Page 61 of Wings of Lies (Daughter of the Seven Circles #1)
Chapter
Thirty-Six
I groaned as I woke up, ears ringing, head pounding, ribs aching. I attempted to lift my arms to clutch my head, but they halted abruptly, clinking against metal. The sound and my immobility snapped my bleary eyes open.
“Mom?” I gasped, wrenching against the black chains wrapped around my body, holding me to a metal table. “Mom!”
She lay beside me, strapped to a table with a lone bag of black fluid feeding into her veins. My purple flames erupted, coating my body and spreading ice over my chains.
“No!” I slammed against them, ignoring the agony in my side.
The ice shattered. I dove deeper into my Infernus, strumming the cords of the black flames.
They replaced the purple, but no matter how high they flared or how hot they burned, they didn’t help me.
“Mom!” I screamed again, a heaviness seeping into my body from the extreme amount of power I used. I dove too deep .
A door squeaked open. I scanned the room desperately, hoping for help, but found only rusted hooks, chains, and knives. Blinking away the light-headedness, I released my power.
Where the hell were we?
“Funny, isn’t it, that your Glory is the only thing that could melt Ember Chains, but it’s the one power you don’t have access to.”
No.
“I figured you’d be out for longer. Shame about your mother. I had to sedate her with Nerium. She was inconsolable when we brought you in.”
No.
“Speak when you are spoken to!”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Every word he spoke was a shard of glass slamming into my ears, filling me with an intense, visceral hatred.
He stepped into view. Not a spec of fuzz or color sullied his uniform. It remained white all the way down to his pristine battle boots. “Lucille, I didn’t want to start your punishments just yet. But if you do not speak, I will have no choice.”
I lifted my hate-filled eyes to his face, contemplating spitting on the stupid white metal of his armor. “What do you need me to say, Father?” I ground out.
His sneer flattened to a line. “Never call me that.”
“Then what should I call you, Father?” I didn’t know why I egged him on, but it had something to do with the fact of him knocking my mom out, cutting me up, and abusing us with his words, playing on replay in my mind.
I saw a flash of metal and flinched back. Except I had nowhere to go as the metal sliced my cheek. Blood slid down my face. My wrists yanked on my chains .
He held up a dagger with an ebony blade. “You will call me by my name.” He smiled, twisting his dagger back and forth, gazing at the drop of blood dotting the tip like he won some prize.
I abhorred him—more than abhorred. There wasn’t an ounce of daughterly affection toward him.
Oh, wait. I wasn’t his daughter.
He strolled to the end of the table. “Do you not remember?” He paused. “Do you know what I am?”
“A bastard?” I goaded. The last thing Michael deserved was compliance, especially when that was all he ever wanted.
He chuckled. The hilt of his dagger flashed before the ebony blade sliced the arch of my foot. Tender flesh that never saw the light of day split.
I pushed against my chains. The cut stung but barely bled.
They were taunts. Little slices to satiate his craving for abuse until it wasn’t enough. By the long scars in single file lines on my back, it was never enough.
“An Archangel. Pure and renowned,” he said with his chest puffed out. “Just like your mother. Until you.”
Gag. I attempted to hide my disgust, but it was as futile as stripping the sarcasm from my tone.
His gray eyes churned with malice and a sickening joy. “Lucille, do you know my name?”
“Nope,” I said in a platonic, chipper voice that was as fake as the smile lifting his lips.
This time, his chuckle gained volume, sounding pleased. “Did your mother ever clarify my abilities to you?” His finger tapped against the table, waiting. I glared at it .
“You know, can’t say we ever cared enough to talk about you,” I said, looking over at her unconscious form.
My purple flames itched to come out, but I was still light-headed, and every one of my limbs was pinned down.
Even if I could manage an icicle, I wasn’t sure how to slam it into Michael’s face.
But maybe if he touched me at the right moment…
My thoughts trailed off, mulling over a plan.
He walked around to my arm, fingering my blood at the tip of his dagger with his gloved hand. The white remained stain-free as he smeared it down the middle, his ebony blade absorbing the red line.
What was that thing? Was that the knife I needed to steal? If so, that female had a lot of faith in my abilities to escape Ember Chains without a key or my Glory.
“As an Archangel, we all have a singular power. Mine is one of truth. So, my dear Lucille, we will play a game.”
I was surprised he didn’t keel over by saying the word dear.
“Oh goody, I love games.” All the resentment I had stored over the years leaked out.
“Me too,” Michael said in a low voice, pressing the edge of his dagger to my inner arm. “Let’s start off with a truth of my own to set a good example for our game.”
I bit my cheek to avoid letting out a loud scoff. He didn’t know a good example, even if it came and sat at his feet like a sacrificial lamb.
“This dagger,” he dragged it across my forearm, indenting my skin but not slicing through. “There is only one of its kind. Its name is Tsal-mawet. Shadow-death.” He stared at it proudly.
So that’s what that looked like.
“Since you most likely forgot. I’ll recap what you’ve missed, and we can go from there.” The dagger left my arm and tinked against the table. He walked around, letting the tip screech against the metal, outlining my body as he talked.
“After your mother hid you from me successfully over the years,” he said begrudgingly, glancing at her with a sick sort of pride. “I bided my time, waiting. Because your mother may know me and my tactics, but I know hers as well.” His lips curled up into a smile.
My father actually smiled as he gazed at her. A weird tenderness softened his murderous eyes.
“I knew because of you , she’d slip up.” The soft expression he reserved for her twisted into revulsion when he turned to me. “And she did. So, I sent a message to a demon called Marcus. He needed to find you and secure you.
“But see, your mother thought the demon still worked for Lilith, the Tenebrous Queen. She thought Lilith was after you because we all heard of the queen stealing female angels to escape her prison. So, your mother made a rune-binding deal with the demon, a trade.
“She’d give up herself for you, but only if the demon would keep you sedated and safe so you wouldn’t run off.
” He laughed. “They put you up in an abandoned safe house with one bag of Nerium poison until she could return to you. Little did she know the demon was under my command. I told him to up the dosage to three bags, enough poison to torture your disgusting sin-filled mind until I could come to finish the job.”
She traded herself for me to keep me safe. Instead of being tortured by a queen, my mom poisoned me to keep me unconscious until what? She survived her own torture and retrieved me from Marcus, a demon who worked for Michael, who wanted me dead or to go to some council ?
“If they made a binding deal about keeping me safe, how is destroying my mind defined as safe?” I glared.
He smiled with pride. For himself. “Because the only way to remove a rune of any kind is from an Archangel’s feather, which only an Archangel or Seraphim can use.
“Your mother assumed no angel would dare remove a rune from a demon. They are our enemies, so if a rune has been placed on them, we know our brethren had reason to do it. But sometimes, in rare cases, we must get our hands dirty for the greater good,” he shrugged, unphased.
“So, I paid off an Archangel bounty hunter to remove Marcus’s rune.
Therefore, no more deal. Then all I had to do was wait for my appointed time to finish the deed.
“See, long ago, I petitioned to the Seraphims that I wanted to come to Earth once a day on your birthday. Archangels are too powerful to grace Earth with their presence more than once a year.” The pride in his voice made my stomach roll. His shoulders were back, chin up like he was a god.
“My mom’s an Archangel, though.”
The corner of his eyes tightened. “No, she fell not long after you came to be. A Fallen angel who kept her signature powers because of me . I gave her everything, even after her sin stole her wings and forced her to live in Elora or on Earth.” By his expression, I felt I was somehow the cause of her fall.
“But she chose Earth. At first, I didn’t understand, then I put the pieces together.
“The Council of Righteousness is comprised of Seraphims, and they aren’t allowed there.
However, they keep a close eye on the supernatural on Earth.
So, your mother figured with me , we could keep you completely off their radar, and we did.
Until the day I bound your powers, and you escaped.
I told the council what happened, and we made a deal.
But first, I needed to find you, which proved difficult because I reduced you to a human, so I employed anyone willing and available to complete the task for me.
“When the demon stole you two months ago, I had to wait until your birthday to come. Only a few weeks remained until I could do what I’ve always wanted. But somehow…”
The dagger stopped near my thigh, an inch away from touching my skin. Heat radiated off the metal, and a magnetic pull begged me to touch it. If the chains weren’t holding my thighs in place, I would’ve pressed my skin to the knife.