Curse of the Fallen by Eve Archer

Chapter Thirty-Two

Ella

“It’s not that I’m not happy to see you, girl.” Sara pushed herself up on the pile of pillows. “But you’re starting to make me nervous.”

“What?” I glanced at the thick, wooden door for probably the hundredth time since I’d dashed into her bedroom after changing out of my shorty pjs and into yoga pants and a T-shirt. “Sorry. I’m a bit distracted.”

Sara laughed. “You think?”

Although I’d braced myself for shouts or pounding feet, the corridor outside her room remained quiet. Maybe Dominick hadn’t been trying to make me feel better. Maybe he was having a political discussion with the prince of demons.

I shivered. Even the thought of a prince of demons gave me the creeps. Would the leader of demons be as scorchingly attractive as all the other demons I’d seen at Dominick’s club, or were only succubi and incubi drop dead gorgeous? Was Dominick meeting with a creature with horns and fiery-red skin, or did the demon prince take on a more pleasing form?

“You want to tell me why you’re so jumpy?” Sara’s voice had regained the sharpness I was used to, and hearing the edgy, New York side of her was comforting.

I sat on the edge of her bed, sinking into the pillowy duvet. “It’s nothing. Just the craziness over the past few days, I guess.”

I hated lying to my best friend, but I also didn’t want to terrify her. She had just returned from the dead, and I could only imagine that she needed significant recovery time from something like that. “How are you feeling?”

She brushed her fingers through her hair, the long, black locks spilling across the crisp, white pillowcases. “My memories are a little fuzzy, especially about what happened when that guy tried to shoot you.”

“Dan.” I uttered his name like a curse. I hadn’t seen him in the dungeons, but I’d heard the tail end of Dominick’s conversation with him. Knowing he’d been hunted down by the Fallen and was being held in the dank bowels of the fortress behind thick bars gave me some degree of satisfaction, but it would be a long time before I could think of him without remembering Sara’s lifeless body.

“I guess he missed, right?” Sara twisted to pick up a glass of water on the nightstand, flinching from the effort.

“You pushed me aside. If you hadn’t have done that, he wouldn’t have missed.”

“Really?” Sara grinned. “I wish I could remember being an amazing badass.”

I laughed away the tears that had been threatening the backs of my eyelids. “As if you aren’t an amazing badass every day.”

“Snagging tickets for the hottest show on Broadway isn’t the same as pushing your best friend from the path of a bullet, but I’ll just have to take your word for it that I was incredible.”

I rolled my eyes. If I’d been worried that Sara might have been changed by dying and coming back to life, my fears were put to rest. She’d lost none of her confidence or her snarky charm.

“So where exactly are we?” Sara swept her gaze around the room, which was like mine in its simple decor, but also had the distinctive medieval features—a stone floor, a giant wooden door and vaulted ceiling, and narrow windows cut into the stone walls. “Does Marbella have old castles?”

Sara obviously recalled nothing of the flight away from Marbella or of landing on the island in the dark and being carried inside by Rami, which was too bad, because I knew she thought he was hot.

“We’re not in Marbella. Dominick brought us to his private Greek island so you could heal in peace.”

Her perfectly arched eyebrows lifted. “Your guy sure does like to stay on the move. I would be surprised that he has his own island, but I’ve already seen his plane.”

I remembered Sara telling me that she knew when we were in the club in Marbella, but I wasn’t sure how much she really knew. “So, you know that Dominick is…”

“An angel, I mean, a fallen one. Yeah, I figured that out when he and Rami whipped out their wings in front of me.”

“They did?”

“To be fair, they were coming off an intense fight with some demons, and I think they forgot they had a clueless human waiting in the car.”

Thinking back on my reaction when Dominick unfurled his wings, I grinned at her. “That must have been a shock.”

“To find out that angels and demons are real and are here on Earth?” She rubbed a hand to her forehead. “It wasn’t my typical Tuesday, that’s for damn sure.”

“And you don’t think I’m crazy to be involved with Dominick?” I might be a grown woman, but Sara’s opinion still mattered to me. She was one of the few people I trusted completely to have my best interests at heart, so I held my breath as I waited for her answer.

She exhaled a long breath. “Oh, I think you’re crazy all right, but I also get it. He’s not only incredibly gorgeous, but he’s a fricking angel.” She held up a finger. “And he was willing to fly all over the world to track you down and rescue you. I might not be too crazy about some of the stuff he’s involved with, but any guy who cares about you enough to show up in New York and practically drag me off to help him find you is okay in my book.”

I reached out and clasped her hand. “Thanks, Sara. I needed to hear that.”

She squeezed my hand all while shaking her head. “As if you were going to walk away from tall, dark, and celestial if I didn’t approve. You are hopelessly head over heels for the guy, Ella.”

My cheeks warmed. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone. Not Christopher. Not anyone.”

“Well, it’s about time. Christopher was a douchebag and a snooze.”

“It’s hard to believe I was with him for so long. It feels like that was a lifetime ago.”

“Or a week,” Sara said under her breath.

“It may sound crazy to say this, but I’m not the same person I was a week ago. So much has happened, and I’ve learned so much that the old Ella seems like a stranger.”

Sara cocked her head at me. “I hope the new Ella still needs a mouthy best friend.”

“Always.” I threw my arms around her and pulled her into a hug.

After a moment, she patted my back and cleared her throat. “No need to get dramatic on me. It’s not like either of us are going anywhere.”

I released her. One day I’d have to tell her what really happened and how she died for a short time, but I’d wait until she was fully recovered to lay that on her. For now, I was grateful to have her back among the living and hanging out with me. As crazy as I was about Dominick, I’d missed having a girlfriend to talk to when it had been just me and all the fallen angels.

“Especially since we’re on a private island in the middle of the Aegean Sea,” I said.

“Not exactly where I imagined I’d be this week, but I have to admit that it sure as hell beats Manhattan in the summer. I will not miss the sidewalks so hot you can see steam rising off them or my apartment’s glitchy AC.” She snapped her fingers. “By the way, I have all your stuff from your old place with douchebag.”

“Thanks.” I’d honestly forgotten that Christopher had all my possessions but leave it to Sara to get them from him. “How’d that go?”

“You mean did I have to kick his ass to give me your stuff? Nah. I went when he was out and sweet-talked his building super.” She winked at me. “Darling douche never knew I was there.”

“You broke in and stole my stuff?”

“It’s not stealing if it isn’t his.” Sara’s voice was righteously indignant. “Besides, I thought he might be petty and destroy it. He had already thrown all your stuff in boxes, so I didn’t even have to go through his dirty-ass apartment to find it all.”

“That sounds like him,” I admitted. “I don’t have anything valuable, but I would be crushed to lose all my photos.”

“I might not have taken the pictures that had dickhead in them, but I took all the ones with us and your parents.”

I snorted out a laugh. Of course, Sara left all the photos with Christopher. “That’s probably for the best. I doubt Dominick would appreciate me putting out pics of my ex.”

“Yeah, no. But he was really interested in a photo of your godfather.”

A chill prickled my bare arms. “So that’s why he mentioned Gabe to me. I was wondering where that came from.”

“Has he told you why he’s curious in the man? I thought you only laid eyes on your godfather a few times when you were a kid.”

An uneasy sensation made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “That’s right. I assumed he was dead, but Dominick and I haven’t had a chance to talk about it yet.”

Sara eyed me, one side of her mouth quirking. “I’ll bet you haven’t.” She raised her eyes for a beat. “You do know you have just-been-fucked hair, right?”

I touched a hand to my hair, opening my mouth to stammer out an explanation when a crash outside the door made us both go still. Then something banged on the door hard, making it shudder and both of us yelp.