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I ran off with the speed given to our kind, out of the water, into the corridor, down the twisting path, and toward the back of the underground system, to the cave farthest away from the hot springs. I just needed a moment, just one fucking moment to get my head on straight, to gather my wits and battle my demon nature back into the depths of my being.
Sucking in air, my skin on fire, I halted in the middle of the small cave, summoned my pants, and yanked them on. Maybe getting dressed might help me regain some fucking control.
My demon power still writhed unchecked, the hellish heat of it making the air whir around me. I clenched my hands into fists, gritted my teeth, and fought with every breath, fought against the swell of my dark power, against the impending full eruption of it.
Because what had leaked so far had only been the harbinger of a larger explosion.
It felt like a volcano rearing up to go from dormant to devastatingly active. The kind that obliterated entire cities.
If my power broke free with Zoe nearby, it’d flay the skin off her bones. I vividly remembered what it had been like in the presence of the archangel Uriel during the apocalyptic fight eight years ago, how simply being in close range to her innate magic—fully unleashed in battle—had started to melt the skin on my hands and face.
I carried the strength of an archdemon now, and Zoe was but a virtue. She’d have no means of defense against this kind of force.
I needed to calm myself, needed to find a way to stifle that surge.
But how the fuck did one calm a seething volcano?
With a strangled yell, I pressed my hands against my temples, closed my eyes, and pushed, pushed, pushed inward, drawing as much of my energy in as possible. My power fought me at every turn, like a writhing, snapping beast in a fight for its life.
I sank to my knees, hauling in lungfuls of air—air that tasted of fire and ash and the desolation of a sun-forsaken realm, as if I carried the essence of Hell in my very cells and had breathed it out, had tainted the air around me with every pulse of that dark power that had been born in the Devil’s dominion.
I’d always been one with my demon nature, had prided myself on my unshakable control, but now it felt like it had a mind of its own, as if the act of suppressing it had made me lose my grip on it, as if switching between identities had caused me forfeit command over both.
Pressing my fists against the ground, I hung my head, my shoulders heaving, the air fairly boiling around me as my power pushed outward despite my desperate attempts to claw it back.
Breathe. I just had to breathe.
I am in control. This is my power. I am?—
“Aziel?” Zoe’s soft question came from somewhere behind me.
My head snapped up. My eyes widened just as I lost the tenuous grasp I’d had on that searing power within me. With a roaring blast, my dark energy exploded out of me, engulfing the entire cave in hellfire.
Which was deadly to angels.
CHAPTER 14
Zoe
He’d left?
What the fuck?
I gritted my teeth with enough force to pop a muscle. Anger was quick to rise to the surface, sizzling across my nerves and heating my skin. How…? Why…? He’d hightailed it out of here the second after we made love? Just like that? He’d dropped me, letting me plop into the water like some rejected fish after a haul, and then he’d run away with angel speed before I could say, Excuse the fuck out of you?
That was so…so…
I paused, my brain catching up with the swiftness of my emotions.
…uncharacteristic of him.
Frowning, I took a minute to think things through. Standing there in the steaming pool, the water lapping at my chest, I took stock, laying out all the facts.
The Aziel I knew wouldn’t have left me hanging like that. The angel I’d fallen in love with, the one I’d seen in my dreams, and the one I’d come to know over the past week would never disappear without a word, especially not after we’d just made love, something I knew meant as much to him as it did to me.
The love he’d professed, the way he’d laid bare his heart, the fact that he’d claimed me for eternity, none of it felt like a lie. I knew in my gut that it was all true.
Which meant he hadn’t left out of some nefarious motivation.
