Iridescent (Ember 2) Read Free Page B

rhetorical.
    “Years. The travel takes years.”
    Candra shifted and drew her legs under her, pressing one hand into her bed and holding the other palm out. “Wait, you’re saying there is no war?” Her heart thumped heavily, irritating the pain behind her eyes, causing a relentless tugging on the blood vessels in her head. A flash of relief built inside her, behind a floodgate ready to come crashing through. She could practically taste the possibility that they were wrong and nothing was coming to get them, nothing to separate her from Sebastian.
    Ivy didn’t answer. Her index finger leisurely traced a line over the delicate apple print on the shorts she wore, concentrating on them intently. Candra couldn’t breathe, as her chest burned with hope that instinct told her not to trust. The answer she wanted wasn’t forthcoming, and the woman wasn’t lifting her eyes. They probably only had minutes more before Sebastian decided he couldn’t let her be alone right now, regardless of her protests.
    “Tell me now, and tell me fast. What in hell is going on here?” Candra demanded, leaving no room for argument.
    “It takes eighteen years. Imagine what it would mean if the Arch was defeated around the time you were born. Now, imagine the victor finding a way out of heaven as soon as the conflict ended.”
    Relief drained away, replaced by a blood-curdling dread. Candra’s eyes widened. She predicted what was coming next. Eighteen years. She gulped down the lump in her throat. “The threat, whatever it is, it’s already here.”
    “The final battle is about to begin, and you are the key to stopping a war.”
    “How?” Candra asked.
    “You can send the Watchers home. No one has to die.”
    Candra’s mouth went slack. Ivy smiled benignly and reached forward to take Candra’s hand.
    “That’s what the Arch wanted, to save them from more fighting. That’s why you are here. Think about it. Isn’t heaven what Sebastian wants? And the others…they don’t want to be here anymore.”
    Candra tugged her hand away and slid off the bed. She dragged the drape back and wrapped her arms around herself, watching rain pelting down in heavy sheets, blurring the street outside. An icy sensation niggled at the back of her neck, making goose bumps rise on her forearms. The first wave of Watchers had come because they’d wanted a human life they couldn’t have. The second had followed to clean up the mess the soulless creatures born to the first created. They all wanted to go home after the war, but they couldn’t return ever, and when they died, they turned to dust. What if she was their way home? Her chest constricted, and she asked herself whether Sebastian would go if she gave him the opportunity.
    “What about the rest of them…humans? What about us?” Candra asked, peering out the window and trying to focus on the blurry figures on the rooftop across the street. Condensation made the glass opaque and practically impossible to discern anything beyond vague shapes. She wondered if it was someone she had met, someone who could die in another bloody war. Maybe an angel she might send back to the place they came from before here.
    “You have no idea what it was like for those who disappointed the Arch. The despair, locked away in darkness and forgotten.”
    Candra closed her eyes and listened to the rain and beyond it to the sounds of the city in the distance, trying to isolate the sources. Despite the violent downpour, she heard the shrill ringing of several fire alarms and the emergency vehicles on the way to them.
    “All because the Arch couldn’t be satisfied,” Ivy went on in a meticulously cool voice. “He had tens of thousands of adoring angels and an eternity to be idolized. Still, humans came to pass. What was wrong with us? Why weren’t we enough?”
    “Us?” Candra whispered the word absently, still focused on the figures perched on the rooftops. The great expanse of their outstretched wings looked black