A Merciless Year One

by Eva Brandt

  I had my doubts about angels fearing humans, but Morrigan’s latter words chased them away. It didn’t really matter, did it? If I could have this strange thing I’d found with my Watchers, it wouldn’t be so bad. Yes, maybe it was a little selfish and maybe I wasn’t dealing with it right. But once I understood it, that could change.

  “Thank you, Morrigan. I’ll do that.”

  “Don’t mention it, my child.”

  There were so many other questions I had, countless things I would’ve liked to ask her. I would have welcomed some more advice on how to channel my powers properly. Unfortunately, Morrigan couldn’t stay to babysit me.

  “I must go now, Delilah. I’ll see you soon, I promise. And remember—be careful who you trust.”

  With those, final ominous words, Morrigan changed back into her crow shape and flew out the window. I watched her go, allowing myself to enjoy the lingering remnants of her potent magic. Both icy and warm, it reminded me of her complex nature—a warrior, a death-bringer, a mother.

  Once the power started to fade, I turned away and left the room. I still had to find my way back to the white portion of the Core and speak to Zadkiel.

  Just like before, the darkness swallowed me whole, but this time, I was a little more focused. The conversation with Morrigan had helped and I had a better idea what path I was supposed to take.

  I’d just caught a glimpse of the first traces of white when everything went horribly wrong. The skittering sound echoed behind me once again. At first, I thought Morrigan had come back, and I wanted to greet her. But when I turned, there was no one there.

  I had enough time to wonder if I’d just imagined it before pain exploded through my body. A blast of magic sent me flying and I hit the wall with a nauseating crack. It was a miracle I wasn’t knocked out on the spot, but my luck wouldn’t hold.

  I tried to compose myself, to suppress my pain. If I could at least stay conscious, I might be able to fight off my attacker, to buy myself time to escape. It was a stupid, arrogant thought. My outburst in class had been an anomaly, and when my enemy grabbed me, I was helpless.

  Powerful, brutal hands pinned me down, immobilizing me against the floor. My head was spinning and my bones snapped as magic coiled around me.

  “You don’t deserve to be here,” a dark voice whispered. “Everything you touch, you destroy. You won’t taint us with your presence any longer.”

  Those strange words were the last thing I registered before I felt a powerful tug against my incipient wings. The agony that rushed over me was more powerful and more terrifying than anything I’d felt in my life. I screamed and knew no more.

  * * *

  When I cracked my eyes open, the first thing I became aware of was the white. By now, this wasn’t anything unusual to me. These days, I woke up to this color scheme every time I happened to fall asleep. The Celestial Realm wasn’t very creative in terms of decorating.

  But this time, the white came with an unfamiliar, burning ache. I’d felt discomfort and even pain at Watcher Academy, but it had never been like this. Never, except for one time.

  A blurry memory flashed through my mind, that of my mysterious attacker and our confrontation in the black wing of the Core. It was so powerful that I cried out and flailed in shock, unable to control my sudden panic.

  The furniture began to shake and crack, and I could smell the scent of something burning. My wings. Someone had tried to destroy my wings, to destroy me. I blindly reached for my back, but the angle was all wrong and when I tried to find the familiar wing stumps, a new wave of pain rushed over me.

  A gentle hand landed on mine, snapping me out of my haze. “Easy there. Don’t be scared. You’re safe now.”

  I blinked and my head cleared a little as I took in the presence of the other person in the room. “A-Ariel? What happened?”

  “You were attacked after Forgiveness class,” Ariel replied. “What do you remember?”

  “Bits and pieces,” I admitted. “Mostly pain, darkness. Who? Who could have done such a thing?”

  I might not get along all that well with the people at the academy, but as far as I knew, nothing I’d done so far warranted such a disproportionate response. And as cruel as they might occasionally be, these were angels. They might be merciless, like Morrigan had said, but they followed the rules. Considering my status here, I doubted tearing off my wings was allowed.

  Ariel hesitated. “We’ve found the possible culprit, but we can discuss that a little later. For the moment, I’d like to see your wounds.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her my wounds could wait. Knowing the truth about my attacker was far more important. But before I could do exactly that, the door opened and Raphael walked into the room.

  “You’re awake, Delilah. Excellent.”

  “Thank you, Archangel Raphael. Ariel was just telling me about the people who attacked me.”

  Raphael grimaced, and alarm bells started ringing in my head. First Ariel, then Raphael? This couldn’t be good. “Sir?”

  “Let me get a look at your back first. It was a close call. If Zadkiel hadn’t shown up in time, you might have truly lost your wings.”

  That shut me up and I obediently turned around, suppressing my urge to ask more questions.

  I wasn’t wearing much, but fortunately, there was material covering my breasts, keeping me from showing Raphael more than I was comfortable. I doubted he’d have cared, but still, I had no desire to share my body with anyone except Sariel, Azazel and Yeqon.

  As Raphael’s fingers traveled over my back, I flinched, my thoughts going to my lovers. Where were they? Why weren’t they here with me? Had something happened to them?

  The questions kept bothering me and, in the end, I wasn’t able to stay silent any longer. “Archangel Raphael, where are Azazel, Sariel, and Yeqon? Why aren’t they here?” I didn’t know how things worked in The Celestial Realm, but in The Mortal Realm, if someone was wounded, their family or friends were supposed to watch over them. My lovers were the closest thing I had to a family here and Metatron should have known that.

  Raphael froze and his hands suddenly felt chilly on my skin. “About that… I suppose I might as well tell you, Delilah, since you’re going to find out anyway. They’ve been imprisoned as it is believed they were the ones to attack you.”

  Time seemed to stop. For a few seconds, I couldn’t process what he’d just said. I must have misheard. There was no other option.

  I wasn’t that lucky. “I know this is difficult for you to believe, but it’s true. Azazel, Sariel, and Yeqon were the ones who tried to rip off your wings.”

  Pulling away from Raphael, I turned to face him. “Excuse me, what did you say.”

  It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, a calm one that made clear what I thought about his words. Ariel let out a low sigh. “You see? That’s why we didn’t want to tell you at once. You’re not prepared to accept it.”

  “Prepared to accept it?” I shouted at her. “I’m not going to accept shit. They’d never do anything like that and you both know it. Why are you saying something so awful?”

  “Because it’s true, Delilah,” Raphael replied. “Zadkiel saw them bent over you himself, trying to remove your wings.”

  “Oh, did he? Somehow, I very much doubt it.”

  Remembering the incident in the Forgiveness class, I thought my lovers must have followed me after I’d fled. If they’d done so, they would have found me first and possibly chased off the real attacker. It wasn’t out of the question that Zadkiel had assumed they were the culprits when he’d arrived, later.

  “This has to be a misunderstanding, I’m sure of it. They saved me.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” Ariel asked. “By your own admission, you don’t remember much.”

  “I remember enough to know it wasn’t them,” I answered. Geez, I shouldn’t have told her the truth about that, even if it had seemed harmless at the time.

  As I spoke, it occurred to me t
hat surveillance at Watcher Academy was supposed to be very strong. That was how Sandalphon had known to burst in on me and my lovers during one of our conversations. But Ariel and Raphael had been pretty vague, to the point of saying ‘it is believed’. That wasn’t a clear certainty. It was a guess. “Do you even have any proof or are you just making wild accusations based on Zadkiel’s judgment?”

  “Zadkiel’s words are enough,” Raphael said calmly.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “No, they’re not. Did your guards not see what happened?”

  “That part of the academy tends to be difficult to supervise, Delilah,” Raphael explained. “We can sense when something happens, but tracking down the culprit is something entirely different. Anyway, like I said, that’s not necessary this time around, because Zadkiel caught them in the act.”

  “And Zadkiel is the most unbiased party in the school, isn’t he? Please.” I snorted and crossed my arms over my chest, unwillingly flinching when the motions jarred my back muscles. “I want to see Sariel, Azazel, and Yeqon.”

  “You’re nowhere near well enough, Delilah,” Ariel said, shaking her head. “Please, be reasonable.”

  “I’m perfectly reasonable. Even if what you’re saying is true—which I very much doubt—I’d still want to hear from their own mouths why they acted this way.”

  Raphael shot me a look that was almost compassionate. “I think you don’t understand the severity of this situation, Delilah. If your wings had been destroyed, your chances of becoming an angel would’ve been gone. But it goes beyond that. Your soul would have been damned, permanently. Chances are you’d have been doomed to go to The Infernal Realm, to serve Lucifer.”

  My skin crawled at the sheer thought. Bowing in front of the man who’d destroyed my life would have been the worst torture in existence. My fragile wings were the only thing standing between me and demonic slavery. Why had nobody told me that until now?

  Well, no matter. “I don’t care about that,” I told Raphael. “I might not be at full strength, but my soul isn’t damned yet. And I want to talk to my lovers.”

  “Fine. Have it your way, Delilah. But I will be supervising the whole conversation, just in case they try anything.”

  I would have preferred it if he’d agreed to give me privacy, but this would have to do. Besides, in this, I had nothing to hide, and I was convinced that neither did my lovers.

  Raphael picked me up and carried me out of the room, with Ariel trailing after us. This time, we didn’t transform into currents of divine energy like we had in the past. Raphael walked normally, making his way through the building at a pace that was, for a divine being, much too slow.

  My thoughts and confusion must have shown, because he explained, “The transport magic that allows us to move around The Celestial Realm is usually harmless, but right now, your core is unstable. It’s better for me to use more old-fashioned methods.”

  Raphael’s take on old-fashioned was a little different from mine. It included physically flying out of The Halls of Truth, into the skies above, in the same direction Professor Grim had taken me once before.

  I wasn’t surprised when we found ourselves at the same dome the avatar of death had shown me then. This time, though, my lovers were nowhere near as calm. Despite being in their cursed forms, they were trying to get out, barreling into the dome over and over. Their tentacles struck the walls, making divine magic recoil into them. If it hurt, they didn’t show it. They just kept fighting, trying to escape.

  My heart hurt for them. “Do they not know that I’m fine?”

  “We didn’t deem it necessary to tell them, no,” Ariel replied. “Since this situation is their fault, we—”

  I’d had enough of this nonsense. “Raphael, please put me in the dome. If you want, you can come with me like you said, but let me see them. They need to know I’m fine. They’re obviously upset. Can’t you see that?”

  “They’re upset because they got caught,” Raphael answered, but he didn’t seem to believe it.

  As I’d asked him, he placed me on the staircase that led up to the dome’s entrance. “How do I get in?” I asked him.

  “You can just walk. The dome is enchanted to imprison specific people. Everyone else can come and go as they please.”

  That didn’t seem like a very practical enclosure to me, especially not in an academy where Sariel, Azazel, and Yeqon had allies. But what did I know about this world? Maybe the enchantment was powerful enough to compensate for the other holes in this place’s defenses.

  For the moment, I didn’t particularly care. All I wanted was to go inside, to reassure my lovers and tell them I wasn’t hurt, to make sure they were freed from this nightmare. Raphael allowed it, but decided to walk into the dome first. “They’re too dangerous now,” he explained. “I need a few moments to make sure they’re not an immediate threat to you.”

  I could understand his logic, although I hated it. I hoped my lovers would listen and give me the chance to speak to them quickly. I really should have known better. The moment Raphael went through the dome’s barrier, my three lovers attacked. Raphael pulled out his flaming sword and buried it in the floor of the dome. Circles of fire lit up the whole area, flaring upwards and reaching for Sariel, Azazel, and Yeqon. Their insidious hold somehow managed to immobilize my lovers. Sariel screeched, and it was the first time I’d heard him utter a single sound while in this form. Raphael took a step back and covered his ears, his sword vanishing from his hand.

  “Oh, no,” Ariel whispered. “This is much worse than I thought.”

  She dove into the dome, presumably intending to rush to Raphael’s aid. A tentacle slapped her mid-air, sending her flying back. She went straight through the wall of the dome, narrowly missing me.

  At that point, I abandoned all caution and ran into the dome. I realized my lovers were out of control and far more dangerous than Raphael had realized, but that just made me more determined to intervene and speak to them.

  “Stop!” I called out as I entered the enclosure. “This isn’t necessary.”

  Unlike during the Forgiveness class, my words were enough to end the incipient fight. Azazel had been in the middle of summoning a ball of flame and the spell fizzled as soon as he saw me. “Delilah? Is that you?”

  It was weird to hear him speak when he didn’t have a mouth, but I took it in stride. I refused to make my lovers feel bad about their new forms, on top of everything else. “Of course it’s me. Were you expecting anyone else?”

  Yeqon wrapped a tentacle around my waist and pulled me closer. I patted the appendage and said, “It’s okay. I’m fine.”

  “That’s a lie,” Sariel said, now hovering behind me. “You’re nowhere near fine.”

  From this angle, he could clearly see my back. He’d always been very perceptive, so he didn’t try to verify my identity. He just traveled a little closer and brushed his tentacles over my spine and the edges of my damaged wings.

  I’d thought Raphael had been gentle when he’d treated my injuries, but that was nothing compared to my lovers’ touch. Yeqon’s grip on me, while tight, didn’t hurt me in any way. Sariel’s light caress held delicate traces of magic, so soft they were barely perceivable. Azazel joined us, his massive, eye-like body hiding me from Raphael.

  “We thought you might have been lost to us forever,” Sariel whispered. “We thought you were damned.”

  “I’m not so easy to get rid of, although granted, whoever attacked me put in a good effort.”

  The words came out a little too light-hearted for the situation, but I couldn’t help it. Sariel’s healing method far surpassed Raphael’s. He kept moving slowly from spot to spot, and the tightness in my spine vanished, replaced by relaxation. Oh, it wasn’t completely gone, but it felt much better, and less like my whole back was going to collapse any moment now.

  “Why are they blaming you for all this?” I asked. “It’s ridiculous.”

  “Not completely,” Yeqon admitted. If he’d had a hu
man face, he would have been grimacing. The massive iris jerked, the veins pulsing in an alarming way. “We sort of lost our tempers and freaked out. Zadkiel made the unavoidable connection.”

  “That’s absurd. You were panicking because I was hurt. What were you supposed to do, celebrate?”

  Azazel’s body moved up and down, as if he was shrugging. “Maybe. You know how celestial beings are. They’ll never understand emotion the way we do.”

  “We understand it fine,” Raphael offered, intervening in our conversation. “Zadkiel told me what he had seen and he wasn’t lying.”

  That was the biggest pile of steaming bullshit I’d seen since the time I’d gone to a misguided field trip to a cattle farm in eighth grade. I desperately wished I could push Raphael in such a pile, because he deserved to be covered in animal excrement for being such an arrogant asshole.

  But that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, and right now, I had other priorities. “Maybe he’s telling the truth,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean he’s right. He could have misjudged the situation. Archangels are fallible, you know, and you’ve admitted you didn’t have surveillance in that area.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that Sariel, Azazel, and Yeqon were on the scene when Zadkiel arrived.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. He wasn’t going to listen to reason, was he?

  Fine. I’d just have to cheat and use their own rules against them. I wasn’t beneath fucking with The Celestial Realms if the situation demanded it. “It explains plenty. You just don’t want to accept it. But okay, I’ll take your opinion into consideration.”

  Sariel’s tentacles stopped moving against my back. “Delilah?”

  I didn’t turn toward him, even if I could sense the terrible suspicion that had just been born in his heart. Hopefully, I’d clarify it within the next couple of minutes and we could get out of this accursed dome together.

  Raphael blinked at me in surprise. “So you do think they were your attackers?”

  “I didn’t say that, but it doesn’t matter,” I answered. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I will forgive Sariel, Yeqon, and Azazel for any slight they might have committed against me. I will forgive them with all my heart, for my pain, for my death, and for my fear. I will absolve them of any and all sins they are guilty of when it comes to me.”