Wings.

My breath caught in my throat, and I opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. After a moment, I recognized that it was the back of a shirtless Nathaniel, but I’d never before seen his wings, which gleamed a coppery sheen in the sunlight. They stretched as wide as they could go before relaxing and folding to his back, but they didn’t vanish. His shirt was sitting on the swing bench a few yards away.

I approached him cautiously. “Hey, Nathaniel.”

He turned his head to me as I stopped right beside him, and he smiled warmly at me. “Ellie.”

I marveled at his wings, at how they seemed two shades at once. When the sun caught his feathers, the color matched his eyes. “What are you up to?”

“Stretching,” he replied.

Prying my eyes away from his feathers was difficult. I didn’t often see reaper wings up close unless I was in a fight, and on those occasions I couldn’t stop to admire the view. Even Will was shy about his wings, and I could count on one hand how many times I’d seen them. “Will ought to do that once in a while,” I suggested with a grin. “He probably wouldn’t be so grumpy then.”

Nathaniel laughed softly, and his wings folded into his back and disappeared. “Perhaps, but I’m afraid he may be a lost cause.” He tugged his shirt back over his head. “It’s going to rain today.”

Sure enough, a dark cloud was rolling in from the west.

He sat down gracefully on the swing and patted the spot next to him. “Come sit with me.”

“I’m sad it’s so much colder today than yesterday,” I said, hugging my arms to my chest against the chill and lowering myself onto the seat.

“Temperature fluctuations are to be expected.” He pushed the swing back and forth slowly with his boot on the mushy, slippery ground. “It’s been wonderful having you here, Ellie. Reapers love being around you. It goes beyond how close Will and I are with you, how well Marcus knows you. We feel better when you’re around.”

“Better?” I asked. “Knowing that you’re able to protect me?”

“Yes,” Nathaniel said. “But it’s so much more than that. There is something about you that draws reapers. It must be your divine origins that we can sense. You feel warm … good. It’s impossible to describe. We crave your presence. It makes you even more beautiful to some of us. Others resent that you have some sort of control over them. The angelic aren’t the only ones who feel like this, but the demonic react to you in a different way. The angelic instinctively want to protect you, while the demonic … they crave you like nothing else. They just want to know what you taste like.”

Everything he said completely unsettled me. I didn’t want anything to be drawn to me the way he described. It made me wonder also if there was more to Will’s love for me, if this was what he meant by feeling innately protective. He always seemed to want to touch me and be physically close, like he couldn’t help it, and it was a struggle for him to stay away from me. The way Nathaniel described my effect on the demonic made me a little afraid, too. But Cadan’s affection was never malicious or felt wrong in any way. He touched me the way Will touched me, though he didn’t make me feel the same need in return. But did Cadan only think he was in love with me because of this innate attraction?

Nathaniel stared out onto the lake. “Your past Guardians were said to have been very devoted to you, but none of them ever served you nearly as long as Will has. A few decades. A hundred years. Though I never knew any of your past Guardians, from what I understand, you’ve never had a bond with any of them the way you do with Will. He’s stronger than any angelic reaper I’ve ever met, and at the same time, he’s darker. I don’t know why.”

That word, “darker,” stabbed like a needle in my arm, bolting me awake. “What do you mean by darker?”

Nathaniel paused, lost in thought. “It’s something in his energy, something that feels different from others of our kind. I noticed it about him the day I met him, and others feel it too—angelic and demonic alike. He’s a legend among us. His power is unmatched by any angelic reaper.”

I’d seen Will do things in battle that both terrified and amazed me, things that reminded me of the demonic, but it was impossible for him to be anything other than angelic. My angelfire had proved that on many occasions. But still … in my bones, I knew Nathaniel was right. Something about Will was dark—darker than Nathaniel, darker even than Ava.

Nathaniel leaned back into the swing and sighed. “It’s all very curious. I wish I fully understood the bond between you.”

Nathaniel’s words sparked a memory of Will’s lips on mine, a memory so vivid that I could feel his heat as if he was touching me that very moment. I closed my eyes, swallowed, and forced myself to say something, anything to draw me from that thought. “Is the bond dangerous?” I asked.

He nodded. “What Will has told you is likely true. You are the mortal archangel, and he is your Guardian. Neither of you is permitted to love the other. You are both bound to your purposes first.”

“I can’t remember why I chose this,” I said in frustration. “Why would I have ever wanted to give up my wings and become human?”

“Ellie,” Nathaniel began carefully. “That’s what you need to understand. There’s no way you, Gabriel, did this by your own will. Angels don’t have free will.”