Page 86 of Princess of Bael

I tried to determine when she’d returned, where she’d come from, but everything felt fuzzy and uncertain. My last memory was of… nothing, really. Being home. Reading a book, maybe?

It all seemed like a blur of time and space, my mind fractured from whatever the fuck had happened.

Kayla scoffed. “I wish.”

“Use her, Ezra,” Mietek repeated, his impatience coming through. “Bite her. Heal. We’ll talk in twenty-four hours.”

“Is that why I’m naked?” Kayla asked, finally taking her eyes away from mine. “Did you put me here to be used like a fuck doll?”

“Dariel is pushing to have you removed,” Mietek continued, ignoring her. “If we don’t see improvement, we won’t have a choice. You already lost Kristina. Now you’ve lost your wings.Fix. It.”

“Kristina?” I asked, my mind blanking. “What happened to Kristina?”

“Yourmategot her killed in her quest to destroy you,” Mietek replied flatly, causing my eyebrows to fly upward.

“Mietek,” Raphaela snapped, the usually docile angel showing her teeth.

“I’m going,” he replied, waving her off as his wings expanded. “Twenty-four hours, Ezra. No more.” His dark feathers beat in the air to propel him off the balcony of my bedroom suite without another word. I watched him for a minute, taking in the stunning sky beyond and feeling a pang in my heart.I miss this place.

Then his words began to register.

Kristina’s been killed.

Because of Kayla and her quest to destroy me.

My brow furrowed as I tried to seek out the truth because something about that felt wrong. I… I felt responsible deep down. Yet I couldn’t define why.

“I removed your clothes, Princess Kayla,” Raphaela said, responding to Kayla’s earlier comments in a soft yet authoritative tone. “The skin-to-skin contact helped facilitate the bond exchange required to bring both of you back. His soul absorbed a lot of energy from you to stay alive—something you enabled by accepting the bond.”

“Acceptanceseems like a stretch,” Kayla returned.

“Call it whatever you like.” Raphaela sounded amused. “Regardless of your term preference, Kayla, you saved Ezra’s life. And in the process of doing so, you both nearly died.”

And this was supposed to be after she attempted to destroy me?I wondered.Or as a result of it?

I searched my mind for answers and found no recollection of any of this. It was dizzying and maddening and making me tense above Kayla for entirely different reasons than before.

“I forced the blood exchange to bring your souls back,” Raphaela continued. “Then you both slept for two Heaven days. However, you need more. Your bond is nearly irreparable in this state. It’s dangerous to you both.”

“A bond I didn’t want,” Kayla mumbled, her voice a little less certain than moments ago.

“A bond that could right the scales,” a new voice whispered as a flutter of opal wings carried Fate, Mietek’s mate, into the room. “A bond that requires healing to prosper. But what will their hearts choose? No one can force them. Only they can decide their paths forward. We’ve done all we can do, Rafa. It is up to their souls now to decide the future for us all.”

That’s not ominous,I thought. However, a tickle of awareness stroked my senses, silencing any reply I would have voiced.

I shivered as a warped sense of reality brushed my mind.

Things are very wrong. The scales are forever off-center. Imbalance is taking me down… down… down… into a spiral of darkness and light, mingling with fragments of space and time.

I swallowed, my eyes closing as I tried to find my equilibrium.

Lost. I’m lost.

Everything’s unstable.

“Ezra,” Kayla said, her voice anchoring me to a space in time, drawing me back to her.

Only for the world to tilt all over again, causing me to fall…