Page 55 of Wings of Lies (Daughter of the Seven Circles #1)
We left it all. I had no words as my mom broke all the speed limits to escape, hoping he wouldn’t catch up.
I gasped, jolting upright from the horrible memory Oliver put me through.
Beside me, Aspen writhed on the ground, not yet out of his own hellscape.
He didn’t moan or cry out. But the reflective lines leaking out of his tightly squeezed lids were evidence of his pain.
A pain that I shared with him as I remembered a mom who loved me and betrayed me and a father who wanted to kill me.
“Wake up, Aspen.” He jerked on the forest floor. I could feel his pain and couldn’t stand it. “Oliver, wake him up, stop this.” But Oliver was on his hands and knees over a pile of puke.
“Oliver?” holding my side, I cringed as I stood and approached him. Whimpers interrupted his heaves. “Oliver?” I touched his shoulder .
“I forgot,” he said in a broken whisper.
I sank behind him and gasped as I pulled him away from his puke. He let me, slumping against my chest. His weight made my ribs throb, but with the heart-aching noises coming from his mouth, I couldn’t help but let him rest against me.
“He was just a boy. He came to our house,” he whispered.
“Who? Who did you see?”
“My mother,” his voice cracked. “Being burned alive by Marcus’s flame.”
Goosebumps pebbled my arms, and I stilled, knowing exactly what memory he was talking about.
“I never saw it happen. I was—she pushed—” Oliver heaved in between his cries.
“She pushed you away, and you hit your head on the wall,” I whispered. I glanced at Aspen. The small blue-eyed boy was Aspen. That’s who she wanted me to save.
Oliver jerked up, eyes puffy with tear streaks on his cheeks. “How?—”
“I have the power to dream-walk into memories,” I admitted. “I saw that one before you tackled me in Damatha Forest.”
Stricken, he stared at me. “How is that possible?”
Aspen moaned. I jerked my head around, pushing Oliver to get off me so I could return to Aspen. I moved to crawl back to him, and Oliver grabbed my arm.
“What are you doing, Lucy? He’s the enemy. We need to bind him or run or kill him or something! I could hit him again, but it’ll take the last of my juice after hitting both of you when you shoved in front of him like a lunatic! ”
“No! We’re not killing him or binding him and leaving him here.
” I shoved Oliver’s hand away. “But we might need to cuff him. The bounty hunter had some. Go search his clothes.” There was no way I was going near that male.
I shuddered, crawling over to Aspen as Oliver rifled through the dead angel’s stuff.
I reached out to Aspen, about to touch his face, when he snatched my hand, jerking me toward him. My ribs screamed, and I whimpered. He immediately let go of me, only to grab me again.
“Fuck,” he spat as he fought against the glow. “Lucille, you need to leave. Cuff me and run.”
Oliver stepped next to me, jangling the cuffs in his hands. “I agree with the princeling, except I’m not sure why?”
I ignored them both, scooting closer to Aspen. “Let me touch you. It’ll help,” I said, pressing my hand against his face.
Aspen clenched his fists. “It won’t work.
Not after what the Nephilim did.” He flung his head back, crying out as every muscle in his body tensed.
I wasn’t even touching the rune, yet I felt the searing electricity attempting to take over.
“I’m not supposed to remember my mom’s murder.
It’s her failsafe. Anytime I tried, the rune would attack and weaken me until I forgot and obeyed again.
But you made me remember the whole fucking thing, and it’s battling me,” he said through gritted teeth.
“So, what do we do?” I asked, putting my thumb on his rune. It shot into my hand, sending a path of unbearable heat through my entire arm. I screamed and let go.
“Stop touching me, Lucille!” he said softly before snapping at Oliver. “Put the damned cuffs on me, Nephilim.”
With wide, puffy eyes, Oliver glanced at me and then back to Aspen, trying to understand the situation but failing miserably .
“Do it! Before it’s too late,” Aspen bellowed, flames flashing in his irises.
Startled, Oliver dropped to the ground and locked his ankles together, then pocketed the key. “Now what?”
“Now you take Lucille and leave,” Aspen moaned like the cuffs that took away his power made the struggle worse.
I grabbed for his fist, but he pulled out of reach. “I’m not leaving you here.”
“I can’t promise you what I will be like when it takes over. You need to go.”
“No.”
“Luci—” His eyes rolled as he fell back, writhing on the ground.
I snapped my gaze to Oliver as he retched into the grass. “Why did you do that?”
“How many people has he watched get murdered?” he moaned as he grabbed my arm, lifted us off the ground, and pulled me away.
I almost jerked out of his hold, thinking he was about to run with me, when he said, “I’m just getting you away from the stench of my stomach acid.
Relax. I’m buying us time to make a plan. ”
Defeated, I gingerly sank to the ground. “What kind of plan, Oliver? I have no idea what to do or where to go anymore.”
He looked at me funny. “What do you mean? We’re going to Magda’s.”
I scoffed, wincing as I unlocked my cuffs and handed them to Oliver.
“Here. That’s how you reach your sister.
They’ll allow you to cross their border, but it’ll suppress your powers.
I don’t need to go to Magda’s anymore. The memory of why I was taken returned.
My mom poisoned me. She’s working with Marcus. She doesn’t need to be found. ”
Oliver stared at the cuffs, quiet. Then he took a step back, refusing to accept them.
“Oliver?” I asked, surprised. “Take them. This is what you’ve been dying to find. Go get your sister back.”
“You’re right. For ninety-five years, I’ve been trying to find a way to Melanie.” He lifted his gaze from the cuffs. “But we made a deal. We’re going to Magda’s, then you can give me the cuffs. Your mom isn’t working for Marcus, Lucy. You need the rest of your answers.”
“How would you know that? Do you have another super-dandy power I don’t know about?” I asked, throwing out my hands and regretting it instantly.
“No, but I saw your fear too, Lucy. I saw your scum-bag father. I heard creepy iceman, which we will have to revisit later. And I saw your mom. I saw the love she had for you.”
I rolled my eyes and stared at Aspen. Oliver stepped forward, gripped my chin, and forced my attention back on him.
“No! Listen to me. I may not have a mother anymore, but I know what love from one looks like. Jumping in front of a fireball for you and standing in front of you, ready to duel it out with another Archangel, is love. So whatever memory you restored in your head isn’t the whole picture.
You’re missing something, and we are going to that damn decapitating witch and getting you answers,” Oliver stated, practically stomping his foot.
“But what if it’s all true? What if my mom’s?—”
“What if my sister’s dead? What if, even with the cuffs, I can never get to her?
What if, what if, what if? I get it more than you know.
But the difference between you and me is that I’m willing to face any outcome just to know I tried for her.
But you, Lucy, based on what I saw by touching you, you have a habit of ignoring your fears or having your mom suppress them, which was why you were shit at controlling them in the beginning.
She did you no favors even if you were hiding from a scum-bag father. ”
I didn’t want to listen to his rational words, not after what I saw. I didn’t want to go to Magda’s and face the truth, whatever it was. My mom sobbed in front of my face and poisoned me with Marcus.
“Lucy, you went straight to the worst what-ifs and forgot to ask, what if your mom’s in trouble? What if there was no other option? Are you really going to forget about her and go on your merry way? Was surviving this shit place all for nothing?”
I didn’t want to face my past—my abusive father or my mother’s betrayal.
But also, I didn’t want to remember how badly Aspen made me yearn to escape.
Every time he met me in those woods, I longed to leave my mom behind and experience life in a different world.
But the guilt wrecked me after thinking of everything my mom had done for us, which she always soothed away when I walked back from the forest.
Her touch was a comfort and a cage.
But it wasn’t just her betrayal that hurt.
It was hating myself for wanting a different life and partially resenting my mom.
If she truly was an evil mastermind, then all the guilt and self-loathing I had for myself was a lie.
But if Oliver was right, and my mother was in trouble, I needed to help her like she always did for me, no matter how misguided her help might’ve been.
If he was wrong and we found her… I didn’t know what I’d do.