Chapter 42 #2
Finally, their leader sighs, seeming annoyed that nobody else would supply an explanation. “The Adversary is a bogeyman made up by the Elohim to separate us from our ipseity—our individual identities. My people are called the Adonai.”
“Oh? Does it bother you when someone doesn’t call you the name you prefer to go by?” I laugh sardonically. “Hypocritical as always, Lucifer.”
Ana snickers again. “I like her already.”
“Thank you, Ana. My name is Kae, by the way. Just Kae.”
She brightens immediately, seeming to feed off the attention. “Hi, Kae! We’re the Adonai Secretarii. We’ve been Azael’s closest advisors since before the resurrection.”
“You mean like… Jesus? Or…?”
“No, not that resurrection,” Zaq says from beside me. “Ours.”
“It took a lot to get Azael out,” Amezarak grumbles, his voice regal and quiet.
Oh... I’ve been wondering how that happened.
My realization must be evident, because Azael growls. Actually growls. Like a dog—except a bit lower, shorter, and quieter. It’s bizarre and unusual.
I bring my eyes back to him, half expecting to see a beast in his chair.
“What?” Ana chirps, unfazed. “You didn’t say what we could and couldn’t tell her.”
“Details about my escape are off the menu,” Azael warns, shooting her a dark look that knocks the smirk right off her face.
Perfect. I’m successfully creating chaos for the God of Chaos—uh, Guardian, or whatever he called himself. I have no intention of stopping now.
“Oh, don’t worry, you can trust me,” I purr, flashing Ana a devious smile.
To my delight, she pales.
“Ignore her threats,” Azael says flatly, stealing my thunder. “She’s harmless.”
Harmless. Sure. They can go ahead and think that. It’d serve me much better if they didn’t suspect I was capable of doing whatever needs to be done to escape from here. Even now, I feel the pressure of the Aether building again—
“Quit lying to yourself, Kaelene,” Azael adds.
Oh, that asshole.
I stab my knife into the table. “You need to get off your high fucking horse and stop thinking you know everything because you’re older than dirt. You’re a hypocritical, manipulative piece of shit with a God complex. There’s nothing special about that. It’s a dime a dozen with your kind.”
The table falls completely silent.
I sweep my gaze across their faces, daring any of them to challenge me.
They don’t. Instead, they all suddenly seem very interested in looking at their food, and not the steadily rising temper of their leader. If I’m not mistaken, the temperature of the room seems to drop a few degrees, too.
A few moments later, Zaq clears his throat to say, “Perhaps we should dismiss early.”
“Excellent idea,” Bat agrees immediately after him, jumping to his feet to usher everyone out of the room.
As soon as they’re gone, Azael begins his insufferable low-rolling musing again: “They can be a bit of a handful at times, but at least they know when to shut up, unlike some people.”
Red-hot anger boils up inside of me. “You—”
He cuts me off by clicking his tongue, and I feel the warnings of his painful magic writhing in my wrists. Looking down, I expect to see some kind of vice grip around them. But instead, I find it’s my hands that are glowing.
My lips twitch into a snarl, but I make an effort to calm myself. Whatever wall I managed to throw between the Aether and me, it’s paper-thin. I can’t afford a complete lapse of control. I’ll have the ceiling caving in on me if I do.
“You’re like a feral animal, thinking it’s caught in a trap.” Azael leans back in his chair, looking down his nose at me with entirely too much amusement. “There’s no need to chew your own arm off to escape. You’re safe here.”
“Fuck off.” I hiss back.
“No. You owe me a favor, Kaelene. Tell me how you got out.”
This self-righteous asshole infuriates me so much, I feel the start of a migraine coming on.
It’s easier to look at the walls than his face, so that’s exactly what I do.
They have paintings in here, and unlike the Abyss, they’re absolutely normal.
Instead of vanity portraits or biblical battle scenes, they’re just mountains and forests.
Calming, even. Happy little trees, happy little clouds… .
“I meditated. That’s how.”
Azael crosses his arms, not buying it at all. “So do you normally burst into the brightness of the sun and explode through highly runed containment cells every time that you meditate?”
I sigh, looking back at his obnoxious, sarcastic face. Lying to him is pointless; he’s too good at reading me.
How much could it really hurt if I feed him a few breadcrumbs? I have to win his trust somehow, after all. I’m pretty sure that’s a basic principle of spy work.
So I try for a rebuttal, “How did you manage to kill Michael?”
“A sword.”
“I saw that much, clearly. What was so special about that sword?”
“What was so special about your meditation?”
Okay, fine. He got me there. If he wants a one-for-one transactional conversation, then I’ll play his game. “I think the Power may have taken pity on me and unlocked the Aether.”
Azael leans in with interest, resting his elbows on the table. I, on the other hand, am disgusted by the closer proximity, shirking away immediately.
If it bothers him, he doesn’t budge. He hangs close enough that I can see every detail of his multi-colored eyes. They might look green from a distance, but they’re really a mix of everything—green, brown, blue, and silver… Like the colors of the globe.
“Intriguing,” he muses. “And what was it like?”
I don’t skip a beat. “What kind of sword was it?”
“A miraculously enchanted sword, fueled by energy antithetical to Michael’s nature. And the Power?”
“It was… the most beautiful music… How did you enchant a sword?”
“I didn’t.” Damn him and his damn riddles and loopholes, just like a genie. “Did the Power speak to you? Were there any words in the music?”
I close my eyes, trying to recall what I’d heard. It was unearthly, mesmerizing, and beautiful. But the words were unintelligible, used more for the way the letters sound than any particular lyrics. I could only make out a few words.
“Absinthium, amaritudo venit.” I try to say it slowly, but I’m sure I still butcher whatever language it is. “So if you didn’t enchant the sword, then I assume one of your advisors did? How?”
Azael looks at me for a beat, silent, with his eyebrows slightly lowered. Then, he shakes his head. “Tamiel can create celestial weapons, and Amezarak can imbue them. It is simply their specialty. The two of them together are worth more than an entire arsenal of weapons.”
Oh. Great. For the first time, I’m starting to worry that I might have picked the losing side.
Azael doesn’t ask another question. He just stares at me, making me uneasy with his strange, appraising look. In an effort to pretend I’m not disturbed, I take a sip of water, avoiding his eyes until I can’t stand it anymore.
“I take it you know what the words mean,” I mumble.
“I do.”
“Would you care to tell me?”
I swear, if he makes me strike another bargain for—
“I think the Power is saying something that historically hasn’t translated very well for humans, which is curious in itself.” He leans back in his seat, crossing his arms. “But it’s also speaking our old common language, and I’m almost certain that you don’t know Latin.”
I purse my lips.
That sneaky, clever little shadow. It could have easily just spoken my language, but no, it forced me to need a translator. It wanted me to relay its message to someone.
Sighing, I give in to its conniving plans, reluctantly asking Azael for help. “If you had to translate—”
“Bitterness comes.” He meets my eyes with an awful seriousness to him, but… That’s what it said? Really? Seems a bit anticlimactic when I already know the world is ending.
I raise an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
Azael pauses, and I count his blinks as his eyes wander around the room.
One.
He must be genuinely trying to understand the message.
Two.
No, he’s clearly crafting a lie to tell me.
Three.
Hell… I can’t read him if my life depended on it.
Finally, he answers, slowly and deliberately, in a low hypnotic voice that reverberates with certainty.
“Bitterness is a translation error in the written prophecy. It’s not a literal sour plant like Wormwood.
Bitterness is resentment, disappointment, disgust, rage.
.. Pure, unbridled rage against the unfairness of everything. Rage against the world.”
He looks at me like he’s just now seeing me for the first time.
“That is what you became, Kae. You’re the Power of Bitterness.”