Ophelia
Malakaiand I tried to work a daily training session into our schedule. Thoughtrainingwas a loose word, given that I was still learning how to balance with the wings pulling at my back. The general soreness of my muscles and constant inferno ravaging my body faded as I adjusted to the magic pushing for a constant release, but the weight made lifting even a training sword an entirely new challenge.
We based our movements on Echnid’s. If the god was lingering in a common space, we stayed nearby trying to overhear his conversations. A few times I found myself under the thrall of the god’s magic, but Malakai would always whisper something to me or nudge down the Bind, and I’d snap back to myself.
So far, we’d learned nothing ofhowhe intended to get his revenge on the known gods or why he needed me to do it. But he was growing impatient. His moments of outrage rippled through the palace. The sky outside turned grayer by the day, and my worries darkened with it.
A few days into our new routine, Malakai was cleaning up from our training session in my bathing chamber—he’d taken tosleeping on the sofa in my suite. With my wet hair trailing down my back, I wandered into my office to go over the books we’d pulled from Lucidius’s private collection.
And I stopped in my tracks.
“What are you doing in here?” I spat.
I’d avoided Damien since I woke up. Had avoided all the Angels as much as I could. They were often out gallivanting the cloudy skies or bowing at their beloved god’s feet. I hadn’t been forced to solely face the Prime Mystique who betrayed me and slew my predecessor since that day in the mountains.
From his spot before the window, Damien cast an uninterested glance over his shoulder, then turned back to the mountainous view. “You forget that it was my home first, little seraph.”
“It has not been your home for centuries,” I said.
“I have not resided here, but does a home ever truly stop being that which it once was? The halls grow empty, but the heart continues yearning.”
A beast roiled inside me, longing to snap and claw at him. Perhaps it was my seraph or maybe just my bruised spirit, but it begged to unleash the fury burning brighter than my Angellight.
Damien scanned the peaks, eyes drifting to the ceiling mural of a warrior dipping his sword in a lake, the blades illuminated a striking blue. And there was such a heavy melancholy to his scarred face, a guilt stiffening his wings, like every twitch rocked through him with the effect of his actions.
Perhaps it was regret for killing Annellius, for lying to me. Perhaps it was something entirely unrelated. Maybe the immortal Angel was simply bored of his existence. But it tugged at the part of me that was his, born of the myth magic that brought my seraph to life.
It was for that part of me—not him—that I softened a touch. “You miss it, don’t you? The mountains and the palace.”
“That I do. More than words could do justice, little seraph.”
I swallowed at that name again, and for the moment, I set aside my grudge with the Angel. More than I needed to be angry with him, I needed answers. “Did you know? All this time, did you know I…” I trailed off, trying my hardest to flutter my wings but wincing.
Maybe theywerestill a little sore. And forget flying. That was something I wasn’t sure I’d ever conquer.
“No,” Damien admitted, his voice earnest. “No, I never knew what myth resided in your veins beyond the Angelcurse and the Godsblood. I never knew what you and your sister could do, or”—the Prime Mystique Warrior looked over my limp wings, expression every bit as stony as the statues of his likeness lining these halls—“I may have tried to find a way around it.”
“Why?” I balked, stepping closer. My hair dripped water to the floor, the steadyplunkloud in the silence.
Damien continued to study his mountains, the home he’d built for himself many millennia ago. The one I’d claimed, too. Now taken from us both.
“Because some burdens are too heavy for one person to bear.” Before I could ask what he meant, he said, “Come, Ophelia.”
With a wave of his hand, he cast a beam of Angellight to shove the balcony doors wide, and I followed him over the threshold. The mountain air was crisp—familiar.
“Can you teach me how to use it like that?” I asked. Damien lifted a brow, and I was certain he knew what I meant, but I elaborated, “The Angellight. I have…I have your power within me.”
“You have all of our power within you, Ophelia.”
“How?” He’d told Malakai about the seraph magic, but I’d been unconscious. I still didn’t understandhowit was possible.
“He who bore the Angelcurse was always able to create our light with their blood upon the seven.”
Tentatively, without an emblem in hand, I held out my palm. In the center, a swirling bud of Angellight bloomed, strands looping and swishing around each other. This was Damien’s. If I hadn’t known at the core of myself, it would have been clear with the way the light leaned toward him, absorbed his presence.
He studied it for a moment. Then, I closed my fist around it.
“I can do more than just summon Angellight with the emblems.”
