He exhaled noisily through his nose.
“And I will stay in during the night, packing my clothes, which are not thrown all over the room.”
“That’s a lie.” He scrunched his hand through his hair. “I can’t believe you even said that with a straight face, but okay. That’s the deal, but I’m going to call Roth. I want backup in case the Harbinger shows up again.”
I nodded, thinking that if the Harbinger showed up, we didn’t need backup. We needed me and my grace. “You know, what happened today was a blessing.”
“I have no idea how you can even say that.”
“Because this whole time I thought my vision was my weakness. That it would be what takes me out for the count. And yeah, I don’t like to think of my eyeballs as a weakness and I hate how I feel like I can’t even think of them as such, but I was wrong. That’s not what I should’ve been focused on.”
Zayne’s head tilted to the side. “What are you saying?”
“My training. My belief that I shouldn’t use my grace until I have to. That’s my weakness. All that training is hard to break. When I fell into that tunnel, I should’ve used my grace immediately, but I didn’t, and he got the upper hand. Not only that, he called me out on not using my grace.” I stared at my hands. “I will never let that happen again.”
30
Since there was a small chance I might have a tiny concussion, Zayne insisted on treating me like I was a human who was on their deathbed.
Upon arriving at the apartment, I showered while Zayne waited outside the bathroom with the door cracked. I didn’t know if he expected me to faint and bash my head open again on the stall, but with every passing minute, I felt stronger and the throbbing along the back of my head lessened. Shampooing the blood out of my hair, however, was not a pleasant experience, as it caused the cut to sting like a wasp had tried to mate with my head.
Afterward, Zayne had coaxed me into the living room and forced a bottle of water on me. He didn’t want to leave me alone in the bedroom, at least not for the next couple hours, and I was secretly glad to have his company and the soft, flickering glow of the television. After the complete darkness of the tunnel, I didn’t think I’d be able to relax for one moment in that bedroom without every light turned on.
Things weren’t as caustic between us as they’d been before I fell into a tunnel, but I wasn’t foolish enough to think that meant things were okeydoke between us. But I still enjoyed being able to sit next to him and not want to bite his head off like a female praying mantis.
At some point, I did fall asleep, and Zayne didn’t intercede. I woke up hours later with the sunlight streaming through the windows and the soft quilt tucked around my shoulders. The gesture was sweet and made my heart ache more than my head.
But I woke up alone and not like I had the last time I’d slept on this couch, all warm and toasty, snuggled against Zayne. Swallowing a sigh, I sat up, holding the quilt around me like a cape. I found that Zayne hadn’t gone far. He stood in front of the fridge, one hand on the door, the other on his hip as he shook his head.
I’d totally forgotten what I’d done the day before.
“Uh...” I murmured, slowly rising from the couch.
Zayne’s head jerked over his shoulder. I was too far from him to make out his expression when he said, “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Almost perfect.”
There was a pause. “Do I even want to know why it looks like the junk food aisle of a convenience store threw up inside the fridge and every cabinet?”
Lips twitching, I struggled to keep my face blank. “I...got hungry yesterday, and ordered groceries through one of those delivery services.”
Closing the fridge door, he placed a carton of eggs on the island, next to what appeared to be his jar of coconut oil. “And thirsty?”
I lifted a shoulder.
“Because I didn’t even know there were that many versions of Coca-Cola,” he said.
“There are a lot of different kinds,” I agreed. “Lime. Cherry. Vanilla. Regular. Sugar-free. Real cane sugar...”
He placed a skillet on the stove top. “It took me about ten minutes to find the coconut oil.”
“Really?” I widened my eyes, giving him my best shocked face.
“Yeah, for some reason, it was tucked away behind mixing bowls and a tub of lard,” he said, cracking an egg perfectly over the skillet. “Actual lard.”
“How strange.”
“Indeed.” Another egg was cracked. “I’m making breakfast. Eggs and toast.” Another pause. “Unless you want to finish off that bag of chips or the packet of chocolate chip cookies.”
Unable to hide my grin any longer, I ducked my chin. “Eggs and toast will be perfect.”
“Uh-huh,” he replied, and I held the edges of the blanket over my mouth, smothering my giggle. He looked up, and even though I couldn’t see it, I felt the drollness of his expression. “I talked to Roth. He’s going to meet us in about two hours.”
“Great.”
Breakfast was almost normal. The silence between us as we ate eggs and toast—Zayne did not eat the toast, because like Hell was I buying whole wheat—was a lot less tense than it had been the past couple days. When I was finished, I rinsed my plate and excused myself.
There was a phone call I needed to make.
Closing the bedroom door behind me, I picked up my phone and called Thierry. He answered on the second ring.
“Trinity,” he said, his deep voice a balm to my soul, which made what I needed to ask and say even harder.
I wasn’t going to beat around the bush. “There’s another Trueborn.”
“What?” he gasped, and unless Thierry was a skilled actor, his shock was real.
I sat on the bed. “Yes. I met him yesterday.”
“Tell me what happened,” he said, and I heard a door close on his end.
Quickly, I broke down why we’d been at the school and the confrontation in the tunnel. I didn’t skip over being injured. “I have no idea what his name is or who he’s related to, but he knew me. He has to be the Harbinger.” I took a shallow breath. “Did you know that this could be possible? That there was another?”
“Absolutely not.” He was quick to respond. “Your father always spoke as if you were the only one, and there has been no reason for us to doubt that.”
“I doubt he didn’t know. Why wouldn’t he have told us—told me?”
“I wish I knew, because I don’t see how keeping that information from you or any of us would do any good. Not knowing made you vulnerable.”
It could’ve also gotten me killed.
“How old did he appear?” Thierry asked.
“Roughly my age, maybe older. I’m not sure. What I don’t understand is why he even exists. I was created by my father to be used as the ultimate weapon in a battle—this battle. How could there be another, and how could he be...evil? Because he definitely was not a friend.”
Thierry was quiet for so long, unease formed a heavy ball in my stomach.
“What?” I gripped my phone.
His heavy sigh came through the phone. “There’s a lot we never told you, because Matthew and I and your mother didn’t think it was relevant.”
“What do you mean by a lot, and what does it have to do with what’s happening?”
“It’s not that we knew of another Trueborn, but we knew why Trueborns were a thing of the past,” he explained. “It’s why some Wardens who know the history would be wary of any Trueborn. And why Ryker was so easily convinced to turn against a Trueborn.”
My stomach flipped. I was not expecting his name to come up. “You’re going to need to explain this to me, because Trueborns and Wardens are like best friends forever. Wardens are the Protectors of Trueborns, and Ryker was afraid of what I could do—”
“He was afraid of what you could become,” Thierry corrected.
“What?”
“I wish your father had explained this to you. It should come from him.”
“Yeah, well, as you know, my father is about as useful as you’re being when it comes to information,” I snapped, patience running thin. “We don’t keep in touch and have dinners on Sundays. I can count on a few fingers the times I’ve seen him in person.”
“I know. It’s just...” There was a gap of silence. “I wish you were here so we could talk face-to-face. So you understand why we never believed this could be an issue for you. That you’re good, to your very core.”
The unease intensified as his last words settled on me.
“Trueborns are only half angel. Your other half is human, and because of that, you have free will. The choice to do great things with your abilities or to cause incredible harm with them,” he said.
“I’m not Spider-Man,” I mumbled.
“No, but you’re more powerful than any Warden or demon. Because of a Trueborn’s human side and the nature of their creation, they are more prone to being...corrupted, more prone to giving in to the allure of power.”
At once, I thought of what Roth had said about how I was born of a great sin. “Because angels are not supposed to knock boots with humans?”
“That’s one way of putting it. ‘The sins of the father are visited unto the son.’”
“That’s archaic, and how do we know it’s really true?”
“Because, as with the corruption of mankind from the acts originated in Eden, the soul of a Trueborn is darker than a human’s and not as pure as a Warden’s.”
I remembered what Layla had said when she’d seen my aura—my soul. She’d described it as both dark and light, and I hadn’t paid much attention.
“There is a balance in a Trueborn just like there is a balance in the world, but those scales can be tipped.”
I was floored. “So, you’re basically saying I could turn evil?”