Iridescent (Ember 2) (21 page)

A flush heated her skin. She took a deep breath. Her desire for Sebastian was sometimes overwhelming, but their relationship was so much more than that. It had grown from a necessity to a tentative friendship and, finally, to a love neither of them could deny any longer.

Lilith had really done a number on her. She had shaken her faith in her ability to judge people. Despite everything, Candra didn’t want to lose her faith in Sebastian, and she hoped she hadn’t broken his faith in her. Watchers all knew her origin; they had witnessed what the Nephilim were capable of.
Maybe he’s realized I’m not inherently good in the way he wants me to be.

She took a deep breath, preparing to speak.

“Stop it.” His tone was thick with an air of finality, and he remained perfectly still.

“Stop what?” she asked, recognizing the whining tone in her voice. Why did he have to revert to
that
personality today?

“You’re staring at me. Stop it. I’m not a movie of the week. You’re watching me as if you’ll get to see what happens next played out on my face.”

“Who says I care what happens next?” she retorted, crossing her arms and averting her gaze to the ground instead of him. She wasn’t staring…at least she wasn’t staring without purpose. She was trying to work out what had triggered his mood swing. Not that Sebastian wasn’t prone to them, just not to the extremes of ignoring her for days…and nights on end.

“I do,” he stated blankly.

Candra huffed indignantly, prompting him to chuckle.

“Quit being an ass.” She peeked up at him. “Are you going to tell me what the silent treatment has been about?”

His eyes tightened slightly. “No.”

“Excuse me?”

“You should ask your friend, Lilith.”

“Is that what this is about, because I talked to Lilith?” she asked, aware her frustration was beginning to show through the tone of her voice. She didn’t want to push Sebastian too far, since she wasn’t entirely sure what his reaction would be and she really needed to not fight right now. Whatever was bothering him couldn’t be just about her conversation with Lilith. He had already been in a weird mood even before he’d found out about that.

Candra peered at him from under her eyelashes, not wanting to get caught staring again. Not only was he not looking at her, his eyes remained shut tight.

“No,” he shot back coldly.

He was talking in damned riddles.

Sebastian sighed, pushed away from the wall, and finally opened his fierce eyes to her. Candra stood her ground despite the intense foreign desire to step back from him. Even worse was the desire to move closer and use her feminine wiles to rush some sort of reconciliation. She refused to resolve whatever was going on between them by glossing over it with another make-out session. The winter sun began to dip low in the sky, lengthening the shadows in the side street.

“What do you want from me, Candra?” One tensed hand reached into his pocket to retrieve a pack of cigarettes. “You’ve been calling and texting. I’m here now, so spit it out,” he said somewhat reluctantly.

“Answers,” she replied. “Be straight with me for once. Don’t treat me like some treasure you are being forced to protect. Treat me like your girlfriend—your equal.”

“My girlfriend.” Sebastian pulled out a cigarette, placed the white stick between his lips, and was about to return the pack to his pocket, when he stalled. After a moment’s hesitation, he lifted the pack and offered it to Candra.

The gesture shocked her. Candra knew Sebastian smoked occasionally, especially when he allowed things to get on top of him, but she had never seen it with her own eyes. He’d certainly never offered her a pack before. He didn’t move any closer, nor did she. In fact, she didn’t move at all.

Forget the staring. She gaped in surprise. His eyes blazed with so many emotions, she couldn’t begin to work them out, but the overriding one seemed to be, yet again, much to her alarm and disappointment, anger. When Candra didn’t speak, he jiggled the pack to emphasize his offer.

“Thank you, but you know I don’t smoke.” She gave him a small smile.

His hand didn’t move. His jaw tightened and flexed, and he jiggled the pack again. “It’s just one cigarette, Candra.” His eyebrow raised in question, almost like he was taunting her.

She briefly wondered if that was the point. Was he drawing attention to the difference between them, how her part-human body somehow lacked in what it could do compared to his? Or was it more blatant, testing how easily she could be corrupted? A sting of pain jabbed in her chest. Something about the way he’d spoken the word
girlfriend
hurt her deeply, as if it was attached to a foul stench.

He was still waiting, one eyebrow raised, with a smirk, like this was some type of victory for him, like he had proved his point.

Candra took a step forward and reached out, taking a cigarette from the pack before stepping back again. He returned the pack to his pocket and took out a lighter, the kind that flicked open and closed with a click. Sebastian took the few steps to stand directly in front of her. He was so close that the toe of his boot settled between her shoes. The scent of spices and heat was so strong, she registered nothing else in the air but him. Her heart picked up pace a little, and Sebastian’s warmth seemed to radiate across the narrow space between them. Candra swallowed, twisting herself away so her back hit the wall. Sebastian moved too, so his stance was the same again.

Her stomach began to coil with fear and longing. Time stood still. He held the lighter up with one hand. The small orange flame flickered in his eyes and caught the gold shimmer. Candra put the cigarette to her lips and inhaled when he touched the flame to the dried leaves and paper. The amber glow of the tip brightened and then faded as she pulled it away from her lips. Still, Sebastian didn’t move. He appeared to be waiting for something, but she had no idea what. Something was so different about him. She couldn’t put her finger on it.

He carried himself with an air of resentment she had only seen once before—the day she told him she had chosen Draven. His lips pressed tightly together when he swallowed. Candra couldn’t help but think he had something he wanted to say. His body and mind seemed to be at war.

Any one of the lecturers or priests from Saint Francis could round the corner and find her standing with a lit cigarette in her hand. Smoking was instant behavioral probation. She’d end up having to volunteer in one of the school’s area clean-up programs or posting flyers warning against the danger of moral degradation to earn back credits for her college references.

The taste of the smoke inside her lungs was disgusting and burned with an acrid, bitter flavor, nothing like she recognized on Sebastian. She exhaled slowly; the smoke rose in ribbons around his face while he watched her intently. Sebastian’s eyes darted to her lips, and he blinked as if snapping out of a daze. He flicked the lighter shut and turned, his body brushing against the fabric of her jacket.

Sebastian’s abrupt movement startled Candra, and she forced the remainder of the smoke from her lungs in a quick spurt of coughing. He returned to a safe distance, keeping his back to her. She heard the lighter work and the sizzle of the paper as it took. Sebastian sucked in one long breath and raked his fingers through his hair in obvious frustration.

“I told you—”

“You can’t protect me if I run off…I get it. So this is about Lilith.” She cut him off, snapping his own words back at him. “Except I didn’t run off this time; she came to me. What was I meant to do? Ignore her? Ignore what’s going on because you don’t want to talk to me?”

Sebastian turned back to her, spinning quickly on his heels, and she jumped. The look in his eyes was predatory, and there was a slight glow of red to his cheeks.

“I won’t let you get yourself killed. You are too important to all of us.” He flung the hardly touched, burning cigarette to the ground, and his fingers twitched menacingly by his side.

Candra’s back was as far to the wall as she could get without climbing into the cracks of the brickwork. She crossed her arms and huffed loudly to stop herself from reaching out to him. She had the sudden urge to reassure herself that he was really Sebastian standing in front of her glowering, and this wasn’t some mind trick of Lilith’s. How could she know the extent of Lilith’s power? The intensity of his gaze made shivers vibrate through every nerve ending in her body.

“To all of you. Not you. I’m not important to you?”
Did I really just say that?
Candra wanted to slap herself for being so dramatic. They were having a fight, that was all. Obviously she was still important to Sebastian, she told herself.

He laughed darkly and rubbed the palms of his hands roughly over his face. He was laughing at her, teasing her. It felt like a test to see if she was worthy of whatever secrets he kept locked away. Maybe he wanted to see if she kept her cool under pressure, if she could have met with Lilith and revealed nothing of importance. She was failing miserably.
I didn’t ask for any of this. I never asked him to enter my life, and I won’t be mocked or ridiculed.

“Fine, don’t tell me what’s going on with you. I don’t even care anymore,” she spat furiously. Warmth spread inside her body as her temper swelled, almost as if she blushed from the inside out. “You’re being an arrogant ass, obnoxious…and your hair is too long. Since when do you smoke around me?”

Her hands seemed to be waving around of their own volition as she continued her rant. She threw the cigarette on the ground. Her eyes darted to it, as if the burning tobacco and paper would jump back up and bite her. “You forced me to smoke,” she shouted incredulously. Candra paused, knowing there was more, but it wasn’t coming to mind, and she felt like a petulant child, stamping her feet.

Sebastian dropped his hand and stared at her with a blank expression, as if he’d never seen her before.

“And I hate you right now. I don’t even want to be around you when you are like this.” She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her like she never existed. Even more than her anger at Sebastian, she was angry at herself for losing her control and voicing things she didn’t mean and would have to take back later. She had lost the high moral ground the instant those words had spewed from her lips.
What am I? Twelve and crying in the playground?

“You’re being irrational. I can’t talk to you when you’re behaving like a…” He began his accusation empathically and trailed off to nothing, clearly unable to say the word he was thinking.

The tips of Candra’s fingers began to quiver with exasperation. She couldn’t get through to him when he was being like this. Why did he have to be such a pig?

“Wh-What?” she stuttered. “I…I don’t…”

“Spit it out, Candra,” he ordered brashly.

Candra glared at him, irate. “Like one of the Nephilim, Sebastian? Is that what you wanted to say? There’s no reasoning with me because I’m like them?”

His jaw flexed, and his eyes widened almost so quickly, she would have missed it if she’d blinked. “No. Like a kid. You are behaving like a kid.”

Candra didn’t believe his lame excuse for a second. He was infuriating, yet she couldn’t make herself walk away. Nor could she escape the niggling doubt inside her heart that as quickly as everything came together, it was all falling apart again. A few of the girls who had passed them earlier made their way back through the alley toward the main school. Candra didn’t meet their eyes or check her watch. She knew she would have to make her way back in at any time, drawing her conversation with Sebastian to an untimely end. He still hadn’t said whatever he came here to tell her.

“Who the hell shoved a giant stick up your ass?” She almost laughed. Everything felt so, different, so not them, yet it was what they always did, standing their ground and talking in circles.

Sebastian forced out a deep breath, not offering an answer and evoking a nervous, highly ill-timed giggle from Candra. She had no idea why she’d laughed or what made this argument different compared to the others. His head shot up, and he looked at her with narrowed eyes. A deep groan rattled in his chest, reminding Candra of the sound an animal makes before finally giving up their fight for life. Then he just walked away, leaving her staring wide-eyed after him.

“Where are you going?” she called out, even though the answer was perfectly obvious—away from the hysterical female.

“Away from here.”

Away from me.
Candra didn’t like Sebastian much when he was being this way, putting her back into the box he marked
little girl.
He could be cruel and hurtful, treating her as if he couldn’t explain what was wrong because she wouldn’t be able to wrap her head around it. He could also be sweet, kind, and generous with his affection. She wished he could always be sweet. She wished it could that easy, or she could only love one half of him.

Thinking that way was useless, but it didn’t prevent her from doing it. She couldn’t give up on him as soon as the waters they had dived into together got rocky. Candra loved every part of him, even the parts that allowed him to convince himself to give up…if that was what he was doing.

She watched Sebastian walk away, leaving her with no answers. A strange tugging sensation in the pit of her stomach dragged her forward, the invisible bond that made them want to be together despite everything. He’d touched her hand the first night he slept on the floor in her room, and she’d felt their connection like energy shooting up her arm. She hadn’t understood at the time, but after her conversation with Lilith, the tingles made sense. Something greater and more powerful than both of them bound Sebastian to her, and maybe that day, the bond had taken root in her too.