Erelah’s shame and horror didn’t lessen as she flew.
And she flew hard.
Wind tearing at her wings, she pushed with magic to speeds that would rip the infernal black feathers from her body, if she weren’t keeping them tucked tight against her back. But no matter how hard she flew, moonlit mountains slipping below her as she headed to Seattle, she couldn’t slough off the need coiling tight in her belly. It had been unleashed by Leksander’s kiss. And his touch. And the hot feel of his tongue on her skin. She couldn’t release the horror of her Fall—it clung to her like a second skin, and her Sin churned just beneath the surface. The Lust sparked by her grappling with Leksander just grew more wild, more uncontrolled, as she fled, putting as much distance between them as she could.
The despair of it choked her mind.
What was she but Sin now? What hope was there? None. The answer was as final and sure as the fact she was driven by her Sin now. She was shadow angel, and all that was left to her were the Sins. Lust, Greed, Gluttony, Wrath, Pride, Envy, Sloth. They were the demons she had fought all her life… and now they were all she had.
With Lust burning hottest of all.
She screeched into Seattle, a black fury at nearly the speed of sound. She pulled up so hard, she nearly passed out, but it killed only her speed. Then she topped out at a thousand feet above the city and dove straight down again, searching… there were demons aplenty, but she wasn’t seeking them. She wanted a human, male, preferably young and virile. Leksander had brought this Sin of Lust to life within her, and she burned with a need to slake it.
Not that she had ever done such a thing.
Nor did she blame Leksander in any way. She was clear that the Sin was hers from the start. She’d ignored the signs, plain for any angel to see, that Leksander loved her. Then, to compound her Sin, she kissed him… knowing full well his feelings. All that with the mortal world at stake with his mating. All because she was weak and foolish and naïve. She’d tried to pay her Penance—the summer fae queen’s torturous cage gave some measure of what Erelah deserved—but it wasn’t enough. Worse, Leksander had come for her. And when he healed her wounds, flushing her with his fae and dragon blood, it had been intoxicating… she could blame the Fall on that, but it was her inability to control her Lust that brought it. She forsook her vow of Chastity with hardly a blink of hesitation.
Perhaps being fallen was her true Penance. The final one that awaited all angelkind.
Erelah would give herself over to it, quench the aching thirst, and then she might think about what would come next.
A masculine human scent caught her attention, clean and clear as the morning dew. It made her shudder with need. She banked hard and dove straight for the street where the man was striding, hurrying with a phone to his ear, chattering with some human business. He was handsome and young, shoulders broad and commanding, even as he was simply dressed in a t-shirt and jeans. But it was the scent of righteousness on him that drew her like a magnet—a pure spirit lived inside, singing with truth. This was a man who worked to help the poor or feed the hungry. Erelah knew not his exact occupation, but it filled his soul with light, which made him unbearably attractive to her kind under normal circumstances. Now that she was fallen, his purity called to her, sparking a ravenous hunger.
She dropped her cloaking just before she landed hard on the sidewalk in front of him.
He jerked back, surprised. His hand with the phone dropped to his side. “What the—”
She didn’t let him finish, just rushed forward and grabbed hold of him, wrapping him in her cloaking magic and black wings and lifting him from the street. He dropped his phone and latched onto her, a reflexive fear at their sudden height, so she flew fast to the nearby rooftop where she could vent her Lust with him. Having his fully-clothed body pressed up against her nearly naked one—her toga was still charred and shredded from her time in the queen’s cage—was already driving her insane with need. But when she landed and released him, the man stumbled backward, eyes wide, hands held fearfully in front of him, as if he could ward her off that way.
The Lust coiled tight in her belly, frustrated in its desire to have him. Although, she honestly had no idea how to proceed. She’d seen a few humans coupling, and she understood the rough mechanics, but that kiss with Leksander… that was nothing she’d ever imagined. She had a craving desire for this man’s touch, but with him quailing before her, she had hardly an idea how that would happen. A kiss? More of those touches that Leksander lavished upon her? Just thinking of it made her skin heat.
“What are you?” the man asked, his voice shaking.
“I am shadow.” Her voice was hoarse, the words bitter ash. And they didn’t draw the man any closer. But his eyes were raking her body. She was nearly naked, and perhaps being bared to his sight spoke for itself. It seemed to be having an effect—at least, the man wasn’t running from her. She held her arms out, beckoning him. “I am your angel, your guardian.” Lies. She marveled at how easily they dripped from her tongue.
“You’re my guardian angel?” Skepticism tinged his words, but his gaze became more bold, lingering on her breasts, which were mostly exposed, her nipples taut against the last shreds of fabric.
“Yes. I’ll protect you. Guard you. I live to give you what you need.” She let some of her own need leak into her voice, then she stepped forward. When he didn’t back away, she took another.
“What I need?” But he had straightened up from his frightened crouch. “What do I need?” He licked his lips, and his gaze strayed to her breasts again.
She stepped even closer, only a few feet from him now. His righteousness was like an elixir so sweet she could almost taste it.
His eyes grew wider as she approached, so she slowed. “Your wings are…” He trailed off.
She knew what they were. Obsidian black. Tarnished with Sin. She must appear a demon to him. “Not all angels are of the light. But we still serve humanity. Just as you do. I know of your work for others. Of your righteousness.” Her voice was dropping to a whisper as she drew closer. “I can taste it on you.”
“Taste it?” His breath was becoming labored, but he wasn’t shrinking away from her. In fact, his gaze was transfixed on her body.
“I’ve watched you.” The lies. So effortless. “I’ve desired you from afar. And I can no longer keep away.”
His eyes grew more round, his gaze finally flicking up to her face. “I… I don’t understand…”
“Shh…” She pressed a finger to his lips. A flash of disappointment coursed through her. There was no surge of magic between them, not like with Leksander. No jolt of wild-tinged pleasure. It was still thrilling to be this close, to be touching a human in this way, but there was no comparison to the dragon prince. “Do you desire me?” she whispered, her body easing up to his.
“I…” He swallowed. “You’re so beautiful, and—”
She cut him off by reaching for his hand. “Do you desire this?” She lifted his hand to her breast. She gasped at the contact—it wasn’t magically charged, yet it still surged heat between her legs.
He let out a shuddering breath.
Her need ramped up with that sound. She slipped a hand to his cheek and drew him closer, her body pressing against his again. His hand shifted and clutched at her breast. A groan welled up inside her. “Slake this need inside me,” she whispered hoarsely then crashed her lips to his.
He gasped against her lips, then suddenly he was grappling her and kissing her and pressing her against him. Her wings flexed back, and she clung to him, pressing the length of her body to his. He groaned, and his tongue pressed its way into her mouth, seeking and claiming and tasting. The need inside her thrummed and rose. She clutched at his clothes, ripping the thin material from his body, just as she had with Leksander. This man was young and strong and full of a masculine scent that seemed to fill every crevice of her body. He was no dragon prince—he had no magical touch, no musky scent of wild fae blood and dragon magic. But he was human. Deliciously human. Belovedly human. A child of God, the kind angels and angelings alike lived to serve. And she was certain by the way he was kneading her breast and panting eagerly into her mouth and gripping her bottom to pull her against his erect penis, still sheathed in his denim pants… she could serve this man. She would perform any act, deny no request, bring pleasure to his body in every way he could imagine. And the ache between her legs would be soothed by the deliverance of that pleasure. Her need throbbed like a pulse there, calling for his touch.
As if he knew her thoughts, he raked his hand down her body and slipped it between her legs. She gasped at the surge of pleasure that shocked through her system, as if he’d ignited an electrical circuit inside her. He moaned and shoved the tatters of her toga aside, fingers digging into her bared flesh with a new urgency, a new aggression… and that brightness within him, the one that drew her to him like a moth to the light… was dimming.
It shuddered a realization through her body: her Sin was contagious.
She yanked back, out of his clutches.
He lurched forward and almost fell. But there was no slaking her need with this one. She would not pollute another with her Sin. Not Leksander. Not this good and righteous human.
“No.” It came out harsh and tinged with angelsong, her frustrated need and anger and fear of what she could do, all wrapped into one word.
The man cringed with the power of it, chest still heaving. “But I thought…”
And of course he did. Just as Leksander was beguiled by her lack of restraint, her inability to resist her Sin of Lust.
“I am sorry.” Then she flexed her wings and leaped straight into the air, fleeing the rich temptation of this precious human’s body, leaving him gawking on the rooftop. Her need still pulsed inside her, and as she skimmed the rooftops of the city, the scent of one human after another assaulted her. She couldn’t stay here—the need would overcome her.
She swooped straight up, washing away the temptation with fresh air, then banked away from the city’s downtown towers and headed north.
Where could she go? Not back to the angel realm. Technically, she could still enter the Dominions, but the angelkind there would rightly slay her. And if she were seeking her end, she wouldn’t do it there. Forcing her cohort to take her down? Or Markos himself? It would be fitting for her, but painful for them. No, if she wanted to die, she could simply go to the fae. Either Court would happily slay an angeling, and it might even be a fittingly torturous Penance, as the Queen of the Summer Court demonstrated so readily. But Leksander might come for her, as he had before, and she couldn’t risk that. No, she would have to remain in the mortal realm, but somewhere safe from the temptation of humans. So she flew north until the city gave way to scattered highways and then forest and mountains. A cold and distant peak from which she could look down at the faraway towers of humanity seemed right, so she landed there, on a ledge that was barely a rocky lip set against the wall of granite. She huddled on the shelf, crouched, with her arms clasped around her bent legs. The cold hardly affected her with the thrumming heat of her body, alive with angel power and dragon blood and a turbulent trace of fae.
Her black wings folded around her, blocking the wind.
Wings of Sin. She was like the shadow angel who attacked her in that alley in Seattle. Was that fallen angel drawn to her righteousness, as she had been to the man’s just now? That black-winged angel hadn’t been slaking his Sin of Lust with her… for him, it had been the Sin of Wrath, a pure anger driving him to attack her with his obsidian blade. Erelah had lost her blade to the queen, but if she had it, she was certain it would have turned inky black just as her wings had when she fell.
Had that shadow angel just happened upon her? Where did he live? Where did the shadow angels go once they fell? Suddenly, it seemed strange that she didn’t know the answer to these things. The fallen were just gone, banished from the sight of the righteous. She hadn’t thought about where they went. She’d heard legend of their deaths—often self-inflicted, rushing off to the fae in a blaze of glory, taking out some of those infernal creatures before being slain. She understood that choice—it was a warrior’s impulse. If your life is already forfeit, perhaps it could yet be worth something by being spent in such a way. Or perhaps it was just the ancient feud calling to them, inflamed by the Sin of Wrath or perhaps Envy, given the fae could live immortal lives rife with Sin and not suffer for it. Not as angelkind did, blessed and cursed with the driving need for righteousness literally filling their blood. There weren’t many things that could end an angeling’s life, but fae magic was one.
Should that be her fate?
She had no one to ask. Not Markos or Tajael. Certainly not Leksander. Her true friends were few to begin with, but now she was completely alone. The wind whistled across the tops of her wings, ruffling the inky feathers. There must be others like her. There must be shadow angels lurking in the human realm. But where? And would they welcome her among them, fallen among fallen?
Angels of light lived together in harmony, training and working for humanity. But shadow angels? The idea brought forth an image of a bloodbath, a brutal game of dominance as the Sin of Pride took hold. Or maybe there would be an orgy of Sin, a venting of their Lust with one another. She’d heard tell that shadow angels could touch one another in a way that angels of the light could not—that fallen angels and angelings engaged in sexual acts of every kind, lost in their Sin. The other Sins could consume them just as easily. The Sin of Envy could lead to Wrath, again bringing bloodshed among them as they took each other with their dark blades. Gluttony, Greed, and Sloth would simply make them unpleasant, soiling the gift of their angel nature, and for the angelings, their human half. Erelah supposed those Sins were the least among them, although they were no less deadly for angelkind.
She should not even consider seeking such a lot.
And yet… what else was there for her?
Then a thought struck her so hard it nearly knocked her from her perch. Her father was shadow. Of course. Not that she knew any more than his name—Razael, whispered only in the halls as each angeling speculated on the one who made them. It was rumored that he was a powerful angel of light before he fell and made her. Often angelings weren’t the direct product of a Fall—after all, shadow angels had no compunction against Lusting with humans. Had she not almost committed the act herself? Most angelings were born of shadow, yet still innocent as any human child… and the angels still rescued them, hoping to keep them in the light. She’d heard the rumors that she was born of light, that her conception directly brought her father’s Fall, but she’d never considered seeking him out. Yet… of all the fallen, perhaps he would want to kill her the least. After all, he had once loved her mother enough to take the monstrous risk of creating a child with her. He must have some residual soft feelings, some that might spare him from taking Erelah’s life on sight.
And maybe, just maybe, he could tell her what she should do.
If he even lived.
It was a glimmer—the tiniest glimmer—of hope. But she was no fool. If she sought out shadow angels, she must be prepared to face them.
And for that, she would need a blade.
Erelah arose from her crouch, spreading her wings and holding her hands in front of her. She could form a blade from her magic, but it wouldn’t have the power of her other, angel-blessed blade. However, it mattered not. Angel blade was angel blade. It was the weapon of her kind, even if it varied in strength by those who wrought it. She focused her thoughts and began the ancient forging song, a soaring triumph of music that shook the snow from the granite behind her. As she sang and summoned and worked her hands in the motions which would call the blade into being, she watched… and waited…
And was not surprised when it glittered as black as the moonless night.