Page 28

EVANDRIEL

M y lips part as my head cranes to take in the towering buildings surrounding us. Forsythe’s gory memory evaporates as my eyes trail along the lush vines and flora sweeping across the many beautifully sculpted building facades, each in varying naturalistic designs. It’s distantly similar to a style I’ve seen in my travels across Europe. A style termed as art nouveau or jugendstil, but this is something so much more. Celestial. Divine. Futuristic. Words come to mind, but none of them are quite capable of grasping the sheer majesty of this place.

Elowen’s voice is one of pure awe—a relief, considering what she just witnessed. But having spent most of her childhood living on the streets of London with her mother before I’d found them, she’s of a sterner, more resilient constitution than I often remember to give her credit for.

“What is this place?”

Sariel’s reply snaps me back to reality.

“Ourinessa.”

The word, despite only having heard it once before in my life, seems to initiate a blissful out-of-body experience as I watch all the pieces of my life click together at this very moment.

“Is this Heaven?”

Sariel gives me a peculiar look. “No?”

My wave of euphoria comes to a halt. “No?”

Sariel’s brows pinch so tight, you’d think I’d grown a dick on my forehead—one so small that it could only be discerned through the straining of one’s eyes.

“It is a divine realm, yes, but it is not an after-realm.”

“But… Ffion, Elowen’s mother, is my mate. She’s supposed to be here…”

Something intuitively rings false as I declare the words aloud, and my mind echoes with Ffion’s words—words that I have held as my beacon of light, my hope, for the last decade.

Sariel’s brow is pinched with concern, and an expression that mirrors my heartbreak and disappointment tugs at Elowen’s features. Gods, I’m an asshole for even getting her hopes up.

“Shouldn’t we be in Heaven or something? An after-realm of some kind?”

Sariel gives me a look that tells me he thinks I’m nothing short of an imbecile. “We should be wherever your soulbound is.”

Dread begins to trickle into me as I turn in a circle, desperately scanning each street corner for the beautiful dark-haired, fair-skinned female with the port-wine birthmark on her face. The one whose seer magic ripples off of her in gentle, ephemeral waves that only I can see. My eyes take in beings of every shape, size, and race. Including ones like me. But none of them are her. The space in my chest where hope had carved out its home threatens to disappear like ash on the wind.

My eyes snag on my reflection in a mirror-like shop window. Something looks oddly different, but I can’t quite put my finger on what at first.

I’ve never met another like me outside my mother. Never seen one until now. I only know what little I can recall from what my mother told before she’d left when I was only twelve, or what Ffion had told me. Everything I’d read about our kind in religious texts and lore seemed to be largely… inaccurate.

Seraphi line the streets here. Many dressed in sharp, military-looking uniforms. “… Protectors of goodness…,” she had once told me.

I’ve spent most of my life killing people—whether it be as a soldier during the American Revolutionary War, keeping wayward scum from preying on easy victims, or leaving bad people at the hands of Foresythe. No matter how justified or unjustified, it’s taken a toll on my soul.

No one’s wings are glamoured here, and as if ripe with envy, the glamour I keep on my wings begins to itch and becomes a suffocating weight as their muscles flex with the need to be set free.

Tugging my cap off, I pull out the tie I keep my hair bound in as I finally drop my glamour. My wings unfurl and spread wide—knocking into several passersby and making several of them yelp.

An elderly woman with fragile, paper-thin wings that remind me of a dragonfly, scoffs in my direction as she shuffles around me. “I beg your pardon.”

The words are spoken in a language I haven’t heard since before my mother left. It causes some heavy, crushing emotion to close my throat shut.

My apology comes out a stutter as my mind stumbles to recall the proper translation for, “Sorry.”

I rub my chest and throat as if somehow that will relieve the suffocating emotion as my eyes gradually return to my reflection. Somehow, simply being in this place, my skin, my hair, my horns, my wings seem to glow— the white and gold glitter brilliantly beneath the sun.

Fuck, I wish Ffion could see me like this.

I imagine her expression would look something like her daughter’s does right now— shocked.

Confusion and heartbreak batter my heart. She’d said that we would see each other again.

“Yes, yes, we all know you’re pretty. Now get out of the way, you useless-Seraphi-roadblock.”

The fine hairs of my neck rise at the voice speaking my mother’s native language. I shift to find a disgruntled female scowling in my direction as she’s forced to walk my twenty-foot wingspan to get around me. Her darkest blue hair is tied in a high bun so tight it looks painful. Dark blue eyes are a stark contrast to her pale grey-blue skin. Glowing blue tattoos whirl over her skin, nearly reaching the long, pointed tips of her ears. She looks nothing short of nefarious.

My wings snap shut as I mutter an apology—my accent clumsy and thick from having only rarely spoken it, and only to myself, since my mother left. With a curled lip and a gesture that I imagine is this world’s equivalent of the middle finger, she stalks off.

For the first time since I’ve met him, I see Sariel laugh—and the expression looks far more natural than the numerous scowls I’ve put on his face.

“Divine realm, huh?”

“What? Did you think the benevolent don’t have tempers? I can assure you, there’s nothing that burns quite as bright as the flames of righteous anger.”

I barely hear his words over the sound of my hope beginning to fizzle away as I continue to scan the vicinity for Ffion, who remains nowhere to be seen. Elowen looks equally disappointed but entirely unsurprised as we seem to draw the same inevitable conclusion. The one I am desperate to ignore.

“… But I don’t see her anywhere? ”

“You sure about that?”

Sariel quirks a brow at me, eyes flicking to the blue female who, I’m pretty sure, muttered, eat a dick when I tried to apologize. I roll my eyes. There’s no fucking way. The tweed cap in my hand crumples as I crush it in my frustration.

“As I said, the mundrapedra will only ever bring you to two places: wherever your soulbound is and the place you call home.”

“Maybe it’s just brought me to my true home.”

Sariel shakes his head. “Doesn’t work that way either. Plus, they’re two separate incantations. I didn’t give you the one that will take you home.”

I scowl with determination. “What’re the words again?”

Sariel and Elowen each lay a hand on my shoulder as I repeat the ancient, tongue-twisting words…

Only to appear a dozen feet away and directly in front of the blue female who clearly hates the sight of me.

She gives a dramatic scoff, as if I’m the rotten cherry garnishing a shitty day. “Gods. You again? Don’t you have a mirror to gaze into?”

My heart riots in my chest. The only woman I’ve ever loved wasn’t ever really mine.

My eyes burn as my gaze plummets to the ground—a veined, marble-like stone—between me and who it seems is my soulbound.

A female who already thinks I’m a complete and utter twat.

And pretty, some rebellious voice in my head adds.

I hear her give a muttered curse as she steps forward, filling my vision with her elegantly dressed form. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to upset you. Did Odessa send you or something?”

Odessa?

I shake my head, the words coming slightly easier this time—though they still make it clear I am entirely foreign to this place. “No. Sorry. Just a mistake...”

The female gives me a strange look, as if surprised by my poor pronunciation. Her eyes roam over me as if she’s not quite sure what to make of me. “Right…”

She hesitates for a moment longer, studying me in a way that makes me feel far too exposed before giving up and walking away.

I tug the ring off my finger, feeling like I need to mourn Ffion all over again, and hand it back to Sariel. “Let’s go.”

Sariel looks down at the ring, but doesn’t take it. “You made me vow upon my blood and magic to bring you to your soulbound and to bring you both with us to Atratus. If I do not do exactly that, it is under penalty of death.”

I heave a long-suffering sigh, scrubbing a hand over my face before I snap beneath my despair and frustration. “Well, how was I to know!? I wasn’t expecting this to happen. What’re we supposed to do now? Kidnap her? Surely there’s a way to undo the vow.”

Sariel gives me an unimpressed look. “I can assure you, there isn’t. Magic isn’t something to be meddled with, and vows are not something you can just go back on. Even if you both agree to it. The words, your blood, your life force, your magic—have sewn its will into the very fabric of the universe. It would be like trying to cut a hole into a blanket. The whole fucking thing could unravel. I assumed you understood this when you dared to suggest such a thing.”

My throat works around a knot of guilt. “No… Not entirely.”

I only know about these things from what Ffion told me—or what I’d pried out of the people I’ve tortured and kidnapped trying to find my way to exactly this place. Before Ffion, it was so that I could find my family. After Ffion passed, it only became about finding her.

Having been born in the New World—in the wilderness outside of the Virginia Colony—where human medicine is virtually nonexistent, I lost my farmer father when I was somewhere between boyhood and manhood, while all my other known family had been lost to disease or famine. And my Serpaphi mother had long disappeared… I returned to the place of my father’s birth—England—in the hopes of finding family. Which proved to be an exercise in futility… Until I met Ffion.

All I’ve ever wanted was a family.

A wife.

Children.

As a seer, Ffion knew what I was. I didn’t have to hide anything from her. I couldn’t have even if I’d tried. She knew all there was to know about me. Told me that someday, I would find myself in a realm called Ourinessa— that I would find my destiny there. That I didn’t belong in Terrenea, and my time there would pass in the blink of an eye in comparison to my painfully long lifespan.

“Seraphi are the protectors of goodness, Evandriel. Even if they are unwitting to their purpose, they will be guided to it by the unseen hands of the universe. By Akash. Just as a wave is drawn by the tide, so you are drawn by your destiny. Your time in Terrenea is exceedingly finite—when my soul is freed from my body, you will protect my daughter, and you will rescue her and her soulbound from this place. And through all your subsequent acts of goodness, you will be led to a fate far more beautiful—and filled with family and love—than you would have ever imagined. It is then that we will meet again.”