He locks eyes with me. “She will be my downfall.”
I recoil.
He grabs my arm and pulls me against him. “You will break me, human.”
“I don’t understand.” I gulp. “I just want to save my cousin.”
He lowers his head, his lips nearly touching mine. “You have started something you cannot end.”
“What?”
He sighs. “You will be our end.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you are what we are not,” he says simply. “You are human, you are a crown, we are creation. You are… different.”
“We are weak,” I say.
He smiles. “No, the problem is not your weakness; it is your strength, chosen one.” He sets me back on my feet and then whispers. “Show us, what we need to watch, what we need to protect. Show us the girl.”
“I never said—”
“—Bannik,” he calls. “Heal the girl.”
“Are you sure that—”
“—Heal her now,” I scream. “Before I do something I will never come back from!”
“Right away.” The man named Bannik, in his gold armor, closes his eyes. They open, and suddenly they go from blue to gold and stay that way. Something rises from his fingertips. “I manifest the healing of the girl who’s ailing, I manifest goodness, strength, she will be well, she will see the wonders of creation, she will”—he falls to his knees—“live. She will live!”
Gold shoots out of his fingertips down the mountain, and in its wake… flowers grow all the way down to her tent.
It is done.
I have done it.
Warm hands catch me as I fall.
It was worth it.
Every moment.
To be in his arms.
FOUR
Sariel
I catch her.
She’s freezing. “What do I do?”
Nobody answers, but my brothers start to move. Bannik is closest to me after healing her cousin, his fingers graze her chin, and I nearly growl, shoving him backward. I don’t understand any of the feelings coursing through me.
Is this… jealousy?
I frown at him. He frowns right back, his jaw clenches into a tight expression as he jerks his hand back and stares at it.
His olive-skinned jaw is trembling, his fingers shaking like he just stuck them in a fire and had every single part of his skin singed, only to heal again.
“What’s happening?” I ask nobody in particular.
She stirs in my arms, then jerks back when her eyes lock on mine; her small hands move to my face, and I let her slowly shove back my gold helmet. Nobody has touched my helmet. Ever.
I’ve touched it once.
I haven’t moved it since.
The minute I put it on, I was at war. I was a Watcher.
And now I am bare to a human woman!
Her gasp is so loud I can hear armor moving as the rest of my brothers turn their heads toward us in unison.
Bannik’s smile is sad. “Almost forgot what you looked like, brother.”
I find myself smiling a bit.
A hand is still on my cheek as a slow tear runs down her face. “You’re perfect.”
I jerk away, her hand falls. “Nobody is perfect but the Creator.”
“Not true.” She has the audacity to argue with me. “You’re a god.”
“No.” I shake my head. “This is wrong. Blasphemous.”
“What are you?” She sits up fully in my arms. With Bannik at our side, the rest of my brothers creep forward, watching, curious, probably bored out of their minds but also wondering who the hell has the nerve to approach us after all of these years? After all of the stories?
“Shouldn’t it be obvious, little human?” Bannik’s laugh is rough around the edges as he shakes his head. “Do you really not know?”
She’s looking at me, not him.
I can’t look away.
I gently set her in the snow, hating that it will make her colder, and stand to my full height. I close my eyes and open them. They blaze white then orange before my wings come out from the slits in my golden armor, shoving them into the sky for the first time in over a thousand years.
It’s like stretching for the first time.
They’re every color of the rainbow and then end at a pretty yet lethal white. Each individual feather moves as one and yet can be used to slit someone’s throat, if I will it.
I’m not just an archangel… I am a warrior.
She moves to her feet and reaches for my wings.
“Are you mad?” I jerk back.
“Are they soft?” She counters.
I frown. “They can be.”
“If I take one…” She swallows. “What will it do?”
Bannik shakes his head slowly at me as if to say not to engage.
It’s forbidden.
I know that.
He knows that.
But we both also know the secrets of creation are held the way we can wield our powers. If he wanted to, he could add his blood to the tip of the feather and heal the entire city.
That is the power we have been given.
Each of us have tasks and jobs that we had back when we were in the heavenliness. I made music, I fought, and I sang with the stars.