Page 19

Chapter nineteen

W alking to work the next morning, Odelle couldn’t wipe the smile from her face, which was especially unusual because she didn’t have a drop of caffeine in her system. Still, she was riding high from their victory the evening before, and a night of celebrating with Antony had made her feel even more unstoppable. It was hard to believe that she wasn’t capable of tracking down the missing crown when the most powerful sorcerer in the world got on his knees before her. Not that she hadn’t returned the favor with enthusiasm.

Now, said sorcerer walked by her side, fingers interlaced in her own. Odelle glanced at him as they strode down the sidewalk, enjoying the pink flush brought to his cheeks and the tip of his nose by the cold. Odelle had endured many “morning afters” but Antony was the first man to walk her to work the next day. He was the first man she had wanted her coworkers see her kiss goodbye.

Odelle found herself disappointed as she pushed into the office though, since nobody looked up, not even to wish her a perfunctory “good morning.” It was almost as if they avoided her gaze on purpose. Before she and Antony even made it two steps in, Ernie intercepted her.

“Zvezda, my office,” he demanded, not even offering her his trademark grin that didn’t reach his eyes .

Odelle’s heart sank to the soles of her feet as she motioned for Antony to stay put. Ernie barely let the office door shut behind her before he started talking.

“I’m going to give it to you straight: you’re fired.”

Odelle shook her head, positive something must be wrong with her hearing. “Fired? For what?”

“You had no authority to make that broadcast, not to mention that I don’t even know how you got that frequency. And you even had to go and mention channel three…now we have heat on us for hacking the signal! We have to cut all ties with you. Show that we don’t condone your actions.”

Odelle’s clenched fists shook but her voice remained steady.

“I’m getting fired for preventing rioting in the city? For being a calm and professional reporter, when the national news station was prompting panic?” Her tone was icy.

“You are being fired for not following protocol and implicating the network in cyber terrorism!” A vein throbbed in Ernie’s forehead. “I know you were trying to prove that you belonged, reporting serious stories, but all you proved was that you can’t remain professional under pressure. You should have taken the talk show job when you had the chance.”

Odelle couldn’t even find words to express the rage pounding through her veins. If there was ever a time she could have set somebody on fire with her mind, it would have been then. Ernie mistook her silence for acceptance.

“Mallorie already packed up your desk for you. I’ll have to ask you to turn in your press ID to me now.”

The retractable cable on Odelle’s ID badge snapped with the force with which she yanked the card from the clip. She tossed it on Ernie’s desk hard enough that it skidded across the surface and fell to the ground on the far side. Before Ernie could bend to grab it, Odelle had spun on her heel and marched from his office.

Now, people did look up from their desks to stare, the weight of their gazes heavy on Odelle’s shoulders. She raised her chin and strode towards her desk, refusing to give them the satisfaction of her rage or her regrets. Scooping up the cardboard box on her desk, filled with framed photos and the remnants of her secret chocolate stash, she spotted Mallorie tapping away at her keyboard. She didn’t even look up.

Before Odelle did something rash, she headed for the door where Antony stood looking perplexed.

“We’re leaving,” she announced, pushing out the door with Antony trailing in her wake like a dinghy behind a warship. The picture couldn’t have been any more different from the way they entered not ten minutes earlier.

The march back to the park was a silent one. Antony reached out a few times as if wanting to pat her arm or take the cardboard box from her, but he let his hands drop. Odelle kept her chin high and didn’t say anything. She was afraid that once she let the dam of her anger break, it wouldn’t be easily contained again. She didn’t want even the slightest risk of somebody from work getting the satisfaction of seeing her ruined. It was one thing she had learned from being a reporter: she could control the narrative. Granted, storming out wordlessly was not the peak of control, but it was a modicum better than vocally raging against the injustice of it all. Despite her silence, she could practically hear her confidence shattering, the armor she had built out of being capable and charismatic stripped away as her career as a reporter—one of her main sources of pride—was ripped away from her .

It wasn’t until they were back in Antony’s bedroom that Odelle set down her box on his covers and hung her head, rage and shame washing over her in equal measures, like icy waves crashing on the beach along Lakeshore Drive. A soft hand landed on her upper back, but she whirled on Antony. He snatched his hand back and looked at her with wide eyes, but Odelle barely noticed.

“How could they? After I—How could I have been so stupid?” Odelle raged, beginning to pace back and forth.

“Did they say why?” Antony asked, his soft voice seeming even quieter in comparison to Odelle’s near shouting.

“Because of yesterday!” Odelle threw her hands up. “I finally show myself I can do something in the fight against the Shadow, that I’m not just a tagalong, and it costs me my job. Being a reporter, it’s more than just my paycheck, it’s who I am . It’s all I’ve ever wanted, to make my mark on the world by exposing the truth and showing it to people in a way that makes the best of the situation. But I was too proud to realize I can’t have my cake and eat it too.”

“We wouldn’t have been able to foil the Shadow’s plan yesterday if not for you,” Antony pointed out, his voice even and reasonable.

Odelle stopped pacing and sank down on the bed. “But I won’t be able to do that anymore. Without being at the station, I won’t have insider information to watch for Shadow activity. I thought I could have it all, and it cost me everything. I used to tease Nora about that, saying I was going to have the job and the love life…everything I wanted. Turns out she could pull it off, not me.”

Odelle was used to the anger of defeat freezing to a shard of ice in her heart, driving her determination to even further heights when people told her she couldn’t do something. This time though, her anger ebbed away and left her limp, like a sail with no wind. Maybe it was because when she failed in the past, she had made a mistake. Now though, she was completely blindsided. She had lost the thing that made her feel most like herself in her moment of victory, by doing what she knew was right.

A thud on the carpet in front of Odelle drew her from her thoughts. Antony had kneeled down before where she sat on the bed and took her hands in his.

“Do you know why, after two thousand years of isolation, I saw you and realized that maybe reentering the world was worth a try after all?” he asked, eyes full of sincerity.

“My hot ass?” Odelle asked with no humor.

Antony narrowed his eyes in mock annoyance. “It was how confident you were in going after what you wanted—what you knew you deserved. You had the job, the friends, and when you were thrown into a world of war and immortal sorcerers, you jumped into that too. You kissed me when you wanted to and walked away when I was an idiot about it.”

“We’ve been over this,” Odelle pointed out, “I should have heard you out instead of storming away. If I had, I would have realized you weren’t rejecting me; you were just nervous.”

Antony shook his head. “No, I was getting in the way of my own happiness because I was letting my past failures dictate my life. But even when you thought I had rejected you for not being a member of the Eteria, you opposed the Shadow, rising to the challenge of fighting alongside us. That’s what really convinced me to stop letting the defeats of the past define me, to be with you now without living in fear of making the same mistakes again.”

Odelle blinked rapidly, trying to keep the moisture gathering in her eyes from spilling over and ruining her meticulously layered mascara. Antony did not take pity on her eye makeup though and pressed on .

“You convinced me that I could ‘have it all’ even after I thought I’d lost everything long ago. Now it’s my turn to remind you not let one setback break your confidence beyond repair.”

“I would say there has been more than one setback recently.” Odelle’s tone sounded petulant even to herself, but Antony seemed to take it in stride.

“Then I guess it’s my job to distract you until you feel ready to move on from this hurdle again. And I’m very patient. It comes with the territory of living forever,” Antony explained.

“How do you plan on distracting me?” Odelle asked, already having a thoroughly diverting activity in mind. As Antony’s hands left hers and started to inch up her thighs under her dress, she was pleased to find that he had similar ideas.

“By reminding you that no matter what, I’ll happily get on my knees for you.”