Erelah rested until sunrise.
Not that angelings often needed rest—she could go days without sleep thanks to her angel nature—but the last twenty-four hours had been, well, fraught with magic-draining events. And the end of everything she held dear. Her status as an angel of light. Her friendship with Leksander. Her vow. Plus she’d been attacked and captured and tortured by fae. The healing at Leksander’s hands renewed her, but the light-pink new skin still branded her body, and his magic blood still warred with hers. Then there was the Fall itself and the aftermath. Finally, creating a black-magic blade suitable to her new shadow status had drained her more than she had expected. It had been so long since she created her own angel blade… back when she left Markos’s Dominion to do her walkabout… back when she met Leksander…
Erelah shook her head and rubbed her eyes fully awake. She couldn’t dwell on flittering dreams of long ago. Or that she’d wronged a man who was nothing but good and decent… and who loved her. She shook that off because she couldn’t afford such thoughts. She was shadow now. She hadn’t truly slept, not deeply, because who knew what dangers were headed her way, but it was enough to renew her. And she’d need her energy and her wits in this new world… and to seek her father.
An angel of shadow.
Erelah rose up from her perch on the rocky ledge, dusted her bare legs, and checked the sheathing of her blade. Her wings flexed behind her, glistening black in the early morning sun, strong and capable, but her clothes were a mess. Not only were they bloody tatters, unpresentable even without the new modesty she’d acquired since realizing the potency of exposed skin—for those fallen from their Chastity vows or, like Leksander, those who never made such a vow—but the remnants of her toga were white. The color of the light, not shadow. She magicked them away and replaced them with a skintight training outfit like she wore for sparring. Only she made this one the color of soot. It covered her torso in tightly-wrapped fabric, leaving her arms and legs bare for maximum mobility. But too much exposed skin remained, so she magicked fingerless gloves from her wrists to her elbows and leggings from her ankles up to mid-thigh, where her blade was strapped. Her sheath was conspicuously white, so she turned it flat black to match the rest. Her feet and hands were bare, but all that could be reasonably covered had been, while still retaining the ability to move and fight.
She felt sure she would have need for that.
If she misjudged all this, and her father wished her dead, no amount of warrior skills would save her. He was pure angel with powers far stronger than hers. She’d seen Markos’s power up close, and other angels in other Dominions, but a true angel gone shadow? Unleashed from the restraint the angels of the light practiced as part of their constant pursuit and perfection of the Virtues? She could only imagine.
She would know soon enough.
She’d already sensed the dark energy of the shadow world as she formed her blade. It was a world that truly lived in shadow, unfelt by her in the world of light and Virtue. There, the demons and their essences blared out to her with their concentrated flavors of Sin, but the shadow angels were more subtle, more hidden. Or perhaps she’d never gone looking before. But as she fashioned her blade, she could feel its ripples extending out into magical space, like a constant pinging of sonar underwater. She was no doubt drawing interest with that, which was why she hurried to finish and then quell that constant drawing upon the world of dark magical energy surrounding her.
And then she had needed rest, but now she was ready.
So she unsheathed her blade and held it high above her with both hands. Closing her eyes, she drew energy into it, making it a beacon in the shadow world. In the world of light, her blade was unique to her, and its signature call was unique. All would know her by it, sense her in whatever realm they may be. She counted on it working the same with dark magic. The only question was whether her father would answer the summons… or if a horde of shadow angelings would descend upon her.
She didn’t have to wait long.
The air boomed above her, and when she popped open her eyes, a dark flash of wings dove toward her. She barely had time to leap off the ledge, but it made no matter because the feathered fury moved faster than she ever could. Iron fists grabbed hold of her wrists, rendering her blade immobile. In an instant, her face was buried in black feathers, wings wrapping tight around her. Then she was wrenched out of the air above the granite mountain ledge, the familiar twist of space and time… they were dimension traveling.
Just as fast, she was dropped, landing hard and rolling on a surface as smooth as glass and dark as midnight. Erelah scrabbled along the floor, gaining her footing and holding her blade aloft—somehow she’d kept hold of it—but when she whirled around to face her kidnapper, any thought of attack melted away.
The size and power of this angel…
He was far taller and broader than any mortal man, the clear mark of an angel putting on no human pretense, but the power humming the air left no doubt. They were in a black cavern of glass, not unlike the training room in Markos’s Dominion, only this one had cool, smoky crystal-like material for the floors and jagged, slanted walls, instead of the glowing, translucent material of the palace of light she lived in. Used to live in.
The angel before her was beautiful like they all were. Impossibly blue eyes. Carved, masculine cheeks. Jet black hair that fell long and tucked behind his ears. His black wings spanned most of the room, which was narrow but tall, reaching several stories. His chest was marked with ink, in symbols she didn’t recognize, which was odd, given that angels forbade such defilement of the body. But that was a rule for angelings of the light, and clearly, those rules didn’t hold here.
He might not be her father—she supposed any angel could have sensed her blade and come to snatch her away—but he was just standing and staring at her, his face alive in ways she’d never seen on an angel. They were always inscrutable and aloof, wise and powerful beyond measure. This one was either about to kill her or… did angels even possess the ability to cry?
“Are you my…” Erelah struggled to say the word. For some reason, it was sticking in her throat.
“You look just like her.” He frowned, but it was an expression made of pain, not anger.
At least, she hoped that expression wasn’t one which would smite her. “Like who?”
“Your mother.”
All the air went out of Erelah’s chest, unbidden, like it was escaping. Her head buzzed for a moment. She looked like her mother. Of course, she did—angels did not possess DNA. They were magic and spirit and infused their children with power, but the fleshly component? The earthly manifestation? That was purely from their human half. Yet, in the nearly hundred years of her existence, she’d never given it a thought.
She had a sudden need for a mirror so she could see what this angel—her father, Razael—saw in her mother when he fell hopelessly, tragically in love with her.
If that was how it happened.
She knew what her mother saw, assuming this manifestation was the same as the one he wore when he fell. Beautiful and powerful and striking. He was truly immortal, as all the angels were, but he could pass for a man in his twenties, at the height of his masculine appeal. Except for the wings and the size and that he vibrated the air with his magical power.
“What do they call you?” he asked.
“What?” Erelah asked in return, dazed. What did he mean by that?
“Your name.” It was a gentle command, but a command nonetheless.
“Erelah,” she said without hesitation, a reflex from being under Markos’s command for so long. And besides, there was no point in lying to an angel. The truth would come out eventually. Although, perhaps the rules about that were different here.
“Angel in the ancient tongue. I knew they would name you well.” He glanced at the blade still clutched in her hand, hovering in the air by her head.
She flushed hot with embarrassment and sheathed it. She’d sought him out, but at that moment, she couldn’t remember why that was a good idea. “I didn’t choose my name.”
“No, I would imagine not.” He was looking over her black-covered body. His clothes were also dark as midnight but comprised a standard angel toga that bared most of his chest, showing those inky markings. “We had another name for you, Erelah.”
Her heart lurched. “We?”
“Your mother and I. We discussed it. Before.”
Before. An irrepressible need to flee possessed her. Whatever this was—whatever he meant to tell her, whatever lesson it was, for the angels were always about lessons—she didn’t want to learn it. Her legs twitched, and her hand braced against the sheathed blade at her side. She couldn’t escape, not if he wished to keep her.
“Your mother was beautiful and brilliant and breathtakingly kind.” That torment of emotions crossed his face again. “I didn’t expect to Fall. Not in love with her. Not in loving her. My Sin was Pride as much as anything else.” His voice was hushed, almost lost in the hum of his power. “You should know the story of your birth.”
She forced her hand away from her blade, not least because it was shaking. “That is in the past. It is unimportant.”
“It is everything.”
She flinched. “I only need… I just…” A grimace took hold of her entire body. “I didn’t expect to Fall, either, and I just…”
“You are under my watch now—you needn’t worry. You will stay here, in my Regiment.”
Those words shouldn’t reassure her—how could she trust any fallen angel?—but somehow they did, even with the prospect of knowing more than she wanted to about the Fall that spawned her existence. She’d spent so many years reviling the angel who created her, striving to rise above the shame of her birth, and all she’d accomplished was to fall herself… and to land in her father’s shadow Dominion. Or, she guessed Regiment, which was just like the Warrior class of the light. Only in shadow, there was nothing righteous about being an avenging angel.
“Were you Warrior class before you fell?” she asked bitterly. “Or does being shadow automatically change your class?” She didn’t know how any of this worked.
“Everyone becomes Warrior in the shadow realm,” he said coolly. “Which is why I’m glad you called me before another Regiment found you.”
She grimaced, but she did call him.
“But yes, I was Warrior class before I fell.” He held out his hand. “Your blade.”
She hesitated, but she was already powerless before him.
“I will strengthen it with a blessing,” he said patiently, hand still extended.
She unsheathed it and handed it over. It glittered black like obsidian—like the walls and the floor and the vibrant power of her father’s wings. He held it between his two clasped hands, briefly closed his eyes… then a pulse of power boomed out from his body. It knocked her back, nearly sending her tumbling to the floor, but she caught herself on a jagged corner of glass protruding from the wall. Her hand came away bloody—the glass had sliced clean through her fingerless gloves. The walls themselves were a hazard in her father’s Regiment. She quickly wiped the blood on her sleeve. Now that she was shadow herself, it was an inconsequential wound which quickly healed, unlike the strike of the shadow angel’s blade before.
A grim reminder that the forces of light were now her enemy.
She straightened and took back the blade her father held out. It hummed with the blessing, the power of it slightly vibrating her hand.
“That will serve you,” he said, nodding to the blade. “With my mark upon it, you are pledged to my Regiment. Any who battle you will be making war with me.”
She sheathed the blade. “Is there much making of war here?”
“Yes.” He gave her a piercing stare, the way angels sometimes did, the kind that felt like they were reading your soul. “You have been touched by fae. I feel their magic both on your skin and in your blood. Is that what occasioned your Fall, my daughter?”
Daughter. The word made her flinch. “No.” She hesitated, but what use was there in keeping it secret? If there were anything an angel could sense, it was Sin. “My Sin was Lust.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You mean love.”
“I… what? No.” Love was not a Sin. What was he talking about?
“You had love of a human,” he said patiently.
“A dragon,” she corrected, knowing that made it worse. “And I… it’s not that I do not love him…” But she sputtered out with that thought. She had told Leksander, again and again, that she could not love him, and she meant it—for she could not love him in the way that he needed. The way that would fulfill the treaty. She could not perform the physical acts of love, the ones bound with Lust, and bear him a child. That was all the more obvious from her Fall. But… did she love him? In a way separate from Lust? And more than the love she bore for, say, Tajael or any of her fellow angelings? Or any of humankind?
She was committed to truth, even now, even in shadow, and there was only one answer to that. Yes. The force of that realization had stunned her into silence.
“I see,” her father said gently.
She looked up from where her gaze had fallen to the floor. There was a Kindness on his face that told her he did see—that he perhaps knew more than she did about this loving of humans, or humankind in Leksander’s case.
“Did you fall because you loved my mother?” It was suddenly important to her to hear that was truth. Because she was beginning to see the depth of what that truly meant.
“Yes,” he said softly. “Love. And Pride. And eventually, Lust. Chastity was always my weakest virtue, you see.” He smiled as her eyes went wide. “Did you think angels had no weaknesses? God crafted us to struggle as much as any human.”
She nodded slowly. There was a powerful truth in that, one that felt like a key unlocking a deep secret inside her. “The Warrior class is strong in righteousness,” she recited, recalling her instruction in her cohort growing up, “but mostly in Diligence and Charity. They are ever-watchful guardians, serving others before any need of their own. But that brings its own passions—the righteous passion of striking against the unjust. It is a double-edged sword, and they are vulnerable to Wrath. It can consume them.” It was the standard text from her studies, but it rang true. She’d often felt she was meant to be Warrior class. If her father were as well…
Razael nodded his agreement. “All that is true… for most in the Warrior class. But I was different. Or at least, I supposed I was. I always struggled with Pride. It wasn’t until I met your mother that I truly struggled with Lust. Both Wrath and Lust are sins of passion, and it wasn’t until my love for your mother roused passions in me that…” He had that tormented look again, and this time, Erelah felt it as a strike against her heart. He had loved her mother. A True Love that was more than just Lust. And the love came first. She didn’t know why that was so important to her when it was so obvious—angels have a great and abiding love for all humans. But now that her father stood before her, now that she knew she was the image of her mother, somehow it mattered greatly that he loved her mother in particular, distinct from the rest. Enough to create a child. Her. For no angeling birth was accidental—each was an intentional act, although usually by those who were already shadow. But her father was of the light, and he meant to create her… and she just now realized the importance of that to her, with the force of something that shakes the earth underneath your feet.
“Why did you make me?” Erelah asked. The words were a whisper.
The torment on her father’s face eased. “Because I loved your mother so greatly, I convinced myself that such a love could overcome anything. Even the Fall.”
“But it didn’t?” Her throat felt thick and tight.
“No.” He held still, how angels can because they’re not human. Their manifestations are just to interact with lesser beings such as herself. But he was waiting for her. Ready to tell her but waiting for her to ask.
She hesitated a long stretch of seconds. Then finally, she said, “I want to know the truth.”
A gentle smile graced his face. “You are indeed your mother’s daughter.”
This inexplicably hurt. Like a hollowness was inside that she’d never known existed, and now that she’d discovered it, all she wanted was to fill it up—with knowledge of her mother, with the truth of her birth, with words from her father, even if they both were shadow angels in a cathedral of black.
“Your name was to be Aurora.” His voice was soft, but it carried in the cavern of black glass in which they stood. “You were going to be a new dawn in both our lives and perhaps in all of angelkind. That was part of my folly. The idea that I could be immune to the Fall that had taken every other shadow angel.”
“You thought you could make an angeling and remain an angel of the light?” she asked eyes wide. Because it was counter to all that she knew and believed about what the Virtues meant. “Why?”
He smiled. “Love. Pride. An extreme desire to have the thing that I wanted most to actually be true? These weaknesses aren’t exclusive to humanity.”
“And my mother… she understood all this? Before you made me?” The idea of this captured her completely. Her mother wasn’t some simple human captivated by a beautiful stranger—she and her father made plans to create her.
“Oh, yes.” Some of the torment crinkled the corners of his eyes again. “Her name was Elizabeth, and she was far more brilliant and full of life than her world, at that time, could understand. Or deserved.”
Erelah nodded. She was nearing a hundred years, which meant her mother had to come from a time that would be unrecognizable today. And through much of humanity’s existence, human women were not given their due.
“Eliza was intended to wed a powerful, cruel man,” her father continued. “He was an important man, a brilliant scientist. I was sent to safeguard him during his work.”
Erelah raised her eyebrows. “Guardian angel duty?” Usually, angelings—not angels—served as Guardians, and even then, only a few angelings from the Protector class. It was unusual for Warrior class angels to be so assigned.
“Yes.” Her father tipped his head, acknowledging the unique nature of it. “Before my Fall, I had a reputation for wisdom. A steady hand in previous battles. A Warrior’s instinct tempered by experience and Virtue. All of which was true and could have served me well, but in fact, left me unprepared for the challenge I faced.”
“The challenge of Guarding a scientist?” She frowned.
“The challenge of not rescuing his fiancé.” Razael drew up to his full height, and Erelah could have sworn his manifestation had grown even more tall. “The man was an important scientist, and humanity needed his work, but he was also barely a man. More of a beast. If he had merely been infected by demon, I would have made short work of it with my blade. But it wasn’t that. This was a choice for evil. And he felt entitled to it, given his position. Entitled to her.”
“But she did not wish it? The marriage?” Erelah was holding her breath.
“No.” A flash of anger crossed his face, a powerful Wrath that made Erelah shudder. “I stood by during their courtship, confining my efforts to safeguarding the man and his progress with his experiments. But in that time… I found myself drawn to Elizabeth’s effortless grace. Her keen mind was a match for his—I think that was why the man was so intent on pursuing her. But where he was coarse, she was Kind. Where he was haughty, she was pure Humility. I’ve seldom seen so many Virtues so deeply embodied in a single human, and never have I spent so much time in their presence.”
“That is when you fell in love?” she asked. And she could see it—an angel trapped in the unrelenting presence of a human filled with Virtue. Her father’s attraction must have been immense, and battling it a constant struggle. This was why angelings were sent on Guardian duty, not angels. It was Erelah’s angel half that was attracted to the beauty of humanity—for true angels, it was even more intense. Then a flash of recognition struck her—she knew exactly that feeling. It was the very bond she felt tugging her back to Leksander’s side, time and again. Drawn by his righteousness. By the beauty of his soul. It had been that way from the very beginning, and it had never ceased. It was why she had to deceive herself about his feelings, for then she would lose him.
Her father nodded. “It was a wonder that falling in love didn’t spell my Fall as an angel. Not yet, at least. My love for her was pure, and yet particular. I felt sure it was exceptional, my feelings for her, even as I held my love for her as a secret close to my chest. I might have continued that way, loving her from afar, chastely and purely, even though I could already feel the distant rumblings of Envy. Still… I might not have interfered at all, had he simply managed to force Elizabeth to marriage through the humans’ complicated mating rituals of the time.”
Erelah nodded. Human mating rituals seemed to constantly change, and she never quite understood them. Then again, she had little need to until recently, when she was trying to convince Leksander to mate. Something obviously ill-fated given he loved her.
“But the man was impatient. And easily offended.” Her father’s voice rose. “He drew her into his study with the intent of forcing himself on her, making her unfit for any but him to marry according to their code.”
Erelah’s face twisted with disgust. She’d seen this particular flavor of evil before and relished smiting it with her blade. “You stopped him.” Her voice had risen in anger.
“I foiled the attack in my guise as a human,” he said, his voice dropping to human levels again. “But I couldn’t continue that protection—and there was no question he would try again—without revealing myself, eventually. And the man’s work needed to continue. The only recourse was to remove her from suitability as a mate, so he would be forced to turn his attentions elsewhere.”
“Remove her?” Erelah frowned.
“And that was where Pride went before my Fall.” His smile was bittersweet. “I felt sure that my love for her was so pure that we could defy all law of angelkind and history and actually produce an angeling while I remained in the light. I confessed my love for her and revealed all that I am. If she had been any lesser of a woman, it might have frightened her off. The fact that she had secretly loved me as well, and now loved me all the more as my true nature was revealed, convinced me that our love could transcend all things. My plan was to allow our love to form a child and then reveal our love to her intended husband. Our affair and the child would tarnish her in the man’s eyes, and we would both be banished from his sight. He would turn to another woman, one who might be willing to marry a man of his stature, and he would continue his work along the way. I would be relieved of my Guardian duty. Then I could whisk Elizabeth away, back to my Dominion…”
“But it didn’t work.” Erelah found herself held hostage by this story—how would her life have been different if she had been raised by an angel father and a human mother in a Dominion of light? It was foreign to everything she had ever known, but she instantly wished for it. A mother who loved her. An angel who wasn’t a commander but a father. It was another hollowness she discovered inside, one she hadn’t even known existed. This was the love that human children knew. The kind they chased after and longed for in forming their own families. The True Love that Leksander felt for her. He said she could never understand it… but he was wrong. She knew it by the shape of the hole that was inside her.
Her father’s voice turned rough. “I was certain my love was pure enough to keep from turning shadow. But I was wrong. My passion for her was too strong. Before I even laid a hand on her, I was bursting with love. For her. For the gift of her True Love. For this child we would make together.” He stopped, and the soft look he gave Erelah made her heart feel as if it would burst. For how could it contain all this feeling? Then the hum around him grew stronger, and he flexed his wings. The span of them grew until a feather tip brushed each opposing wall. “I was overcome by the passions that stirred in me. I lay with her, and we formed our child—you, my beloved Aurora—but I was lost the moment the act was complete.”
Beloved. He had called her—
He kept going. “Elizabeth had become the world to me. I wished only to lay with her, again and again, living in the passionate love that we had made. The intensity of that was too strong… and you know, my angeling daughter, the power of an angel. Of light. Or shadow.”
She nodded, wide-eyed. If he couldn’t control himself, he wasn’t safe. Even an angeling would be a threat to a human if not properly leashed in their power. But an angel? The simplest flicker, the smallest loss of control, and he could destroy her without meaning to.
“I had turned shadow.” The hollowness of his voice echoed the emptiness inside Erelah. “It was done. Even if I had somehow not been blackened by the turn, I could not have kept her. Or you. I was a danger to you both.”
“So you came here.”
“After a long Penance… yes.” He gave her a pained smile. “If there had been any way for me to stay, I would have. To abandon you… the necessity of that drove me further into the dark. But now you’ve come to me, Erelah, my angeling daughter, and I feel as if you’re a blessing I do not deserve, but which I shall selfishly keep nonetheless.”
She nodded, a churning of emotions roiling her stomach. Her mother had loved her before she was made. Her father as well… and he still lived. She was beloved. Somehow, it lifted the shame of her birth, the one she’d carried and tried to atone for all of her life. And yet… she and her father both were yet banished to the shadows. “Did you ever try to return to the light?”
He scowled. “You cannot return, Erelah. You should know that.”
She dropped her gaze. “Then I shall pledge my obedience to your Regiment in exchange for protection.” Beloved. The word was filling some of the emptiness inside.
“I hope…” He paused, so she looked up. “I hope you will allow me the honor of protecting a daughter I created out of True Love. No matter my Fall, no matter my inability to control my Sin, keeping you safe, Erelah, is one of the few things of the light I might still be able to do.”
Wanted. She was wanted and beloved. Maybe she would never have her redemption as an angeling of the light. Maybe she would never return to Leksander, never tell him she loved him even if she couldn’t lay with him in a physical way. But she could serve as her father’s redemption, as meager as that might be here in the realm of shadow. She could fight by his side against the darker forces here, whatever they might be. She could gain back a small piece of a life she hadn’t even known she’d lost.
It might not be salvation… but it was filling the emptiness inside her, even so.