Exalted by Ella James Read Free Book Online

necessary, but Nathan
opened his mouth, and Andrew's will was gone.
    “GO
INTO THE CELL, ANDREW. KEEP MEREDITH SAFE.” Andrew had the brief thought that
Nathan had never turned his gift toward him in the past. Then he was following
Meredith inside.
    “Fuck
you, Nathan.” Carlin slapped him in the jaw, and Nathan caught her arm, pushing
her inside.
    “I'm
trying to help you, too, Carlin.”
    He
slammed the iron door shut and glared through the bars. “Stay put. I’ll be back
soon.”
    Andrew
listened to the pounding of the other Shepherd's footsteps until Meredith
turned away. His gaze went with her; he watched as she put her hands over her
face, breathing deeply to keep from crying. He felt a pang of sympathy for her,
and anger at their situation.
    To
Carlin, he said, “We need to find a way out of here.”
    She
nodded, looking slowly around their cell. “I wish we had Mekal with us. He
could open any door.”
    Andrew
nodded, wondering briefly if the short boy had survived. Sighing, he kicked at
one of the walls, then noticed a small depression where his foot had connected.
He bent to inspect it, shaking his head. “It can’t be this easy,” he said.
    “What?”
Carlin asked, kneeling down beside him.
    “The
walls are dirt, right? Dirt and whatever this red slime is. What if we can dig
ourselves out?”

 

Chapter Eight

 
    Nathan slammed the stone door behind him and marched
through the packed mud hall, his hard footsteps fueled by his raging temper.
    The moment he’d returned from tucking Meredith and her band
of ignorant deserters safely into a holding cell, he’d called a meeting of
several powerful Bishops and all his Shepherds. Well, first he’d ordered Shea
to fashion the illusion of a bullhorn, and he’d forced her to magnify his
already powerful voice—which was even more powerful in Alexandria, The Three's
seat of power. He’d ordered the mob in the commons into silence, and he’d
threatened to imprison anyone who uttered even one word in the next twelve
hours. He knew the limitations of his gift, and he figured they'd soon be back
to chaos—but for the moment he felt okay leaving them.
    The meeting with his fellow Shepherds and the Bishops had
not gone well. He’d managed to keep them subdued with the strength of his
voice, but they’d still been angry and full of questions for which he had no
answers. Almost every one of them was preoccupied by wild rumors, and when he’d
questioned them about the origin of the rumors, several them insisted that The
One’s messenger had come into their dreams and told them of the impending
removal of the net.
    The ‘messenger’ was the being called Edan. Nathan felt sure
of it. He didn’t know anyone else with, as one smitten Bishop had put it,
'beautiful honey-toned hair and haunting gray eyes'.
    Nathan followed the hall until it started slanting
downward; he tried to ignore the sick feeling whirling in his gut.
    It wasn’t the uproar among his fellow Chosen that had him
worried, or even what appeared to be a mass illusion precipitated by Edan. It
was what that mass illusion signified when stacked with other evidence.
    Evidence Nathan had seen firsthand. Evidence that indicated
he'd made a terrible mistake.
    It had happened after Meredith had cursed at him and cried
over him, while Nathan lay bleeding badly from his leg near the entrance to the
resort in St. Moritz. Julia’s Nephilim had swooped down, and a sobbing Meredith
had wrapped herself around the Hunter, tucking herself under one of his hideous
wings.
    Nathan had been left there, and in his pain, he’d thought
he was suffering a delusion. Out of thin air, Edan had appeared, introducing
himself as one of The Three’s “consultants”, which Nathan knew was a lie. The
guy wore a smug, ironic look that told Nathan he didn’t care about the Chosen
at all.
    “I don’t need…your help,” he’d rasped, but he was already
dizzy from blood loss.
    The smirk was back. “You don’t, but