24 Raphael #2
Dante went still but he didn’t flinch or look away. His fingers simply stopped moving against the sugar packet, and that was enough.
“You know what he meant.” I watched his face for any sign that I had guessed wrong, but he waited a second too long before answering. “Dante.”
His grip tightened around the packet until the paper crinkled. I leaned forward, lowering my voice even though none of the humans around us seemed interested in anything beyond their drinks and conversations.
“There are whispers too,” I said. “I heard them before I left Heaven. People talking about Ari like she’s something else now.
” I hesitated, because the word had sounded ridiculous when I first heard it and somehow worse now that I was sitting across from him.
“Temptation.” I paused as Dante’s eyes met mine. “What does that mean?”
He rubbed his thumb across the crushed paper in his hand before setting it down. “It means the whispers aren’t entirely wrong.”
For a second I only stared at him. The café noise seemed to recede beneath the sudden pressure building behind my eyes. “What is she?”
“Ari.”
The answer came quietly enough that it almost made me angrier.
“That isn’t what I asked.” I sat back, searching his face for the evasiveness I had spent centuries learning to recognize. “I know who Ari is. Tell me what they’re talking about.”
“It’s the most important answer.” Dante’s expression softened, but he didn’t dodge this time. “She’s still Ariuk. She’s also Temptation.”
I stared at him. For a second the word meant nothing at all, just another impossible thing people had started attaching to her name since she left Heaven. “Temptation is a concept.”
“So is Chance.”
“What?” The answer came out too fast, and Dante immediately shook his head.
“Later. Start with Ari.” He leaned forward, forearms braced against the table.
“Uriel created her, but she didn’t develop the way an angel was supposed to.
He noticed it before anyone else did. Her feathers were changing.
Her essence was changing. He came to me because he already knew something about her wasn’t following the rules. ”
My thoughts were moving faster than I could sort through them. “And somehow that becomes Temptation?”
“Not exactly.” Dante’s voice stayed steady even as mine started climbing. “I knew she wouldn’t remain only an angel.”
“That sentence doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know.”
“No, Dante, you don’t get to say that and keep going like it explains anything.
” I dragged a hand through my hair, already feeling the pressure building behind my eyes again.
“Angels don’t just stop being angels because their feathers change.
Uriel doesn’t suddenly know his creation is turning into a concept.
You’re skipping about twelve fucking steps. ”
“I’m not skipping them. I don’t have them.
” He reached across the table and nudged my coffee farther from my elbow before I knocked it over.
The movement was so familiar that I almost stopped talking.
“Uriel didn’t understand everything either.
He knew Ari was changing, and he knew something was wrong in Heaven. That was why he came to me.”
I frowned. “For what?”
“To get to God.” Dante’s mouth flattened before he continued. “He thought something was happening that he couldn’t reach from inside the council anymore. He wanted my help getting close enough to warn him.”
That stopped me long enough to actually look at Dante. “Then the coup—”
“Wasn’t why he came to me.” Dante held my gaze. “I can’t tell you every decision Uriel made after that because I wasn’t there for all of them. But when he came to me, he was scared. He wasn’t asking me how to take the throne.”
The table suddenly felt too small. “And Ari?”
Dante exhaled slowly. “Part of helping him meant dealing with what happened if he failed. He had already broken something bigger than one of Heaven’s laws by creating her, and she was changing because of it.
I knew that if Heaven realized she was becoming something they couldn’t classify, she wouldn’t be safe there. ”
I leaned back, studying him. “So you asked for her.”
“I asked him to let me protect what he might not be there to protect.” His voice went quieter, the sharpness easing out of it. “I wasn’t trying to own her, Raph. I was trying to make sure she survived whatever came next.”
That should have settled something. Instead, it only opened another hole beneath everything I thought I understood.
“How did you know breaking a rule could do that?” I asked. “How did you know Ari could become something that wasn’t there before? That... that she would become Temptation?”
Dante’s eyes stayed on mine and for the first time since he sat down, he looked like he was deciding whether I was ready for the answer.
“I didn’t.” Dante said. “That’s different.
Temptation wasn’t written across her forehead when Uriel came to me.
I knew the balance had been disturbed and it would only get worse for her. ”
“Balance.” I repeated the word slowly. “What balance?”
Dante sighed.
“No. Don’t do that.” I pointed at him. “You don’t get to sigh like I’m the difficult one here.
I came down here because people in Heaven are suddenly talking about stuff I’ve never heard of like those are things I’m supposed to understand.
Jophiel is telling me Ari shouldn’t exist. You’re telling me Uriel broke some rule beneath the rules. My head is about to fucking explode.”
“Raph.”
“And stop saying my name like that.”
He paused, his dark eyes boring into mine, his expression softening even further.
There had been a time when that saying my name like that could stop me in the middle of almost anything.
Dante had used it whenever I got worked up after council meetings, usually right before taking whatever I happened to be holding out of my hands so I would stop gesturing with it.
I hadn’t noticed I had picked up the little metal spoon beside my coffee until Dante reached across the table and gently took it from between my fingers. His thumb brushed the side of my hand before he let go, and the familiarity of it hurt more than I expected.
“You still do that,” he murmured.
“Do what?”
“Grab whatever’s closest when you’re angry and wave it around like you’re going to win the argument with cutlery.”
I looked down at the spoon now sitting safely beside his hand. “You used to have better answers.”
His smile waned slightly. “No. I used to be better at convincing you I did.” He leaned back, letting out another sigh.
“There are rules underneath all of this,” Dante said.
“I mean the rules that keep the natural balance from ripping itself apart. Most of the time, they hold. Sometimes something happens that breaks one badly enough that it creates the possibility for something to exist that couldn’t have existed before. ”
I frowned harder with every word. “That makes no sense.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean it makes absolutely no fucking sense. Something breaks a rule and suddenly a new creature appears?”
“Not automatically. It isn’t that clean.”
“Then what is it?”
Dante dragged a hand over his face. “I don’t have every answer.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “You’re telling me all of this and you don’t know how it works?”
“I know enough to know what happened to me.”
The words took a second to register. “What happened to you?”
He hesitated, and suddenly the café felt much quieter than it had a moment before.
“I was an angel,” he said. “Then I fell. Opportunity opened a door she should not have been able to open, I took it, and somewhere between one side and the other, there was room in the balance for something that hadn’t existed before. ” Dante held my gaze. “Chance.”
I shook my head once. “What?”
“That’s what I became.”
“No.” The answer came out before I could think about it. “No, you’re Dante.”
“I am Dante. I am also Chance.”
“You’re a fallen angel.”
“I was.”
“You’re the king of Hell.”
“That too.”
I shoved out of the booth so quickly I nearly clipped the table with my hip as I stood. “You cannot just add IDEA to the list like it’s another fucking title.”
“Raph—”