forty-seven
I’m covered in dirt by the time I bury each of my friends. Their blood stains my skin, but it’s the memory of the pleas in their lifeless eyes that will never wash away.
There are only a few hours left until sunrise, and the pain of the lion’s bite returned halfway through my gruesome task. Exhaustion claws at me, threatening to pull me to the dirt and never let me rise again.
I choose the house next to the one we were camped in to rest. It’s much smaller, with only one bedroom and a small living area. A horde of creatures already attacked this area this evening, which means the chances of a second are low. Still, I don’t turn on the lights as I take a shower.
The archangel hasn’t returned, and I don’t know if he will. Frankly, I don’t care if he does. We’re close enough to the warehouse now that it’s likely I can make it on my own once the sun rises. Though without the archangel, the fallen angel may kill me the moment I step through the door.
The archangel.
The man I called my friend merely hours ago. He saved my life yet again, and though I should be grateful, I can’t help the resentment that clouds my thoughts.
We’ve been travelling together for nearly five days now, meeting unimaginable evil along the way. I lived through it all because of him. I escaped death the first night I ran into the darkness after Jeremy, and again when the dark-haired angel nearly choked the life out of me. I almost fell off the edge of the chasm and plummeted to my death, but the archangel caught me. I was almost dragged to the Darklands by daemons at the bottom of that pit, but his light killed them all. I thought when I saved him at the estate that perhaps I’d balanced the scales a little, but now five people have died in my place.
How many times can one person escape death before it catches up to them?
Hot water pours over me and I let myself soak up every second. Tears stream down my face, but it’s as if they were never there as the water washes them away.
Images flash through my mind, and before I know it, my cries turn to sobs. The things I’ve seen in the past five days are engraved into my mind. I’ll never be able to let them go. Nothing will ever wash this feeling away.
Images of Jeremy being taken by the fallen angel, of tortured humans caged like animals at the estate, of the lifeless eyes of my friends after we left them to die. Of the cold way the archangel looked at me as I pleaded with him to save them.
I lean against the wall for support and let it all wash over me: the grief, the pain, the heartache, the guilt.
Eventually my sobs turn to sniffles, and I pull myself together. I wash everything twice, scrubbing away the blood of my friends. My skin feels raw by the time I turn the shower off, my eyes heavy.
I wipe at the misty mirror, noting the puffy skin under my eyes and the redness that accompanies it. I don’t have it in me to care.
The bedroom door squeaks, snapping me out of my daze. Warmth radiates through the room, and my shoulders drop.
The archangel has returned.
I take my time drying myself, squeezing water out of my hair and wrapping the towel around me. I find materials to bandage my arm, and this time I struggle through it on my own. The archangel doesn’t tease me through the door when I grunt.
I stare at my clothes in a pile on the floor.
I don’t want to wear their blood.
I step out of the bathroom wrapped in my towel, ignoring the archangel, who leans against the windowsill and stares into the distance. His wings are gone, as if he thinks I’m less likely to force him to leave again if he looks human.
I feel a small sense of relief that he came back, knowing that he will be there to fight with me against the fallen angel. But not only that… If that had been the last conversation we ever had, it would be a shame.
The archangel doesn’t look at me when I walk into the bedroom. “I found you some clothes. And some food.”
My eyes dart to the tins of food and pile of clothing on the bed. “Thank you,”
is all I manage to say.
I change in the bathroom, taking an extra few minutes to compose myself before facing him again. He’s found me fresh socks and underwear, black jeans that fit me well enough with my belt, and a black shirt with sleeves I have to roll. At least it covers the red bandage on my forearm.
I return to the bedroom and eat in silence, sitting with my legs crossed, looking anywhere but at him.
My eyes dart to the tins on the bed. “Thank you,”
is all I manage to say.
He seems to be avoiding me the same way, not once turning away from the window.
Once I finish eating I lie on my side, tucking myself under the covers and finally turning to face the archangel. He stares out into the darkness, no malice in the shadows around him.
I stare at the spot on his back where his wings were not long ago, as he carried me away from my friends. My body aches, my arm raw beneath the torn flesh.
“You may as well plunge your dagger into my back if you’re going to continue glaring at me like that.”
His low voice carries through the room in a vibration, disrupting the silence.
“I’m considering it.”
Am I? Would I really hurt him, just because he saved me? “But if you need to lie down and rest, you can do so without worrying about me stabbing you.”
There’s nothing I’d like more than to put distance between myself and the archangel right now, but I know he needs to regain his strength if he’s going to fight Cain tomorrow. If he’s going to help me save Jeremy.
He turns around and looks at me, the shadows on his face softening his inquisitive expression. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. My weapons all the way over there. You’d see me make the move before I’d have the chance.”
I try to force a smirk but immediately regret it, unspoken words of anger lingering in my mind.
The archangel gives me a soft smile and walks towards me. He hovers next to the bed, as if making sure I’m not going to change my mind. Then he lies down next to me.
His arm brushes my back, and heat tingles my skin. I shuffle further towards the edge to break the contact.
We lie in silence for a while, but neither of us close our eyes. The air in the room is thick, the silence deafening.
I can’t quite figure out what I want to say, if I have it left in me to say anything at all. Do I even have a right to be angry at him? Can I really hate him for saving my life?
I take a deep breath. “I told them you were my friend and then you left them to die.”
My whisper rings through the room, a breath escaping him when it does. As if he’d been holding it in anticipation.
“I had to choose between them and you. I thought the choice was obvious.”
He turns to look at me, his gaze heavy.
I don’t want to see the emotion that dances in his eyes. I don’t want to see if they look human right now. “I told you to leave me with them. To let me go.”
He scoffs. “Why would you wish to die?”
I scoff back. “Why should I get to live while they meet their end? When hundreds, probably even thousands of humans are strung up in cages like animals?”
My hands clench and unclench at my sides, but I refuse to look at him. To do so would be to acknowledge how close we are to one another.
“Because I chose to save you. It was my choice to disobey you. You don’t get to feel guilty for it.”
The archangel’s words come out in a low growl, and I feel his heat rise as his power stirs beneath the surface.
A humourless laugh escapes me. “I don’t get to feel guilty?”
“No.”
My fists ball again, my nails digging into my palms. “You don’t get to give me orders.”
“And I don’t take orders.”
Resentment laces his voice.
The ceiling blurs above me as anger boils in my blood. “It wasn’t an order! It was a request. I was asking you, as a friend —”
I take a deep breath. “As a friend, I asked you to respect my wishes. I chose to stay and fight with them until the end.”
The archangel doesn’t even need a moment to think of a response; his words almost topple over mine. “And that was a stupid choice, so I made a different choice for you. For you to live.”
Worlds, could he be more frustrating? I bite my lip to stop the string of insults that wish to tumble out of my mouth.
“Thank you for saving my life. Thank you for always saving my life. But why me?”
I take another deep breath and force my hands open. My palms sting from where my nails dug in. “You said you were collecting favours, but I think that is a load of shit. So tell me – why save me when you could’ve saved all of us?”
This time, he thinks it over. He goes so silent that I almost look to see if he’s still there.
After a while, he finally lets out a breath. “Perhaps I like to look at you. Perhaps I find you amusing. Perhaps, despite the fact that you’re one of the most infuriating people I have ever met, I enjoy spending time with you.”
His voice is low and quiet, as if he’s trying to soften the words. Then his warmth comes closer and he grips my chin gently, turning my face towards him. “Perhaps I decided that I wasn’t ready to lose you.”
I haven’t looked at him since he lay down in this bed. I’ve hardly looked at him since he returned. His hair is a mess of waves, his eyes ringed by deep, dark circles, the silver in them impossible to see. His brows hang low and his skin is dull. He looks exhausted. He looks… as if he’s turned human.
And in his eyes, amongst the blue, I find the emotions that I hoped not to see. Guilt. Sorrow. Pain. Desperation. And something else flickering there that I don’t quite recognise.
“I don’t regret what I did.”
He speaks slower now, his voice strained. “I am sorry about your friends. I didn’t wish for this to happen, but I’m not sorry that I saved you.”
His hand burns into my cheek so fiercely that I worry it’ll leave a mark, not just on my skin, but on something inside of me. A mark that Jeremy will see within seconds.
“I’ll always save you, Amara. You should know me well enough now to know that.”
I don’t dare move. I hardly breathe. For a long while, we do nothing but stare at each other as his finger traces small circles around the base of my ear. My heart quickens, my palms turn damp, and I find myself picking at something on my fingers that isn’t there.
It could be hours that we stay this way, and I wouldn’t know any better. Time just seems to cease to exist.
But time always catches up to you eventually, and as the archangel pulls his hand away, the emotion in his eyes dulls. “They were marked by Lilith’s hellhounds. They would have been dead within a year regardless. I didn’t have enough power left in me to save all of them, otherwise I would have.”
The grey tinge to his skin testifies to it. I wonder if he has any power at all right now.
“I don’t know you,”
I say. “Not really.”
My eyes drop to his lips for a moment, their usual pink hard to see. “I don’t know anything real about you.”
“Then just ask and I’ll tell.”