A stray tear fled from the corner of Diel’s eye, and it broke Noa’s heart. “Finn Nolan created that monster to shield himself. Then you came along, a white witch from a coven of fucking warriors, and rescued us both.” Diel’s lips trembled, and Noa began to cry again at how open he was being, at what being freed from his collar had truly meant to him. “You gave me back my past. You gave me back memories of my sister.” Diel blinked the tears from his long black lashes. “You gave me back me.”
“I love you,” Noa said, feeling a seismic shift within her, a crevice that had split around her heavily defended heart, allowing Diel inside. She was his home, and he was hers. His brothers were now hers, and her sisters were now his.
Noa released one of her hands from his and placed it on his cheek. He turned and kissed her palm as if he needed to kiss her and never stop. Noa waited until his attention was focused back on her. “I swear I’ll get your sister back to you too. You won’t just have memories of her any longer.”
Diel exhaled a stuttered breath. “We can all get her back. As a family.” The way he said “family,” as if he had always craved it, as if it had always been the thing he wished for in his prayers each night, destroyed whatever was left of her heart.
Noa nodded and kissed him, showing him without words that he was her entire world. But all the time her mind raced with thoughts of how to get Cara back. And where to even begin.
She pulled back. “Let’s shower and then join your brothers downstairs in the dungeon.” She took one last kiss from Diel. “We have someone in our home who can give us answers.” Noa squeezed his hand, a bloodthirsty smirk etching onto her lips. “Let’s go find out what happened to your sister.”
Chapter 23
Diel dressed in jeans and a sleeveless shirt. Noa was in leggings and one of his black t-shirts. His heart was a fucking loaded canon as he watched her pull the oversized shirt over her head and flick out her long damp hair from the wide neckline. But as his heart swelled, his stomach sank. He recalled watching her break from the phalanx earlier that night. He’d watched her slice through priest after priest like a demonic ghost, trying to get to the boy in the collar.
Diel had never known fear like watching her disappear into a black hole of robed priests. Noa thought herself evil, tainted by hell. But when he watched her, Diel only saw a fucking white witch wearing a goddamn halo. A heart made of pure gold. She thought herself cold, but she showed more love for people than most, a trait he had only ever seen in Gabriel. A charitable soul, only her charitable acts were done in her very Noa way. To Diel, charity didn’t always have to be pure and innocent. It could be given by a person dripping with rage and wielding a fucking unstoppable sword.
As if she knew he was thinking of her, Noa finished dressing, slipped on her boots and came toward Diel, who was sitting on the edge of the bed. She wrapped her arms around his neck, smelling of lavender and mint from the shampoo and body wash she had just used. Diel pulled her down with his hand on the back of her head and kissed her. Then he stood and held out his hand.
“We’d better get down there, or Bara will have gutted him,” Diel said. His heart burst when Noa smiled at that thought and wrapped her fingers around his.
She pulled him to the door. “Come on. We can’t let that ginger loudmouth have all the fun.”
Noa was fucking made for him. She might have resented her inner darkness at times, blamed it for that young boy’s death, but Diel relished it. She was his match in every way that counted.
They descended the stairs, and Noa found her sisters in the Nave, sitting around the dining table. Dinah got to her feet. “You going down there?” she asked Noa.
“Of course,” Noa said. “I want answers.” Diel watched Dinah closely for any sign that she disapproved of his woman and who she was inside. But there was no censure in Dinah’s expression.
Diel relaxed and led Noa down to the cellar. He pushed open the door to the small dungeon-type room he knew the priest was being held in. All his brothers, bar Gabriel, were inside. The priest was on a chair in the center of the space, tied down, eyes rolling as he fought for consciousness.
Uriel flicked his chin to Diel and Noa in greeting. “Perfect timing. He’s just stirring. We kept him knocked out for you.”