Free Reckoning by Laury Falter

do. Do you know that Fernando Vega, that very man you attempted to kill solely on your own, has personally killed three messengers? Without any assistance from his own kind? There is a reason he took jobs as a hit man, Magdalene.”
    I understood what he was implying and yet it didn’t register with me. I could handle myself. My only reaction was a tight pinch of my lips.
    His shoulders slumped forward then, tired of trying to convince me to act with self-preservation. “Let’s get back. If Ezra finds us gone again it’ll hurt her beyond words.” He started towards the clouds, slowly, ensuring I was following.
    I wasn’t.
    He slowed his pace upward and then stopped all together. “Your desire…no…your obsession in killing our enemies…alone…takes precedence over any other thoughts or concerns. It dominates you, Magdalene, and anything that dominates you can hurt you.” He paused then, closing the gap between us to place his hands on each side of my face. Peering at me through the night, shadows from the flaming remnants of Fernando’s house dancing across his cheeks. “I’m-I’m frightened for you, Magdalene.”
    The understanding of his message was suddenly a palpable presence in my stomach, twisting my insides until they ached.
    He was right. Every waking moment, every second I spent in the afterlife each night, thoughts cycled through my consciousness on how to exterminate them. I hated them because through cold calculations they had hurt… killed the ones I love. Now ever fiber in my body ached for vengeance. It was me acting with cold calculation to destroy them and I understood exactly what Eran was warning me against. If I didn’t watch it, I would become one of them.
    “ I worry myself sometimes,” I muttered, causing the creases in his brow to deepen. “I’m trying to control it. I-I just think that sometimes it controls me.”
    “ It’s all right,” he whispered soothingly. “We’ll work on it together.”
    I wasn’t entirely in agreement with that suggestion. Working on it together implied he would need to be present as I hunted - something I wholly disagreed with. Yet, I knew, staring back at him that I would not win this argument tonight.
    He kissed my lips deeply for a brief moment and then his wings flapped, carrying us higher. We separated but it was a struggle, our hands slipping from each other only at the very last second.
    The flight back to New Orleans was silent, as I considered the best way to convince him to allow me to hunt alone. By the time we reached our roof I had considered countless reasons, each one making less sense than the last. I knew his reasoning, he’d used it before and it, unfortunately, was entirely logical.
    He was a guardian. I was a ward. He would protect me at all costs…including my own desires to hunt alone.
    As we landed on the balcony outside my room and my wings sunk back inside my skin, his hand found mine. It was warm, pulsating, and irresistible.
    He didn’t look at me when he began to speak, his head dropped, gazing at the balcony’s wooden floorboards instead.
    "Magdalene…when you died as a child, those Fallen Ones who attempted your murder were thought to have been the last of our enemies. We thought..." Shaking his head, he muttered, fury hidden just beneath his words, " I had thought we’d succeeded in their extermination. I was wrong." He pulled away and began pacing the balcony.
    "You don't need to do this," I told him.
    "Yes...I do. I need you to understand why I need to accompany you." Agony coursed through him then, an emotion so strong and swift it seemed to flow from him directly into my veins. His body seemed to cave against it for a fleeting moment before he recovered and continued on. “There, in Montana, after you were revived from the accident that had taken your infant life, I was assured you were safe and those Fallen Ones who took your life could no longer hurt you. Believing those were the last of our enemies, I