Angel's Heart: Daughters of Elysium Book Four, page 1
ANGEL’S HEART
Daughters of Elysium—Book Four
S.M. SHADOW
Angel’s Heart Copyright © July 2023 by S.M. Shadow
ebook ISBN: 978-1-954400-27-6
Print ISBN: 978-1-954400-28-3
Publisher: Seclusion Publishing
Interior Design: Seclusion Publishing
Cover Design: GetCovers
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or book reviews
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
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HE HAUNTS MY DREAMS EVERY NIGHT, BUT I DON’T EVEN KNOW HIS NAME…
I don’t have any memories before I was twelve, can’t remember anything about who I was or where I’m from.
As a kid I thought I had wings and could fly, and I believed it so much I jumped off a building and nearly died.
There’s a scar over my heart, like something was torn out of me, and every night, I dream about him. Coal-black hair and eyes that match. Sometimes he has wings, but they aren’t like the blue-feathered ones I thought I had, but black and leathery. Sometimes in my dreams he isn’t a man at all, but a dragon like one from legend.
I’ve drawn his face a thousand times, but I never thought he was real. Then he shows up one day and his name slams into me: Benedict. And when he acts like we’re old friends, talking about taking me back to some place called Elysium...I know I’ve either finally lost it, or that childhood I can’t remember is a lot stranger than I ever could have predicted.
But if there’s any chance those wings I thought I had are real, I’ll do anything to get them back. And no matter how much logic might tell me it makes no sense, my heart tells me I’ll follow Benedict anywhere. That I always have.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by S.M. Shadow
1
Seraphina/Drift
I sat in the park, bent over my sketchpad, my fingers dark with graphite as I tried to get the shading just right. I knew I wouldn’t—I never could get anything just right when I drew him—but I kept trying anyway. I’d never stopped trying, even when my adoptive parents thought I was losing my mind and I swore I would stop.
I just got better about hiding it.
I finished blurring the last bit and straightened up, looking down at the face that had haunted my dreams as far back as I could remember. A dark gaze, black eyes with a touch of fire looking out from a face that belonged to a bronze-skinned god. His black hair was a touch long, falling naturally into soft spikes.
He looked like a devil, which was ironic because I’d once thought I was an angel.
Twelve years ago, I’d been found wandering alongside the highway outside Atlanta, Georgia. A husband and wife had found me, my back cut with two long, bloody parallel wounds. They had been jagged tears in my flesh, not clean or surgical, as if something had been torn from me rather than cut.
I’d had no idea who I was. I still didn’t. I just knew those two people called the police and no one ever claimed me. And somewhere in the year I spent in state care, a year between that couple finding me and adopting me, I believed I could fly.
I believed it so much that I climbed to the top of a two story building and jumped off, fully expecting my wings to catch me. They didn’t, because I didn’t have wings, and jumping hadn’t made them magically manifest.
I’d gotten a broken wrist, some broken ribs, and a severe concussion, but miraculously avoided any more serious damage. I’d never understood why John and Shayla Edgewood adopted me after that. Except that sometimes, on the darker days, I thought maybe they adopted me because of that.
Because I was lost and broken and no one in the world cared about me, and they thought if they stepped in they could mold me into whatever they wanted.
I shouldn’t have thoughts like that. They’d been good to me. They were wealthy, and I’d never wanted for anything, and I was old enough now to understand just how badly my life could have gone.
But sometimes I felt like they thought they could fix me—with their money and their love and their good intentions—and I’d somehow failed them because I couldn’t be fixed.
But when I looked into the dark eyes staring out at me from my sketchbook, I didn’t feel like I was broken. I didn’t feel like I needed to be fixed. I just felt like…me.
Whoever that was.
“I thought you stopped drawing him.” The voice was clipped and irritated, and it startled me so badly I knocked the sketchpad off my lap.
Jordan grabbed it.
I lunged to my feet, trying to take it back but he just held it out of reach. Not hard for him to do when I was all of five feet two inches and he had half a foot on me in height. He flipped through the pages with increasing disgust on his perfect trust-fund face.
Jordan Banks was everything John and Shayla wanted for me. He was from a good, boring family, he went to a good, boring college, and he always wore good, boring khakis and polos while he spent his days settling in at his father’s good, boring law firm.
Maybe I put too many “goods” and borings” in there, but it was all I could think about when I thought of him.
I hadn’t always hated him. We’d practically grown up together and he’d been, if not nice, at least civil to me despite how chaotic, how lost, I’d been in those first few years.
I’d always thought he was a nice person, so when he’d asked me out when we were sixteen I said yes, even though I knew I didn’t really like him that way. And it had made John and Shayla so happy, so I kept seeing him.
I let him touch me and fuck me and wondered why people thought sex was so great. He didn’t hurt me, or anything, but it just wasn’t…good. It wasn’t fun.
I did it because I was supposed to, and I felt like a failure because he always seemed disappointed with it. So I tried to get better at it, and that only seemed to make things worse.
He never left me, though. I’d been stupid enough to take that for love, and I’d tried to love him back. Because I’d still been a chaotic, lost person who’d just gotten good at hiding it, and I thought I was lucky to have him.
“These are disgusting.” His grating voice broke through my unpleasant memories to land me back in the unpleasant present.
He waved the sketchpad at me. It was open to a drawing of the man, black leathery wings unfurling from his back. There were a hint of scales at his neck, and also on the backs of his hands, and I couldn’t say why but it was one of my favorites—like it was the most him.
Jordan was still ranting. “Are you into that fucking monster porn shit all those sluts are reading? Is that why you never get wet for me?” He was in my face now, his aftershave burning my nose like astringent. “Because I’m not a fucking animal?”
I grabbed for the sketchbook and he pulled it out of reach again.
“Why are you even here?” I demanded. “We’re not together anymore.”
I’d broken our engagement a month ago. He’d changed, after he’d proposed, and all the mild condescensions I’d thought were aberrations in his behavior had turned into full-fledged, constant condescension. It hadn’t taken me long to figure out that once he had a ring on my finger he thought it was a done deal, and he didn’t have to hide who he was anymore.
Didn’t have to hide that he didn’t really like me at all. That he’d been nice to me when we were kids, dated me
Except the Edgewoods never could have kids, so they’d adopted me. I was the right age, still young enough to grow up with Jordan, and I was supposed to be malleable enough to go along with it all.
And I was. Right up until the night I heard Jordan talking to his friends about it all. Blowing off steam about me, about how tiresome I was, and such a boring fucking lay and I didn’t even have decent tits, and he’d better start auditioning mistresses now if he was going to be chained to me for the rest of his life.
And then his friend had responded with a line that made everything about Jordan’s behavior finally make sense. “She doesn’t have to have decent tits if she’s worth five-and-a-half mil.”
Five-and-a-half million was the value of Jordan’s trust fund. It hadn’t taken much digging to figure out that his trust fund was contingent on him marrying the Edgewood heir.
“Don’t start with that again,” Jordan said. “Do you think if you play this game you’ll get something more out of me? The only thing you’re doing is pissing me off. I had to spend all day yesterday picking the goddamn wedding flowers because you couldn’t be bothered to show up.”
“Because we’re not getting married!” I screamed, loud enough that people around us looked over.
He dropped the sketchbook, grabbed my arm in a bruising grip and yanked me toward him. “Keep your fucking voice down.” He punctuated the last three words with painful squeezes of his hands. “And would you stop with this breakup bullshit? I’ve covered for you with your parents and told them you’re just overwhelmed, but if you keep up with this I’ll tell them you’re having another episode.”
I froze. If he told John and Shayla I was having an “episode” they would believe him. They always believed him over me. On anything. They’d send me back to one of those hospitals. Okay, for the wealthy they were more like prison-like resorts, but they were still places I didn’t have any freedom. Where my schedule was planned down to the minute and I wasn’t allowed to draw because if they let me have an artistic medium I’d be likely to draw him, and that was “bad” for me.
I hadn’t told them I’d broken off the engagement because they had this lovely thing over me called a conservatorship on the basis of my “fragile mental state.” I couldn’t sign a fucking lease without them, like I was still a child and not twenty-four, and if I told them I’d broken up with Jordan they would probably take away the condo they’d grudgingly allowed me to move into. Take away the art school I’d finally been allowed to attend because I’d gotten good at showing them pictures and paintings that were bright colorful lies more befitting the daughter they wanted me to be.
“You don’t want to marry me,” I said. “Can’t you just tell them?” I hated how soft my voice was, how pleading. If Jordan told them he didn’t want to marry me, I thought maybe they wouldn’t blame me for that. Not enough to take away what little freedom they’d given me.
“Wake up, Sera,” Jordan said. He knew I hated the shortened version of my name. It was why he used it. “This was never about us wanting to marry each other. It’s business, and it’s a deal my father’s not going to let go. So stop whining, put this fucking ring back on your finger” —he pulled the diamond engagement ring from his pocket and shoved it into my palm, the edges cutting my skin— “and be at the damn bakery tomorrow for the cake testing.”
I realized then that he was never going to let it go. And that if I let him shove me into this, I’d hate myself for the rest of my life. I’d rather be in a posh prison resort than married to Jordan Banks.
“Let go of me.” The words were barely a whisper.
“What?”
“Let go of me!” I yelled it this time, and people around us looked again, hesitant expressions on their faces, the looks of people wondering if they should intervene. As if merely having the thought, the concern, made them okay people when they knew they weren’t actually going to do anything. If he dragged me out of here, no one would step in.
He didn’t let go. His grip tightened on my arm. “If you make me have to explain myself to anyone here, you will fucking regret it. Now put the damn ring on, come with me, and—”
“She told you to let her go.” The calm, intense voice, dark and deep like whiskey and hellfire, came from behind Jordan. I saw an outline of a man, broader than Jordan and a little bit taller. Enough that I could see black hair, but not his face.
Jordan let me go and turned to face the stranger, all conciliatory smiles and politician’s face. “I understand what this must look like, and I appreciate you being willing to intervene, but—” His voice wavered and broke off, his gaze darting to the sketchbook. Then he cleared his throat and stiffened his shoulders. “But Sera and I were just having a minor disagreement. It’s nothing to be concerned about.”
I expected the stranger to agree and walk off, like people always did when Jordan turned the charm on them.
“If it’s nothing to be concerned about, she can tell me herself.” I wished I could see his face, but I couldn’t get my body to move, even the foot to the side it would take to see around Jordan.
Jordan chuckled. “Sera, babe, you want to tell the good Samaritan everything’s okay?”
Instinct told me I should. Years of being told that I was too loud, too weird, too much trouble, told me now that I shouldn’t drag this stranger into my problems.
But fuck that voice. He’d chosen to insert himself into my problems, and if he left, Jordan would drag me out of here. I didn’t know what I was going to do after this, but I knew I wasn’t leaving with Jordan.
“No,” I said. Not loud, but not soft, either. Just steady. Finally, for once in my life, I was steady. “Everything’s not okay. Don’t touch me, don’t talk to me again. I want you to go.”
I felt his anger mount, but I knew he wouldn’t show it here. Not in such a public place. If he got in a fight or the cops got involved, someone would recognize him. And his daddy wouldn’t like that.
“Fine.” He turned and looked at me. “You made a bad choice. Don’t blame me when you don’t like the consequences.”
He walked off, stomping over the sketchpad still on the ground as he went. But all the sudden the sketchpad was the last thing on my mind, because it paled in comparison to the man standing before me.
He didn’t have wings or scales, but I would have recognized those black eyes anywhere. They looked out at me from that hauntingly beautiful face, the one I’d dreamed about over and over again until I thought I would die from longing for a person who didn’t even exist.
Except he did exist. Right here, right now, he existed, and he was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t fully place. Protectiveness and affection, anger and a hint of confusion, and… something else.
He blinked and it was all gone, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “Hey, little Drift. Getting into trouble again?”
Little Drift. Words that sounded so familiar but I couldn’t remember hearing them. And then a name sprang to my lips, one I felt like I’d been aching to say every remembered moment of my life.
“Benedict.” I breathed it more than spoke it.
