Page 47 of Tortured Soul (Soulless #1)

Lola

T urns out, revoking the binding promise took even less time than making it.

After I went upstairs to change into a comfy T-shirt and yoga pants, Arc had made a small knick on my palm and his, locked our hands together and said a few words in a long forgotten language.

The lines made of our mixed blood had started to slither under our skin until the bronze liquid poured out of the small wound and onto the floor between our feet.

And just like that, I was free.

Free to either stay here but on my terms, or free to escape with Dimitri like I originally planned to.

But did I still want to? I chose to leave when I got fed up with Arc and Carter’s attitude and the whole binding promise situation.

One of those was now not an issue anymore, and the other might need to be studied going forward—I’d never have guessed that something like what happened tonight ever would.

There was a high chance that it would make things more awkward.

Even though Carter had seemed to enjoy himself and the whole ordeal while it happened, he acted strange afterward and was now wearing different clothes.

And, I still had to figure out if Arc did track Dimitri without his consent.

For this, I needed Dimitri to come back.

“So…” Both Carter and my head lifted to Arc’s voice, breaking the awkward silence. “I feel like we should get to know each other. Any thoughts on that?”

Carter grunted, and resumed moving his food around his plate. The meal—roasted duck and potatoes with a mix of various vegetables—was actually delicious. His loss . “We already know each other.” The angel’s voice lacked its usual bite.

“I meant Lola,” Arc corrected. “She doesn’t know much about us, and neither do we.”

Carter made another noncommittal throaty sound and Arc’s lips pinched in a thin line.

“What about I tell you something about my past you don’t know?” Arc’s hands were crossed under his chin as he looked at me. “Carter and you could do the same.”

My past was a damn mess; there were so many things I could but didn’t want to tell, I struggled thinking of something specific.

I could tell them about that Archdemon who fought tooth and nail to have me in his tie group but then decided not to bother with me after all when he noticed I wasn’t an asset but rather a thorn in his side.

About how he sent my contract back to Hell for Lucifer to deal with rather than wait for another Archdemon to request me.

I could tell them about that priest in England who took a liking to me and locked me up in a dungeon with other girls and boys he already abducted and abused on a daily basis, and the bloody events that followed when Dimitri found out.

Or, the story of how I almost became a Queen when I caught the eye of a King and, after taking me as his mistress for two years, got so obsessed he killed his wife for me to take her place.

Dimitri had helped me escape before it could happen as my Archdemon of that time was way too happy to have a foothold into court.

“I guess I’ll start, then,” Arc said, after a too-long silence. “I was born in 523, in Nicopolis, Greece.”

That made me pause. He was old. Not as old as me, but ancient nonetheless, born only a few years after I sold my soul.

“The city's in ruins now,” he continued. “I was never even held by my parents. From the moment I was born, it was the warlock who oversaw my mother’s childbirth that took me in and looked after me, and since I grew really fast, I never saw him as a father figure but more like a brother. When he— died , about two hundred years after I was born, it took me a long time to get over it.”

Carter’s eyes drifted between Arc and the table in front of him. He obviously knew that story, but the tight set of his jaw and the crease in his brow showed that it still affected him.

“I spent most of my first five centuries running away from Divines and Hellrisers alike.” Arc’s eyes were dull and lost on his plate. “Both sides saw me as an abomination, something that shouldn’t exist and never have been born. But, for some reason, they never managed to catch me.”

He shrugged, lifting his head to meet my gaze. I’d had a rough life, but hearing even this small information about his past made me realize that it could have been way worse. At least I hadn’t been relentlessly hunted.

Well, if we forget about Amyntas, who did search for me like a mad man for a couple of years.

These details about Arc’s life might have been only snippets of information, but I understood why he struggled to give his trust.

Still not a reason to plant a tracking chip on someone without their consent, but still. I can be reasonable.

“Carter?” Arc said, turning toward his grunting friend. “Care to share something with Lola?”

He mumbled something that sounded like “ Not really, ” but sighed and rolled his eyes at Arc’s piercing stare. “Fine.”

The angel finally decided that he was done playing around with his food and dropped his fork in his plate with a loud clatter as he leaned back in his chair.

“I fell in the 1960’s in Italy. I spent about a decade confused and on my own before I met Arc during the lovely summer of 1975.

I was unlucky enough to have met him during a time where his demon was wholly in control and he was fucking and fighting his way to every yacht party in Sicily.

When we first saw each other, it took about two minutes for us to realize that we had some sort of mind link connecting us, and maybe three more minutes for me to decide that I did not want to have those types of images in my mind twenty-four seven.

“ But , no matter how much I pestered him to stop and get control over himself, he did inflict me another two years of that madness before he finally begged me to stop him and help him get on track.”

Arc chuckled. “I never forced you to follow me around during those two years. You could have just fucked off and lived your life far away, without having to see anything that happened in my mind and through my eyes.”

“I liked Sicily,” Carter countered. “I made my home there, and I didn’t want to be the one to move. ”

“Yeah, right.” Arc rolled his eyes, casting me a cheeky grin. “He’ll never admit it, but he just enjoys my company.”

“I might now , I didn’t then,” Carter grumbled. “It was like having porn in my head all the time, only interrupted by the occasional brutal fist fight.”

Arc leaned forward, inching me closer with a motion of his finger.

“He’s conveniently omitting to mention the circumstances of how we met,” Arc said as Carter muttered a series of colorful curses and threw his head back in exaggerated despair.

“ He was being attacked by a group of demons on the beach. Our Divine friend here being all mighty and powerful managed to stand his ground, but higher demons being Immortal and all…they kept attacking, and attacking, until somehow, they successfully restrained him. When I showed up, he was being dragged away by his feet, eating the fucking sand.”

I couldn’t hold a chuckle from breaching free as I looked over at Carter. He, on the other hand, looked like he’d rather be anywhere else than hearing the story again, probably since it was being told to me. It was good to know that I wasn’t the only demon to have handed his ass to him.

“Anyway, at that time, I was a bit of a trigger happy hot head,” Arc continued.

“I made them all burst into nothingness and made sure Carter was fine. When our eyes met, something happened, and I could see myself in his eyes. I ran off to avoid the issue after making sure he wouldn’t blab about my powers. ”

“Arc was scared.” Carter was too happy about that bit of information. “He realized that I had an open channel straight to his mind, and did not want to deal with that.”

“Can you blame me?” Arc asked, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back to mimic Carter’s position on his chair.

“I spent two years dedicating my free time to research what the Hell was happening. Turns out, when a higher angel falls, he can connect his soul to another to become its fucking Guardian.”

My jaw dropped. I wasn’t expecting such an explanation.

“Wait,” I started. “Guardian angels are a real thing?”

Carter nodded. “It is. No angel is born as one, though. Oh, and not all fallen become one either. ”

“So, what—does it strike you out of nowhere? Is it like a soulmate thing? A fallen can only become a Guardian if he meets the right soul? Or—”

“We don’t know.” Carter shrugged. “At first, I thought it was happening as some sort of redemption. Like God was giving me a chance to revert the fall.”

He paused and I waited, balanced on the edge of my seat, my arms crossed on the table in front of me. How could Carter of all Divines be a Guardian angel? I mean, they all were kind of obnoxious asses, but he was their fucking king.

But Carter kept silent, lost in his thoughts, staring at his full plate.

Arc released a long breath. “We don’t know much about Guardian angels,” he said, his mismatched eyes soft as they looked between Carter and me.

“All Divines are mostly clueless about them, and Carter is the only one I’ve ever met.

The redeeming theory checks out, but it’s been over a century now.

One would think if it was some sort of test, he would have passed it by now. ”

Or not . Those two might be friends and getting along, but Arc was the only one who had the patience to deal with his crap. I doubted the Big Old Dude upstairs approved of Carter’s behavior.

Not to mention the fact that Carter’s mate was a Succubus probably made him lose points with his Almighty Daddy , no matter that he didn’t get a choice in the matter.

Arc frowned and shook his head at my obvious inner turmoil. I rolled my eyes. If he thought I would hide what I thought about Carter’s redeeming qualities , he was kidding himself.

“Anyway,” he said as Carter seemed to slowly come back to himself. “What about you, Lola?”

Clearing my throat, I thought about all the things I felt comfortable enough to share, stopping on something that I already mentioned briefly during our date.

“I already told you how I killed my father, and that it was one of the reasons that led me to sell my soul.”

Arc nodded, as Carter’s head tilted toward me in interest. Great .

“My family was a bit strange. I mean, the way we lived was not uncommon back then, but still.

I had a twin brother, who was my only full blooded sibling.

Our father had…many wives. Our mother was his Maiden, the wife above the others as she carried his heir.

She was only su pposed to have one pregnancy, but she was un lucky enough— depends who you asked —to have carried twins.

“It didn’t matter how many kids my father had with his other wives, my brother and I were the only ones considered to become the clan’s leaders.”

Carter’s eyes sparked as his face scrunched up in thoughts.

“Unsurprisingly, he chose Aghen to take over after him, and I think for a while, our father didn’t really know what to do with me. But Aghen didn’t want to succeed him, and, after I learned I was supposed to be married off as another Clan Leader’s Maiden, things started to fall downhill.

“As my arranged future husband was on his way to our clan for a formal introduction, I met Dimitri.

It was a chance encounter, really, but we spent time together in secret for the whole year, while my future husband was back in his faraway land.

When I confided in Aghen a couple of days before I was supposed to leave, he freaked out.

“He tried to push me to escape and finally take Dimitri to bed, as I would have been worthless as a Maiden if I was no longer a virgin, but I knew I would be hunted down. After a few days, Aghen managed to convince me to talk to our parents, to try and make them side with us , and name me heir to fix both of our problems. I would have been rid of my supposed future husband, and my brother free to do whatever he wanted to do. But they didn’t. ”

Both Arc and Carter listened to me without a word, drinking in everything I said. I forced myself to swallow through my clogged throat as I continued.

“My father launched at Dimitri, and I jumped in the way. I don’t remember exactly how Dimitri’s blade ended up in my father’s heart, my hand on the handle. But I do remember the look on his face as Aghen yelled at me and Dimitri to run away.”

I gulped, purposefully omitting a few details. Their faces were unreadable, a mixture of many emotions and thoughts that I couldn’t pick up from one another.

“I sold my soul so the demon would bring my father back, and make them all forget about what happened and about me. Because I killed him out of selfishness, and I wanted to be selfish again, and live with my mate, not with some asshole who would have probably abused me for years. ”

Little did I know that my father and mother might have forgotten about me, but my brother hadn’t. Neither did Amyntas. I often wondered what happened to Aghen after all that…If what he stole from our father and gave to me as he ordered me to run had allowed him to live the free life he so desired.

“I regret selling my soul, but not saving my father. Not following Dimitri,” I said. “I only wished I had thought of better options.”

Arc gave a slow nod. The wheels in Carter’s eyes turned as he nibbled on his bottom lip.

“Anyway, that’s pretty much the whole story.” Or at least, the one I was willing to share. “I’m—”

“Did you ever go back?” Arc asked. “To your clan, I mean. To see if your father was indeed alive and if your brother was still around.”

My clammy hands were rubbing small circles over the fabric of my dress.

“I did. A year after, only for a peek. My father was alive, and my brother was nowhere to be seen.”

“And what—”

I jolted on my seat, eyes widening. My heartrate picked up as I felt the familiar but barely noticeable tug in my stomach.

“Dimitri is back,” I said as I jumped to my feet and ran toward the door.

“Wait, Lola—”

“Dimitri is back!” I repeated.

I didn’t wait for them to follow, but I heard Carter said he needed to do something and that he would meet us later.

The moon was full and shining in the sky, half covered by the thick clouds, but still illuminating the road as I ran like a mad woman through the rain toward the towering front gates, zig-zagging between the few Immortals still strolling outside.

My heart sank in my stomach as I spotted my mate, snarling and held back by a group of guards.

He was covered in blood.

Red, golden, and black.