Chapter 8 #2
I spun around and danced out of the kitchen, filled with a bubbling euphoria I could barely contain.
SunRae was here! And yes, it turned out that she was the obnoxious angel I’d met on the Scholar’s wedding day when he threatened to kill everyone and expose my guardian and had been absolutely awful, but that was just his personality. He couldn’t help it.
Except…
My dancing slowed as I left the castle, stepping out into the overcast day, following the path towards the woods. The angel woman followed me, six steps behind like she was almost giving me privacy. I preferred how Mitt seemed to disappear into the shadows, but angels were like that.
Bold. Honest. Direct.
Richard was not. Otherwise, he would have followed me with his own name, and he wouldn’t have kept following me for five years. Not just following. Messaging every day, multiple times a day, sometimes for hours and hours about nothing.
Why would an angel keep a secret like that for so long and then just come out with it in the middle of another conversation?
What were we talking about? Assassination.
He could have told me when he first met me in the kitchen while he was baking cookies.
“Hi, I’m baking because I’m SunRae, you know, your online friend.
” But no, he waited until after the baking segment, when I was washing his poisoned blood out of my dress.
Which I’d left in the sink, and I was still only wearing the white petticoat and camisole.
Was he worried about me dying? But how would telling me that he was SunRae help with that?
Maybe he was trying to make me feel better about Mini dying, and him killing her, because he was a much better friend than she’d ever be, and he was here to support me so I wasn’t so lonely.
Or maybe…My stomach tangled. Maybe he’d told me so that I’d stop staring at him like I had some kind of attraction for him.
Because I loved SunRae, but we were friends forever and I’d never let something silly like romance get in the way of true friendship.
And he was an angel who didn’t feel desire.
He’d been very, very clear about that while I’d been touching his silky glowing skin and healing his internal bleeding.
He wasn’t here for romance, just like I’d said when I voted him off, but he didn’t want me to vote him off because he did care about me as friends, and didn’t want me to die.
No way he would have spent that much time and effort being my online friend if he wasn’t, in fact, actually interested in being my friend. Right?
I dropped back so I could walk with the angel. “Hi. I’m sorry I didn’t officially introduce myself. I’m Katriana, and you’re…” I held out my hand, smiling hopefully.
She gave it a firm shake. “I’m Hallie, short for Hallelujah.”
Hallelujah! “That’s a lovely name. Can I ask you a question about angels?”
She got a hunted look. “If you want to understand Richard, you’ll have to get in line. He’s…” She scratched her chin. “He has everything to be the perfect angel, but instead he’s never satisfied with anything. You can’t get more powerful, charismatic, or even handsome, but none of that is enough.”
That was not what I wanted. I hesitated and then laughed.
“It’s not about Richard. Just angels in general.
For instance, if you knew someone for, say, five or six years, and then after that long they told you something that they should have told you from the beginning, what would be your reaction?
” Right? If I knew what he expected my reaction should be, I could trace that back to what his intention had been.
She laughed and then broke into a dead serious face. “You mean lying? For half a decade about something important? I’d question that entire relationship. Lying is a deal-breaker. All angels know that.”
“But what if he, or she, felt awkward about it?”
“Lies are the death of the soul. You just haven’t noticed being dead yet.” She sheathed a sword I hadn’t seen her pulling.
I stared at the sword and her grasp on the hilt while I held onto my shaky smile.
“Right. Lies are death. So if an angel lies for half a decade, they’re already half dead?
” That made no sense. Except a normal person would be more than half dead if their armor was cratered like that.
How had that even happened? Did he catch a cannonball with his chest?
“Or they want to die.” She shrugged. “It speaks of a lack of purpose, direction, resolve. If you don’t know who you are, lying to ones self isn’t as noticeable.”
I nodded like that made sense. But he hadn’t lied to himself, but to me, and not even a crazy person wouldn’t notice the difference between being a knight of the HOST and a female pet baker.
Had he ever said he was a girl? Maybe not.
But I’d said that if he was a guy, I’d marry him for his baking.
He hadn’t told me he was a guy then, probably because he didn’t want to marry me.
Of course not. He was an angel, and not just any angel.
The son of the Commander, with so much Angelic blood he could summon heavenly fire at will.
Honestly, this was all more and more confusing.
Richard probably hadn’t told me that he was secretly SunRae so that we could hang out and be buddy-buddy on the show, unless he had.
No, he was more concerned about assassins than hanging out with me.
He could have come and hung out with me any time in the last five years, but he chose now.
He could have sent another angel after the cupid flaked, but he’d come himself, from a war, and started by baking cookies with his blood in them.
An experiment to see how I reacted to his blood.
Did he want me to drink his blood? I’d heard stories about him loving to poison vampires with his blood, so naturally that meant he didn’t mind vampires drinking him.
Did he like it? Some people did. Being vampire drunk could be addictive if you had enough human blood.
And he’d let me drink from his vein far longer than was necessary to keep me alive.
But if he’d told me, expecting me to have a normal angelic reaction, like Hallelujah’s, he’d expected me to be angry.
To pull away, to be furious at him for lying for so long, for laughing at me for years and years behind my back.
I should have been, that was rational, but I was so happy to see my best friend who had been with me through years and years of struggling to make some progress on my platform, so I’d just been happy.
Had he been disappointed by my reaction?
I couldn’t tell. He was good at covering whatever he actually felt, or everyone would know that he was a pet baker with things like empathy, enthusiasm, and appreciation for all things adorable.
The most I could figure was that Richard told me he was SunRae so that I’d put distance between us and no longer want him, but that I might stop voting him off the show so he could protect me from assassination.
He was an angel and everyone knew that they had duty, and the first duty of an angel was to fight evil.
That was the assassination thing. The second was to have children to continue the angelic line to fight evil in the future.
She’d called it purpose, not romance. Richard was always fighting evil, but maybe he needed to focus on settling down with an angel and fulfil the next duty.
His sister was married, and hadn’t his friend also recently settled down?
That’s probably what he was missing. Maybe I could set him up with Hallie.
Hallelujah! What a name. Weird that most angelic names were so spiritual, and Richard’s was so…
not. Did my heart pang sightly at the idea of Richard dating an angel and settling down with her to have a bunch of adorable babies?
Of course not. He was SunRae, my friend, and as his friend, it was my job to make sure he was happy, and never make him uncomfortable with any kind of romantic feelings I might have from his sweet blood and warm eyes.
I could do that. SunRae was here? I’d do anything for my best friend forever. Particularly since I wasn’t romantic about him, anyway.