Page 132 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

“Because he was uninvited and walked through our wards like they didn’t matter. But we do know that angels can’t interfere, they don’t and never have. Although, we wished they would, because with their power, the war against Katarra would be over.”

She stood in front of him to look him in the eye. “But you broke the Accords by sleeping with me.” She watched his face for answers. “I used to be a lawyer, Zarek, and I hated telling anyone that I was a lawyer, so there’s that. And I only worked at the bookshop because I’d inherited half of it. I quit because I’d lost faith in it, like everything else…” Magic, fathers, romantic dating life, and higher powers. “But I haven’t forgotten how to see the arguments from both sides to counter them. I also know how to read a room. And a man.” Especially if they’re being accused of something she didn’t see as wrong. But it was the laws of his realm she had yet to learn. “Help me understand. Did you or did you not break the Accords?”

“Yes. ” He sighed, raking his fingers through his black hair. “I broke them.”

“And the consequences?”

“Death.”

Angela gasped. The fear swept like ice squeezing her soul. “How? That’s not possible. We spent one night together. How can that be so wrong?”

Zarek was quiet for a beat too long.

“No more secrets, Zarek. I’m done with that. I want to help you, like you’ve been helping me.”

Zarek’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t break the Accords by bringing you here; we had a Variance, a contingency clause. But after last night…” His fingers found hers and he gently squeezed. “For a member of the Sworn Exarchs to be with someone from the mortal realm, that carries consequences. Regardless of the circumstances.”

Her stomach squeezed with fear. “What do we do?”

“Gellar’s solution is what your father named first.”

“The marriage?”

He nodded.

“I don’t understand how?”

He explained how the Continuum Council wanted to test her. How she’d fail and be declared mortal, which would undo everything. But that the sovereignty protection that came with being married to a Sworn Exarch, combined with the bloodline clause, placed her beyond the Council’s reach entirely.

She listened without interrupting, while desperately trying to be like Zarek and keep all her emotions neatly locked behind a wall.

When he finished, the rose garden was silent.

“So,” she said. “Gellar wants to protect his captain. My father wants to protect me. The Claiming has its own opinions that could still get out of control. The Council wants to test me. And nobody on that list stopped to ask me.” She let that land. “Am I a prisoner here, Zarek?”

“No.”

“Then I can leave.”

“Yes. No. Not until you’re safe.”

“But if I leave, what happens to you?”

He didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

She looked at the warrior whose armor no longer carried the staves that had contained him for centuries. Telling her about his potential death with the same composure as if discussing the weather.

Except, when he’d come through that vortex, she’d felt relieved that it was him. When he’d fixed her necklace, his hands had been gentle. When he’d organized that desk in her room, he’d been thinking about what would make her comfortable. None of that was the Claiming. That was Zarek.

Wasn’t it?

Someone like Zarek simply could not live in her world. Not with those eyes, or his power to burn. What would he do, work behind a desk he’d probably incinerate by Wednesday? Terrify every client who walked through the door? And if she married him, she’d stay here. In Paradox. Where a week in this world made her world move on without her in minutes?

Either way, she could never go back to being the person she was.

Which meant the question wasn’t really about marriage at all. It was about who she was going to be on the other side of saying yes or no—and which version of that woman would she recognize.

Not when she was already in the middle of an identity crisis of fairly spectacular proportions. She was half-angel, a Nephilim, carrying a power base she didn’t fully understand, stuck as a resident of a magical realm she hadn’t consented to visit. As the daughter of an archangel who played chess on boards nobody else could see, with a mother whose secrets she had yet to unravel—and now Zarek wanted to add wife to that list.