Immortal (Fallen Angels #6)(74)
Author: J.R. Ward

Colin arranged his legs such that they crossed at the ankle, and he put his palms upon his thighs. His hands moved slowly up and down.

Nigel cleared his throat. “I regret this…” His voice cracked. “More than you can know. But in asking Jim to give up Sissy, I felt it was unfair of me not to offer a sacrifice of similar impact in this war. A true leader expects no more of others than they do of themselves. You are the basis of Heaven to me. There is no greater pledge unto the fight than leaving you—and that is why I acted alone.” He wanted to reach out and try to take the archangel’s hand, but he knew that would be folly. “Whilst I was over in Purgatory, the pain at losing you was more unbearable than the torment that was upon me from that place. I was … bereft at the loss of you, and what I had done in favor to the battle against Devina was cold, cold comfort. I would choose another path, if I had to do it all over again. I would…”

As his voice drifted off, there were so many more words clogging his throat, jamming up his mouth, twisting his mind, but they were simply variations on what he had just spoken. Still, there was a temptation to give in to the torment, to keep talking and talking in hopes that something would change the position he had put them both in.

But Colin hated wasted time, and the justification, such as it was, had been made.

Dropping his eyes, Nigel got to his feet and found that he was unsteady and fairly well close to fainting. Especially as he turned away and began to walk out of the water closet and across the vast emptiness of the loft Devina had once inhabited.

The barren expanse seemed such an apt metaphor.

“I do not believe you understand what it was like.”

At the sound of Colin’s voice, he turned so fast he had to throw his arms out into the thin air. With a thundering heart, he said, “Tell me.”

Even though this was going to kill him.

As he stood in the loo’s doorway, Colin’s face was drawn in lines of anger. “I stood over your body. I cried … over your body. I picked you up and carried you to the river’s edge and I sat beside the fire that consumed you. It burned for hours.”

Nigel closed his eyes and put his hands up to his face.

“No,” Colin snapped. “You do not get to do that. You do not get to shield yourself from your actions. There was naught that I could do with your aftermath—you left me to deal with that alone, without knowing … goddamn it, without knowing why you had done what you had. So you can damn well be present in this moment.”

Nigel lowered his arms and refused his eyes the permission to go anywhere else—even though his chest was so tight he could not draw breath. “I am so sorry. I am so very sorry…”

Colin’s dark brows drew tightly together. “Do you think I do not know you.”

“No, you know me better than all.”

“And that is why I am offended anew.” Colin crossed his arms over his chest. “Did you think … dearest God, Nigel, did you think I did not know what was ahead of us at that moment in the war? What you were facing and what choices you would believe you had? With Jim in failure as he was, tied up within the destiny of that innocent, Sissy, giving wins away, do you think I did not recognize all of that and…”

When Colin did not finish, Nigel cleared his throat. “And what?”

“Do you think, no matter how much it destroyed me, that I would not have let you go?”

Nigel returned his hands unto his face, and this time Colin said naught about the veil of palms over his eyes.

“I would have let you go,” Colin said roughly, “because that was the best thing to do, the only pathway that we had in this forsaken war. Someone else needed to be the savior at that point, and the only way to get Jim out of the role … was to do exactly what you did.”

It all seemed so freshly devastating, Nigel thought in the silence that followed.

Colin exhaled a curse. “I would have made the sacrifice, too. But you either didn’t trust me enough to do that or worse, mayhap, you do not really know me that well, after all. I am a soldier, and as such, I do not forgo logic to feeling. Even if the emotions are … overwhelming.”

Nigel was aware the moment the other archangel left, even though there was not a sound or further movement taken. Instead of following Colin back up to Heaven, however, he found himself sinking unto his knees in the middle of the emptiness.

He had no practice with regrets. He had hitherto lived his immortal life with deliberation and self-control—and had curried no small amount of superiority because of it.

Now, though, he felt connected unto humanity at a whole new level.

Compassion was easier to proffer if one had suffered.

Chapter Forty-one

“Did you get enough to eat?”

As Jim sat beside her on the front steps of the old mansion, Sissy took yet another deep breath. She’d been doing it a lot since they’d all come back here, eaten five large pepperoni pizzas between the four of them, and gone their separate ways.

Which was to say, Ad and Eddie had headed up to the attic.

And Jim had come out here with her.

After a day of on-and-off rain, the night was cool and damp and smelled of good earth and growing things. Smelled of Jim’s aftershave, too, she thought as she pulled his leather jacket closer around her.

“Sissy?”

“What—oh, sorry. Yes. God, yes. I don’t think I’ll ever eat again.”

Shoot. Maybe she shouldn’t phrase it like that.

Down at the far end of the lane, a car turned onto their street and proceeded carefully toward them. For a moment, her whole body stiffened—except it was not a big black Mercedes-Benz that was missing a hood ornament.

She relaxed the instant she recognized it as a Lexus.

“It’s so weird,” she murmured. “I feel the absence more than I noticed the presence.”

“Of what—oh, that.” He cleared his throat like he didn’t want to give the thing a name. “What’d gotten taken out, you mean.”

“Yeah.” She put her hands over her pizza-filled stomach and rubbed back and forth. “I had no idea it was there and controlling me. But now that it’s gone, I feel … myself. Which doesn’t mean that I’ve, like, forgotten everything that was done to me or what I lost. I still feel the same things I felt before. It’s just … the foundation is different. More solid. More … me, I guess? I’m babbling, aren’t I.”

“Not in the slightest. Makes perfect sense to me.”