CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Aria winced, gasping as pain speared through her chest and rushed down her arm, robbing her of the small amount of air she managed to get into her lungs. She closed her eyes, pain etched on her face. She gripped the bed covers as sweat beaded on her forehead. Her blood felt like it was on fire, scorching her nerve endings. The tingling numbness was slowly turning into a burning agony, spreading up her extremities.
The man that had been in here, he called himself Apollo, as in the god Apollo. He had tried to heal her, and although he had eased her breathing some, he had made her blood boil even hotter every time his healing light had sunk into her skin. The bleeding had stopped so she was not about to bleed out any time soon, but now she was going to die of something else, and she feared it was going to be horribly painful.
Tears burned her gold eyes and she wished her mother was here with her. She had seen what pain looked like when someone died—as their body turned on them. Her mother had been so alive, loving everything about the world, loving that man who had spent one night with her, giving her a child and leaving her. She had loved him until the day she died, even as the cancer ravaged her body and turned every cell into an assassin. By the end, Aria didn’t know who she hated more, her mother for her blind devotion to a man she met once, or that man, who right now was standing outside her door.
She could see his shadow. She knew it was him. She always knew it was him. She could feel him against her back, as if she, too, had wings like him. She let out a heated breath and ran her hand over her forehead, licking her chapped lips.
“For god’s sake, don’t just fucking stand out there like a lemon—either go get me a glass of water or leave, I don’t care!” Her throat screamed at the use, and no doubt Dr. Apollo would have scolded her for shouting.
Hell, she knew the look in his eyes when he realized there was nothing he could do for her. She had seen that look in the eyes of doctors all throughout her mother’s chemo treatments. Whatever was happening to her was killing her—it was no normal illness, and being stabbed by a pig-ugly little thing had been the catalyst for whatever was happening to her now. She knew she didn’t have long.
Putting her hand to the barely closed wound, she rolled to her side, her vision blurring. Dizziness rushed over her, and for a second she felt like she was going to fall from the bed. Her stomach rolled and a surge of bile rose. Then a cool hand pressed to her forehead and she was eased to her back again. Letting out a soft moan of appreciation at the cold against the fever rushing through her blood, she did not fight when she felt herself being held in strong arms.
“Drink, Aria.” Such a nice voice, she thought. She floated for a while, sipping the blissfully cold water through a straw placed against her sore lips. Chips of ice were rubbed against her lips until she finally felt like she could open her eyes and not vomit.
As her vision cleared she looked up into a pair of concerned eyes that matched her own. No amount of calming could wash away the years of anger against this man. She made a move to get off him, but the moment she tried her stomach rolled again.
“I know your feelings toward me, Aria, and I can’t blame you, but please. Just lie still for now. At least until you sleep, then I will not disturb you again.” Damn him for sounding so reasonable.
“I don’t know why you care. You never gave a shit before.” He lifted the glass toward her and she snatched it from him, not wanting his help with anything.
“You are my daughter.” God, he said that as if it would wipe away the last thirty years of him not being in her life, or the life of her dying mother.
“You don’t have a daughter. Don’t pretend like it suddenly has meaning, Gabriel.” Wincing, she held her chest and turned her head away from him. She didn’t want this, didn’t want him trying to fix the problems in their non-relationship. It was easier to just let things lie as they were. That way she would not be disappointed with him, or with herself.
“Aria, you don’t understand. It was not that easy. What I did, what your mother and I did… your birth was not only against the rules, it was against the gods. Humans and my kind were never meant to breed.”
“Breed. Don’t you make it sound so damn roman—” Erupting into a bout of coughing, she allowed him to wrap his arms around her, holding her still so she did not jar her wound. The glass of water went flying but Gabriel managed to save the ice chips at least.
Slowly, her breathing came under control and she settled back against him. He tentatively offered her an ice chip, and reluctantly she took it into her mouth and sucked on it until her throat stopped screaming at her.
“I cared for your mother. As much as one like myself could. She knew the risks of having you, as did I, but she insisted. Nephilim are unpredictable beings, you know this. Your mother made sure you knew what you were. We agreed when you were young it would be best if I stayed away. For your protection, Aria.” He was not going to lie to her, not now, not when death haunted her shadow.
“My protection?” She made a move to try and face him, and gave up when her body refused to obey her.
“From Michael. Even before this Pandora’s Box quest, he preached purity of our race. If he found out about you, he would have purged you from the world and made me watch, before making an example of me.”
“So you were protecting yourself?” Her tone held more than a little accusation. It was getting hard to breathe, the corners of her vision were starting to fuzz, but this was too important to black out now.
“No! I don’t care what happens to me. I care about the things he would have done to you. You did not develop the Nephilim traits, for that I am eternally grateful. Had you grown wings, he would have taken them from you. The pain—such a pain you can never understand—I am pleased you never will.”
Aria lay in silence listening to him. She tried to remember if she had ever seen him with her mother before. They must have seen one another when she was a child. If they made a choice for him to leave he must have spent time with her. How could he have left her? The pain bloomed in her chest as if fresh, and tears rolled from her eyes into her hair line. She felt his fingers brushing over her temples, but she couldn’t move her head to stop him.
She felt like she was floating now, in this place where the fever burned. Something came to her, just a frame of memory, or maybe it was false memory. She could see her mother standing with someone, back when she was small. Her mother was young, her blond hair catching in the wind, a long flowing summer dress floating in the breeze, the man with her dressed in a suit.
He looked important. He was speaking with her mother, and they were looking at her. The man looked like a nice man but he didn’t smile much. He looked confused when he saw her running toward them. He knelt before her and stroked her raven black hair, and suddenly looked so sad. Then he vanished, just poof, gone from in front of her. When she asked her mother what happened to the man with the sad gold eyes, her mother would say, “What man?” Was that a real memory? Or fake?
“You left me.” Her voice sounded so far away to her.
Some part of her brain was trying to remind her she was dying right now, but somehow it didn’t matter. Her chest felt heavy and her body hot. Cool hands brushed over her forehead and he smelled nice, familiar. Her father was here holding her. She was safe.
“Yes, I did, Aria. I know you won’t forgive me for that. I do not ask for it. I ask that you don’t turn me away now. Let me stay with you.”
“Why? Where are we going?” Were they going somewhere? She was so tired. It was okay to sleep, right?
“Nowhere, Aria, we’re staying right here.” Why did he sound like he was about to cry?
“When I wake up will you be gone again?” She forced her eyes to open so she could look up into his eyes and frowned. He was crying. Silent tears left his eyes. She wanted to reach up and touch them but her arms wouldn’t move.
“No, Aria, I won’t leave you again. I promise.”
“That’s good. I like having you around.” Just a quick nap, she thought, closing her eyes. She could feel the arm holding her shaking but her eyes were already closed. The arm tightened and something warm dropped onto her cheek. “I think I like having a dad.”
Gabriel shook all over, his hand buried in her hair the whole time. Her limp body lay against his as he rocked her gently back and forth. He had never felt like this before; emotions, though not entirely foreign to him, were usually muted. But this was crippling. His heart was being torn apart. How could he feel so much for a child he barely knew? His voice was stuck in his throat. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t even roar out his pain. He felt paralyzed by this sorrow that saturated his body. How did mortals deal with this? His brain would not function past the last few moments of ‘she’s gone’.
The silence in the room was deafening; all he could hear was his own low sobbing, and that was more than he could take. He lifted a hand to his cheek. Pulling it back he looked at the damp on his fingertips from tears he had never experienced before. He licked his lips, tasting the salt on his tongue. Crying. He had never cried in all his thousands of years on this earth.
His eyes moved down to her face, and gently he reached out, brushing a strand of her raven hair from her still damp forehead. At least she looked like she slept now, the pain gone from her face. But she still burned, no doubt from the fever that had ravaged her body only moments before. Leaning down he pressed his forehead to hers, a fresh wash of pain rolling over him. Had he been showing his wings they would have been trembling with it.
Pressing his lips to her eyes, one, then the other, he spoke a small prayer over her before gently sliding himself from under her back, and arranging her body so she lay at peace upon the bed. He could not bear to cover her face as mortals did. He left her uncovered and looked down upon his only child. The irony was not lost on him that she looked more angelic now then any angel ever created in all time.
He turned to the door and left silently, closing it behind him. The room outside was empty but for Isabelle, the Seer of Empathy. Her eyes were red from tears of her own she cried for him. After all the pain he had caused these people, she still had the grace to cry because he was in pain.
He tried to take a step forward but he had lost his strength—the big bad Archangel Gabriel, once the man who fought alongside gods against the Titans and won, had no strength left. His knees gave way and he fell toward the ground, resigned to what had happened and to his future before him. Michael would find him and punish him, and he would die. He would not fight him. Maybe if the gods were kind he would see Aria in the next life.
Warm arms wrapped around him and Isabelle went down with him as he collapsed to the floor. How the small female managed to hold his weight he never guessed, but she held him anyway, preventing him from hitting the floor. Her touch was like a dam breaking. The flood of emotion ripped from him, and he gripped her back, roaring into the air for all the universe to hear his pain. She just held him the whole time, even when his wings ripped from his shirt and his voice became hoarse with his cry. She held him, hushing him, stroking his back.