly as she laid back on the ground and Antony’s face appeared above her. She didn’t feel cold anymore. It was a nice change. Although, she thought she remembered somebody saying once that it was a bad sign.

“Call 911,” an unfamiliar voice said from her side. “She needs to go to a hospital.”

Nobody commented on the Shadow monster, seeming to think she had merely slipped and fell. People must only see what they wanted to, just as they always seemed to look away as she slipped through the mirrored surface of the Bean .

Antony didn’t seem to care what the voice wanted. He pulled at her arms, and Odelle managed to contribute enough effort to sit up. Antony looped one of her arms around his shoulder and heaved.

He let out a low grunt at the effort, and Odelle thought her arm might pop out of its socket, but he got her to some semblance of standing. To say he helped her walk to the curb would have been a vast understatement. Her feet scraped against the ground as he mostly dragged her, somehow hailing a cab in the process. It probably had something to do with the fact that he had a soaking wet woman draped across his shoulders.

It wasn’t the most graceful of maneuvers, but Antony cupped the back of her head as he lowered her to the backseat, keeping her from hitting the doorframe. She crumpled into the back of a car.

“Millenium Park,” Antony ordered, voice harder than Odelle had ever heard it. “The Bean.”

“I think she needs a hospital, dude.”

Odelle couldn’t see Antony’s face when he looked at the driver, but whatever it held was enough to convince the cabbie not to argue.

Once the cab lurched into motion, Antony turned his attention back to Odelle. His panicked fingers scrambled at the buttons of her coat. Odelle squirmed to help him remove it, and it fell to the floor of the backseat with a sodden plat . Antony’s fingers immediately started searching for the zipper to her dress.

“I thought if I were going to get hypothermia, I would have done it earlier,” Odelle attempted to say, but the chattering of her teeth got in the way. She chuckled anyway, more than halfway delirious with shock.

At the distinctive sound of the side zipper of Odelle’s dress coming undone, the cab driver perked up again .

“Hey, no funny business in the back of my cab, especially not with an unwell woman,” he barked. “And if you’re gonna try something, at least pretend to be discreet.”

“You were the one who wanted me to get her help for hypothermia,” Antony snapped without looking away from his task of trying to divest Odelle of her dress, a project similar to playing pool with a rope. “This is what you do for hypothermia.”

Finally vanquishing the dress and pulling it off over Odelle’s head, Antony paused. He stared down at her as if realizing for the first time that undressing somebody resulted in them being naked. Even though she still had her underwear on, she was sure they didn’t exactly leave a lot to the imagination in her current state. She wanted to giggle at the stricken look on Antony’s face, but she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. He had seen her naked before, after all. Maybe the thought of undressing her himself or the cab driver sitting just inches away was why he hesitated.

Antony wrenched his eyes away from Odelle, instead reaching for his sweater and pulling it off over his head, revealing a dark T-shirt underneath. She helped Antony shove her arms, which felt like overcooked spaghetti, into the garment, and sighed in relief as the wool encompassed her body. She wasn’t warm, but this was certainly an improvement. Still, she trembled. Antony furrowed his brow, then nodded to himself. Without further preamble, he scooped Odelle up and crushed her to his chest.

Antony was probably a perfectly reasonable temperature, but the heat rolling off him felt like a furnace to Odelle. She squirmed, trying to get as close as possible. Antony jumped as her frigid nose brushed the hollow of his throat. Odelle just pushed closer, attempting to crawl into Antony’s much warmer skin .

Much too soon for Odelle’s liking, the cab came to a stop and Antony swung the door open to let in another gust of winter air. She scrunched closer to him in protest, but Antony looped her arm over his shoulders once more.

“Just a little bit farther, then Thad will be able to help you.”

Before Antony slammed the door, the cabbie grumbled, “Guess this one counts as charity then.”

They made their way to the statue of the Bean in the same half-walking, half-dragging manner as before. Odelle and Antony tumbled through its mirrored surface, collapsing onto the grassy hill. The warm air and sunshine felt like heaven, and Odelle just laid there, soaking it in.

Antony left her, stumbling up the hill, shouting for Thad—a mirror to how they had entered the Sanctuary a week ago with the roles reversed. Odelle didn’t know how long it was before Antony and Thad returned. They carried a stretcher, which they helped her onto. She was just grateful that she didn’t have to move much. Still, she wanted to reach up and smooth away the worried creases on Antony’s face as they carried her inside the Sanctuary.

Odelle believed in modern medicine, but she had to admit that there was something to these magical herbs. She sat propped up by far too many pillows in an impossibly fluffy bed and took another sip of the concoction in her mug. Even though the liquid was room temperature, it seemed to warm her from the inside out as it slid down her throat, heat radiating from her core to her fingertips. She expected magical potions to taste foul, but this one was mild and vaguely herbal, like gin but with none of the bite. The drink chased the lingering taste of river water from her mouth.

Thad took the now empty mug from her.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

Odelle nodded emphatically, and a brilliant smile split his friendly face.

“Good,” he responded in his deep voice. “I seem to be making a habit of helping the Zvezda sisters recover from encounters with the Shadow. Luckily, this one didn’t poison or wound you, just took you for a very cold swim. There aren’t any more Zvezda siblings I should be prepared for though, are there?”

“No,” Odelle reassured. “Although I’m sure if you ask Irina, she will assure you that two of us is more than enough.”

Thad chuckled, making the gold drop earring he wore in one ear shimmer and catch the light.

“You should feel completely yourself in no time. Drew, the distinctly non-magical doctor, could have fixed you up from this one. It’s a shame you didn’t bring him along.” Thad shot her a sly smile.

She thought about what Drew had said about Thad the day before. “You can thank Antony for bringing me here instead of to a hospital. To be fair, I’m not sure he would have known how to get me to an emergency department.”

“I would have figured it out.” Antony stuck his head around the doorframe into the room at that very moment, as if summoned by Odelle mentioning him. He had changed back into his more traditional Greek attire. “We learned the hard way with Nora that hospitals aren’t the best at treating injuries inflicted by the Shadow.”

As Antony approached Odelle’s bedside, Thad backed toward the door .

“I’m going to go mix up some more herbs, just in case. Call me if you need anything.” He looked pointedly between Antony and Odelle as he backed out of the room.

Antony paused at the edge of the bed, smoothing over the pile of blankets covering Odelle with fidgeting hands, but he didn’t sit down.

“I’m sorry.” Antony’s voice was quiet as he spoke.

“Sorry?” Odelle echoed in confusion. “Antony, you saved my life—twice now. What do you have to be sorry for? Besides leaving my coat and dress in the back of a random cab, that is. That’s the second coat I’ve lost in as many weeks, and I’m not made of money.”

“I only had to save your life both times because I messed up.” Antony looked dejected as he spoke. “If I had been a better fighter, I would have been able to drive off the Shadow and prevent the portal incident, but instead I was the one laying on the ground while you saved me. And today? A Warrior or even a Defender would have seen the Shadow before it could lay a finger on you.”

“Antony, you can’t—”

“It’s like I told you months ago, a woman like you…” Antony barreled on, trembling fists clenched at his sides. “You shouldn’t be with somebody like me. You should have somebody brave and strong, who doesn’t get all the people he cares about killed.”

Odelle frowned. She didn’t remember Antony saying anything of the sort.

“I knew it was better to stay away from you, and it didn’t seem hard to convince you, either. You stormed away on Christmas before I could even explain myself and have avoided me ever since. I told myself it was for the best. But then you turned up here, asking for aid with the Shadow, and I couldn’t help myself. I kept indulging myself, telling myself that I could help with the crown—it’s my area of expertise, after all. But today proved I was right all along. I can’t fight to protect you. You deserve somebody who can.”

Odelle had thoroughly lost the thread of this conversation. Maybe her brain was still moving slowly, frozen to a halt by the cold from the river and had yet to restart. It sounded, though, like she and Antony had very different opinions on what was happening between the two of them.

“You thought…you turned me down when I kissed you because you thought I should be with a Warrior?”

Antony nodded dejectedly. “Or at least somebody who could hit a Shadow on the first dagger throw when you were in danger. You hadn’t known about us for that long, and I thought you would assume I was more capable in a fight, like the rest of the Eteria. I felt like I was luring you in under false pretenses. And then you stormed off so quickly, I thought you must have agreed with me—that it was a mistake to kiss me in the first place.”

“I stormed off because you said I was beneath you. You told me that you couldn’t be with a normal human like me!” Even as Odelle said it, she realized that was not quite what he had said, and knowing Antony, it wasn’t something that he would say. As a reporter, she should know how dangerous it was to take a phrase out of context. Nora might have had a point about Odelle being too quick to judge.

It was Antony’s turn to look utterly bewildered. “That’s not what I said, was it?”

Odelle didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream in frustration at their idiocy. At her idiocy. Yes, Antony’s phrasing left something to be desired, but she had let her worries taint the situation, putting meaning behind his words that hadn’t been there.

“Was…was that what you thought?” Antony asked, horror dawning on his face .

Odelle buried her face in her hands, not able to look Antony in the eye as reality crashed in around her. It had been far easier to be mad at Antony, to say he was the one who thought she didn’t fit in with the Eteria, than it was to face the truth. Odelle was the one who had been afraid she wouldn’t measure up. Her older sister had found her place in this world, and Odelle didn’t begrudge her that, but for the first time in a long while she had to grapple with her inadequacy. She’d always been pretty, popular, and a charismatic television personality, and the thought that she might not fit in with this fantastical force where her sister now fought wasn’t something Odelle could stomach. A choke somewhere between a laugh and a sob shook her shoulders as she reflected. She’d interpreted Antony’s words cruelly and stormed away before he could justify himself because she had twisted them to echo the fears already eating away at her psyche. She had made everything about her problems when it was actually his far more tragic history at play.

“So you’ve been avoiding me because…” Antony started before trailing off as if Odelle’s motives were a puzzle far more complicated to put together than her disassembled toaster.

“I was mortified.” Odelle buried her face in her hands. “I threw myself at you, and you basically told me we weren’t in the same league.”

“In my defense, I meant it in the opposite direction of what you interpreted,” Antony explained, as if it were somehow natural that the most powerful sorcerer in the world would tell a girl she was too good for him.

Odelle glared at Antony through her parted fingers.

“I turned out to be right,” Antony babbled on. “You’ve learned the hard way that I’m not capable in a fight. We can just pretend this—”

Odelle had heard quite enough of this insanity. She lunged forward and grabbed Antony by the front of his peplos , yanking so hard that he nearly tumbled onto the bed on top of her. He let out a soft oof that morphed into a throaty groan as she slammed her lips against his.

He tasted even better than he had on Christmas, sweet as sunshine and fresh as a spring morning. It was as if somebody had bottled the essence of the bright Sanctuary air into a person. One of Odelle’s hands remained fisted in his clothes while the other came up to cup the back of his neck, holding him hostage—not that he was making any attempts to escape. He let her lead the kiss for a moment until his surprise dissipated, and then he gave as good as he got, forcing her to pull back and catch her breath. Her heart pounded as if she had just run a marathon.

“So…you still want this?” Antony murmured, as if the way Odelle kept her lips inches from his, unwilling to put more distance between them, left any room for doubt.

A wry laugh escaped her.

“How can you have been alive for almost three thousand years and still be such an idiot?” She teased, fondness lacing her words.

“I prefer to think of it as having three thousand years of practice at being an idiot. And three thousand years of facing my shortcomings.” The glazed look in Antony’s eyes gave way to apprehension once more. He sat back on his heels, putting space between their lips once more, although he remained seated on the bed, kneeling where Odelle’s legs ended.

“How can you be all that you are and somehow still feel as if you can’t protect me?” Odelle prompted gently, unable to resist reaching out and stroking Antony’s bare knee. She pressed down the urge to insist that she didn’t need protection, as the past few months had demonstrated that everybody, including all-powerful immortal sorcerers, needed somebody to have their back .

“It’s because of what everybody says I am.” Antony hung his head, loose strands of copper obscuring his face. “I’ve been told that I’m the most powerful channel for the Light in existence time and time again, and yet the Eteria fell on my watch. I was there—our leader died in my arms, taking our hope with her, and all I could do was run away. Bring the Sanctuary to this pocket dimension to live on and face my failures.”

“You made the Sanctuary?” Odelle couldn’t help but ask, even as her heart broke at his words.

“The building already existed, but I’m the reason it’s here.” Antony gestured around vaguely. “Our ability to use the Light was fading, and all I could think about was that the survivors needed a place to be safe. This is what I came up with.”

Odelle’s head swam at the thought of how much power the creation of a pocket dimension would take, and how that incredible force was contained in the lithe body in front of her, shoulders hunched like he carried the weight of the world. She pressed her hand to her forehead to focus on the issue at hand—that somehow Antony found his incredible feat to be a failure.

“Antony,” Odelle soothed, thumb drawing circles on his bare knee. “That means that everybody that is here survived because of you. The Eteria continues to fight the Shadow, to hold it at bay, because of what you did.”

“But if I had been able to join the fight. My friends, the Commander…” Antony argued, even as he finally glanced up to meet her eyes again.

“You can’t do everything. Nobody can,” Odelle insisted even as she thought that Antony could probably do more than almost anybody else. “That doesn’t mean the things you can do aren’t important. ”

The despair in Antony’s eyes seemed more distant and he put his hand on top of Odelle’s where it rested on his leg. Still, he hesitated.

“That doesn’t change the fact that I’m not a Warrior who can protect you when the Shadow attacks.”

“True. You’re a Smith who protects me in his own way. Besides, I’ve dated plenty of jocks, and I like that you see the world differently. You see the world for what it could be, not just a series of battles and enemies to beat to a pulp.”

At this, Antony’s lips finally quirked up into a shadow of the soft smile that was quickly becoming Odelle’s favorite sight.

“I guess it’s not so different from what drew me to you then,” Antony admitted, lacing his fingers with her own and leaning in closer. “You have a fighting spirit, but your weapon of choice is the truth. There’s something beautiful about the fact that you’ve committed your life to giving people the information they need. That they deserve.”

Odelle had never heard somebody describe her career in such terms, but Antony had drawn very close as he spoke, and she decided the time for talking was coming to a close. Their mouths had better things to do.

They lost the thread of the conversation as their lips met again, and she didn’t know or care who initiated this time. Antony shifted his weight forward, moving off his knees to hover over her instead, and Odelle reveled in the way his chest pressed against hers, even through the blankets.

When Antony pulled back once more, he looked thoroughly debauched, hair in his eyes, lips red and glistening, and a crimson blush staining his cheeks that spread down his chest. Here she thought that he had thought her beneath him, but it turned out that she held the power—the power to make him look utterly undone.

She could kiss him forever to put that glazed look in his eyes, but they had wasted too much time on their insecurities already. She wasn’t a patient woman to begin with, and she wasn’t about to deny herself the thing she had tried to keep from imagining for so long.

Odelle pushed the purple fabric off Antony’s shoulders and leaned in to nip at his collarbone, reveling in the way his pale skin turned pink where her mouth had been. His breath hitched and he laced his fingers into her hair, and although his grasp was gentle, his hold was firm enough to keep her from moving farther down his chest.

Odelle looked up at him through hooded eyes, simultaneously annoyed and concerned that he had stopped her. Even as he met her gaze, it seemed that the dreamy soft cast in his expression was slipping, looking more wrecked and desperate by the second. His expression sent warmth skittering down Odelle’s body.

“It has been…a very long time,” Antony admitted between uneven breaths. “If you keep doing that, I’m not going to want to stop.”

“Then it’s a good thing I don’t want to stop either,” Odelle murmured, running her fingers up his spine even as Antony’s hand in her hair held her gaze firmly on him.

The groan that tore from Antony was unlike any sound she had heard from him in the past. His gentle, playful manner dissolved into something far more desperate but just as appealing.

“If you really feel that way, we aren’t leaving this bed until you’re pink and warm from head to toe,” Antony warned, the rasp in his voice sending shivers down Odelle’s spine.

He was good to his word, mapping her skin with his lips from the hollow behind her ear, to the valley between her breasts, to the inside of her thighs. All the while, Odelle drew him back for periodic kisses, pushing his clothes down his shoulders to expose more pale skin gliding over wiry muscles, like a statue hewn from marble.

Finally, Antony threw her thighs over his shoulders and covered her center with his mouth. Odelle was glad that her prosthetic legs were off, or she surely would have bruised him with a metal foot with how hard she convulsed at the feeling. Antony pressed an arm across her abdomen to hold her in place, putting her completely at the mercy of the sensations he was pulling from her. Odelle surrendered willingly.

As many incredible things as Antony had built in his life, he was now taking Odelle apart piece by piece with his fingers and his tongue. It wasn’t long until she was pawing at his shoulders, pulling him up her body, more than ready to feel him moving inside her.

Antony obliged, sliding home and pulling a high whine from the back of Odelle’s throat that she hadn’t even known she was capable of making. She tightened her abs, trying to buck up against him, but he sat back on his heels, pulling her hips into his lap. For all that Antony was wiry, he was strong as he hauled Odelle against him and drove into her.

It wasn’t long until Odelle was panting and writhing, and Antony wasn’t far behind, quickening his pace. Despite the undone look on his face, his stare remained fixed on her. She could barely keep her eyes open against the force of the sensations rocketing through her, but the gold creeping into the edge of Antony’s irises had her transfixed. Antony’s control clearly at its end, he pressed a thumb just above where they were joined, the added friction sending Odelle toppling over the edge, every muscle in her body snapping taught at once. Antony was hot on her heels. A shudder wracked his entire body, and the gold overtook his eyes, locking Odelle in his gilded gaze even as he gasped her name.

Then the Light faded from his eyes, leaving him looking down at her with a satisfied, adoring look that made her quiver all over again. All powerful sorcerer or not, Odelle wanted to make him look at her like that every day.

Coming down from her high, Odelle decided Antony was too far away and pulled him to her once more. He collapsed forward, and they tangled together, unwilling to unwind themselves even as they shifted into a more comfortable position. Joyous giggles escaped both of them, as if neither could believe this had actually happened.

“Mission accomplished,” Odelle teased, pressing a kiss to the crook of Antony’s neck where her head currently rested. “I’m no longer cold.”

She felt more than heard Antony’s chuckle in his chest, where it pressed against hers. It was true, though; he warmed her from the inside out, body and soul.