Great, another reason to transfer to another school.
We made the sharp turn that led us onto the narrow lane within the trees. I found myself eager to see the tiny stone chapel again, to escape all that was rapidly plummeting down on us, even if only for a little while.
Just like the first time I laid eyes on it, it sucked the breath right out of me with its simple beauty: the old stone, the wooden door, and the broken stained glass windows shrouded in roots and underbrush, as though forgotten by time. Something was different and I didn’t immediately know what, but I felt it, like something was waiting. I shook the feeling. After what had just happened in history class, no wonder I was on edge.
He took my hand and together we slowly approached the little stone chapel, looking around us every so often, as if trying to spy something among the trees. It looked the same, nothing appeared damaged, but why did it feel so…wrong? Then intuition took over and told me we shouldn’t go inside. I didn’t know if Garreth felt the warning. I wasn’t sure what angelic sense he had left and I was more than confused that I seemed to be the one feeling this extrasensory-perception thing instead of him. Like he said, he was my protector, not the other way around.
Instead, we sat on the fallen tree like last time. He took my hand, the burning one, and looked at it carefully, as though he were a doctor inspecting a freak of nature — which would be me.
“It’s forming correctly.”
I stared at him as he looked at my hand.
“What?”
“As your Guardian, I was given orders not only to protect you but to also be your witness.”
“Um, in English, please?”
“The Judgment Point of your existence has begun, the revealing of your purpose.”
“But…didn’t you already do that? I’m supposed to defeat Hadrian.”
He cupped his hands around my face and held them there, warming my skin with what little white light he had left. It was still in him. I felt it pulsing through his veins, felt it tapping against my skin. He closed his eyes and I watched him calm me, forcing his pulse to beat with mine. I had the urge to lean forward and press my lips to his and seal them there forever. But there was so much at stake. I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take. Hadrian…angels… Couldn’t he and I just run away and be together?
Garreth opened his eyes and touched his lips gently to my hand, as if obliging the one wish he could give my heart. As soon as his lips met my skin, I felt so much more inside me that connected to him. It wasn’t just the life-light, or the calming of my emotions, it was beyond that. I could clearly feel that he and I would get through this unscathed.
We pulled apart and then, without explanation, he pressed his palm to mine. I felt searing heat from the octagram slice into my hand, burning it, and I wondered if he was healing the poison welting up my flesh. When the heat subsided and I was given back my hand, I gasped, staring at it in wonder and surprise.
“My hand. It’s…”
“It’s called the circle of unity. It represents the unbroken cycle of life, death, and rebirth.”
I held my right hand open in front of my face, so I could look at it more closely. It was absolutely beautiful and it was mine. I wanted to trace the simple scrolling with my finger but I was scared to. Would it hurt? Would it disappear? The fragile curve began its scrolling descent down across my palm in an elongated “S,” then repeated the shape behind itself. It was incredibly feminine and I was amazed how it suited me. It filled me with a strange sense of power and tingled against my skin as if resonating with magic.
So now I was no longer the damsel in distress but an equal to both Garreth and Hadrian. I belonged, inducted into a divine society…and this was too much. I suddenly felt overwhelmed, as if I had been given an expensive gift. Do I give it back and tell them I can’t accept? What if I can’t do what’s expected of me? But it made the task ahead of me all the more meaningful.
Somehow, I would have to find the strength to believe I could do this.
I began to shake, the power inside suddenly retreating, leaving in its wake the timid seventeen-year-old Teagan I’ve always known.
“Teagan,” he whispered, trying to capture my attention.
I had been staring at the beautiful mark on my hand for about ten minutes. A bizarre feeling swept over me but it wasn’t just because of my hand; it was all of me, my whole body, my insides.
“I don’t know if I can do this. I…”
“You’re scared.”
I nodded. His gentle words soothed the pain from my hand and the tremors of confusion from my body. And when I looked up into his pure eyes, I had no doubt that I could trust the unknown. He was guiding me.
Protecting me.
We had three more days. Three more days to spend together and stop Hadrian and his plan.
Impossible. But was it?
Silently, I accepted my gift.
The sky had grayed quickly, covering the treetops with heavy, threatening clouds that forced me to shudder involuntarily. There was something more than the sudden change in weather that caused my arms to tingle and prickle, but I couldn’t figure it out. I looked at Garreth leaning against the imperfect bark and gnarls of the old tree.
“Come on, let’s go,” Garreth said, sensing my discomfort and looking upward. “I have a feeling the school might call to check on you.”
I rolled my eyes. School was the least of my worries these days.
The first plump drops of rain were just beginning to fall as we reached the Jeep. Garreth quickly started the car and turned the dial for the heater.
“You’re shivering.” He pulled me close and enveloped me with his warmth.
“Didn’t you feel strange back there?”
In the dim light, Garreth shook his head slowly from side to side. “What did you feel?”
His handsome face suddenly took on a boyish expression of uncertainty. He looked so innocent. No, he looked…human.
“I don’t know exactly, but something wasn’t right.”
With the heater cranked, I felt myself begin to thaw just a little but I couldn’t stop trembling.
“What?” Garreth asked of me. He had been studying me intently while I was off somewhere in my brain trying to figure all this out.
I let out a sigh. “I really don’t know. Obviously, Hadrian is playing hardball here. I mean, this army of his. There are so many already.” I shook my head as if disbelieving my very own words. “I see them everywhere now, the people who are losing their Guardians. There was a boy in my history class, and just like that, his Guardian was corrupted. It’s happening so quickly, Garreth.”
I let my head fall back against the headrest and I pressed my hands to my eyes. Everything inside me hurt. I realized I hadn’t let myself properly grieve for Claire, and that all this happening in my life was like a fast-forwarded episode of The Twilight Zone, starring yours truly.
Hadrian’s war was psychological, his victims affected mentally. Deep inside, I felt like I was going crazy.
Maybe I had Hadrian to thank for that? Maybe I wasn’t too far off if I believed that he would soon drive everyone absolutely mad in order to reign. I had been chosen for a reason but, right now, that reason made absolutely no sense to me. I looked at my hand for reassurance. Everything happens for a reason.
Nothing is coincidental.
Gently, Garreth took my hand and placed in it another gift. Only this one was hard and cold and very, very deadly.
The sheer weight of it held me and I couldn’t move, let alone take my eyes off the incredibly scary looking knife Garreth had just placed in my hand. I looked at him and he read the confusion in my eyes.
“It’s a dagger, by the way, not a knife.” He smiled in an attempt to pull me out of my deer-in-the-headlights trance.