I’ve been caged.
The dark bars hold me—made of magic, so I cannot twist through time and space to win my freedom—but I’m almost glad for it. My domed cage is suspended in a vast dark cavern of the blackest crystal magic, and all around me swarm the shadow angelings who captured me, plus a hundred more. They fight and bicker, but this is not the innocent quarreling of my cohort—these are fights with blades and ill intent. I’ve already seen one angeling torn to literal pieces. Part of his wing still lays on a small ledge of the crystal cavern below my cage, bloody and broken. The rest of him is gone, plummeting to the dark depths.
Something bangs into my cage. The jolt sends me crashing against the magic of the bars, which flashes a scorch of pain across my back. I bounce off and land on the floor of the cage on my hands and knees. The magic shock has left my assailant cringing in pain as well and set the cage swinging. This burn is just the latest—I’ve got a dozen others from the cage, inky stripes across my hands and chest and back. Those add to the shadow blade strikes and general beating I acquired during capture. All of it, if they were wounds in the training room or even the Penance room, would easily and quickly heal. But because everything here is shadow, the foul darkness of the magic seeps into me and stays. It’s a poison that’s slowly working its way toward my heart. I can battle it—and so far, my wings remain white, so I’m still in the light—but it weakens me in a way that I can scarce combat. And it’s worse with each strike.
I stay down, unsure if my attacker is finished—he still hovers in the air next to the long arc of my cage’s swing.
“Your time is coming, bastard of the light,” he hisses as I pass. His teeth are filed to points. He could pass for demon, although I know he’s only shadow.
“You are such an idiot,” says the female angeling next to him. She’s the one who captured me.
The demon-like angeling scoffs at the burn marks across his chest, his souvenir from body-slamming my cage. “When Elyon returns and roasts him, I will have the first bite.”
“In your dreams, Cephas,” she retorts. In the hour I’ve been here, I’ve learned her name is Terah. She conjured my cage, and she’s keeping watch over me. Less for my possible escape, I think, than to keep the others from destroying me before whatever fate she has planned. Apparently, we are waiting for this Elyon to return. I know not who that is.
Cephas snorts. “And you dream of fucking him.”
“As if you don’t.” Terah smirks. “But Elyon promised me his virginity. Don’t worry, Cephas. I’ll leave a little innocence for you to besmirch when I’m done.”
Cephas snarls in disgust—I’m unsure if it’s because he finds the idea of Lustful contact with me disgusting or if he’s angry he won’t have the privilege of defiling me first. But he doesn’t answer Terah, just rises out of sight, joining the hordes in constant circulation around the cavern.
My cage is still swinging, so Terah pulses magic to slow it to a standstill.
I rise up from the floor. “I think I would prefer the roasting.”
She laughs, and it’s surprisingly light. “Yes, I imagine so, light angel.” She remains close by, hovering as she runs her gaze over my body, then flicking a glance around to make sure no one else is breaking from the flock to attack. Another melee is forming near a platform on the far wall, and that attracts the attention of many. Her focus returns to me, and she bites her lip in a way that could be used to illustrate Lust for generations to come. “Holy magic, you’re yummy. I’d forgotten how the light brightens everything up.”
I frown because I don’t entirely understand her meaning, and it feels like being even more dangerouysly blind than I already am. This entire shadow realm defies my understanding. There is brutality unleashed here. Sin is rampant. Wrath is an intoxicant that seems to fill the air. I recognize these things, but they’re so foreign to my being that I’m forced to feel my way through each moment, grasping for some understanding. Some possibility of escape.
I fear there is none.
I struggle to keep that fear off my face, but I must be failing because Terah’s expression seems affected by it. The surprise is that her smirk softens rather than grows sharp. “I know you don’t understand any of this yet, but trust me, hot boy of the light. If you’re going to turn shadow, Lust is the way to go.”
“Is that how you Fell?” I can too easily see it.
She laughs again. “I was born Fallen, sweet thing.”
“None are born in shadow,” I say, reflexively. I’m not sure why I’m bothering to argue with an angeling in shadow herself. She is turned, and once turned, there is no coming back to the light. Every lesson in the Dominion reflects that Truth.
Her smile fades away. “Elyon ordered my formation and chose me as his right hand. I may have been light at the moment of birth, but he was there to take me into his dark embrace.”
Her words send a chill through me, even worse than all that’s befallen so far. The corruption of a child… “Who is this Elyon? And how might I anger him so that he’ll bring about my swift death?”
She grinned again. “Oh, honey, you’re not getting out of any of this. Not that way, at least.”
I frown again because I can’t parse her meaning. The way she licks her lips as she looks over my body speaks to Lust. But then the tension in her body, the tight hold of her shoulders, signals a deep fear. Yet her words hint there might be a way out. Or perhaps she means directly what she says—that my death will not be simple or swift.
I decide to take her at her word. “If there’s no escape, then there’s no harm. Just tell me what I face here.”
Her fierce grin softens again, unexpectedly. “Elyon is a fallen angel. He is ancient and powerful. Whatever he decides for you, that’s your fate. So you’re better off going with the hurricane than trying to fight it, boy of the light.”
I frown again. Her words feel like Truth, something I don’t expect from someone in shadow. Although I suppose it’s not required that they lie all the time. “And what does the hurricane want with me?”
Her smile starts small and grows. It’s almost… innocent? No, that’s not the right word. As I struggle for understanding, she says, “That’s the interesting part, actually.” Her smile dims a little. “What name did the angels of light give you?”
I draw back from the edge of the cage. I can’t think of any harm in telling her, but it still feels… dangerous. It’s the first thing she’s asked of me, rather than demanded or simply taken. I decide to risk it. Perhaps I can win her favor, and in winning her favor, find escape. “Tajael.”
She nods. “Tajael.” She says my name like she’s tasting it. “I like it. Elyon didn’t call you that, of course. To him, you were Rijel’s lost boy.”
I reflexively lean forward. “Rijel?”
“Your angeling father?” Terah raises her eyebrows, but it’s clear she knows this is news to me. “One of Elyon’s Magis—the inner circle, his most loyal and powerful angelings. The only ones he trusts outside his own children. Rijel seduced your human mother, Judith. Had his way with her. Got her with child. You definitely look like her, though, not him.”
I just blink, taking this in. My mother, a human, seduced by a shadow angeling. I knew that was Truth, but somehow hearing their names makes it more real. And if this angeling knows of them… I step up, stopping just short of the cage bars. “My mother—Judith—is she still alive?”
One of Terah’s eyelids twitches, then she schools her face into a cool expression. “The mothers never live.”
“Never?” That didn’t make sense. An angeling was magically powerful, but bearing one shouldn’t be—
“Elyon destroys them.”
I reel back as if the words are a physical blow. “Why would he…” I cannot make sense of it, not through the horror and shock and no small amount of pain for a woman I never knew. But she gave me life. Even if it was in Lust with a shadow angeling, I was her child—she bore me, grew me within her body, then gave me my first breath. And she was human. What threat could she have posed? But I know the answer before Terah speaks it.
“He loathes the humans,” she says. “God loves them more than angels, and you fools in the light think you should protect them.” She shook her head. “Her purpose was served when she bore you. Rijel paid the price for losing you, especially to the forces of light. I tried to warn Elyon, but he couldn’t see it—Rijel was an idiot through and through. He thought he could play around in the human world, have his fun, and not lose you after you were born.”
I glance at the dark cavern outside my cage. This world… I can’t imagine being a child here. This was what Markos saved me from. At that moment, I pledge to make my vow with him should I escape—no other angel deserves my gratitude, my loyalty, or my life near as much.
Terah is eyeing me in my silence. “He sent me after you, you know. It’s galled him to no end that you ended up in Markos’s Dominion.”
At that, my eyebrows lift. “You spy upon the light?”
She snorts a laugh. “It’s not like you guys try to hide anything. But strolling into a Dominion of the Light to get you back? It’s not like he wanted you that badly.” She purses her lips and looks over me again. Some of that heat I recognize as Lust is coming back to her eyes. “Besides, he knew you’d be going for a walkabout. Elyon can be patient when it suits him.”
“So he sent you to capture me.”
She smirks. “Something like that.”
I frown, confused again. “But what does he want with me?” Just as I speak, a flash of light and a boom splits the air. The wave of it ripples through the angelings in flight. Near the platform at the far wall, I see him. Angels can take any form they wish, and this one wishes to look like an oversized male human, too impossibly large to be taken for the real thing. A flutter of angelings hovers around him. Just as I’m squinting to see him better, he disappears—and reappears in front of my cage. I stumble back, just from the shock. Elyon’s flying white hair—long and magically floating around him—combines with his dark, terrifying eyes to present the perfect picture of a Warrior Angel. If the Warrior had gone to shadow and was rife with evil intent.
“Well done, my loyal one,” Elyon says to Terah.
She bows her head, but there’s a certain dignity to it. His most loyal and powerful angelings. It strikes me—Terah must be one of the Magis. His inner circle.
Elyon turns his dark gaze on me. I am used to the power of angels—I was raised by an angel of light, after all—but the resonant power of this one reaches through the dark magic of my cage and electrifies the air.
Elyon frowns. “He is still in the light.”
“The blade strikes will take him eventually,” Terah says casually.
I look down at the inky marks all over my body, and I fear she is right. But, by the angels of light, I will fight this shadow poison with my last breath. I defiantly return Elyon’s stare.
He ignores my bold look and turns back to Terah. “Then we should celebrate his return.” He reaches out a hand to her, placing it on her forehead. “I said you would be rewarded, and rewarded you shall be.”
For a moment, I think he is killing her. She convulses, eyes half-lidded, mouth agape, but then I realize… it’s pleasure, not pain. I’m frozen in place, transfixed and horrified. Angels are wise and Virtuous and direct creations of God. They are supposed to have a pure angelic love for humans and angelings alike, not this… unabashed pleasure. This perversion of everything angelic… it’s the most demonic thing I’ve seen in angelkind, even worse than the horrific Wrath that tore apart an angeling before. Violence can be righteous—the Warrior Angels and angelings of the light were created for just that slaying of demonic forces. I trained for righteous violence within the crystal walls of Markos’s Dominion. But there is no righteous pleasure… especially not this magical coupling, whatever it is. I don’t precisely understand it—the only place he’s touching her is her forehead.
It lasts and lasts… and it’s drawn the attention of the other angelings in Elyon’s cavern. They gather around, hovering and clinging to the walls, licking their lips and seeming to draw vicarious pleasure from the “reward” Elyon is giving her. Even I’m transfixed as she gasps and shudders and finally gives a loud cry that seems to rock her entire body.
Elyon releases her.
She drifts away from him, eyes closed, mouth agape, head tipped back. The rustling of feathers around them is a sudden vortex of sound, but the angelings are unmoving, waiting for some signal. Elyon’s smile is horrific—the kind a demon carries before consuming an innocent—and I half expect him to turn and smite me inside my cage. Terah’s magic bars would not withstand a direct angel assault. She’s still drifting aimlessly, lost in her pleasure—the surrounding angelings are gently nudging her back into the open space that has formed around Elyon. But his attention isn’t on her, or me, but scanning his own troops. Slowly, he gives a nod to someone in the crowd, and a female angeling surges forward.
“My Lord!” she gasps.
He grabs hold of her by the hair and turns her away from him, locking his hand on her hip and drawing her bottom toward him. It’s then that I see the massive erect penis now protruding from Elyon’s toga. He’s larger than an ordinary human, and that size is represented even more so by that shaft. He magicks away the angeling’s clothing and pierces her body with his. She cries out, and I cannot be sure he’s not harming her. But that cry is like a signal that goes up throughout the crowd.
A tremendous fight breaks out.
It buffets my cage as angelings tangle with the tether or bounce off the magic of the bars. I huddle in the center, dropping to a crouch to keep my balance, and the melee goes on and on. After a few minutes, it settles… or at least, no one is running into my perch any longer. They’ve resolved into couples or sometimes more, and I realize they’re not fighting. They’re having sex. In all manner of positions and places—some mid-air, some clinging to the walls, some winging back to the platform to perform their sexual gymnastics there. Elyon continues to lead the way, having discarded the first angeling and acquired another, relentlessly pounding his oversized penis into her, prompting moans from her slack mouth.
The couplings continue. And continue.
Some appear forced. I can’t be sure from the cries because they all sound the same. Shrieks and moans. My imaginings of hell were no less visceral. Or any less a cacophony. The males seem intent on plunging their penises into any orifice willing to accept them… and some unwilling. The females are just as demanding, grinding on their partners, clutching heads between their legs. The variety of positions seems endless. The pleasure energy seems to rise and fall and then rise again, but the faces are all the same—all locked in a frenzy of Lust that spills into the air. The sweat and the saliva and the ejected seed of the males… sex has an unmistakable odor. Its musk seems to invade my body along with the slow march of the shadow essence from my wounds.
I curl up in the middle of my cage, unfurling my wings just to wrap them around me, hiding the sight of the orgy, if not the sounds and scents. It also reassures me—my wings are still of the light.
I was born from Sin. But I need not choose Sin.
I think that Sin will choose me.