The Queen nodded as if she hadn’t caught the meaning of the Healer’s words. “Thank you. Please send for me if there are any changes in Meretta’s condition.”
The Healer nodded back and quietly left the room.
Azrael glanced at the Queen. “May I stay with her?”
Folding her hands in her lap, the Queen’s shoulders eased as Azrael’s Light finally receded. “You must prepare to complete your Acceptance, I fear. He could strike again, and I don’t want to give him the chance. If the demons have breached the Manor, there’s no time to lose.” A fierceness took over her features and the Queen straightened. “You’re meant for something great, something greater than I ever could have hoped for. Whatever it is, I’ll die before Mehmet stops you from fulfilling your fate.”
Azrael nearly burst out the whole truth right there. This was all her fault! She’d made a deal with a demon. She’d allowed evil to cross holy boundaries. The only traitor here was herself.
“It’s my fault Meretta is—” Azrael began and her voice cracked.
“No,” the Queen snapped. “This is not your fault, understand? This is Mehmet’s doing.” Her glance shifted to the doorway once again. “Gabriel will be here soon.”
Azrael wished she could sense the angel like the Queen could, and didn’t want to speculate why the Queen had magic she didn’t. Azrael felt nothing until he rushed into the room, wild-eyed and with stiff wings that grated against the wide arches of the doorway. He relaxed when his blue gaze met Azrael’s. “You’re okay.”
The Queen swept to her feet. “We have things under control. Tell us what you know from your end.”
Gabriel’s wings pressed to his back and he eased into the room. “I was in Celestia when they sensed a Dark Soul being brought into the Manor. A demon must be working with someone on the inside, and whoever they are, they brought the orb in only a few hours ago.”
The Queen nodded. “Based on Azrael’s description, that sounds accurate. She experienced a portal being opened and an underling demon being brought through. She was able to break the ward and send the creature back to Mhakdar, but Meretta was in the room when it happened.”
Gabriel visibly whitened. “Is she...?”
The Queen offered a tight smile and folded her hands. “She’ll be fine.”
Gabriel looked back to Azrael and narrowed his eyes, approaching carefully as if she were a deer.
Azrael squirmed in her seat. “What? Why’re you looking at me like that?”
Gabriel brought his thumb to her chin and turned her face. “Not a single mark on you. That means you’ve not only used one ability I’ve never taught you, but two.”
“What do you mean?”
His hand fell to his side and his robes rippled. “You closed a portal, and you protected yourself from Light overdose.”
Azrael’s gaze shot to her feet. She was able to protect herself, but not Meretta?
Queen Ceres glided to the doorway. “Gabriel, stay with her. Don’t let her out of your sight. I’m going to find our traitor.” Her lips creased into a thin line as Gabriel gave her a nod, and then she was gone.
Alone with the angel, Azrael felt strangely unprotected and vulnerable. Even though he was an angel, majestic and towering with his perfect form over her like a god, he had no power over the Light. He couldn’t keep her from hurting herself or others, or even him.
As her thoughts of guilt and doubt overwhelmed her, she brought her knees to her chest and strained to keep the tears in.
“Hey, Azrael, it’s going to be all right.”
Azrael’s lower lip trembled and she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “I’m scared,” she admitted. “Has Mehmet ever gotten inside the Manor?”
Hurt wound through his face like a sickness, and Azrael closed her green eye so she couldn’t see it. “Yes, before Alexandria was alive. We had many more warriors then, and when she Turned there was an uprising. We lost a great number during that time, and the Manor’s Inner Sanctum was fortified with Divine Material after...” his words drifted. “The only way he can get in now is with an orb, a Dark Soul, a powerful source of magic that can open a portal to Mhakdar.” His gaze found hers again and pride sparked in the air. “But you’ve destroyed it. Once the Queen finds the traitor, it won’t happen again.”
Thoughts plagued her with the hundreds of possibilities. What if there was no traitor? What if this was all her fault? She’d made a deal with a demon, she’d broken her own orb and made a pact that had led her to become Queen. What if this had been enough to open a portal? What if, in all reality, the Dark Soul was hers?
“Stop it,” Gabriel said. “You’re blaming yourself. Don’t do that. This isn’t your fault.”
“I...” she began. “I have to tell you something.”
Gabriel crouched so that they were eye-level. “You can tell me anything.”
She swallowed. “What if I did something...wrong? What if, this really is my fault?”
His white brows pushed together. “What did you do?”
She forced herself to watch his face. She had to know his true reaction, not the façade he gave the world. She had to look into his eyes and know what the truth would mean to him. “I’m a hybrid, Gabriel. I had a demon orb, and I used it before I became Princess.” She shivered. “What if...”
Gabriel shocked her by releasing a short laugh. “You think I didn’t know?”
Her eyes bulged. “What?”
His smile lit up his face. “How else could a hybrid become Queen?” His hand reached out until it found hers. She didn’t pull away. “Sometimes it takes a little bad to do the right thing.”
She didn’t know what to say, but even if he approved, it didn’t change anything. “The Dark Soul,” she began.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t work like that. It’s a different magic. What you used was a tether between you and the demon that fed on you as an infant. The magic to open a portal is entirely different. There’s a traitor in Manor Saffron, and I assure you, it isn’t you.”
Silence engulfed them for a long time. Sharing the truth should have shattered her world, but instead it made her feel sane again. Gabriel wasn’t like the other angels, and for the first time, she started to wonder why. His eyes were blue, while theirs were purple. He was always distant, but seemed to relate to her, be proud of the things she could do with her moral compass. Did that mean, in a strange way, he was a hybrid too? Not touched by a demon as an infant, but grown to have a soul that understood both good and evil?
The revelation would be something Meretta would love to analyze, and incessantly tease Azrael as their fated “meant-to-be.”
“Can we see Meretta, you think?” she asked.
Gabriel’s hand tightened on hers. “Are you sure?”
Azrael nodded. “The Queen said I’ll have to undergo my Acceptance soon. I want to see her before I do.”
Gabriel nodded. “Then let’s go.”
Azrael kept her eyes on his feathers as she trailed behind him. It calmed her to see the natural way they swished against one another, creating a rippling wave of white like a cape. Almost in a trance, she bumped into him when they arrived at the Healing Ward.
Gabriel guided her to the doorway. “I’ll be right here. Go on in.”
Seeing the tight space offered by the corridors, Azrael saw why he didn’t wish to go in. She curled her shoulders inward as she shuffled her way through alone. A Healer holding a bloodied cloth dripping in a wooden bowl of water nodded to a curtain, and Azrael slipped inside. She let her eyes adjust to the dim room. Only the upper portion of the walls had Divine Material, and each was engraved by a Windborn rune, prayers to the Divine for peace and healing.
Azrael could hardly identify Meretta, a form completely wrapped in bandages with perfectly white hair blotched with pink. Azrael held in tears as she approached the bedside and hovered her fingers over Meretta’s lips. Soft breath kissed her fingertips and Azrael relaxed.
Blood had alre
ady begun to seep through the bandages and the Healers had washed what blood they could out of her hair. But to see it so starkly white made her look like a ghost. Azrael couldn’t resist and gently pulled one of Meretta’s eyelids open, revealing a thin layer of gold film. With a startled squeak she jerked away.
“I’m so sorry,” Azrael whispered and clutched her arms around herself. “Please, forgive me.”
Meretta would have shushed her, assured her none of this was her fault. But she was too far gone to do anything but softly breathe. Azrael had to take what comfort she could that her friend was still alive.
Hot tears came anyway, and Azrael ran out of the room, frantically tearing through the curtains until she found Gabriel again and crumpled into his chest.
He shushed her and wrapped his wings around them as if by instinct. “She’ll be back to her old self in a few days. Don’t be so hard on yourself.” He forced her to look at him. “You saved her life.”
“Is there anything I can do? What if the traitor strikes again?” Azrael shivered.
Gabriel thought for a moment. Azrael thought he might say the Queen would take care of it, that she had nothing to worry about. But as he looked into her eyes she willed him not to say anything of the sort. Heat ran up her spine and she didn’t care if she used her magic. She needed to do something.
“I have an idea,” he said, and began down the hallway.
Azrael shoved the guilt deep into her chest. She’d used her magic on Gabriel, forced him to do something he’d never do. But if it would keep Meretta safe...
Azrael slowly closed her blue eye.
When they’d arrived at the gardens Gabriel paused, looking momentarily confused.
“You had an idea,” Azrael reminded him. She pushed her will stronger, ignoring the twinges of pain that ran down her back.
His eyes went out of focus as he spoke. “Yes, that’s right.” He looked down at his feet, then up at her. “You’re a hybrid. That means you not only have access to the Light, but the Dark as well. You could find our traitor before they can help the demon again.”
Azrael straightened. “How?”
“Hindsight. You can speak to the land,” he said as his palms flayed out. “You can see what it’s seen. The traitor would have gone through the gardens. Ask the land when it felt darkness. Ask it when it felt something profound, a change, a shift, a soul that didn’t belong.”
Azrael looked around the gardens, seeing only the familiar fountains and perfectly trimmed foliage. “How?”
“You’ve lived here all your life. You know the energies of this land. Use your Light, and the Dark, use it to find the tendrils of time that are the memories of the land.”
Azrael crouched to the ground, let her fingers run through the wavy blades of grass. She closed her eyes and willed her Light to come forth. Heat sparked under her fingertips and when the darkness opened its eyes with interest, she didn’t curl away from it this time. She brought it in, mingled it with the Light until she felt a commune and opened her eyes. The gardens teemed with silver strands. She reached out to them and they twisted from her touch. She laughed and it seemed to enjoy her merriment, dodging and flickering until it calmed and allowed her to graze it like the snout of a stallion. The moment her hand touched it, a blinding wave of heat scourged her body and she would have screamed, except she couldn’t.
She had no body with which to scream.
The winds took her away, not to another place, but another time. Day and night blinked in a blur and the gardens teemed with people and seasons. The whirlwind of change spun around her until she felt she would be consumed, but then it finally slowed.
With a crack of thunder it came to a halt. She was still in the gardens, but the foliage had grown wild, not so pristine and trimmed. A girl leaned against a tree and stared through Azrael. The sun illuminated her midnight locks and made her khol-rimmed eyes look so bright, one green and one blue. With a pang of shock, Azrael realized this was Alexandria.
Alexandria turned and a breathtaking tattoo running up her back lit like the morning sun, swirling with blinding waves of living Light. It was more incredible than the Queen’s, and even her own. The winds of time rippled and made the girl disintegrate into a thousand pieces. Azrael reached out, crying for her to come back.
Then she saw Gabriel, but he wasn’t the same. His eyes were purple, just as all the other angels she’d ever seen. He wore golden robes and his wings glittered with jewels. He looked through her and she turned, only to see Alexandria again. But this time, she had wings.
Alexandria smiled, love filling her face and making her far more beautiful than she already was. A thin silver gown ran over her curves and she flexed her wings, sending sparks of light that were repelled from silver strands wound through starkly dark feathers.
Azrael finally understood why all renditions of Alexandria had been so dark, so shadowed and grey. Her wings were as black as her hair, a sharp contrast to Gabriel’s purity.
With a gasp Azrael realized they were not alone. A horde of Windborn and angels surrounded the pair, silent and expectant. It was only when Alexandria swept past her and into Gabriel’s arms did she realize what this was. He leaned and placed a kiss on Alexandria’s lips, and she wrapped her arms around his neck as their wings curled in on one another.
Azrael couldn’t watch as they exchanged rings.
Her heart broke and thunder cracked across the ages of time. Her soul was trying to return to her own body, but her pain and jealousy made it hard to care. Light seared against her soul and she knew she’d stayed too long. Another moment, and it could take her for good.
It towered, threatening and powerful. It didn’t need to intimidate her, it’d already won.
It was the Dark that taunted her back into action. It called her names, said she was weak and a pathetic second-choice. Alexandria was everything she couldn’t be.
Azrael didn’t like that it was anger that made her tear against the Light, to prove it wrong along with the Dark. Chaos swirled as she lashed out in rage. She found the thin tether back to her body and grabbed onto it with all her strength. She pulled and tugged, ignoring the Light that bit at her skin, the Dark that wrapped around her ankles.
When she’d made it back into her own body, black dots spread across her vision and a deafening crack made her double over and vomit blood onto the grass.
She tried to jerk away when Gabriel reached for her. “No,” she said and then coughed violently as she clutched her side.
“What did you see? How far back did you go? It shouldn’t have—”
She met his gaze, not hiding the pain and ferocity that burned in her chest. “She had black wings.”
Gabriel went stiff. “You couldn’t have... That’s too far.” Awe and shock streaked across his face, quickly followed by remorse. “Azrael, that was three thousand years ago.”
For a moment, Azrael was struck silent. She knew Alexandria had been generations of Queens ago, but she’d never considered what that’d meant.
“Come,” he said gently as he offered his arm. “Let’s get you to the Healing Ward. I never should have gotten you to try...” his voice drifted and he pinched his lips closed. His features went hard and Azrael knew he never would have put her in such risk. He knew it too, and it stung the way he looked at her now. He knew what she’d done.
Azrael didn’t apologize for forcing him to give her a way to help Meretta. But even now, she’d failed. Her great power could do nothing other than think of herself, her own wants and desires, her own curiosity. Instead of finding the traitor, she’d uncovered Gabriel’s dark secrets. He’d loved Alexandria, and it had changed him, as well as gotten her killed.
Azrael resisted him as he tugged her to the garden’s doors. “Did you love her?” she demanded. She’d been through so much, already failed. She needed to know at least that.
Gabriel turned from her with a grimace. “It was a long time ago.” He looked back to her somberly. “Who didn’t love h
er then?”
THERE’D been good reason Gabriel never would have offered to help her find lost threads of time. She could feel the toll the magic had taken on her and felt ridiculous for taking on that kind of risk, especially without a completed Acceptance. She’d almost lost herself to celestial powers, and all over petty jealousy of a three-thousand-year-old dead Queen.
Recovery in a stifling room away from Queen Ceres with nothing but a pounding headache seemed like an appropriate punishment. Using the Dark was a first, and the aftermath was entirely opposite than the Light. With the Light, it took no toll other than the moment, the effort to close the gates within her soul, and perhaps a nasty blister over her skin that was bound with Divine Material. But the Dark was a part of her, and it had been allowed to spread. Sickness filled her and made her nauseous, sending pounding headaches until she pressed her thumbs against her eyes with the strain and tasted sour bile in the back of her throat.
“Can’t you give her something for the pain?” Gabriel’s voice thundered in Azrael’s brain. He was arguing again with a Healer, even though Azrael had said a hundred times she didn’t want help from anyone. She’d done this to herself, and she’d pay the price.
“As I’ve told you before, we’ve used the most of the salve on other patients. There’s only one bottle left.”
“This is your future Queen,” Gabriel sneered. “I don’t care if it’s the last bottle on Terra. Give it to her, and I don’t care if she fights it. Just do it. She needs to complete her Acceptance, and she can’t do that while she’s like this.”
Gabriel hadn’t said the full truth. Azrael knew that he’d meant she couldn’t endure a trial of Light while infected with the Dark.
When trained hands massaged salve into the tight knots of her neck, she didn’t fight it. Rosemary and Thyme masked its putrid scent, and she forced herself to relax. The wave of her nausea eased and the thunder of her headache retreated to a dull throb.
“What is that stuff?” Azrael murmured.
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