All Hail the King (Celestra Forever After Book 6) Read online

  “Marshall, I’m going to ask you something and I forbid any doublespeak.”

  He steps in front of me, blocking Marlena from my line of vision, but it does nothing to break the spell Chloe has cast on me tonight.

  “Ask me anything. I am here to serve.”

  I step in close and pick up both of his hands, our chests touching. His warm breath rains down my cheeks as those vibratronic pulses radiate from his being to mine. Touching Marshall has always been an erotic pleasure.

  “Is Gage demon-possessed? Is that why he’s done all of these horrible things to my people and me—and then ran off and married Chloe Bishop?” My chest bucks as tears hit the surface, but I refuse to acknowledge them. They are of no use to me anymore.

  Marshall sighs. His shoulders droop a moment as he looks to me with a forlorn expression. “Dear Skyla, he is no more possessed by a dark entity than you are. He is wholly of sound mind and body. His actions are his own. There is no outside influence.”

  A horrific cry rips from me, dissolving the music and reaching the ceiling before penetrating the rafters and escaping to the heavens where my mother can glory in my misery.

  There is no outside influence. There you have it. There is no demonic spirit bearing down on Gage Oliver’s soul. He is wholly himself. And it makes me wonder who he truly was to begin with.

  “Were we a lie?” I say the words to Marshall so hypnotically slow, so very quiet. Marshall doesn’t need ears to hear me. He feels the vibrations of my soul. He’s more in tune with me than I am.

  “That I cannot answer. Only the recesses of his heart know the true depth of his love for you. I had seen them, though. I bore witness to what appeared most genuine.” Marshall cradles my cheek in his hand, his thumb brushing so lightly over my lips. “You must move on now, Skyla. The time has come. You mustn’t look back.”

  “I can’t do it.” I shake my head. The skull drilling chaos exploding around me feels right. It feels absolutely necessary. Had there been silence I wouldn’t have survived. Sometimes when your life is in such utter disarray you need all the madness this world can sponsor just to weigh you down so you don’t float away and drift slowly to the deep end of insanity.

  A thought comes to me. A final grasp of hope in this desolate hour.

  “Marshall.” I press myself against him, my fingers digging into his sleeves. “I must find a way to fix this.” My voice hikes an octave, completely threadbare as a bomb of emotions threatens to detonate inside of me. “Take me back”—it croaks out of me—“right now. Take me back to the beginning. I command you to do this.”

  His head volleys to the side and his eyes slit to nothing. “Back to the beginning? That’s quite an order.”

  “And you will do it with a smile.” I’m straddling danger with Marshall, speaking to him this way. It’s never a good thing to command anything from him. This is one Sector that can be stubborn as hell.

  “Well then.” He sheds a manufactured grin that lasts less than a second. “I suppose we have someplace to go.”

  He holds out his arm and I quickly thread mine through it.

  “To the beginning,” I pant in anticipation.

  “To the beginning indeed.”

  Marshall rockets us out of the house, straight through the ceiling, into the sky high up above Paragon as if we were ghosts in flight back to heaven. But it’s not heaven we’re headed to. It’s right back to that dot of an island below our feet that looks so convincingly harmless, so alarmingly insignificant, that it makes me want to coo at its cuteness. The moon is proudly displaying its majesty, so bright and brilliant that my breath hitches at its splendor. Paragon is robed in a never-ending blanket of fog and neither the sun nor the moon can show off its majesty.

  You forget how bright the light can be after your eyes have been veiled with the film of deceit.

  Logan flits through my mind and I glare up past the stratosphere. I would not put it past my mother to pry into my thoughts. I would not put it past her at all to try to utilize this, the most broken moment of my life, to steer Logan and me together once and for all.

  Marshall gives my hand a squeeze and I hadn’t even realized he was holding it. “The thoughts you have you must learn to own. Perhaps they are revealing something to you that your heart is yet to become aware of.”

  I shake my head emphatically. “I don’t want to think about that. Take us back, Marshall, to where it all began. I will change something. I will do something to unravel this chain of unconscionable events.”

  “Very well.”

  A heavy wind picks up as the stars whiz by in a series of elongated lines and the universe spins around us like a top. I can feel the weight of the present lifting off me like a stone and hear the groaning of time as we skip back years to where I first laid eyes on Gage Oliver in that bowling alley. How seemingly innocent we all were back then—and God, I pray we were. It wasn’t Gage who first captivated my attention. No, we were a slow burn, but once the flame was lit, we had the power to set the world on fire. I thought we had done just that—united our hearts and thus were en route to uniting our people. Gage and I were going to break the mold and restore peace to feuding angelic Factions once and for all. It was Celestra, Noster, Deorsum, Levatio, and the Countenance. Celestra and the Counts, as the Countenance is unaffectionately known as, are continually warring for power.

  We are—were the strongest Factions. Celestra bore the support of the Sectors and the Counts and Fems. The Sectors are for good and the Fems are nothing but a public nuisance, constantly purveying wickedness with their selfish intentions. Whichever Faction has the celestial seat of power enables the Sectors or the Fems to hold the podium in the heavenlies. But Wesley appeared on the scene a few years back and dropped a hammer over our world.

  Wes—Gage’s look-alike brother from another mother—same wicked father, Demetri—decided that he would start a rebellion steering members of any Faction away from my leadership. Thus, the Steel Barricade was born—Wesley’s brainchild that accepts Nephilim of every angelic Faction who is willing to go against my people and me. He lured them under the guise that the government is closing in on discovering a genetic marker that delineates the Nephilim from the average human. And, of course, Wes also claims to be close to hiding those markers and protecting any soul that sides with the Steel Barricade. Whether or not Wes is close to hiding the markers is up for debate. But I’m closing in on them, too, and once my feet hit the planet once again—in the correct time continuum—it is the first order of business as far as restoring all that was lost.

  Wesley cannot win, and neither can Gage.

  Marshall gently brushes the hair off my face. “Are you prepared to face the past, Skyla?”

  “I’m more prepared than I have ever been for anything.”

  The stars blur into a spiral of thin lines once again and my heart soars at the anticipation of reliving that sweet day. It was my best friend, Brielle, who took me to the bowling alley just after my family and I moved to Paragon.

  When I think of that day, a smile always comes to me, the purity, the unadulterated innocence of anything angelic. It was the very last moment before I officially gave my heart away to a boy—two of them if you want to get technical. It was the very first day I would lay eyes on the father of my children. Perhaps if I had it to do over again, knowing what I do now, I could right so many wrongs.

  My heart wrenches as Logan bounces to the forefront of my mind. Could I really deny him what we had? Perhaps to save Gage from himself I could. Logan would beg me to do it.

  Marshall and I free-fall back to earth, his strong arms holding me taut against him as the wind whistles past our ears. We sail softly those last few hundred yards until the dense bushy trees of the island become visible. I glance around for familiar landmarks, Devil’s Peak, the oversized mall, which leaves a concrete footprint over a vast area, and the ocean surrounding that supernatural island, but I can’t find any of them.

  We land deftly upon clay-lik
e soil the color of burnt umber. The trees catch me off guard, cedars ten times taller than any I’ve seen on the island, and I try to recall ever being awed by their height before. The air is perfumed with the strong scent of jasmine along with something sweeter and far more glorious than that mingling with it. And dotted among the cedars stand some sort of sunflowers at least six feet tall in yellow, peach, red, and blue. It’s a hypnotic sight and makes me wonder once again if this entire day has been a bad dream.

  I’m about to tell Marshall that I don’t think we’re behind the bowling alley when a peacock struts by, a beautiful male with his plumage fanned out in jewel tones of aqua and green.

  “Marshall?” My breath is taken away from the sheer glory of the creature before me. It’s larger than any I’ve ever seen, almost as tall as I am, and for a second I fear for my safety, but then I remember who I’m with. Marshall would never let a thing happen to me in his care. A bird certainly won’t eat me.

  “No, Ms. Messenger”—his chest rumbles with a laugh—“he won’t eat you.” He gives my hand a squeeze, letting me know he can read my mind. A part of my Celestra powers is mind reading when I’m touching someone, and, of course, Sectors share in this questionable gift.

  No sooner does he get the words out than an enormous tan furry creature pokes out from between two cedars. It takes me about six stunned seconds to identify it and jump into Marshall’s arms with a scream of terror shredding from my throat.

  “A lion!” I howl. “We don’t have lions on Paragon.” I’m quick to swat Marshall’s arm. “It’s clear your head is still congested from the sight of all those scantily clad can-can dancers. You’ve landed us in some subtropical paradise.”

  “We have a lion here, Skyla.” He frowns at the ferocious beast who steps over cautiously, sniffing the air, his magnificent mane stiff and perfectly blown back. He looks up at Marshall, and I would swear on all that is holy he just nodded at him before heading off in the same direction the bird went off to.

  “We have a lion on Paragon,” I say breathlessly as Marshall bounces me back to my feet. “I don’t remember anything about a lion on the island, but then, I was so love-struck by Logan we could have had an entire zoo on the loose at the time. I’m sure they’ll subdue him, first thing.”

  “They will. In a lot of ways they already have.” He glances over his shoulder. “And no, I’m not talking about the creature that just strutted past us.”

  My mouth falls open. “You’re talking about Logan, aren’t you?”

  Many years ago Logan was represented in many prophesies as a lion—Gage was an eagle.

  The sound of giggling comes from the right and my feet lead me over before Marshall can confirm my theory. I walk past the enormous trunks of the overgrown pines and spot a field of sorts filled with every fruit tree imaginable, with vegetables of every shape and size, some of which I have a hard time identifying. The giggling starts up again and I see a couple standing by a floral blooming tree that reminds me of a plumeria. But I’m not too interested in the tree or the heavenly scent permeating the area.

  That couple bearing far too much flesh has my full attention and my feet float over their way. My eyelids all but flip backward as I take in this naked, all too familiar duo, and my adrenaline hits its zenith without warning.

  “Marshall,” I hiss. I’m equally infuriated as I am confused. Standing before me, whispering amongst themselves, is another version of Logan and myself. My hair is a touch darker, and that bush between my legs is downright humiliating. My God, I could put that thing in nineteen different ponytails. And Logan is a rather shaggy version of himself as well, but still—hotter than that kitchen fire that once took down a part of the original bowling alley. “What the hell is going on?”

  The smirking Sector looks down with a devilish gleam in his eyes—never a good sign. “I believe the instructions were, take me back to the beginning. And this, my love, is the very beginning.”

  The beautiful garden, the tranquil animals, two very naked people…

  “Oh my ever-loving God,” I moan just as my doppelgänger turns around and I can’t help but shoot my mother in the sky a look that says you would.

  The girl starts gabbing away in some language I’ve never heard in my life and Marshall lifts his hands over my ears.

  “Allow me to rectify the language barrier among the three of you.” He waves in their direction and the air looks as if it has just congealed between us.

  “Did the heavenly father send you?” This cheery, smiling, naked as the day she was born or hatched or sculpted from dirt version of me asks in the sweetest voice that I have never once owned.

  “No, the heavenly father did not send me.” I turn and swat Marshall. “This sneaky Sector delivered me at your feet just to prove that he’s got a sense of humor.” I snarl up at him. “If this is your idea of trying to make me feel better, then I suggest you try again. A foot massage and a cup of hot tea would have done nicely. And then maybe a noose to hang Chloe with.” A couple of nooses if I’m being honest. Gage Oliver in his current incarnation isn’t doing me a whole lot of good either.

  “What’s this noose?” Adam asks—I’ve dove into Genesis enough to know the entire sob story these two have proliferated. Leave it to knockoffs of Logan and me to ruin everything for all of humankind forever. I glare up at Marshall once again, because if he’s trying to drive home a point, I so get it. And how I wish he hadn’t dragged the Garden of Eden into it.

  “Never mind what that is.” I look back to the seemingly content power couple and can’t help but drop my gaze to Logan’s junk. His ancestor was hung like a horse!

  Eve clutches at the invisible pearls around her neck. Nice to know this is an innate action built into the grand design of women the world over.

  “What do you want?” she coos with the urgency of an injured dove.

  “I don’t know what we want,” I snip back without meaning to. “I’m sorry I’m so upset, but you’re both naked. I can’t think straight!” I riot as I tug at the hair at my temples. I need to get out of here and back to Paragon sans a few years from the present.

  Dear Lord, I can’t even get Marshall to follow my orders. At this rate, things are never going to work out for me.

  “Naked?” Adam looks to Eve quizzically.

  I can’t help but steal another quick glance to all of those sex organs dangling and bouncing. Eve looks down at her—fantastic breasts might I add, and does a little hand bra maneuver. I guess she’s not used to people ogling, especially seeing that there are no other people here to ogle her. All she and the Logan look-alike have to do all day is each other. Even the amazing vegetable garden is on autopilot at this point in time. Man, do they ever have it made.

  I clear my throat. “Never mind your lack of clothing—”

  Eve steps forward and plucks at my dress before I can finish. “Clothing?”

  “Forget the clothing.” I pull my dress back. “You don’t need clothing. That’s the beauty of this place.”

  She looks to her equally perplexed hubby. “Clothing is beautiful. I must have one. It’s like a sheath made from gossamer and wind, but ten times sturdier. How wonderful it will feel to wear the wind.”

  “Lord.” I glower at Marshall who looks to be stifling a laugh. And just as I’m about to threaten him within an inch of his existence, I suck in a sharp breath before turning back to Adam and Eve. “Oh my word, you didn’t eat that ridiculous fruit yet, did you? Please, please, please, heed my warning. That thing is forbidden for a reason! Believe you me, Eve, you’re about to have a hundred little munchkins ruling the roost and you will thank me for this sage advice once you’re in labor.”

  Holy heck, what if I get back to the present and all memories of my own horrific birth with the boys is erased from my memory? That was the most singularly physically painful ten plus hours of my life. And no thanks to Gage’s desire to partake in his own forbidden fruit, I now have something emotional to rival it. Ironically, I feel
the pain he’s inflicted physically as well.

  “What fruit?” Eve steps in with those glowing baby blues of mine, those features I see in the mirror each and every day—my mother’s to be exact, something about this entire scene breaks my heart. My mother made sure I was her exact representation when she designed me—and believe me when I say she went to lengths to ensure I was her carbon copy. Apparently, she started that game right in the beginning. And seeing what a huge fan she is of Logan Oliver, it’s no surprise that the first man to walk the planet held his handsome countenance.

  Adam’s chest puffs up. “There’s only one fruit we haven’t partaken in.”

  Eve gets a squirrely, all too familiar look in her eye and, oh crap—there goes the neighborhood.

  “Oh no, you don’t.” I wag my finger at them while walking backward and plucking Marshall by the sleeve right along with me. “You do not get to pin this entire fiasco on me. Do not go near that forbidden fruit, Eve. It tastes like bitterness and despair. But I know that wily look on your face, and I have certainly read the story. You guys are so about to get busted!”

  Eve scoffs my way. “Demetri says it’s fine. It tastes like melons and wine. It will make me think clearer and see the things before me as they truly are.”

  “Demetri?” His name slips from my lips lower than a whisper as I stagger my way forward. “Demetri…” My mind reels with the possibilities and then like a hammer it hits home. “That’s the name of your little garden pet, isn’t it? The serpent?”