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Tears turn to ice on my cheeks, my hair whipping around me as the chimeras disappear in the distance. I struggle against the archangel’s hold, slamming my fists against his chest.

“Archangel, take me back!”

The words are swallowed up by the wind, though from the pitying look on his face, I know he heard me. “Take me back, now!”

I can hardly feel the bite on my arm now, the ache in my heart taking precedence.

“Archangel!”

His hand tightens around my waist, as if he’s afraid that I’ll push myself off him and fall. He looks down at me, the silver in his eyes so light. His features soften, his eyes pleading as much as mine.

“Please.”

My cry is nothing more than a whisper. A desperate, empty sound.

We start to descend, but the archangel doesn’t veer back towards my friends. He simply puts me down on a street blocks away from where they’re fighting for their lives.

They’re going to die, if they’re not dead already. I was supposed to die with them. I was ready to die with them. I was ready to fight to the death at my fellow agents’ sides.

My head feels heavy, my body threatening to crumble to the ground and never get up again. I turn towards him and whisper, “We’re too far. I’ll never make it.”

The pity and guilt on his face are gone. The man who stands in front of me is not the one I’ve come to know at all. Rather, it’s the infamous monster responsible for the destruction of our world.

“Archangel, take me back.”

The words feel hollow now, as if their fate is already decided.

His expression doesn’t waver for even a second. “No.”

My fist meets his jaw and his head whips to the side. I don’t let him see the paralysing pain on my face. I don’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that that hurt me more than it did him.

“Amar—”

My spit splatters on his boots before I turn and run back towards the battlefield.

I fall to my knees in the centre of it all.

It’s been years since I’ve been in the midst of battle like this, and back then there were only daemons to fight against. Lilith’s other creatures of darkness hadn’t crawled their way to the surface yet.

The shadows are still now, only moving when the wind rustles a branch. The beasts are gone, having had their meal and moved on to their next victims. The destruction they left behind is unlike any other I’ve seen.

Sam’s eyes are wide as they stare to the side, his mouth dripping with blood.

I should have died with them. I should have fought alongside them. Why should I cheat death while humans around me are slaughtered? First at the estate, and now here.

I left them all behind.

The sound of crunching glass from behind startles me, but I don’t need to turn around to see whose footsteps they are.

“You could’ve saved them.”

My voice is quiet, the broken words barely making a sound. “You could’ve saved all of them.”

He takes a sharp breath. “Slayer…”

My head whips towards him. “Does human life mean so little to you that you’d rather watch them die than use a small portion of your power to save them?”

His look of pity has returned, but I see no guilt alongside it. “Slayer —”

I don’t let him finish. I don’t want to hear whatever sorry excuse he has. “I’m such an idiot. Here I was thinking you were more than just the archangel.”

I say the title with a mocking tone. “I was starting to see something good in you. Turns out I was right all along. You are a monster.”

It’s a venomous insult, fuelled by the bodies splayed on the ground next to me.

He runs a hand through his hair. “They were going to die anyway, Slayer. There’s no reason you had to as well.”

I ignore him, lifting Sam under his arms and dragging his body towards the now-destroyed house we were camped in.

“What are you doing?”

the archangel calls after me.

“Burying my friends.”

“Let me help.”

He reaches for Sam, but I block him with my body.

“Leave me.”

It’s not a request, but a command. A tone that feels foreign to me. No trace of myself to be found.

“Amara —”

“Go, archangel.”

The sound of wings sends a chill down my spine as the archangel takes to the skies, leaving me to bury the bodies of the people I begged to trust him.