Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
The first group training session goes about as well as you'd expect when you put seven ancient beings with centuries of grudges in the same room and tell them to cooperate.
Seraph's training arena takes up the entire west wing of the House of Ruin.
It's a massive open space with marble floors and mirrored walls.
The ceiling is domed, painted with frescoes of angels in flight that look suspiciously like self-portraits.
The light is white and unforgiving, designed to show every flaw, every hesitation, every mistake.
Classic Seraph.
"Formation," he calls, his voice carrying across the space like a whip crack. "Semicircle. Now."
The angels move. Even here, in combat gear, they're something to see.
Kael takes the far left, rolling his scarred shoulders, heat already wavering off his skin like asphalt in August. Lysander takes the opposite end, barefoot on the cold marble, looking like he rolled out of someone's bed and couldn't be bothered to fully dress.
Croesus stands beside me, close enough that I can feel his warmth but not touching.
Dorian settles in with the casual ease of a man who's been in a thousand fights and found most of them entertaining.
Idris simply appears between two of them, silent, their dark hair catching light in oily rainbows.
And Caspian. Caspian lowers himself onto a bench against the wall, cane across his knees, pale eyes already half-closed.
"You're supposed to be in the formation," Seraph says flatly.
"I'm observing." Caspian's voice is like paper tearing. Thin and dry. "Consider me the tactical consultant."
"Consider yourself lazy."
"That's the idea, yes."
Seraph's jaw tightens, but he turns to me. "The binding connects you to all seven of us. In theory, you should be able to draw power from any of us at will. Channel it. Use it. In practice, you've only ever drawn from one at a time, and usually by accident."
"I was about to kill Raphael," I point out.
"In a moment of pure survival instinct. Not control." He holds up one finger. "Today, we teach you control. You're going to reach through the binding and pull power from each of us, one at a time. Learn what each connection feels like. Learn to call it on command."
"And if it goes wrong?"
"That's what the mirrors are for. I'll see it before you feel it."
"Comforting."
Seraph steps back and gestures to Kael. "You first."
Kael grins. It's the kind of grin that makes small animals run for cover. He crosses the arena to stand in front of me, and the temperature spikes. Not metaphorically. Actual heat, rolling off him in waves, making the air shimmer between us. His ember eyes glow brighter.
"Pull from me," he says. "Reach through the bond and take what you need."
"I felt it before so... maybe this won’t be so bad." I’m not sure if I’m trying to convince myself, or him.
"Get on with it, little sin eater."
I grit my teeth at all these assholes using that nickname for me now, but I close my eyes.
The bonds sit inside my chest like seven separate threads, each one a different texture, a different temperature, a different hum.
Croesus's is golden and heavy, warm like sunlight on metal.
Thicker and more substantial. Seraph's is sharp and cold, polished silver. I find Kael's.
It burns.
Not gently. Not like a warming fire or a candle flame.
This is a furnace. A wildfire. Something that could level cities and has, if the stories are true.
The rage hits me first, ancient and enormous, the kind of fury that has been burning for years and shows no sign of stopping.
Underneath it, pain. His own fire consuming him, the scars on his hands and arms and chest all testament to a curse he can't outrun.
I pull. Just a thread of it.
Heat floods my veins. My hands glow red at the fingertips and I gasp, not from pain but from the sheer force of it. The anger is there too, pushing behind my eyes, making me want to hit something, break something, burn something to the ground and watch it turn to ash.
"Control it," Seraph snaps from somewhere to my left.
"I'm trying."
"Try harder."
I grit my teeth and push the wrath down. Not out, not away. Down. Into my core where I can hold it. My fingers stop glowing. The heat recedes to a manageable simmer although a fine sheen of sweat coats my skin. My pulse is hammering but the urge to commit arson has faded to background noise.
Kael is staring at me. Approval, maybe. Or hunger. Hard to tell with him. "Not bad. I’d expect most people to pass out when they feel my heat.”
"Thanks," I deadpan. “I’m not most people.”
"No," he agrees. "You're not." His gaze lingers a beat longer than necessary, his eyes tracking down my body and back up in a way that has nothing to do with combat assessment. "You held it. That's more than some angels can do."
"Next," Seraph says, and there's an edge to his voice that I recognize. Territorial. Kael steps back, still smirking.
Lysander is next. He saunters forward like the arena is a runway, violet eyes half-lidded, mouth curved in that permanent suggestion of a smile. He stops too close. He always stops too close.
"This one is going to be different," he murmurs. "Fair warning."
"Different how?"
"You'll see."
I reach for his bond. It's warm. Liquid.
Like honey in sunlight, slow and sweet and impossibly inviting.
Desire pours through the connection before I'm ready for it.
Not sharp, not aggressive. Just... want.
Bone-deep, soul-deep wanting. For closeness.
For touch. For someone to look at me and see me and choose to stay.
It's devastating.
Not because it's sexual, though that's part of it.
Because it's lonely. The loneliness underneath Lysander's charm is a vast and terrible thing, an ocean of wanting with no shore in sight.
He creates desire in others because he's drowning in it himself.
And he can't even feel the touch he craves.
Numb to sensation. The cruelest joke Heaven ever told.
I pull back before I lose myself in it.
"You okay?" Lysander asks, and for once the seduction is gone from his voice. Just concern. Raw and unguarded.
"Fine." My voice is thick. I swallow. "You're very lonely."
The humor drops from his face. Just for a second. Then it's back, that lazy smile sliding into place like armor. "Darling, I'm surrounded by beautiful people at all times."
"That's not the same thing and you know it."
He doesn't answer. Just steps back, and the connection fades to its usual background hum.
Idris is next. They don't walk toward me so much as drift, those shifting eyes watching me with an intensity that makes my skin crawl. Their lips move out of habit, forming words that produce no sound. Their voice arrives directly inside my skull, smooth and unsettling.
Ready?
"Do I have a choice?"
You always have a choice. That's what makes this so interesting.
I reach for their bond. It's slippery. Mercurial.
Like trying to hold water in my fists. The moment I think I have a grip on it, it shifts, becomes something else.
Envy doesn't feel the way I expected. It's not petty jealousy or bitter resentment.
It's hunger for identity. A desperate, clawing need to be someone, anyone, because your own self was stripped away so completely that you've forgotten what it looked like.
Idris is the angel who can become anyone. And they can't remember who they were before.
The power that flows through our bond is subtle.
Not fire, not desire. Illusion. The ability to see through false things to what's real underneath.
I blink, and suddenly the arena looks different.
I can see the cracks in Seraph's glamour, the faintest shimmer where his wings aren't quite as perfect as they appear.
I can see the tension Croesus holds in his jaw, the micro-expressions he usually controls.
I can see Caspian on his bench, and the void around him is visible now, a dark haze of apathy that clings to him like fog.
I see everything. Every deception. Every mask.
It's too much. I let go.
Interesting, Idris says in my mind. You saw through all of them. In seconds.
"Stay out of my head."
I wasn't in your head. You were in mine.
Dorian steps up next, warm brown eyes crinkling. He opens his arms wide, inviting. "Come on, then. My turn. I promise it's the most pleasant one yet."
He's not wrong. Dorian's bond is thick and rich, like sinking into a warm bath.
Sensation floods through me. Taste, texture, the smell of bread baking and wine fermenting and rain on hot stone.
Everything is vivid, amplified, almost painfully real.
The marble beneath my feet feels like silk.
The air tastes like honey. The light on my skin is a physical caress.
And underneath it all, nothing. Dorian's curse.
He can create endless sensation but feels none of it.
Every feast is ash in his mouth. Every pleasure is theory, not experience.
He's been numb for all these years, pretending to enjoy things he can't taste, hosting parties where he's the only one not having fun.
I draw the power carefully. Abundance. Excess. The ability to amplify, to make more, to fill every empty space until it overflows.
"Interesting," Dorian says, watching my face. "What did you feel?"
"Everything. And then nothing."
His smile falters. Just a flicker. "Yes. That about sums it up."
Caspian doesn't move from his bench. Doesn't even open his eyes.
"Come here," I say.
"No."
"The angel of sloth, ladies and gentlemen." I walk to him instead. Standing over him, I can feel the void emanating from him. Cold. Empty. The gravitational pull of not caring about anything, including whether you live or die. "I need to pull from your bond."