Chapter 13
Thirteen
I give him an hour.
Partly because I need time to stop shaking. Partly because chasing after someone who just had their deepest shame exposed seems like a bad idea. And partly because I'm starving, and apparently near-death experiences and kissing fallen angels burns a lot of calories.
The dining room is on the east wing of the house, past a corridor of mirrors that I've learned to avoid looking into directly. Every surface in this place reflects, and I'm getting tired of seeing myself from angles I didn't ask for.
I find the room by following the smell of food. Someone, or something, in this house cooks, though I've never seen a kitchen. The meals just appear, perfect and elaborate, whenever I'm hungry enough to seek them out.
The dining room is... of course, white marble. White tablecloth. White china with silver edges. A crystal chandelier that fractures light into rainbows, the only color in the entire space. The table could seat thirty, but there's only one place setting. Mine, apparently. Right at the head.
Staff move along the edges of the room. I've seen them before.
Pale figures in white uniforms, faces smooth and blank, never quite meeting my eyes.
They refill water glasses and clear plates and adjust napkins, and they have never once spoken to me.
I don't know if they can't or won't. I've stopped asking.
I sit. The chair is uncomfortable. Designed for aesthetics, not actual human bodies. A plate appears in front of me: seared fish, vegetables arranged like art, some kind of sauce drizzled in patterns. It smells incredible.
I eat without tasting it.
My mind keeps circling back to those wings. Broken. Scarred. Healed wrong. The way his face looked when he realized I'd seen them. Genuine panic, the first real emotion I've ever caught on him that wasn't calculated.
Pride has a price. Everything perfect does.
What happened to him? What could break an angel so badly that millennia hasn’t been enough to heal?
And why do I care?
That's the part that bothers me most. I should be thinking about strategy. About what this means for our dynamic, how I can use this information. Instead I'm sitting here poking at expensive fish and wondering if he's okay.
I'm going soft. That's dangerous.
The door opens.
Seraph stands in the entrance, and for a moment, neither of us moves. He's changed clothes. Fresh white shirt, dark trousers, every platinum hair back in place. The glamour is solid. Perfect. Not a single crack showing.
But I know what's underneath now.
"May I join you?" His voice is cool. Formal. Like we're strangers meeting at a business dinner.
"It's your house."
"That's not what I asked."
Something shifts in my chest. He's asking permission. After everything, the fighting, the kiss, the wings—he's standing in his own doorway asking if he can sit with me.
"Yeah," I say. "Sure."
He moves to the chair beside mine. Not across the table, maintaining professional distance. Right next to me, close enough that I can smell lilies when he sits.
A place setting appears. Wine, too. A bottle of something dark red that one of the silent staff pours into a crystal glass. Seraph doesn't touch the food, but he drinks. Deep.
I watch him drain half the glass in one long swallow.
"I didn't know angels could get drunk," I say.
"We can't. Not really." He refills the glass. "But we can chase the memory of it. The warmth. The way the edges used to soften."
"Used to?"
"Before." He doesn't elaborate. He doesn't have to.
We sit in silence. I eat. He drinks. The staff drift along the walls like ghosts, never acknowledging the tension thick enough to choke on.
Finally, I set down my fork.
"You don't have to explain," I say. "The wings. I know I saw something I wasn't supposed to see, and I'm not going to—"
"They're my price."
I stop.
Seraph stares into his wine glass, swirling the dark liquid. The light from the chandelier catches the silver in his eyes, makes them look liquid.
"When we fell," he says quietly, "we didn't just lose Heaven.
We lost parts of ourselves. The parts that mattered most." Another long drink.
"Croesus lost his ability to see beauty.
He can see value. Price, worth, what something could be traded for.
But beauty? The thing that makes a sunset worth watching or a painting worth preserving?
" He shakes his head. "Gone. He collects beautiful things because others tell him they're beautiful. He'll never know for himself."
My throat tightens. I think about Croesus surrounded by his treasures, touching them with those golden eyes that can calculate worth down to the penny but can't appreciate any of it.
"And you?"
"I was the most beautiful of us. Before.
" There's no vanity in the words. Just fact.
"My wings were—" He stops. Drinks. Starts again.
"They were perfect. And now they're not.
They can never be perfect again. No matter how much power I pour into the glamour, no matter how flawless I make everything else, underneath.
.." He sets down the glass too hard. Wine sloshes. "Underneath, I'm ruined."
"Seraph—"
"The angel of pride." His laugh is bitter. "Cursed to spend eternity knowing exactly how far I've fallen from what I was. Every time I demand perfection from others, every time I criticize and correct and push, I'm trying to create in them what I can never have again."
The words land heavy in my chest. All his cruelty, his impossible standards, his relentless criticism. It's not just personality. It's pain. A wound that won't heal, picked at fresh every single day.
"The others," I say slowly. "They all have something like this?"
"Every one of us." He finally looks at me, and there's something raw in his expression.
Something he's not bothering to hide. "Kael's rage burns him.
Literally. The scars on his body aren't from battles.
They're from his own fire consuming him from the inside.
He can't control the heat when his emotions run high.
" He pauses, takes another drink. "Lysander is numb to touch.
The angel of lust can make anyone feel anything, but he can't feel it himself.
Every sensation is muted, distant. He creates desire he can never truly experience. "
I think about that. The cruelty of it.
"Dorian can't taste," Seraph continues. "Food turns to ash in his mouth.
He hosts endless feasts, creates abundance from nothing, and none of it brings him any pleasure.
Idris can't speak. The angel of envy, who can shape shift into anyone, who wants everything others have, lost their voice in the fall. They communicate mind to mind, but they don’t remember what their own voice sounds like. "
His grip tightens on the wine glass.
"And Caspian needs a cane to walk. Every movement is agony for him. The weight of apathy made physical. He doesn’t leave his house unless he absolutely has to.”
Seven angels. Seven sins. Seven prices.
"That's horrible," I whisper. The bonds inside me stir, all of them angry at being told their secrets. It makes me smile to myself. Finally, some fucking leverage.
"That's justice. According to Heaven." He picks up the wine glass again, oblivious to my thoughts, but doesn't drink. Just holds it. "We chose to fall. We chose pride over obedience. These are the consequences of that choice, stretched across eternity."
I think about what it would mean to live with that. Not for years, not for decades. For millennia. Knowing exactly what you'd lost and why. Watching humans live and die and feel things you'd never feel again.
No wonder they're all so broken.
"Why are you telling me this?"
He's quiet for a long moment. The staff have retreated, melted into the walls like they were never there. We're alone in the too-white room, surrounded by cold marble and colder silence.
"Because you saw," he finally says. "And you didn't look away. Didn't flinch." His jaw tightens. "Croesus has known me for thousands of years. He's never seen my wings as they are. Not once. But you—" He shakes his head. "You kissed me and my glamour just... failed. I don't know what that means."
"Maybe it means the glamour is tired too."
Something flickers across his face. Almost a smile, but sadder.
"Maybe."
We sit with that. The silence is different now. Not hostile. Almost companionable.
This is my opening. He's vulnerable, cracked open in a way he hasn't been before. If I'm going to make demands, now is the time.
"I need your help," I say. "With my grandmother's murder."
Seraph goes still.
"Croesus showed me her research. The missing souls, the angel-blooded descendants being collected.
I know she was executed for what she found.
" I hold his gaze. "But there's more. There has to be.
She served two houses before she died. Yours was one of them.
You knew her. You knew what she was looking for. "
"I did."
"Then help me find who killed her. Help me figure out why these bloodlines matter so much that Heaven would send an archangel to silence a sin eater."
He sets down his wine glass. "I agreed to help you. But it’s a dangerous thing to want."
"I stopped caring about dangerous somewhere between the shadow walkers and the vision that made seven fallen angels go pale with terror."
His eyes narrow. For a moment, I think I've pushed too far. I know not to speak of that.
Then his mouth curves. Not quite a smile. Something sharper.
"There she is," he murmurs. "I was wondering when you'd stop playing careful."
"I've never played careful in my life."
"No. You've played smart. There's a difference." He leans back in his chair, studying me with those mirror eyes. "Croesus gave you some pieces. But he's protective. He held things back because he thought keeping you ignorant would keep you safe."
"And you?"
"I think ignorance just makes you easier to kill." He refills his wine.
I press. "She asked you to protect me?"
"I failed." The words are flat. "I should have paid closer attention. Should have realized how close she was to the truth. By the time I understood the danger, she was already dead."
"What did she find? The thing that scared her? You gave me the library. I have her journal but..." I don’t say I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it.
"She found a name." He meets my eyes. "Not who was collecting the souls. But who was giving the orders. Who at the very top of Heaven wanted these bloodlines gathered and was willing to kill to keep it quiet."
My heart is pounding. This is more than Croesus ever told me. More than I've gotten in months of searching.
"Tell me."
"I can't. Not yet." He holds up a hand before I can argue. "The name alone means nothing without proof. And if I speak it out loud, there are... consequences. Bindings even I can't break. But I can help you find the evidence yourself. My house, my resources, my rules."
"What's the catch? Why hold this one thing back after showing me the library and the gallery?"
"Because I want you to stay. The full year. No complaints, no fighting the training, no more dancing around whatever this is between us." He gestures vaguely at the space between our chairs. "You commit fully to the House of Ruin and everything that means."
I should negotiate. Should push back, demand more information before agreeing to anything. But I can see in his eyes that this is the best offer I'm going to get. And it's more than I had an hour ago.
"The full year I agreed to starting from when I arrived," I say. "Full cooperation. And at the end, you tell me everything. The name, the evidence, all of it. Then I move to the next house and you let me go."
"We'll see."
"That's not—"
"It's the best you're getting." He drains his wine glass. "Do we have a deal?"
I think about Croesus, walled off and silent. About the conspiracy that killed my grandmother and is hunting me. About the vision that terrified seven ancient beings and the secrets they're still keeping.
"Deal," I say.
Before either of us can say more, the door opens.
One of the silent staff members glides in. A woman, I think, though the features are too smooth to be certain. She approaches Seraph and leans close, whispering something in his ear.
His expression sharpens. The vulnerable man who was drinking wine and confessing his wounds is gone. This is the angel of pride again, cold and calculating.
"Interesting," he murmurs. Then, to me: "Finish your meal. We have work to do."
"Work?"
"A client." He's already moving toward the door, all business. "Your skills are required."
My stomach drops. Another contract. Another sin to absorb, to carry, to purge. I'm still feeling the echoes of Kael's wrath in my blood, still sore from training sessions that leave me bruised for days.
But this is what I agreed to. This is the deal.
"What kind of sin?" I ask, pushing back from the table.
He pauses at the door, looking back at me over his shoulder. The chandelier light catches his hair, turns it to white gold.
"Envy," he says. "One of Idris's strays. Should be interesting. You haven't worked with that one yet."
Envy. Wanting what others have. The bitter taste of not enough, never enough.
At least it's not lust.
"How long do I have to prepare?"
"An hour. The client is desperate." His eyes glitter. "Time to see what you learned in training. Try not to disappoint me."
He's gone before I can respond.
I sit alone in the too-white dining room, surrounded by marble and silence and the weight of everything he just told me. Seven angels, seven prices. A name at the top of Heaven that Seraph can't even speak out loud.
If I focus, I sense him moving through the house, his attention already shifting to the work ahead. Kael's interest sparks at the hint of conflict. Idris circles closer. Envy is their sin, after all. This will be personal for them.
And Croesus.
Still walled off. Still silent. But I swear he’s listening.
I stand and head for my room to prepare. There's no time to sit with what I've learned, no time to figure out what it means that Seraph just showed me more vulnerability in one meal than Croesus has in weeks.
That's a problem for later.
Right now, I have a contract to break.