“You should be resting.” He folded his arms in a bicep-bulging smoke show.
“And you should be talking.” Eddie removed the hammer from his hand. “Not punishing innocent pieces of wood. And not pushing me away.” She leaned closer to him. “I don’t like it.”
Shade growled.
Her ovaries fluttered, but she kept her steely stare locked on him.
“The four horsemen are waking.” He sighed.
“And?”
“That’s bad.” He braced his hands on the workbench and dropped his head. “Very fucking bad.”
“End of the world bad?”
“Yup.”
Okay, now she was getting somewhere. “Is that where you and Sophia went the other day?”
He looked at her, those gray eyes tender. “Eddie, you are recovering from an ordeal. You should not be thinking about this.”
“Shade.” That he cared enough to try to protect her soothed some of her nasty tendrils of rejection, but they weren’t going to build any trust between them with evasions and lies. “If you want me to trust you, you’re going to have to trust me, and my resilience.”
He stared at her.
She held his gaze.
“Fair enough.” He blew out a long breath and leaned his hip against the workbench. “Have you read Revelations?”
“Bits and pieces.” As in, not actually read but heard and seen here and there.
“For the most part it’s a fairytale.” Shade shoved his hand through his hair. “But there is some truth to it. The four horsemen of the apocalypse are a real thing, and they bring the end of days.”
Eddie needed some clarity on the details. “And this is linked to the seals, right?”
“Yes.” He sighed. “The weakening of the seals heralds the end of days and wakes the horsemen. With what’s been going on in hell, the horsemen are stirring.”
That did not sound good. “Does that mean they’re waking up?”
“Yes.” Shade strolled around the workbench to her, and as if he needed the contact with her, he drew her close to him and tucked her back against his front. “That was what we were uncertain about. They’re ancient beings. From time to time, they shift or move.”
“This has happened before?” Eddie was happy to be tucked in close to his warmth. It felt like home in the most elemental way.
“We’ve managed to keep it from the guardians, but every now and then, in a millennia type of way, it has.” He tightened his arms around her. “We always check it out. Just in case.”
“And?” She already knew she wasn’t going to like the direction this conversation took.
“Ramiel sent Haziel to check it out.” Shade’s tone hardened, and she felt the tension in his body. “And he shouldn’t have. Seraphim are strong, but they’re not archangels. The horsemen are tuned into celestial or hell power, and the minute they sensed it, they drew on it. They use it to fuel their wakening.”
“So why go near them?” It seemed fairly obvious to her that if a fire needed wood, don’t toss logs on it.
“It’s one of those things that we need to check, but do so carefully,” Shade said. “A hell prince or an archangel has enough strength to resist the draw of the horsemen. At least while they’re in this dormant state. Once they waken, there is no stronger power in the universe.”
“So Ramiel sent a knife to a gun fight?”
Shade huffed a laugh. “Pretty much. Wrath found her and went with her, but once the horsemen caught her power signature, they latched on, and Haziel didn’t have the strength to break free.”
“So Wrath helped her?”
“He tried.” Shade tucked his head into the crook of her neck. “But it’s like a nuclear meltdown. The more power the horsemen get, the stronger they become, and it grows incrementally. Wrath couldn’t stop the draw. He could only hold it at a certain level.”
Eddie put the pieces into place. “So you and Sophia left to help him.”
“Yes.” He leaned them both back against the bench. “And we got her free. But it didn’t stop there.”
“Tell me.”
“There is a lot of fucked up to this situation.”
“Tell me.”
“First,” Shade said, “Ramiel should never have sent Haziel, and if any of the arches or princes had known about it before he did, we would have stopped it.” He shook his head. “Except for Gabriel, who saw it more in the light of a litmus test.”
“Because it could kill her?” He was right. That was seriously fucked up.
“Yes.” Shade kissed the top of her head. “And also, it fuels the horsemen and brings them closer to waking.”
Eddie had never warmed to Ramiel on the handful of occasions she’d met him. The archangel seemed sneaky. “So why did he do it?”
