Wrath of the Fallen by Eve Archer
Chapter Eighteen
Dominick
“You’re a difficult angel to find.” I stepped into the billiards room, pulling the heavy, mahogany door closed behind me. Although there was no fire roaring in the fireplace, the air carried the trace of smoldering embers.
Rami glanced up from where he leaned over the burgundy felt surface of the table, the gleaming, wooden cue stretched along his arm. “I needed an escape from the demons.”
“So, you give yourself in service to their prince?” I snapped, the bite of my words making Rami twitch.
I rubbed a hand over my brow, instantly regretting my impulsive statement. I’d meant to ease into it, attempt to have a civil conversation before asking him what the hell he’d been thinking. But I couldn’t restrain myself. Despite my attempts to calm down by talking to Ella, and the long search through the chateau that had allowed me to stomp off some of my rage, the hurt was still fresh. “I’m sorry. I know you did this for me—for Ella—but you should have talked to me, first.”
“Why?” Rami straightened and leaned on his pool cue. “So, we could discuss it and come to the same realization I did within seconds, that this is the best way?”
I strode forward and braced my hands on the polished, wood rim of the billiards table. “There must be another way than you serving the demon prince. It’s too much.”
Rami locked eyes with me. “It’s too big of a sacrifice to protect the only woman you’ve ever truly loved?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but my throat tightened. I wanted to ask how he knew that Ella was the only woman I’d ever loved, but of course he knew. Ramiel knew me better than anyone. He’d been by my side for millennia. He’d seen me bounce from one woman’s bed to the next with no care for any of them—until Ella.
“I can’t let you do this,” I argued. “I should be the one to make the sacrifice.”
Rami cocked his head at me. “You’re going to leave the head of the Fallen empire and leave Ella for a full year? You can’t.”
“I could.” I wouldn’t want to, and every moment would be agony, but I could do it.
“You have too much to lose. I don’t.”
I bristled at that statement. “So, I have to lose you, instead?”
Rami gave me a weary smile. “You will never lose me, brother. The pledge I made to you before the fall can never be broken. You know that.”
The fury that had stormed through me as I’d pounded through Mastema’s mansion had lost some of its intensity. Now I didn’t feel rage as much as sorrow. It was a feeling I was unaccustomed to and didn’t enjoy.
“Surely there’s something else that the demon prince would accept,” I said, letting my head dangle between my arms. “Money? Property? Perhaps he’d accept part ownership in our clubs.”
“You’d give Mastema a stake in the Fallen empire? The rest of our brothers would never allow it, and neither would I.”
I peered up at him. “They’d agree to it if it meant we didn’t have to lose you.”
Rami shook his head slowly as he walked around the table to me. “I wouldn’t let them. This is my decision, Dominick, and it’s one I plan to fulfill.”
I straightened, scowling at him. “I’ve never liked this stubborn side of you.”
“And this inability to face reality doesn’t suit you.”
We held each other’s gazes for a moment, and then I jerked mine away and took long steps to the high arched windows overlooking the garden. “I will never be able to repay you for this.”
“I’ll add it to your tab.”
I swiveled around, catching his grin and breaking into a smile myself, despite my desire to stay angry at him. “I think my debts to you have set some kind of world record.”
“If I kept track of such things.”
I swallowed hard, thinking about the unspoken tally of our friendship and how I could live a thousand lifetimes—and had—and never be able to repay his loyalty. “You are wrong when you say you have nothing to lose, Ram.”
He gave a small shrug as he leaned over the table again, notching his pool cue over his fingers and aiming it at a cluster of balls. “Nothing that will not be there for me when I return.”
“Will she?”
Rami looked up, his cue still and his breathing measured. “I’m not sure—“
“Don’t pretend you have no idea what I mean.” I cut him off with a brusque wave. “I know you as well as you know me.”
Rami returned his gaze to the table, shooting the cue and breaking the balls. He never looked away as they scattered across the table with a loud crack, two sinking smoothly into pockets. “I might find the woman intriguing, but there’s no understanding between us.”
“I doubt she’s the type anyone ever fully understands,” I muttered more to myself than to him.
“It’s better this way. The last thing I need is a human woman distracting me.”
“That’s what I thought, and look where we are.”
Rami prowled around the table, eyeing the balls. “But you fell for a demi-angel. Sara is one-hundred-percent human.”
“And that matters?”
Rami swept his gaze across the room’s soaring windows, carved-wood ceiling, and ornate chandelier hanging over the billiards table. “This is not her world. She might have been drawn into it because of her best friend, but she’ll have to return to her normal life—her apartment in New York, her job, her other friends.”
I nodded, a realization creeping over me. “If you’re gone for a year, you remove the temptation of her.”
“That is one of the advantages to working for a demon. It makes you a much less appropriate boyfriend.”
I eyed him as he stretched an arm across the table and tapped one of the shiny pool balls with his cue. “Now I feel like I should be offended that you accepting Mastema’s offer wasn’t only because of your devotion to me.”
Rami gave me a crooked grin. “You would.”
“Who are you really protecting?” I asked. “You or her?”
“Why can’t it be both?” His eyes flashed for the briefest moment. “She deserves more than a fallen angel who will be in league with the literal prince of demons.”
“And you?”
He sighed. “If there is no chance, I won’t torture myself with the possibilities.”
I put my hands in my pockets and rocked back onto my heels. “Since when have women ever been torture for you? I’ve never known them not to swoon at your feet?” I gave my friend a quick once-over. “I’ve heard women call you drop-dead gorgeous before. Why do you think you can’t have this one woman?”
“She’s not like most of the women I seduce, just like Ella wasn’t like most of the women you’d seduced.”
That was true. I’d spent centuries bedding eager females and lately, the ones who frequented my club in skimpy clothes and Botoxed bodies. Ella hadn’t been anything like the shallow women who’d been so easy to conquer. And it was easy to see from Sara’s sharp tongue that she wasn’t, either.
“That doesn’t mean she couldn’t fall for you, especially if we’re using Ella as an example.”
Rami frowned. “Your mate is a demi-angel.”
“Which is why we’re currently hiding out in a demon’s lair, and you’ve been conscripted to serve at Mastema’s side for the next year. As you and I well know, divinity is not all it’s cracked up to be.”
Rami inclined his head at that, as if acknowledging the truth of what I’d said. “Trust me when I tell you that my decision is the best for everyone. And it is one I don’t regret.”
“It’s one I know I’ll regret.” I groaned. “Who will be my number one now? Gadriel?”
Rami considered this. “If he can pull himself away from the ladies for long enough.”
“Exactly my point. No one is you, Rami.”
“I feel confident in saying that working with Mastema will not be as easy as working by your side.” He cut his eyes to the door. “I don’t relish living among demons.”
I leaned one hand on the pool table and met his eyes. “All you ever have to do is send word, and I will descend on this lair with the might and fury of the Fallen.”
His eyes shone as he nodded. “I like that exit plan.”
