The Fallen (Hades Castle Trilogy Book 1)

by C. N. Crawford

Oddly … considerate. Was he trying to beguile me?

  Well he would find the tables turned, because I would be seducing him. Making him vulnerable.

  All I knew was I'd have to be quick on my feet, and I'd have to be subtle.

  As I peered at the books by his bed, I paused. It was my magpie instinct again, and something caught my eye. A glimmer of gold behind the dusty books.

  I crawled over his bed. Curiosity compelled me to take a closer look, and I realized it was the frame of a painting. At the edge of the canvas, I caught a glimpse of vibrant red curls, and a dress with the puffed sleeves of antiquity, a hint of an ornate collar.

  "Why have you got a painting hidden behind your books?” I asked.

  To no one's surprise, he simply responded, "That's not something you need to know. Will you go to sleep, or will I be listening to you inspect everything in here?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Curiosity can be dangerous,” he murmured.

  “Why do you always wear that cloak?”

  “It’s almost like you didn’t hear what I just said.”

  But he pulled down his cowl anyway. Even though I’d seen his face before, his beauty was as shocking and stark as the carvings in the next room. I was sure his features had been lovingly carved by God, a careful hand sculpting his avenging angel. A slight furrow etched between his eyebrows as he read his book.

  Looking at his face felt like I’d stumbled into a forbidden sanctuary of a church, a place where people like me weren’t allowed.

  If I had to seduce him to save my country and avenge the dead, it wasn’t the worst thing that he looked like that.

  His gaze flicked up to me again. “Will you sleep now?”

  I took off my own damp cloak and draped it over one of the chairs before the fire. Despite the flames, the size of the hall meant it was freezing in here.

  When I looked back at Samael, he had gone completely still. His eyes slowly brushed down my body, pausing at my breasts.

  It was only then that I realized the rain had made my nightgown completely see-through. The curves of my breasts were on display, nipples peaked. A draft in the hall rushed over me like a sea wind.

  I felt a surge of warm magic rush off Samael. My heartbeat seemed so loud, I felt like it was echoing off the high ceiling. With what looked like a tremendous effort, he pulled his gaze up off my breasts, meeting my eyes again. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

  This was working.

  “I’m cold from the rain.” I crossed my arms below my breasts. “Maybe I could take a bath. Just to warm up a little bit.” I nodded at the bathroom. “I saw that you have a bathtub in there. ”

  He cocked his head. “Are you planning something? Some sort of machination?” He spoke quietly, but his tone had a sharp edge to it that made my spine straighten.

  “Planning something?” I stepped even closer to him, my breasts only about six inches from his face.

  But he was keeping his gaze locked on mine, and his eyes seemed to be darkening to a deep color of flames. After a moment he closed them, and leaned back in his chair. There was something about him that felt so much like a caged beast, a quiet sort of control that could snap at any moment. If I said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, my death could be brutal and swift.

  Or perhaps something else would happen …

  The line deepened between his eyebrows as he opened his eyes again, now returned to pale gray. “I actually don't care if you take a bath. It doesn't matter to me at all.”

  Given the tenseness of his muscles, I didn’t believe him.

  “Okay.” I smiled.

  I crossed through the stone arches to the bathroom—an octagonal space, with a copper tub on a raised dais. Tall windows gave a view of the stormy skies outside, and candlelight danced over a stone floor.

  I turned on the tap, filling the tub with warm water. Shivering, I peeled off the wet nightgown. The cool air raised goosebumps on every inch of my naked skin. I felt acutely aware that at any moment, he could glance through the arches and see me completely exposed.

  I shot a glance back at him to see if he was paying attention, but he was making a determined effort not to. Draped in his armchair, a book in his lap.

  Steam curled from the bath as it filled, and I stepped into it. Would he be like Cassius—my posh former lover? Because all I had to do with Cassius was take my clothes off, and I had him mesmerized for the next twenty minutes. Which was perhaps generous. Ten minutes, maybe.

  And in the Bibliotek Music Hall, I’d seen the real expert seductresses at work. When the burlesque dancers took the stage, they often pulled up a wide-eyed reveler from the crowd, sat him down in a chair. The dancer would slowly peel off her clothes, flashing a little bit at a time—just a hint of nipple, a bit of thigh. It was slow, controlled, a rising crescendo of desire, of breasts brushed against cheeks, fingers stroked over chests. It was a balance between the hidden and the revealed. Always, the man would look at the dancer like he’d been awestruck.

  Of course, Samael would be more difficult, tightly wound and unearthly as he was. I needed to catch him completely off guard. The fact that I confused him seemed promising.

  I dipped a toe into the bath, then climbed into the hot water.

  The warmth felt amazing after being in the rain. As I sank into it, my muscles relaxed, and my cheeks and chest flushed.

  But Samael’s gaze was intently on his book.

  I needed him to look over at me. “Sourial started teaching me to read,” I said.

  He was in the middle of turning a page in his book, when he went completely still. He cut me a sharp look. “Why do you bring him up?”

  Was that … jealousy? No, that would be insanity. “No reason.” I started tracing circles in the water with my fingers. “You still haven’t told me what this job is. Why do I have to be literate?”

  His eyes were on his book again. “I need people to believe that you and I have things in common. If you don’t read, we can have little in common.”

  “Why?”

  He closed his book with a loud crack, and he stood, crossing over to the archway that separated us. I wrapped my arms around my knees, hugging them closer. So much for being seductive.

  I thought I saw the ghost of dark wings swooping behind him. “I need a wife. My dreams tell me it should be you.”

  I swear I stopped breathing for a moment.

  Seems he was the one catching me off guard.

  25

  Lila

  I watched his back as he crossed back toward his room. “You want me to be your wife?”

  “I want other people to think you’re my wife.” Silence fell over the room, and he cocked his head. “Which would involve you actually becoming my wife at some point.”

  “Why?”

  “It is a custom among my people.”

  My heart thudded against my ribs. “And why do you have to conform to this custom?”

  “Sometimes to gain the trust of others, you must act as they do. You need to be one of them. I plan to rule them.”

  “The fallen angels.” Might as well say it.

  In the doorway, he turned back to me, eyes narrowing. “The fallen angels, yes. I assumed you knew what I was, but I wasn’t sure. The Fallen have no king. Yet. But the King of the Fallen must have a mortal wife. That is where you come in.”

  As I sank into his bath, my breaths were deep and shaking, and I started tracing circles in the water again. “So will we be sleeping in the same bed?”

  “Absolutely not. But others must think we are.”

  “Are you interested in mortal women? Because Sourial sure is.”

  A chill seemed to spread across the room, and he leaned against the doorframe. “Has he crossed any boundaries he shouldn’t have?” His voice was a blade of ice.

  “No,” I lied. “Would you be jealous? Since I’m supposed to be your wife?”

  The temperature seemed to grow even colder, the atmosphere thinning. Maybe now was m
y chance.

  I felt like a hundred butterflies were swooping through my body, but this was a battle, and it was time to attack. So I rose from the bath, hot water dripping down my body—one hand over my breasts, one strategically placed at the apex of my thighs.

  I stepped out of the tub, then crossed closer to where he stood in the doorway. I looked up at him. “Husband, do you have a towel?”

  His gaze snapped to me, and his stare felt like it was boring into me, his chest rising and falling slowly. His irises were bright licks of fire, and I saw the faintest hint of golden sheen sweeping along his cheeks, like swirls of golden tattoos coming to the fore.

  He flicked my hair off my shoulder, then slid his hand around the back of my neck.

  Leaning in, he spoke in a whisper that warmed the side of my face. “Be very careful around me, Zahra. Do not try to tempt me.” His seductive angel magic was skimming over every inch of my bare skin. I found myself closing my eyes, confused by the hot surge of ecstasy where he touched my nape. “Because if I lose control, I will lose control completely, and I am like nothing you have ever seen before. I am nothing you can comprehend.”

  In the hollows of my skull words rang like a curse. Venom of God.

  He pulled his hand away from me, and turned to stalk away. I found myself naked and shaking in his bathroom.

  Then, he uttered a word in a foreign tongue, and the lights went completely out in the entire place. The fire, the candles, everything snuffed out. With the stormy clouds hiding the sun outside, I could hardly see a thing.

  Well this had gone bloody well, hadn’t it?

  I swallowed hard. What had I just seen—the golden tattoos? Another glimpse of his true face. Exquisite, but I’d felt fear slicing through my heart all the same. His true face was a divine vision not meant for mortals.

  Now, I heard only the sound of my own breathing, and the droplets of water hitting the floor.

  I didn’t have any dry clothes yet. I stumbled into a sofa, and felt around until my fingertips brushed over what I thought was my cloak, until I realized it was dry.

  At last, my eyes adjusted. I saw that he’d left a soft blanket out for me, draped over the sofa.

  Stark naked, I lay down and pulled the blanket over me. So soft and comfortable here, like a dream.

  But there was one burning question in my mind—one that maybe spoke to the heart of his mystery. “Why did you fall?” I asked. “What did you do?”

  He let out a sigh that sounded forlorn. In the next moment, the fire was burning once more in the hearth. I sat up, holding the blanket up to cover myself. My hair fell loose over my bare shoulders, and I waited to hear what he would say.

  He was sitting at the edge of his bed, staring at the floor. “I drink tea, sometimes, at night. Herbal tea.”

  I frowned, completely confused. “Sorry, is that why you fell, or …”

  He looked at me like I was mad. “No, oddly enough, I wasn’t cast out of the heavens for the mortal sin of drinking herbal tea. I just wanted to drink some while I told you about the most painful memory I have. Will I be pouring a cup for you?”

  “Are you trying to beguile me?”

  He arched a quizzical eyebrow, then stood and plucked the kettle off the mantel. “Absolutely not. If I were trying to beguile you, you would know it. And you would likely not recover from the experience.”

  He hung the kettle from a hook over the fireplace. I watched as he pulled herbs from a tin, and dropped them into little silky sachets.

  “Okay. Noted. Just tea then.”

  The flames wavered, warm light and shadows dancing over the perfect planes of his face. It was no wonder he thought highly of himself, which was bloody annoying. “It’s a medicinal tea,” he said. “It soothes the soul. Fenugreek, mugwort, sage, and something very secret. It’s a blend I learned to make from a woman named Yvonne.”

  “A mortal woman?”

  “One who I regarded highly. Or so I’m told.”

  “Told?”

  “Angels do not remember our lives before the fall.”

  I felt a bizarre and very unexpected twinge of jealousy of this woman. And that was insane.

  I frowned. “Is she the woman in the painting? The redhead?”

  He nodded, staring at the kettle as it warmed. “Yvonne was a healer, alive a thousand years ago.” He leaned against the mantel, his head resting on his arm. For the first time, I sensed a sort of weariness in him. When the kettle started to whistle, he pulled it off the hook—not using a cloth or anything, just his bare hand on hot metal.

  He poured the boiling water into the cups, and the steam curled into the air around him. He handed me a cup, sat in his chair, then peered at me over the rim of his mug, steam coiling before his face. Even his tea was a way to hide.

  “I’d been in a battle when I met her.”

  “With mortals?”

  He narrowed his gray eyes. “Are you going to keep interrupting?”

  One hand held my hot tea, the other clung to the blanket over my chest. I waited for him to go on.

  “It was a holy battle—angels fighting demons.”

  I stared, and dread swooped through my heart. This was new information.

  There was something worse than angels?

  26

  Lila

  “Wait—demons?” I sputtered. “Demons are real?”

  Glaring at me, he went very still, and let the silence settle in the air.

  “Go on,” I muttered.

  “Thank you. I was on the Island of Wrens, fighting the army of the great demon Lilith, and she nearly managed to kill me. She left me bleeding out over the stones and soil, my head nearly off my body entirely.”

  I wanted to hear more about her, but I wasn’t going to interrupt him again.

  “Yvonne saw it happen. She’d been hiding in the forest, watching the battle. We lost, badly. But when the battle ended, Yvonne crept out of the trees where she’d been hiding. She started to heal the wounded angels, one by one. But I was in the worst shape, and it took me months to recover. We stayed friends after that.”

  My towel had started to fall down—which Samael noticed—and I tugged it up. “Just friends?”

  “I wasn’t exactly her type.”

  I nodded. “Arrogant and bloodthirsty?”

  “She didn’t like males in that way. Stop interrupting. We stayed friends, but mortals did not view her as kindly as I did. They thought she was a witch.” For a moment, I thought I saw the faintest hint of burning chains writhing around him. “Your kind has an amazing propensity for cruelty.”

  I was about to point out the bodies he hung from the castle walls, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “For reasons I don’t remember, angels were not allowed to teach mortals our celestial secrets,” he said. “I suppose you weren’t to be trusted. But I wanted her to learn to protect herself in case the witch finders came for her, so I taught her the secrets of warfare, celestial combat. That was when I fell. But I don’t remember much before the fall. It was taken from me.”

  He went silent, looking down at his tea. When he met my gaze, his gray eyes had a deeply forlorn expression that made my throat tighten. “That’s the thing about being Fallen. We want to tell things to mortals, and to …” His sentence faded out. “Well, others do.”

  “What does it mean to fall?” I asked.

  Something in his face looked lost. And that was insane, because he was the Angel of Death. He didn’t need to be protected.

  He frowned, staring at me over his mug of tea. “Once you fall, you forget most things. You forget meaning. Mostly it’s a sense of having once been whole, but now being broken. But I vaguely remember that the things I used to do had meaning, and that once I didn’t worry about right and wrong. I remember that lacerating sense of loss when I fell, like my soul was ripped out. I was empty. Nothing meant anything, and no one meant anything. After I fell, often rage overtook me, and I wanted to destroy, to crush people into dust. I was trying to
heal myself through death, to restore my glory as the Venom of God.”

  His eyes had taken on a haunted look, then a muscle flexed in his jaw. “After I fell, I remember watching Yvonne die, but I couldn’t remember her name, or how I knew her. I’d forgotten language. It seemed she was too gentle to use the celestial art of fighting that I’d taught her, so the witch finders captured her. They tied her to a stake, and lit the bottom, but her feet were burning for so long, and her legs. It took a long time. I remember that. Something about her screams got through the haze and made my heart race. I couldn’t stop staring as she burned, and part of me hated it but I couldn’t think of what to do … So I just watched. She must have wondered why I wasn’t helping her, because she could see me there. I think she was screaming my name.” His voice sounded ragged. “It’s just that it went on so long.”

  He met my gaze again, and the firelight danced over the perfect planes of his face. “I remember who I am now. I am the Venom of God. I cut down those who perpetuate the evil of man. That is my purpose. And when I unite the Fallen, we will bring order to the chaos of mortals.”

  A chill rippled over my body, and my breaths had gone shallow. I stared at my beautiful enemy.

  I sipped my tea, and the earthy flavor rolled over my tongue. “But don’t you ever worry that you’ve got it wrong? That you’re slaughtering the wrong person?”

  A flicker of confusion in his eyes, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he spoke a single word in Angelic, and the lights went out again.

  In the dark, I drank the rest of my tea. When it was finished, I curled up naked with the blanket over me. I’d never felt anything so soft against my skin, like the softest rabbit’s paw covering my body. And the sofa beneath me—velvety pillows, the fabric exquisite. Completely exhausted, it wasn’t long until sleep crept over me.

  But when I slept, I dreamt I was plummeting into the churning Dark River. I was slipping deeper under the surface. I thrashed in the water, forcing my way to the top again, and when I breached the surface, I was staring up at the scaffold outside the castle walls.