Page 41

The train cut out a few hours of walking for us, but we only made it two stops before we fled. It’s been more silent walking since then, the quiet becoming the norm for us.

I chew my bottom lip as words rush through my mind, wanting to apologise for the blame I placed on the archangel for not being there. Wanting to explain that hearing Jeremy’s voice made it feel so much more real. I want to try to put into words the feeling of helplessness that accompanied it. But nothing comes out, nothing but broken breaths to fill the silence.

We step over shards of glass and broken pieces of brick, taking it street by street. We avoid the small sand dunes scattered in the streets, the archangel explaining that they are indeed portals to the Darklands.

The Darklands, where the devil reigns and souls are tortured for eternity. Though from what the archangel told me, there’s more to it than that. He didn’t delve into specifics, but I don’t press for more, happily taking any scraps of information that he deems me worthy of, anything that I can relay to the agency.

Branches scatter the road as sporadically as abandoned vehicles. The sun sits below the tops of the houses, the sky bleeding orange around it. It’s jarring to see it this way, the sunset illuminating the sky the way it did before the war began. For a long while after the earth split open and beasts crawled from its depths, the sky remained a hellish red. We thought the world might just burst into flames and take everything with it.

I pass the time by thinking about Jeremy – about his voice, his smile, the way his eyes light up when he sees me. I think about the way he makes me feel. I really think about it.

I try to remind myself of that feeling, to put it into words. The only word that comes to me is safe.

He makes me feel safe. I trust him.

I’ve been with him for two years, and the only feeling I can remember is safety? Comfort? I mean, I love him. I’ve always loved him. Yet I didn’t want to marry him. Yet I haven’t seen him in days, and the first feeling that comes to mind is safety.

The archangel is silent beside me, his brows pulled together tightly. I wonder where his mind goes in these moments of quiet. While mine wanders to the man that I search so desperately for, what plagues his? Does he think of family? Does he even have any family left? I know that his mother has passed, and he briefly mentioned his father, but I don’t know if he’s still around.

“Tell me about your father.”

Tell me anything to stop these thoughts from festering.

The archangel’s body tenses. His shoulders square, his head holds high, his hands ball into fists. “What about him?”

“Is he still… around?”

The archangel turns away from me and focuses on something far away. His hands flex. “He was never around. He existed and I existed. But we did not exist together.”

The way he speaks tells me he wishes to be any place but here, speaking about anything but this.

“I’m sorry.”

I reach out to touch him, but hover an inch away, letting the cloud of warmth tingle my senses before quickly dropping my hand.

The archangel’s shoulders relax and he takes a deep breath, though his expression doesn’t soften. “Don’t be. When he was around, he was cruel. He was born with the expectation that he would become an archangel, yet never did, and he hated me for stealing his destiny. When I was born and the fates decided that I was to be the next archangel, he resented me. He sent me off to train for most of the seasons, and I would only return home to update him on my progress.”

His father treated him as if his destiny was his entire life, as if there were no more to him than becoming the archangel. It’s no wonder that he rejects the concept of destiny so strongly.

“No matter what I said, no matter if I failed or succeeded, it was never enough. He hated me from the moment I was born, and nothing was ever going to change that. The only thing he loved was my mother, and I took her from him as well.”

I open my mouth to speak, to tell him that his mother’s death was not his fault, but as if he senses my next words, he cuts me off.

“But to answer your question, yes, he is still alive.”

I rethink my words, what I wish to tell him. It’s awfully hard to hate this side of the archangel; it makes him marginally less punchable. “Well, for what it’s worth, I think he had every right to be envious of the man that you became, because it’s something that he could never be.”

I almost trip over him as he stops in the street and turns to look at me. His eyes cast a trail over my face, searching for something. Always searching for something. They linger on my lips for a moment too long, and the skin on the back of my neck heats.

“You’re not what I expected either, you know.”

His voice is deeper, but gives no sign of the immortal warrior. It’s laced with an emotion that scares me more than any bloodlust.

Suddenly he’s in front of me, his breath mixing with mine. His hand moves slowly but too quickly all at once. Everything else around us is frozen. His thumb grazes over mine in a ghost of a touch, so soft that the warmth is fleeting.

I watch as the silver in his eyes dims, the way it does in moments like these. In moments where we become just a man and a woman. No war, no angel, no human. Just us.

My laugh has no humour to it – it’s an uncomfortable scoff designed to change the mood. “No? Less of a weak little human?”

No smile plays on his lips. Rather, he has the desperate look of a man who is seeking water in the desert.

Gunshots echo through the empty street. I spin on my heel, my breath leaving me in a rush. Flashes of light flare in the distance, and my gun is drawn within a second. The archangel doesn’t draw his sword, though, his face confirming what I already suspected.

Humans.