2 Ariuk
Ariuk
The beauty of heaven was unrivaled. A warm breeze flowed through my braids that I had worked on while I was supposed to be guarding one of the gates.
The lush gardens full of green, blue, and purple hues were part of the paradise that humans so desperately wanted to live in, and I couldn’t blame them.
It was beautiful. Lying upon these beds of grass was like sleeping on a pillow.
If only living in heaven was as peaceful as it looked.
The darkness that lurked beneath the seductive beauty of this plane was unavoidable. It just wasn’t something angels advertised when guiding souls to Earth.
A heavy sigh fell from my lips as I relaxed into the embrace of my promised angel, Domiel, whom I called Miel. He tugged me against his chest as we leaned against the tree of life, my gaze focused on one of the purple flowers at my feet.
My inclination was to pinch the stalk between my toes, but they frowned at death and destruction in this realm, which I found tiresome because it would be just so easy to twist and watch the life seep from its essence.
Those are not angelic thoughts, I giggled to myself.
For twenty-eight years, I’d been trying to become the kind of angel Heaven expected me to be. Last year, everyone finally stopped pretending my gift was simply late and started using the word giftless when they thought I couldn’t hear them.
“Skipping lessons again, Ariuk?”
I opened one eye. Parisa stood on the path with two angels from our training group, all three dressed in the same white linens that made everyone up here look painfully boring.
“Hard to practice something I don’t have.”
Her gaze flicked toward Miel before coming back to me. “Being Uriel’s creation should make you want to set a better example.”
“Maybe Uriel should’ve asked for a refund.”
Miel’s arm tightened around my waist. “Ariuk.”
Parisa smiled like she’d won something and continued down the path with her little entourage.
I watched her go, resisting the urge to throw the purple flower at the back of her head.
An angel without a gift wasn’t unheard of.
However, being the creation of an archangel made my failure everybody else’s business.
No, I wasn’t bitter.
Then there were my fucking wings.
We were known for our purity, which meant things in shades of white, pearly, sparkly, and plain. I much preferred colors, namely any that didn’t include white but specifically deeper undertones that brought out the richness of my dark skin.
Which is why it made sense that everyone’s wings were white, free of blemishes and wickedness. Mine? Feathers scattered along my spine were a shade of midnight, a void of darkness and evil that made people shy away from me.
I had them clipped a few times for them only to grow back impossibly darker, a few more feathers darkening at my feeble attempt to rid myself of them.
In the last month, I had gained several more patches, some a dull gray, and others a rough cream that offset the paleness of my wings.
The tips had started darkening as well, but a few snips every few days had kept anyone from asking questions.
Miel’s fingers brushed the linen covering my shoulder. “You clipped them again.”
I went still. “No, I didn’t.”
“Ariuk.”
“You saying my entire name doesn’t magically make me honest.”
His hand started toward my back, and I caught his wrist before he could pull the fabric aside.
Wings were status here. Size, strength, color…
angels compared them the way humans compared expensive cars and whatever else they used to prove they were better than everyone around them.
Mine had started growing midnight feathers in places nobody else’s should.
“They’re getting darker,” he said quietly.
“Thank you. I hadn’t noticed while cutting pieces off my own body.”
“You should tell Uriel.”
I snorted and released his wrist. “Absolutely. Then he can tell the council, the council can decide whether to pluck me bald, and Parisa can finally have something interesting to talk about.”
“They wouldn’t do that.”
“Comforting.” I pulled my wings tighter beneath the white linen, wishing I could stay in my shifted human form permanently and pretend the damn things didn’t exist.
My attention drifted back to the purple flowers, my toes closing around one of the stems until it snapped with a soft crunch. The poor thing bent toward the ground, hanging there uselessly as Miel glanced down between us.
“Did you just kill that?”
“It was leaning,” I said, although we both knew it hadn’t been. His sigh brushed against my temple as I nudged the broken flower farther into the grass with my toes. Apparently, growing black feathers wasn’t my only argument against being angel material.
Miel wrapped his arms a little tighter around my waist and I instinctively tilted my head to the side so he could press his lips into the curve of my neck. He didn’t take the bait. His mouth landed chastely against my temple instead, which was about as exciting as I should have expected.
“You could kiss me like you mean it once in a while,” I muttered, settling back against his chest when it became obvious I wasn’t getting anything better.
Miel’s gaze flicked toward the path Parisa had disappeared down. “We’re in public.”
Of course we were. Heaven had rules for everything, including how much affection promised partners were allowed to show before somebody decided it was inappropriate.
Even holding me this openly was enough to draw attention.
Touching each other’s wings was worse, intimate enough that most promised couples saved it for behind closed doors.
Miel knew touch mattered to me, so he tried in the restrained little ways he considered acceptable. I might have appreciated the effort more if I hadn’t spent enough time on Earth to discover that humans managed to enjoy the people they slept with.
“Humans have this fascinating concept,” I said, dragging one of his hands higher across my stomach. “Apparently, you’re allowed to want the person you’re fucking.”
His entire body went rigid behind me. “Your fascination with humans is concerning.”
“Your fascination with missionary is concerning.”
That earned me the exact offended silence I wanted.
I smiled and let my head loll further to the side against his shoulder, thinking about everything I actually wanted from a lover.
Someone who lost control occasionally. Teeth, nails, filthy words, maybe a little begging if I was feeling generous.
Instead, Heaven had given me Miel and his commitment to making sex feel like another sacred ceremony.
“What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?” Miel asked, tangling his fingers with mine across my belly.
I lifted our joined hands toward the sunlight, his pale skin stark against mine as his essence bled faintly into my own. “Just wondering whether you’d still put up with me if Uriel wasn’t an archangel.”
His fingers stiffened between mine before he pulled our hands back down. “That’s ridiculous. You’re my promised.”
“That wasn’t a no.”
Miel sighed like I was exhausting him on purpose.
Maybe I was. He followed every rule, kissed every important ass placed in front of him, and had spent most of our lives expecting me to eventually inherit Uriel’s seat.
I might have been Heaven’s giftless little embarrassment, but being promised to me still kept him close to one archangel now and potentially another one later.
“Not everything is about status, Ariuk,” he said.
I hummed, unconvinced, and traced my thumb across his knuckles. “Sure.”
Miel let the silence sit for a moment before shifting behind me. “You could make things easier on yourself if you went back to lessons.”
I tipped my head enough to look at him, joking. “Parisa, is that you?”
His mouth flattened. “I’m serious.”
“So am I. You sounded exactly like her for a second.”
The problem was that he wasn’t entirely wrong.
I’d spent enough hours standing in training circles while guides told me to reach for an essence that never answered.
Everyone else eventually produced something worth teaching.
Fire. Water. Light. Whatever little miracle had decided to live inside them.
Mine sat there doing absolutely nothing.
“You gave up,” Miel said quietly.
“They gave up first. There’s a difference.” I shifted against him, already tired of the conversation. “I’m not wasting another afternoon performing failure for an audience.”
Miel’s annoyance didn’t disappear with the subject. “And stop calling me Miel.”
I twisted a little farther in his arms. “No. Three syllables every time I need something sounds exhausting.”
“It’s Domiel. You know that.” His expression tightened in that painfully patient way he used whenever he thought I was being difficult. “Full names strengthen our essence. You know why they matter.”
Unfortunately, I did. Names carried more than letters here, and saying the whole thing strengthened whatever already lived inside us. For angels, naturally, that meant purity, another tiny shove toward everything Heaven thought we should be.
“Ariuk,” he said pointedly, purity prickling beneath my skin at the sound of my own full name, proving his point in the most irritating way possible.
I glared at him. “See? Annoying.”
His mouth twitched like he was fighting a smile. “That’s the point.”
“Asshole.”
“Language.”
I was opening my mouth to give him several more examples of inappropriate language when a terrifying screech echoed across the plane.
My attention snapped toward the main gates as Uriel stormed through them and headed straight for the palace, his white linens snapping around his legs with every furious step. Beside me, Miel sat upright so quickly his arm disappeared from around my waist.
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know.” Uriel didn’t storm anywhere. I’d watched angels scream in his face while he answered with the same expression he used while drinking tea. Calm was practically woven into his essence, which made the rage carved across his face now feel wrong enough to put me on my feet.
I tore away from Miel and ran after him as I shouted his name. Uriel didn’t so much as glance back.
Uriel took a left beneath the first marble arch, and my stomach dropped.
“No. Uriel!” I pushed harder, chasing him deeper into the palace while Miel’s footsteps pounded behind me. Gold trim flashed along the marble as Uriel disappeared and reappeared between the arches, passing the open court and the rooms where the council conducted its business without slowing.
The palace itself wasn’t forbidden. The altar was. Nobody approached it unless they had been summoned, not an ordinary angel and definitely not an archangel who should have known better.
“He’s going to the altar,” I shouted when Miel finally caught up.
“Ariuk, slow down.”
“Tell him that!” I cried out.
Uriel ignored both of us, disappearing beneath the final arch into the open space surrounding the altar. I lunged after him just as Miel caught my wrist and yanked me back against his chest hard enough to knock the breath from me.
“Let me go!”
His arm locked around my waist when I tried to wrench free. “You can’t follow him.”
“Neither can he!” I fought his hold until Uriel stepped fully toward the altar. Then every bit of resistance drained out of me.
The archangel’s essence billowed around him, boasting of power that didn’t belong in heaven. My tongue darted out to lick my lips, intrigued by the foreign presence even as Uriel’s doom lingered ahead.
Tears gathered in my eyes, my entire body alert when the thunderous crack of lightning and a burst of power that could only be described as God’s anger erupted through heaven the moment Uriel stepped up to the altar and placed a hand on it.
I held my breath, waiting for the inevitable punishment.
A few had tried their hand at approaching the altar, but they had never made it, turned around by one of the council, Michael or Jophiel.
They were usually banished from a garden or required to do hard labor for a period of time.
No one had made it this far. Please, Uriel. Don’t do this…
I didn’t even know what I was pleading for as a sob tore from my throat, a gasp at my side alerting me that I wasn’t the only one watching this unfold. Angels had gathered around us, eyes wide with a mixture of curiosity and fear as Uriel’s mouth began moving.
It took me a moment to realize Uriel was praying. The realization only confused me more because there was nothing special about praying here. We could do it anywhere, and if an angel needed a message delivered directly to God, Port existed for that exact reason.
“Why is he doing it there?” I asked, still straining against Miel’s hold.
His arm tightened around my waist. “I don’t know.”
“He could’ve called Port.”
“I know, Ariuk.” Miel sounded almost as unsettled as I felt, his attention fixed on Uriel rather than whatever rule I was currently breaking. If Uriel hadn’t marched all the way here because he needed God to hear him, then whatever he was doing required the altar itself.
His mouth moved faster, the words too quiet for me to catch. Darkness thickened around him before rushing forward and curling over the marble, seductive enough that some traitorous part of me wanted to move closer instead of farther away. My struggle against Miel stopped.
“Do you see that?”
“See what? Uriel disobeying every rule in the book? He’s going to be punished, Ariuk.”
Normally, Miel using my full name would have earned him another argument, but I barely registered it now.
Two archangels were already rushing down the hall, white wings flaring behind them as they closed the distance to Uriel.
I leaned forward against Miel’s hold, silently urging Uriel to finish whatever the hell he had started before they reached him.
My father figure let out a bloodcurdling scream as he was torn away, the ground beneath us rumbling with God’s anger. My gaze lingered on the altar as it vibrated, a crack racing from the top to the bottom as the rumbling came to an end.