Free FALLEN (Angels and Gargoyles Book 3) by Brenda L. Harper

realizing it.
    “Don’t do this, Dylan,” Stiles repeated. “I know you don’t trust me anymore, but please, listen to me on this one last thing. They will destroy you.”
    Dylan tore her eyes from Wyatt to focus on her friend. There was fear in his eyes like nothing she had ever seen before, not even in Davida as she waited for her executioner…she didn’t understand. What could Stiles possibly fear? He was going free.
    “Finish what we started,” Dylan said.
    It took a moment for understanding to flash across Stiles’ face. His body had begun to glow, a faint light growing stronger as the Redcoats pushed and shoved, forcing him toward the door. But it stopped the second his words penetrated the fog of his fear.
    “I will,” he said quietly.
    “Dylan?” Wyatt studied her face as the Redcoats cut Stiles free, too. Then the door closed and she lost sight of them.
    She was alone. Alone in a narrow, dark room with her two most powerful enemies.
    And, somehow, she had promised to heal one so they could fight another day.

Chapter 12
     
    “Now.”
    Dylan pivoted on her heel, her thoughts whirling a mile a minute even as she tried to keep them boxed up, tried to keep them from revealing everything to the last two people who should hear them. She closed her eyes and thought of a room filled with boxes, of the room where Wyatt had taken her into his arms and held her, touched her, filled her with a wild river of emotions she was suddenly afraid she would never feel again.
    Lily gripped her hand, her touch stronger than it should have been in her weakened condition. Dylan opened her eyes and studied eyes that were so much like her own. Was this what it was like to have a mother, to have someone who you could see yourself in? Was this what it was like to have a connection to another human being?
    Dylan carefully extracted her hand from Lily’s. “We have to lay her down,” Dylan told Luc.
    He, without question, lifted his lover from her chair and carried her through a door Dylan had never noticed before behind the raised platform that held their chairs. Inside was a small chamber where a bed dominated most of the room. The sheets were white, made of some material that was slick and delicate, but stained in multiple places by the yellow and green fluid that seeped from Lily’s lesions.
    Luc laid her in the center of the bed, carefully pushing pillows under her head to give her the most complete sense of comfort he could. His affection for her belied the cruelty he had just shown Dylan’s friends, as though he was two people, one who loved with his entire soul and one who hated just as absolutely. Dylan shivered as she watched him offer Lily a soft kiss on her sweat-dampened head.
    “You can heal all of her?” Luc asked.
    “Yes.”
    “If you hurt her—”  His hand shook as he pointed a finger in her direction. He didn’t say anything else. It was as though the steel went out of his spine when he said that little bit. As though his fear was so overwhelming that he simply couldn’t find the words to express it.
    Dylan moved up to the bed, aware of Lily’s eyes on her. The sick woman could barely lift her head, could only grip with her gnarled hands, but her eyes were just as aware as they had ever been. And they never left Dylan’s face.
    Fear bit at Dylan’s soul as she settled onto the bed beside Lily and studied the damage still left to repair. Lily was so much worse than Stiles had been when Dylan found him suffering in the woods. He had burned with fever, but Lily was so consumed by her own that, sitting feet away, Dylan could feel the heat rolling off of her as though a camp fire was burning beside her. Her body was bent and twisted by whatever was causing the swelling of her joints, the lesions were so numerous Dylan couldn’t even begin to guess at how many there were, and bruises all over her thin skin suggested an internal bleeding Stiles hadn’t had when Dylan healed him.
    She was beginning to