by Alisa Woods
Perhaps Ariel would visit.
And then, when she’d regained her strength, she would find a way out.
Chapter Five
Razael had spent a decade in Penance that felt shorter than this.
He paced his throne room, waiting.
Waiting for Zuriel to finish fucking his angelings.
Waiting for Laylah to return from the war on the streets.
Waiting for Eden to allow him to visit again.
Laylah had been adamant it wasn’t a good time when he asked. That was before he dispatched her to the front to bring him a report on progress there. Of course, he did not need his angeling’s permission to visit a human under his protection—and such thoughts showed how the tension in his mind about Eden was eroding his ability to think rationally. But he heeded Laylah’s warning because it was wise to do so.
Of course, Eden had no interest in seeing him. Why would she?
His indulgent fantasies before were a serious mistake. He had conjured images and let them seep into his soul, pleasures he would never have… pleasures he did not deserve. He had never Sinned quite so abysmally in Lust as with that stretch of hours when he possessed her in his mind. It shamed him to even think of it—and the shame was double because he couldn’t not think about it.
So, he’d sent Laylah away to the front and seriously considered conjuring a Penance room in his chambers to expiate some of this Sin. A Penance Room in the shadow realm. He was losing his fucking mind. That thought sobered him enough to rein in some of his obsession with the transcendently alluring Eden. His sole duty with her was Protection, and he would fail in that if he were pining for her, lost in Lust, or simply wracked with Sin-guilt such that he was not vigilant against attack.
He’d only been in her presence a short while, but he was convinced Elyon would come for her—Asa had said she was Elyon’s favorite, and Razael had no question as to why. And no doubt that Elyon would never let such a prize go. It sickened Razael further that he shared the same obsession, although surely not for the same reason. Elyon would see something as pure as Eden and wish only for endless defilement, whereas Razael wanted nothing more than to revel in her light. But in the end, were they any different, as far as Eden was concerned? Each wished something from her… not for her.
And for that, Razael’s shame threatened to drown him.
If he were in the Light—if he were a better angel—he would turn the immortal world inside out, win a war, slay demons, and conquer the shadow realm, just to give her the things she most needed. Safety. Happiness. A home in which to raise the child she valued above all things.
Instead, he brought himself to orgasm with fantasies of her riding him.
The agony of it nearly drove him to his chambers and his cloud form again. But that was more self-indulgence, and he would be better than that, even if he was wretched beyond belief. Penance and isolation were luxuries he could not afford, not with the potential cost to Eden and her child, not to mention Ren and the babies.
He forced himself to stay in the throne room and await Laylah’s return.
By all rights, he should turn the babies over to the forces of Light. They would be raised in a cohort in a Dominion of Light like any other rescued angeling child. Children were almost always separated from their mothers before they could form a bond—even then, it was very difficult on the human mothers. He’d overseen countless such operations as an angel of Light. The babies were the product of shadow—either a shadow angeling or a newly Fallen angeling of Light—but the children themselves were innocent. They had to be brought to a Dominion of Light, or the shadow realm would claim them. The mothers would lose their children either way, but at least in the Light, the children had a chance. The fundamental horror of it all was why Razael forbade his male shadowlings from getting humans with child. His female angelings scarce need to be told—if they were the sort who wished to raise a child in shadow, they were not the kind who would last in his Regiment.
But these babies, these mothers under his care, the ones he’d vowed to protect… they were a special case. Tearing the babies from them now seemed a cruelty. But to what end? Could he raise angelings of Light in a Regiment of darkness? With regular orgies and all manner of Sin? Even if they remained in the Light, they would simply become dangerous to the shadowlings in their Regiment as they grew. No… some other solution must be found. He wasn’t sure the form, but he had not vowed to protect these women and their children only to rip them apart when the time came.
If they got that far.
First, he had to ensure the war was won—or at least Elyon defeated. Then, he could find a solution that would give Eden and her child the life they deserved. This plan, as meager as it was, gave his sanity an edge to hold onto.
As he mused the possible ways the children and mothers could remain together, the air in his throne room popped, announcing the arrival of an immortal. He was instantly alert, but it was only Laylah… and another shadowling. Xapham—a young one, less than a decade in the shadow realm.
Laylah shoved the male shadowling, and he stumbled toward Razael, catching himself then staring with terrified eyes up at him.
“My lord, I—” he started.
Laylah cut him off. “Shut up, Xapham.” To Razael, she said, “We have a problem.”
Razael frowned, just now taking in the state of the one she’d brought. Xapham’s hair was disheveled, his wings were out, but most noticeably, he was naked and fully erect. In the split instant that became obvious, Xapham conjured a toga to cover himself.
“What kind of problem?” Razael asked Laylah. It was odd in the extreme for her to haul an angeling in the sex act before him, and he could only speculate the purpose—was Envy somehow ruling Laylah’s good sense? He prayed not, given his reliance on her not least as liaison with Eden.
“We’ve got four more missing,” Laylah said with disgust, “and they’re not going down in battle. They’re going down on humans.”
“It wasn’t merely Lust, my lord—”
“Did I say you could speak?” Laylah cut him off again.
Xapham twitched but kept quiet, turning fearful eyes to Razael.
Razael briefly squeezed his shut. Defections. The temptation of Redemption. He knew it might happen, but to go absent from the battle when they were already short on forces…
“This coward,” Laylah spat the word, “has been seducing a human woman, trying magic knows what to trigger some kind of turn to the Light.”
“It was True Love, my lord—”
Laylah’s blade was out in an instant, its edge pressed to the back of the angeling’s neck. “One more word and I stop it with my blade.” The cold Wrath in her voice snapped Xapham’s mouth shut.
“Laylah, release him.” Razael sighed.
“I’d like to release his balls from his—”
“Laylah.” He put more angelsong in it, and Laylah suitably jolted from the sound.
She growled at Xapham but sheathed her blade.
“Return to your duty,” Razael instructed Xapham. “Leave the human alone until I give my blessing to continue.”
Xapham looked shocked, as did Laylah, but he took that grace and ran, twisting out of the throne room in a flash of interdimensional travel.
“There are three more just like him.” Laylah’s Wrath was burning even hotter now. “If we just let them go—”
“You would rather… what?” he asked. “Confine them? We need every angeling who’s able on the streets.”
“There should be some Penance to pay.” This was personal for her—Razael could see it in her soul, the edges of her brokenness growing more sharp.
“You can stick your blade in Xapham, but it will not bring Asa back to you.” The Truth needed to be spoken.
Her mouth hung open for a moment, then she snapped it shut and dropped her gaze. “I am not waiting for that fool.”
“You should not… but the heart wants what it wants. Even if it is wrong.” Words t
hat easily applied to himself.
She peered up and seemed to take his double meaning. “So what do you do?”
“You chastise yourself a hundred ways, but you stick to your duty.” He grimaced. “Lesser angelings will be distracted by Love and Redemption and the sweet pleasures that come from the pursuit of those. We must not be those lesser beings, Laylah. Not now. Later, when the war is won, we can experiment all we wish with finding some measure of happiness. As such is even available to us.”
Her eyes had gone round while he spoke. “My lord, I think…” She hesitated and swallowed. “I believe there is still hope for that happiness.” She was speaking about Eden now, he was sure of it. “My lord is a righteous angel—”
“Your lord is a fool in countless ways.” Her shocked look wrenched a laugh from him. “I Fell from love of a woman such as Eden. From the promise of a child of True Love with her. Do not underestimate the amount of folly I am capable of.”
“My lord—” she protested.
He put up a hand to stop her. In Truth, it wasn’t fair to burden her with this. “Know only that I understand desiring something which you cannot have. And I assure you, Laylah—you have more promise in this than I do. We’ll find a respite for you. Perhaps even happiness. But first… the war.”
She nodded, eyes wide. “First, the war.”
He sighed. “Put my shadowlings on notice that they will be banned from future orgies if they’re found consorting with humans.”
Laylah grimaced. “That’s not much of a punishment in the face of Redemption.”
“No. But it will make them think twice. And we may need to drag Zuriel from her orgy. Time is against us—we need to gather an alliance to make this attempt on Elyon.”
“I can order the shadowlings in her chamber away to battle.” She tipped her head to him. “On your orders, my lord.”
Before he could answer, another overpressure pulse brought more immortals to his throne room. Laylah whipped out her blade, and Razael nearly blasted the intruders, holding back only at the last moment when he saw wings of white.
Tajael… and he had brought… “A fae in my Regiment? Have you lost your damn mind?”
Tajael’s hands were up, asking forgiveness. The pointy-eared fae female next to him just smirked. “Nyssa has brought a problem to my attention,” Tajael said. “One you need to know.”
More problems. “There are channels for that.” Any one of his angelings—including Laylah—could have conveyed the concerns of the light forces without them having to appear in his throne room. Much less bring fae. They had neutral territory in Seattle for just that purpose. “But now that you’re here…” He gave a nod to Laylah to dismiss her. She twisted away, hopefully intent on interrupting Zuriel’s endless playtime at his expense. He turned back to Tajael, angeling in Markos’s Dominion, and one of the leads in the battle there, given his attachment to one of the scientists spearheading the humans’ research. “What sort of problems are you bringing to my throne room?” He slid a sideways look to the haughty fae at his side.
“May I present Nyssa, Fae Queen of the Summer Court?”
He knew who she was. Her long, silver-white hair flowed around her body, covering much of the white-lace dress that clung to her skin. “What’s it been, Nyssa? Four millennia? Or five?” They’d had one tussle between his angelings and her fae, back when he was in the Light, but more recently, they’d skirted around seeing one another face-to-face, despite multiple entanglements.
Her smirk bloomed. “Time hasn’t been kind to you, Razael.”
“Time is against us all, it seems.”
She tipped her head in wry acknowledgment. Nyssa’s Summer Court was a distant cousin to the dragon prince for whom Razael’s daughter, Erelah, had Fallen. She then returned to the Light and bore him a daughter of her own. Nyssa herself had been at the dragon’s keep, safeguarding the dragons while Razael and Markos battled Elyon and kept him from harming the then-unborn child, Aurora.
“I hear you gave a fae blessing to my granddaughter,” Razael said to the queen.
“She does have Summer Fae in her veins.”
Razael grimaced. “Mixed with angeling. It’s a wonder the child can function at all.”
“Clearly, her fae powers keep her steady and strong, none of this Falling business. Wouldn’t want her following in her grandfather’s footsteps, now would we?”
Razael snorted but let it pass. Fae and angels were ancient enemies, but without the queen’s reinforcements from her thousand-strong legion of fae warriors, they would have already lost the war against Elyon. While the fae didn’t possess the strength of angelings, they were still a force to be reckoned with.
Tajael was watching them with a comical expression of confusion and amazement. “I see. Well, the problem at hand is—”
Nyssa cut him off by stepping forward, her lace dress trailing behind her. “The problem is your angelings are fucking everything in sight. For the love of magic, Razael—I thought the shadow realm had a better grip on their Lust.”
“Laylah just informed me—”
“Well, let me inform you—Elyon’s forces are taking us on directly now. It’s one thing to provide reinforcements, partners for patrols, backup in skirmishes. It’s another to be abandoned while your shadowlings go off seeking humans to fuck while my forces are left to be ambushed in an alley.”
Razael sighed. Nyssa had every right to be angry. Moreover, fae and angeling wouldn’t last long on the streets unless they held together. “I know, Nyssa. You need to hold a little longer—”
“I’m not sure we can.” She lifted her chin. “The Winter Court is happily watching our forces winnow. And I can’t say my Court is pleased about the slaughter. We won’t stay in this forever, Razael. Much more loss and I’ll be forced to pull back, just to make sure we can still defend ourselves against the attack from the Winter Court—which I am certain will follow in the wake of all this.”
“Understood.” He glanced to Tajael, who was looking more concerned with every word. “I have a plan, Nyssa,” he said to her. “One that will banish Elyon forever.”
Her eyebrows lifted, and so did Tajael’s.
“I just need a little more time.”
She didn’t look pleased, but Nyssa gave him a slow nod. “Get your forces back on the streets. We’ll hold as long as we can.”
He tipped his head in Gratitude, and she twisted and disappeared from his throne room.
Tajael remained behind. “It’s as dire as she’s saying,” he added.
“I know.” Razael frowned.
Tajael nodded and then twisted away.
Razael drifted back to his throne and settled heavily into it. In all his worries about Eden, would he even have a Regiment to protect her when all was said and done? They were out of time to make this happen. Just as he resolved to seek Zuriel himself and press her into moving forward, she appeared in a flash of light his throne room, followed quickly by Laylah.
Zuriel’s cheeks were flushed, and she seemed slightly annoyed, but her tone was even when she said, “Are you in a hurry to rush to your death, Razael?”
He rose from his throne. “Death is already feasting on the bodies of my angelings. And our fae allies are ready to abandon the effort. We need to make our move now, Zuriel.”
Laylah’s eyes went wide, but she kept quiet.
Zuriel grimaced. “Very well.”
“Where do we start?” Razael asked. “Who among the dark angels are least bonded to Elyon?”
“Well, none of them relishes an alliance with him,” she said. “He’s mad, you know.”
He just waited.
“Evangeline first. She’s is newly Fallen. Well, new compared to most—a few hundred years, I believe.”
Razael nodded. “I remember her Fall. She was a Guardian wasn’t she?” That was how he met Elizabeth, and that time on Guardian duty spelled his doom.
Zuriel shrugged as if she could not care less about Evangeline’s circums
tances. “If you can convince her, then Jael should follow.”
Razael frowned. “Jael? I do not know that name.”
“Because he’s been in shadow as long as Lucifer has been in his Dark Dominion.”
That was a time of chaos, and many were lost. “So as long as Elyon?”
“Yes, and he’s quite as mad as our favorite human-loathing dark angel.” Zuriel waved that away. “Jael was Wrath-Fallen in the War of Heaven, in league with Lucifer, and probably quite the dashing hero of darkness then. Now… he’s a doddering old fool with barely a sensical thought in his head. But he’s terribly fond of Evangeline. And she… indulges his madness, if only to access his powers, which are substantial. She has a tidy Regiment, but he can’t keep an angeling alive for more than a decade.” She tipped her head and whispered, “Has a bit of a temper.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Powerful angels were dangerous even when Sin hadn’t destroyed their minds.
“Evangeline is quite taken with the shadow life,” Zuriel continued. “She’s ambitious. But she’s not as impressed with Elyon as the others, nor as frightened. Yet she doesn’t wish to see her delightfully Sinful life destroyed by his insanity. Evangeline allied with Elyon only to keep him at bay. Go shine your Virtues at her, Razael, and you should be able to convince her. If you do, Jael will follow along and do her bidding.”
“Me?” Razael asked, suddenly realizing the flaw in this plan. Because he couldn’t possibly leave Eden and the others unguarded.
“Well, I’m not going to be your emissary for this bit of madness.” Zuriel gave him a look like he was the crazy one.
Razael flicked a look to Laylah, who was tensely watching their exchange.
“We can recall the rest of our troops from the streets,” Laylah said quickly. “We can keep watch over the humans.”
“Which will only give more bodies to slaughter should Elyon decide to attack.” Razael turned back to Zuriel. “If you won’t entreat Evangeline for me, then I’ll need you to stand guard here.”
Zuriel made a face. “I suppose…”
“And without the distraction of fucking your way through my Regiment.”