1
Zayne stood only a few feet from me, the surprisingly cool July breeze lifting the edges of his blond hair off bare shoulders.
Or that was what I believed I was seeing.
I was slowly going blind. My line of sight was already severely restricted with little to no peripheral vision. Eventually, there’d be nothing but a pinprick of sight left. To make seeing things all the more iffy, cataracts had formed in both eyes, causing my central vision to be blurry and eyes even more sensitive to light. It was a genetic disease known as retinitis pigmentosa, and not even all the angelic blood pumping through my veins could prevent the disease from progressing. Bright light of any sort made it difficult for me to see and low light wasn’t any better, making everything shadowy and hard to see at night.
So, with only the lampposts inside Rock Creek Park lighting the walking path behind me, it was more than possible that I wasn’t seeing what I thought I was. I’d also gone through a hellish trauma mere days ago, handed a beatdown of epic proportions by the psychotic archangel Gabriel, also known as the Harbinger of Overlong Monologues, so God only knew what that had done to my eyes.
Or my brain.
Zayne could be a hallucination, one driven by brain damage or grief. Either of those two things actually made more sense. Because how was he standing in front of me? Zayne was...oh God, he had died, his body having turned to dust by now, as all Wardens’ did upon death. The bond that had linked us together, made him my Protector, gave us both strength and speed, had turned on us the moment I truly acknowledged how much I was in love with him. He’d been physically weakened, and Gabriel had taken advantage of that. I’d heard Zayne say his last words. It’s okay. I’d watched him take his last breath. I’d felt that cord that had connected us together as Protector and Trueborn snap inside me.
He’d died.
He was dead.
But he was right there, standing in front of me, and I smelled freshly fallen snow and mint—wintermint. It was stronger than before, as if the summer air was soaked in winter.
Because of that scent, for a moment, I wondered if he were a spirit—someone who’d died and crossed over. When souls who’d moved on to the great beyond came to check in on loved ones, people often smelled something that reminded them of the person who’d passed on. A perfume. Toothpaste. A cigar. Bonfire. It could be anything, because Heaven...Heaven had a certain scent; it smelled like whatever you desired most, and I wanted Zayne to be alive more than I wanted anything.
I smelled Heaven right now.
But even with my funky vision, I could see that Zayne wasn’t a spirit. That he was flesh and blood—glowing flesh and blood. His skin held a faint luminous glow that hadn’t been present before.
Dizziness swept through me as I stared into eyes that were no longer the palest blue. Now they were an intense, vibrant hue, reminding me of the brief moments at twilight when the sky was the deepest shade of sapphire. Wardens didn’t even have eyes like that, nor did they glow like one of those old Glo Worm dolls Jada had once found in the attic when we were kids.
And Wardens sure as Hell didn’t have the kind of wings spreading out from Zayne’s broad shoulders. They weren’t Warden wings, which often reminded me of smooth leather. Oh, no, these were feathered—white and thick with streaks of gold glowing with heavenly fire, with grace.
Only two things in this world and beyond, outside of God, carried the potent and all-powerful grace within them. I was one of those things.
But Zayne hadn’t been a Trueborn like me, and neither had he been like the few humans who had an angel perched on their family tree, giving them a watered-down, way less powerful grace that either enabled them to see ghosts and spirits or caused them to display other psychic abilities. I’d been told my whole life that I was the only Trueborn, a first-generation child of an angel and a human, but that hadn’t been exactly true. There had been Sulien, Gabriel’s offspring, but Zayne had killed him, so I guessed I was back to being the unique person that I was. All of that was irrelevant, because Zayne had been a Warden.
The only other being with that kind of grace and wings was an angel, but Zayne hadn’t been that, either.
But he totally had angel wings now—feathered angel wings that glowed with grace.
“Trin...?” he said, and I sucked in a sharp breath. Oh God, it was his voice, and my entire body seemed to shake. I would’ve given up just about anything to hear his voice again, and now I was.
I took a shaky step forward.
“I can...sense you.” Confusion filled his voice as he stared at me.
Did he mean the Protector bond? I searched for the buzz of awareness, the hint of emotions that weren’t mine. I found nothing. There was no cord. No bond.
He wasn’t my Protector any longer.
“Trinity,” he repeated softly, and I heard it then. The tone of his voice. It was off. More than just confusion. “The name...it means something.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Because it’s my name.”
He tilted his head into the shadows, but I could still feel his stare. Did he...did he not remember me? Concern blossomed. I had no idea how he came back or why he resembled an angel, but if something had happened to him to affect his memory, I would help him. We’d figure it out together. All that mattered was that he was alive. I took another step, lifting my arm—
One moment he was standing several feet away, and then the next he was right in front of me, those incredible wings blocking out the world behind him. Zayne had moved faster than any Warden could—faster than even me.
I flinched in surprise, jerking my head away. In the back of my mind, I knew that Zayne, knowing how my vision worked and how hard it was for me to track movement, wouldn’t have moved liked that. But something was clearly up with his memories and—
Zayne grabbed my hand as he dipped his chin, inhaling deeply. He shuddered, lifting his head. My eyes widened. As close as he was now, I could see the familiar lines and angles of his face, but I saw them...I saw them more clearly, and that didn’t make sense, either. His wings blocked out the moonlight, and the glow of the nearby lampposts wasn’t close enough to explain how I could see him so well. His features were too distinct, and there...there really was this glow under—
“Do you think you can take me on, little nephilim?” he demanded.
Wait. What?
All my senses went on high alert as I stared up at him. “Little—?”
Healing skin and muscles protested, flaring hotly as he pulled me against his chest. His arm clamped down on my waist like an arm of steel. The hold was crushing but the contact of his body against mine was still a shock to the system, scattering thoughts and silencing the warning bells that were starting to go off loudly. He lowered his head once more, and my entire body tensed in anticipation. There was a whole lot of weird going on, but he was going to kiss me, and I would never not want—