Chapter 18
Eighteen
Sleep doesn't come easy.
I lie in Seraph's massive bed, alone thankfully, staring at the ceiling.
The silk sheets feel too smooth against my skin, too perfect, like everything in the House of Ruin.
My mind keeps replaying that moment. Croesus leaning forward.
Seraph's lips parting. The electricity that had nothing to do with me.
Three thousand years of circling each other like wolves.
Caspian's words echo in my skull. The Angel of Sloth sees everything from his position of perfect emptiness. No desires to cloud his vision. No wants to distort what's right in front of him.
What is between them?
And why does the thought make my chest ache?
I roll onto my side, pressing my face into the pillow. The shield I built is still holding, barely. I can feel Croesus on the other side of it, a distant golden warmth, but his emotions are muted now. Background noise instead of a symphony.
Part of me feels guilty for the relief that brings.
Part of me wonders if he's lying awake too, replaying the same moment, feeling the same confusion.
I don't sleep. But eventually, the darkness claims me anyway.
Morning arrives like a blade.
"Up."
Seraph's voice cuts through my exhaustion, and I open my eyes to find him standing at the foot of the bed. He's dressed for training. Fitted black shirt, loose pants, his platinum hair pulled back in a half-up-half-down style. His expression betrays nothing. Black is a new choice for him.
"What time is it?"
"Time to train." He turns toward the door. "The training room. Ten minutes."
He's gone before I can respond.
I drag myself out of bed, muscles aching from yesterday's session, and find clothes laid out on the chair.
Simple. Practical. Nothing like the silver dress from before.
I dress quickly, splash water on my face, and try not to think about the way Seraph's thumb had traced my collarbone while Croesus watched.
The training room is through a series of twisting corridors, each one lined with mirrors that show slightly wrong reflections. My face, but sharper. My eyes, but with more gold flecks than I remember. I look away.
Seraph is waiting in the center of the room, a vast space of white marble and silver light. He's moving his hands, flowing movements that look almost like dance, but I can feel the power coiling beneath each gesture.
"Your shield held through the night," he says without turning. "Impressive. I expected it to collapse while you slept."
"Sorry to disappoint."
"I'm not disappointed." He turns then, eyes finding mine. A spark flickers in their depths, gone too fast to name. "Today we work on strengthening it. Making it instinctive instead of effortful."
We begin.
Seraph doesn't teach with kindness. He teaches with precision, with critique, with the same relentless expectation of perfection he applies to himself. He pushes me to raise the shield, drop it, raise it again. Faster. Smoother. Until my head is pounding and sweat drips down my spine.
"Again."
"I can't—"
"You can. The binding is part of you now. Stop treating it like an invader and start treating it like a limb."
I grit my teeth and try again. The shield wavers, holds, wavers.
The bond flares.
Not just Croesus's golden thread. All of them. All seven bindings ignite at once, burning through my chest like someone poured molten metal into my veins. I gasp, staggering, and Seraph is there instantly, his hands on my shoulders, his eyes wide.
"Raven. What's happening?"
"I don't—I can't—"
The training room disappears.
Fire. Everything is fire.
I'm standing in a fortress that burns, flames crawling up walls of black stone, eating through tapestries that depict ancient battles. The heat is unbearable, pressing against my skin like a physical weight, and the air tastes like ash and rage.
This isn't the House of Ruin. This is somewhere else. Somewhere wrong.
Through the flames, I see figures moving. Dark shapes that don't move like angels or humans. They flow like smoke, like shadows given form, and where they pass, the fire burns hotter, angrier.
Demons. Or something with demon blood. Strong ones.
And in the center of it all, surrounded by an army of shadow-things, stands a figure I recognize.
Kael.
The Angel of Wrath burns brighter than the fortress around him.
His skin glows with inner fire, his eyes blazing ember-red, and in his hands he holds a sword made of pure holy flame.
He's fighting. Gods, he's fighting like nothing I've ever seen.
Each swing of his blade cuts through three shadow-things at once, each step leaves scorched stone in his wake.
But there are too many.
For every one he destroys, five more rise from the darkness. They swarm him, clawing, tearing, and I see blood. His blood, impossibly, sizzling where it hits the ground.
He's going to die.
The thought pierces through the vision with absolute certainty. Kael is going to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
And then I feel it.
Through the binding, through that red-gold thread that connects me to him, I feel his shame.
Not fear. Not desperation. Shame.
Because he knows this is his fault.
Images flash through my mind. Fragments of memory that aren't mine.
Kael in a dark room, facing someone with demon blood.
An insult. A threat. His control slipping, just for a moment, just long enough for his fire to burn where it shouldn't have burned.
Someone important. Someone connected to powers that don't forgive.
He started this. His wrath got the better of him, and now they've come for revenge with an army.
The shadow-things press closer. Kael roars, a sound of pure fury that shakes the burning fortress to its foundations, and unleashes everything. Fire erupts from him in a wave that incinerates dozens of the creatures at once. But more keep coming. Always more.
I try to reach for him, try to push something back to him. Strength, power, anything. But I'm not really here. I'm just watching. Helpless.
Get up, I think at him desperately. Keep fighting. Don't you dare die.
Whether he hears me or not, there’s a shifts. Kael plants his feet, raises his sword, and the fire inside him blazes white-hot. When the next wave of shadows crashes against him, he doesn't just fight.
He detonates.
The explosion of holy fire consumes everything. Shadows scream as they burn out of existence. The fortress walls crack and crumble. And in the center of it all, Kael stands alone, surrounded by ash and silence, his chest heaving.
He won.
But through the binding, I feel no victory. Just that crushing shame, so heavy it makes my heart ache. He lost control. Again. Started a war he'll have to finish. Proven to himself, once more, that violence is all he knows.
The anger never stops, I hear, an echo from somewhere deep in the bond. You become the monster you sought to destroy.
The vision fractures.
"Raven!"
I come back to myself on the floor of the training room, Seraph's face inches from mine. His hands are on either side of my head, and his eyes burn with something that might be fear.
"I'm..." I try to sit up, and the world tilts dangerously. "I'm okay. I think."
"You were screaming." His voice is tight, controlled. "For three minutes, you were screaming and convulsing and I couldn't reach you."
"It was a vision." I press a hand to my chest, where all seven threads still pulse with residual fire. "Kael. Something attacked the House of Fury."
Seraph goes very still. "What?"
"Shadow-things. Demons, maybe. An army of them." I close my eyes, trying to hold onto the fading details. "He fought them off, but barely. And he blames himself. I felt it through the binding. His shame. He did something, lost control, and they came for revenge."
Seraph sits back on his heels, his expression unreadable. "Kael's wrath has always been his weakness. He's provoked wars before."
"He almost died."
"He's survived worse." But Seraph's tone suggests he's not as certain as he wants to sound. "The binding connected you to him during the attack. Showed you what was happening in real time."
"Is that normal?"
"No." He stands, offering me a hand. I take it, letting him pull me to my feet. "A blood binding shouldn't be able to transmit visions across that distance. You shouldn't be able to feel what another angel feels that clearly, especially with your shielding."
I think about the way all seven bonds had ignited at once. The way I'd been pulled into Kael's mind without warning or consent.
"The binding connects us all now. It’s dangerous to have this much power," I say quietly.
Seraph looks at me for a long moment. His eyes are as usual, unreadable, but acknowledgment passes between us. A truths neither of us wants to speak aloud.
"We're the dangerous ones," he finally says. "That's the point."
I shiver despite the warmth of the training room. Inside me, I still catch echoes of Kael's shame, Croesus's distant worry, Caspian's empty void.
"Will Kael be okay?" I ask.
"He always is." Seraph turns away, but not before I catch a flicker of fear in his expression. “He'll be furious at himself for losing control. He'll punish himself for weeks. But he'll survive."
"And the things that attacked him?"
"If they're smart, they'll scatter. If they're not..." Seraph's voice hardens. "Kael doesn't believe in mercy. He'll hunt every single one of them down."
I think about the shame I felt. The self-hatred. The certainty that violence was all he had to offer.
"That sounds lonely," I say without thinking.
Seraph stops. His back is to me, rigid, and for a moment I think I've said something wrong. But when he speaks, his voice is softer than I've ever heard it.
"It is."
He says nothing else. Just walks out of the training room, leaving me alone with seven bonds pulsing in my chest and the taste of ash still lingering on my tongue.
I don't follow him immediately. Instead, I sit on the cold marble floor, pressing my palms flat against it, trying to ground myself in something solid.
The vision is already fading; the details blurring at the edges, but the emotions remain.
Kael's shame. His fury. The terrible loneliness of being the monster everyone expects you to be.
Eventually I make my way to the library, trying to focus on grandmother's research. But the vision keeps intruding. Kael's blazing eyes, the shadow-things swarming, that devastating shame bleeding through the bond.
My hand traces the binding over my heart. Seven threads. Seven angels. Seven very different kinds of dangerous.
And somehow, I'm connected to all of them.
Through the muted bond, I feel Croesus stirring. Reaching for me. Worried about what he sensed through the shield. The explosion of power, the fear, the screaming he must have felt even from a distance.
I could lower the shield. Let him in. Let him comfort me the way he wants to.
But I don't.
Instead, I pull out grandmother's journal and start reading. Because Kael's vision reminded me of something important: we're not just playing politics and navigating jealousy and figuring out whatever the hell is happening between Seraph and Croesus.
There's a war coming.
And I need to be ready when it arrives.