My head moved back and forth in denial. I hadn’t known. How could I?
I jumped when Nakita was suddenly at my side, the gentle touch of her wings brushing me. Her sword was gone, and I stared at her, seeing her confusion, knowing what she was feeling, since I was feeling it myself: betrayal, dismay, fear.
“At least I didn’t try to kill her,” Ron muttered.
“No, you kept her ignorant.”
“I’m the one who saved her!” Ron shouted back.
“You didn’t save me,” I said, lips barely moving. “I died. Remember?”
The light breeze coming up from the beach lifted my hair to make the purple tips tickle my cheek. I tried to understand. It didn’t make sense. I could not be the rising dark timekeeper. I didn’t believe in fate.
Ron started forward, and I jerked out of my fog. “Stop!” I shouted, gripping my amulet with my other hand outstretched, and he halted, stymied.
“The seraphs fated Madison to take your place?” Nakita said, her voice cracking. “You sent me to kill the one who would be my master? The next who would uphold seraph will?”
Kairos frowned at her. “She wouldn’t be your new master if you would let me destroy her soul. With her gone, I will live forever, able to claim a place at a higher court.” Kairos pulled himself into a proud stance. “I will be immortal. Immortal, Nakita!” he said, his expression becoming fervent as he gestured, almost knocking over his cup. “It would be enough to shift the tides of time to our favor forever. Imagine it!”
“You promised to help me,” Nakita whispered, her voice softer than the wind.
Kairos glanced at her in annoyance, but his eyes narrowed as he realized the threat she was. “Give me your amulet,” he said, holding out his hand, and when she didn’t, he strode forward, anger and dominance in his movement.
I stifled a gasp when Nakita shoved me behind her, and my feet scrambled to keep me upright. There was a sharpping that seemed to make the new sunlight shiver, and when I looked, Nakita’s amulet was in Kairos’s hand and he was striding to the nearby table. He had made her helpless.Crap. Now what?
“I’m still your master, you ignorant angel,” he said as Nakita’s source of power clinked upon the table; then his smile chilled me to the bone. “Now. Madison. About your body.”
Oh, God.He had my body. He could destroy my soul. Ron stood unmoving, not that I expected anything from him.
Nakita dropped to a knee before Kairos, her face pale and a ribbon of moisture slipping from her eye.
“You said you could make me well,” she said, grief clear in her tone. “I don’t want to be afraid.”
Despite my own fear, pity rose through me. She was fallen, an angel doubly betrayed. The innocence of a wild thing of power given knowledge of death.
“You promised, Kairos,” Nakita said softly as tears slipped from her and she wiped them away, shock showing briefly at their presence. “I suffered black wings eating my memory. Memory is all I have. I believed you. You sent me to kill her because you fear death?”
“I will be immortal!” Kairos shouted, his anger bursting forth. “How can you presume to know what it’s like to fear death? You’ve existed since time began and will until it ends!”
Nakita stood, the air shimmering where her wings would be. “I know now what it’s like to fear death, but I still live by seraph will,” she said, her voice shaking. “I live by it, and you will die by it.”
Kairos smirked, fingering her amulet on the table. “How, Nakita? You belong to me.”
But then she pulled from her belt a white rock, bound by black wire and laced on a simple black cord. It didn’t look like the amulet I had returned to her in the woods, and Kairos shook his head as if it meant nothing—until she rubbed a thumb across it and what looked like salt fell away to show a simple black stone glowing with infinity. Itwas the stone I’d returned to her in the woods. As if I had been her keeper.
I’d stained it with my tears—gifting her with a symbol of my grief and an atonement for having broken the purity of her existence.
Nakita’s hand fisted about it. “I accept you,” she said to me, though her frightening grimace was for Kairos.
“No!” I shrieked, reaching out when the glint of her sword flashed a pure black. Nakita leaped forward to send her blade cleanly through Kairos.
Ron took several steps forward, crying out in dismay, but it was too late. It was done.
Kairos looked at his unmarked middle, blinking when he brought his gaze up, fixing first on the violet stone, then her eyes. “You’ve failed us,” he whispered, and then he collapsed.