Vicki Pettersson - The Given

The Pure’s voice cracked then, and a tear appeared at the corner of one eye. He winced when he saw that Kit had noticed, but didn’t try to hide it or blink it away. Instead he stared at her with an almost blazing defiance. And vulnerability, Kit saw. She knew what that felt like, but his was so raw it was almost perverse.

Kit stared back, some old warning about looking directly into the faces of angels chiming through her head, yet she couldn’t look away. Tears rose and swam against his opaque irises, then shimmered there, like a heat wave against the road. The liquid pooled to take on a hard edge, sliding to the corners of his eyes. Then his tears began to glow green as they fell, and Kit watched with growing horror as malachite carved an even deeper furrow into those dark, lined cheeks. The grooves were already well established, and a scraping sound cut through the room as sorrow etched his face. A milky-white foam was left in the wake of the tears, some universal matter similar to blood, though Kit didn’t know what it was.

“Tears are filled with emotion,” Sarge explained, watching her watch him. “Emotion is your link with His power, but for a Pure? A being that was created, not birthed? Emotion is poison.”

And one of the sharp stone tears tipped off Sarge’s dented chin, fell to the floor, and shattered with the sound of breaking glass.

“I didn’t know how much pain I caused you,” he said, emeralds now forming in his eyes.

But he knew now.

“Please,” Kit whispered, as her own eyes filled with tears. She could taste his pain now, because it was shared. Because it was her own. “Please stop.”

“But this is my punishment for the sorrow I have caused, and for the sorrow yet to come.” Kit froze, fear flooding her in one great rush. She knew it. There was more to come. That’s why he was here. A Pure wouldn’t deign to appear on the Surface unless there was something in it for him, after all. And Grif’s previous hesitancy still nagged at her mind.

Kit surprised herself by sounding so calm. “Just tell me.”

And, without preamble, he did. “Griffin Shaw is dying.”

Kit just stared before shaking her head. “No. No, he—”

“It is fated, and has been since the beginning of time.” This time, crystalline tears shattered against the floor, and the Pure shuddered like he was trying to escape his own body. Kit couldn’t blame him. Three more edged teardrops ripped through his face in quick succession, the white blood welling to flood the crevices of his face. “In just over twenty-four hours, he will be dead.”

“So stop it.” Stop the tears, stop the pain. Stop the very wheels of fate.

“I can’t. I—”

“You owe me,” she finished for him, voice rasping harshly.

“In a fair world, I would owe you.”

Kit closed her eyes. But life wasn’t fair, everyone knew that. Life was a place where angels stood by and watched people use free will to destroy each other. Kit shook her head side to side now, almost violently. “No—”

“You’ll have to be strong, Katherine,” he said softly.

“No!” She screamed it now, pounding the counter. “Don’t you just tell me this and then leave. You fix it!”

“I cannot involve myself . . .”

In human affairs, he was going to say. In their lives. In fate’s plan. Yeah, she knew that. And she didn’t care.

“Fix it!” she screamed, and she punched the mirror so hard that a web splintered from its center. Her hand exploded in pain, knuckles ripped apart, wrist jarred.

Sarge reached out, through the mirror, which rippled like water, to try to touch her. Kit jerked away.

“Let me heal it,” he pleaded, and attempted to wrap his overly long fingers around her knuckles.

“I’m fine,” Kit said through gritted teeth. “It’s only a dream, right? I’m sleepwalking?”

“Please,” Sarge said, and this time she only stared. “Let me at least do what I can.”

He held out his hand, unnaturally long fingers splayed palm-up. Breath harsh, Kit finally reached out as well, and while she saw the instant their fingertips connected, she couldn’t feel it. And suddenly the mirror separated them again, and she was healed.

She flexed her fingers, then looked up at him. She didn’t thank him. “Fine, if you’re not going to help Grif, I will.”

“What can you do?”

“I can close it all down. Bring his past to an end and ensure his future. If we solve the real mystery that brought him back to the Surface, if we find Evie Shaw, then his heart will finally have relief.”

“He’ll still have to move on.”

“Then at least he’ll do it in peace.” And, shooting Sarge one last hard look in the mirror, she whirled and headed back to the bed, where Grif still slumbered. She would face whatever the next twenty-four hours had to offer, because if her fate could be altered—if stars could attack her flesh like stinging bees and realign her destiny with their luminous sting—then so could Grif’s. Knowing that was possible was how she’d get to the other side of it, and Grif would, too. Even if she had to mow down angels. Even if she had to drag him there herself.

Grif woke expecting to feel different, maybe even be different, like an element—water shifting to vapor, there but gone. For a moment, warmed by Kit’s arms, he had felt normal and thought he’d done it. He’d fulfilled the prophecy.

Reunite with your true love before the anniversary of your death . . . or all is Lost.

Then he shifted and caught it purling out of the corner of his eye . . . tiny, just a wisp of silver, and one perceptible only to a Centurion. Yet Grif was hardly that anymore. If he were at full power, the winnowing thread of plasma would be shot through with light. Instead it was dull against the moonlit room, and Grif knew Sarge had been telling the truth at the tiki bar. He was losing his angelic nature. The prophecy was coming true.

Reunite with your true love before the anniversary of your death . . . or all is Lost.

Liars, Grif thought bitterly.

Shifting in bed, Grif reached over and realized Kit was no longer beside him. Shooting straight up, he was about to throw off the covers when he caught sight of her sitting bedside in her Barcelona chair, draped in a flowing white robe. The scent of coffee reached out, teasing him, and she stared at him from above the mug’s rim. She sipped without blinking. It made her look more otherworldly than him.

She tilted her head toward the door. “Is that plasma?”

“Yeah. It’s—” He stopped himself and did a double-take. Perhaps he was still dreaming. “Wait. You can see it?”

Kit cut her eyes left, where the plasma could still be seen spinning along the floor, low and sparking with silver. “Is it a mist that looks like it’s funneled into shape? As if it’s sentient and has somewhere to go?”

“Yes.”

“Then I can see it.”

But how? He was awake enough to know that something had happened in the hours since they made love, but too sleep-addled to know what. And Kit didn’t give him a chance to figure it out.

“Were you going to tell me, Grif?” she asked, mug cupped in both hands. “Or were you just going to disappear again?”

His heart sunk. So she knew. He saw the certainty in her dust-dry eyes. “Who was it? Sarge?”

She inclined her head.

“How? Did he come through me while I was sleeping?”

“He used my dreams,” she said, shaking her head. “Sleepwalking.”

Grif frowned and glanced back toward the doorway. And he’d reached her physically somehow, imbuing her with Divine Touch. That explained how she could see the plasma. Yet that meant he’d have ventured to the Surface, and the Pure angel, the Sarge that he knew, would never do that.