FORTY-FIVE
The rose garden was quiet in Paradox when Angela met with Zarek, who’d been waiting for her. They followed the path without speaking for a while, the Keep at their backs as the pale light settled in for a sunset on what had been a very long day.
Her father had left, wearing that infuriating smile that told her the conversation wasn’t finished by a long shot. But she finally had some answers.
Ones she’d never expected, such as that she was a half-angel.
A Nephilim.
“My mother was human,” she said, not to start a conversation, but more to voice what she’d learned to see if it sounded right.
“My father loved her. She loved him. And…” She paused, working her way through the recollections of her father.
And there were many because Father Michael saw the bigger picture of things, but in so many ways, as if playing ten games of 4D chess where no one else knew they were playing. “The love was real. I know that much.”
The garden path was soft under her shoes as she thought about her mother.
Rosaleen, the single mother who’d never married and had never named her father.
Yet he’d been there. She remembered the house visits, the half-empty wine glasses on the kitchen table late at night, and how they leaned into each other, sharing whispers that meant nothing to a small child stumbling down the hallway, wiping sleep from her eyes.
When she’d asked her mother who her father was, Rosaleen would simply say that he’d gone somewhere they couldn’t follow and smiled in a way that closed every door on the subject. And so many, like Angela, thought he’d passed away.
But the poor woman, her mother, had helped everyone who came into the apothecary for herbal advice while quietly managing something the doctors later called complications in the corridors of the hospital after the train accident.
Mortals can’t carry magick, she’d heard more than once in this realm.
Only now realising that her mother’s poor body had carried more than it was built for, and she had never once complained about the sacrifice made to carry a Nephilim child.
It made her wonder if her mother understood exactly what loving an archangel, a powerful being, would cost a woman—and chose them anyway.
She glanced at Zarek, then she exhaled slowly. “He said he named me.”
“Angela?” Zarek gave her that brief smile.
“Angela. Angel. An angel. It’s just another one of Father Michael’s riddles he likes to hide in plain sight.” She barked a laugh that held no humor. “My whole life. Every single day. The answer was there, telling everyone what I was.”
But even then, she couldn’t imagine the truth behind those letters that made up her heritage.
“The powers of an angel, how much do you know about them?”
“Angels keep their own counsel. What the archangel showed us today was…” He paused, as if carefully choosing his words. “We know very little about them. It has Bellus keen to attack the Celestial Accords to learn more.”
“Right.” She turned the medallion over in her fingers, understanding now it was more than just a gift but also some connection to her father.
“Father Michael told me about my power base and what it’s built for.
You should know, it isn’t for harm. Whatever I am, whatever this is…
” She pressed a hand to her sternum. “It doesn’t work that way.
We need to be clear about that, I’m not some chosen one.
And I can’t be a weapon in your war against Katarra. ”
“I wouldn’t let them use you like that.”
“Does Gellar know?”
“He will.”
She nodded, not sure how Gellar would take it.
“You came for me in the dreamscape, through that vortex. I know what it cost, Zarek… to get to me.” She glanced at the armor, where the staves once stood. Now gone. “Thank you.”
Zarek shrugged. “You called out. I answered.”
“You should know that my father…” A word she never thought she’d say until today. “He created the vortex and told me it was a test.” She pressed her lips together as an embarrassed heat moved across her face.
“Test for what?”
“To see how far you’d go to come to my aid.”
“Was it only the vortex?” Zarek asked carefully.
“I don’t know. Honestly, I’ve been asking myself that same question.” She glanced at the lawns of the Keep with the scent rising from the many roses that edged the pathways, and stopped walking. “Did Father Michael break a law by being here? You guys drew swords on him.”
“Because he was uninvited and walked through our wards like they didn’t matter. But we do know that angels can’t interfere, they don’t and never have. Although, we wished they would, because with their power, the war against Katarra would be over.”
She stood in front of him to look him in the eye.
“But you broke the Accords by sleeping with me.” She watched his face for answers.
“I used to be a lawyer, Zarek, and I hated telling anyone that I was a lawyer, so there’s that.
And I only worked at the bookshop because I’d inherited half of it.
I quit because I’d lost faith in it, like everything else…
” Magic, fathers, romantic dating life, and higher powers.
“But I haven’t forgotten how to see the arguments from both sides to counter them.
I also know how to read a room. And a man.
” Especially if they’re being accused of something she didn’t see as wrong.
But it was the laws of his realm she had yet to learn.
“Help me understand. Did you or did you not break the Accords?”
“Yes. ” He sighed, raking his fingers through his black hair. “I broke them.”
“And the consequences?”
“Death.”
Angela gasped. The fear swept like ice squeezing her soul. “How? That’s not possible. We spent one night together. How can that be so wrong?”
Zarek was quiet for a beat too long.
“No more secrets, Zarek. I’m done with that. I want to help you, like you’ve been helping me.”
Zarek’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t break the Accords by bringing you here; we had a Variance, a contingency clause.
But after last night…” His fingers found hers and he gently squeezed.
“For a member of the Sworn Exarchs to be with someone from the mortal realm, that carries consequences. Regardless of the circumstances.”
Her stomach squeezed with fear. “What do we do?”
“Gellar’s solution is what your father named first.”
“The marriage?”
He nodded.
“I don’t understand how?”
He explained how the Continuum Council wanted to test her. How she’d fail and be declared mortal, which would undo everything. But that the sovereignty protection that came with being married to a Sworn Exarch, combined with the bloodline clause, placed her beyond the Council’s reach entirely.
She listened without interrupting, while desperately trying to be like Zarek and keep all her emotions neatly locked behind a wall.
When he finished, the rose garden was silent.
“So,” she said. “Gellar wants to protect his captain. My father wants to protect me. The Claiming has its own opinions that could still get out of control. The Council wants to test me. And nobody on that list stopped to ask me.” She let that land. “Am I a prisoner here, Zarek?”
“No.”
“Then I can leave.”
“Yes. No. Not until you’re safe.”
“But if I leave, what happens to you?”
He didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
She looked at the warrior whose armor no longer carried the staves that had contained him for centuries. Telling her about his potential death with the same composure as if discussing the weather.
Except, when he’d come through that vortex, she’d felt relieved that it was him. When he’d fixed her necklace, his hands had been gentle. When he’d organized that desk in her room, he’d been thinking about what would make her comfortable. None of that was the Claiming. That was Zarek.
Wasn’t it?
Someone like Zarek simply could not live in her world.
Not with those eyes, or his power to burn.
What would he do, work behind a desk he’d probably incinerate by Wednesday?
Terrify every client who walked through the door?
And if she married him, she’d stay here.
In Paradox. Where a week in this world made her world move on without her in minutes?
Either way, she could never go back to being the person she was.
Which meant the question wasn’t really about marriage at all. It was about who she was going to be on the other side of saying yes or no—and which version of that woman would she recognize.
Not when she was already in the middle of an identity crisis of fairly spectacular proportions.
She was half-angel, a Nephilim, carrying a power base she didn’t fully understand, stuck as a resident of a magical realm she hadn’t consented to visit.
As the daughter of an archangel who played chess on boards nobody else could see, with a mother whose secrets she had yet to unravel—and now Zarek wanted to add wife to that list.
It was, frankly, a lot to process on an empty stomach.
What she needed was a decent drink. Something cold and alcoholic that arrived in an enormous glass with cherries and other fruit crowding the rim.
She needed to sit with that glass somewhere quiet and work out who Angela Duboise actually was, because the version of that woman who’d walked down that dark alley taking a shortcut to her car wasn’t the same person anymore.
And he was asking her to marry him.
“And if I marry you,” she said carefully, “I fall under Vanguard sovereignty. I stay in Paradox.” She stared for a moment as the pieces whirled inside.
“Did Gellar suggest this because it protects us both? Or because it keeps his captain here doing his job?” She watched his face for something that wasn’t the captain, or the warrior, but the man.
“And by marrying me it keeps me with you, for the Claiming part, but also your job part.” She could almost hear Commander Gellar say, For the good of the realm.
Zarek said nothing.
“Will I ever be able to go home? You keep telling me I’m not your prisoner.”