Hawkyn’s gut was churning as he paced back and forth at the Summoning Stone, a football-sized rose quartz placed in the center of a newly-built gazebo at the edge of the Memitim training center in Sheoul-gra. With any luck, someone from the Memitim embassy in Heaven would pop down here to see him, but in his experience, there only seemed to be a 50/50 chance of that happening...which was still far better odds than getting someone from the Memitim Council to show up. If they had ever visited Sheoul-gra, he wasn’t aware of it.
He’d give the embassy fifteen more minutes, and then he was out of here.
Footsteps behind him had him spinning around in relief, but when he saw his father standing there in black slacks and a button-down shirt, intense green eyes blazing like hot emeralds, Hawkyn’s gut dropped to his booted feet.
“Hawkyn.” Azagoth’s deep voice sent a shimmer of dread through Hawk’s very marrow. His father was intimidating on the best of days, but lately his mood had been as black as his hair and clothes.
Steeling himself, Hawkyn inclined his head in greeting. “Yes, sir.”
“I heard you were injured.”
“I was, but I’m fine now.” He gestured in the direction of the armory, where he was in charge of inventory and acquisitions. “If you’re wondering about that report you asked for, I sent it to your desk yesterday—”
Azagoth waved his hand. “I’ll get to it this afternoon.” He stared at Hawkyn long enough to make him begin to sweat, and just as Hawk started to fidget, his father spoke. “You’ve never told me about your childhood.”
Hawk swallowed, remembering that Darien had told him Azagoth had been asking weird personal questions. “No, sir, I haven’t.”
“Tell me.”
“I really don’t think it’s important—”
The breeze turned chilly, mirroring Azagoth’s voice, and Hawkyn resisted the urge to shiver. “Would I ask if it wasn’t important?”
Hawkyn ignored the rhetorical question. “My childhood was no different than any other Memitim’s.” Except Suzanne, who had led a charmed existence before her first Memitim mentor had plucked her from her human life. “It sucked.” At Azagoth’s cocked eyebrow, Hawkyn knew he wasn’t going to get away with a vague explanation. His father wanted details, and only a moron denied Azagoth what he wanted. “I grew up in a workhouse in London. The people who ran it said I was left on the doorstep as a newborn.”
“No one adopted you?”
He laughed. “Children who were ‘adopted’ back then were often taken to be used as slaves or apprentices.”
“Children who lived in the workhouses and orphanages weren’t treated any better, no?”
Not really, no. And why the hell were they talking about this? Reluctantly, he answered his father’s question before he became impatient. An impatient Azagoth was a scary Azagoth.
Then again, so was a patient Azagoth.
“As soon as we were able, we were forced to pay for our care. We got money however we could. Begging, stealing, doing odd jobs, prostitution.”
Azagoth’s expression didn’t change, and yet Hawk could feel the anger billowing off him. But why? As far as Hawk knew, Azagoth didn’t give a shit about how his children had grown up. He’d always said that now was what mattered. They’d grown up the way they had in order to shape them into warriors. It had all been for the greater good and all that standard issue bullshit.
“Was there ever a time when it wasn’t bad? When you were happy?”
Happy? Was Azagoth fucking kidding?
The memories he’d thought were long buried came rushing back at him, and with it, the anger. The feelings of abandonment. Back then he’d thought he was human and that his human parents, probably devastatingly poor, had given him up as a last resort.
Now, knowing his parents were powerful beyond imagining and had intentionally left him in a shitty situation, he was even angrier. Yes, he knew why they’d done it. And he’d always been able to conceal his emotions. But he could no longer deny that those emotions, that fury and hurt, had been seething just below the surface of his mind for centuries.
“No, Father, it was always bad.” Hawk’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “I don’t remember ever having a full belly or being clean. I was never happy. Not once. Not ever. Not until the day my Memitim mentor arrived to rescue me from the hell that was my life. He might even have saved my life. I was about to lose a hand for stealing a crust of bread.”
For a long time, Azagoth said nothing. He merely stood there, his eyes glinting like green glass as he stared at Hawkyn.
Finally, he gestured over Hawkyn’s shoulder. “You have company.”
Hawk wheeled around to find Jacob, a Memitim who had Ascended nearly a century ago, standing near the Summoning Stone. His mink brown wings that matched his hair and eyes were fully extended, probably to show them off to his lowly, un-Ascended half-brother.
“What do you want?” he asked in a snooty tone.
“I—” Hawkyn turned to Azagoth, but their father had disappeared. Well, that was one less thing to worry about.
“You what?”
Damn, but Jacob was annoying. But then, he’d been annoying even before he’d been given his wings and a cushy job at the Memitim embassy, which was really more of a regulatory agency, but whatever.
“I know we aren’t supposed to be privy to our Primoris’ futures, but would we know if their futures have gone off track?”
Jacob adjusted the crimson sash that kept his embassy-issued metallic silver and bronze robes closed. “Why are you asking?”
“I dunno,” Hawkyn said casually. “I’m just curious.”
“I see.” Jacob put away his wings in a whoosh of air that ruffled Hawkyn’s hair. “You wouldn’t know. We would.”
Hawkyn’s breath backed up in his lungs like cement, and he couldn’t move any air for half a dozen thudding heartbeats. Had Drayger’s fate line gone off track, and did the embassy assholes know?
Stay calm. “How?”
Jacob studied his nails, dragging this out, clearly enjoying the power he wielded. The weasel.
Finally, he folded his arms across his chest, making his robes swing around his bare feet. “Every Primori has a file of sorts,” he explained. “These files are monitored, and if anything goes awry or the Primori dies before his time, we get an alert.”
“What happens after you get an alert?”
Jacob huffed as if irritated with the conversation. “It varies. Sometimes we let the situation sort itself out. Sometimes we warn the Primori’s Memitim guardian that they’d better rectify the situation, and sometimes there’s nothing we can do but try to mitigate the damage by rearranging the lives of others to get the results we need.” He paused, locking gazes with Hawk. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”
“Not at all.” Hawkyn smiled, hoping Jacob bought his bullshit. “I’m just hoping to join the Memitim Council one day, so I’m trying to learn all the behind-the-scenes stuff now.”
Jacob laughed. “You think that’ll give you an edge? Idiot. I’ve been a full angel for decades now, and I’m not even on the waiting list to merely apply to join the Council.”
“Maybe you should have been asking questions before you Ascended,” Hawkyn offered. “Like I am.” Jacob had always been a slacker, doing the bare minimum of work needed to get the job done.
“Fuck you.” Baring his teeth, Jacob flared his wings again. “I spoke with your mother the other day. Did you know she’s on the Council? She joined recently. Introduced me to her mate and three beautiful children. Most of our mothers never had families because of the guilt they feel for giving us up. But not yours. She dotes on her children. Loves them like crazy.” His smile turned malevolent. “Have you ever even met her? Where did she leave you as a baby, I wonder...”
Hawkyn decked the asshole. Just slammed his fist into Jacob’s perfect face. The crunch of bone was the most satisfying thing Hawkyn had felt in years. Didn’t matter that Jacob’s bones mended in an instant and that the blood vanished without a trace. It felt good.
“You,” Jacob snarled, “are lucky I have someplace to be right now. But watch your back, little brother.”
Jacob flashed out of Sheoul-gra before Hawkyn could respond. Lucky for Jacob, since Hawk’s response would have been a lot more painful than a punch in the face.