Chapter Seventeen #2
It was exactly as she described. To the left of the couple, a spiraling maze of trees stretched outward, but unlike the vibrant floor elsewhere, the trees were coated in shadows. The colors dulled into a state that mimicked night—constant, deep, and unnerving.
The female gestured toward the fruit nestled within that darkness, her hand mimicking the motion of eating. The male shook his head quickly and tugged her gently away. I looked towards the dark trees again. So much fruit…and yet, unlike the others, it remained untouched.
The male always allowed her to place things in her mouth. What made those different?
Beside me, Faye sucked in a sharp breath and clutched the lip of the well. “That’s it.”
“What is it?” Michael asked. “Why can’t she go in?”
“It almost looks like our garden,” Haniel offered, voice hushed. “But something about it makes me uneasy.”
“It’s forbidden,” Faye said, placing her hand over her chest. “I feel…something wrong there. It’s not guarded. But it’s a test. A choice. And if it’s disturbed, it will unravel something far beyond what we understand.”
Her words stirred an ache in my chest. I could see others growing uneasy as well.
“I don’t understand,” I muttered. “Why does your voice make me feel strange? Uncomfortable. Like that garden.”
Haniel rubbed her chest the same way as Faye. “I feel it too. Something about that place hurts.”
“Adam knows,” Faye said with sudden certainty. “He feels it. He will protect her—he has to.”
Michael blinked. “They have names? How do you know their names?”
“I…” Faye swayed, reaching for her head. Before she could fall, I caught her in my arms. Gasps echoed from the others, who rushed to her side.
She insisted she was fine, but no angel had collapsed before. No one had ever trembled. No one had ever—felt like this.
Except…maybe I had.
The day I first saw the foot. The petals. That burn in my chest.
And Haniel’s sudden reaction to Faye’s words.
Could Faye be right about humans? Could they really…change something? But how? And why did I feel it?
That night, I returned to the well alone.
Whispers had spread among the angels like ripples through the garden. About Faye. About the strange feeling. About that cursed forest. Many were keeping their distance now afraid.
Not me.
I had waited long enough to see into the scrying glass without the crowd. Without distraction. Without anyone else breathing around me.
I stood before the well, heart silent, breath calm.
The humans were playing with a strange creature, enormous compared to them.
Its skin was gray and smooth, with a hanging, elongated nose that swung side to side.
The female threw her head back in delight as she touched it.
Her mouth widened unnaturally, exposing her teeth.
It wasn’t fear. It was something else. A shape her mouth made when she was… what? What did that sound like?
If Faye were here, maybe she’d know.
Another ripple tore across the surface. Gold shimmered and warped. I leaned forward, pulse quickening.
The petals returned. Blood-red. Falling.
Then the foot.
It pressed delicately into the gold. Bare. Pale.
A sharp thump exploded in my chest—then another. A rhythm, like music trapped inside bone. I gasped and steadied myself.
The leg followed. Slender. Shapely. The smooth curve of a calf and the hint of a thigh. My gaze devoured every inch before the image flickered again.
The heat. The pressure. The strange ache inside me intensified.
I had studied the humans long enough to know that body belonged to a female. But I had never looked at one. Not like this.
The gold of our world never stirred such feelings. I never studied my body, never saw a reason to. But now, something foreign was happening beneath my skin. My thoughts fractured.
Heat pooled low in my belly. A tremor wracked my limbs.
A puff of breath escaped my lips—uninvited, unfamiliar.
I didn’t understand it. But I wanted to.
No… I needed to.
And that terrified me.
I should have turned away.
The pulse hammering through my chest wasn’t normal. The burn spreading low in my body wasn’t normal. Whatever she was—whatever she was doing to me—wasn’t normal.
And yet, I stayed.
Every angel in Heaven could have pried at my shoulders, called my name, dragged me from the scrying glass, and still I would not have moved. Not until I saw her. Not until I saw every inch of what was meant for me.
The image was almost coy, draped in mist. A slight fog curled around her hips, veiling the place the humans used to expel waste—like a deliberate choice, as though I wasn’t meant to see but somehow was being shown enough.
Each time the gold rippled, the fog shifted, hinting at more without revealing it.
Something about her skin—its softness, its color—was unlike any creation we had ever seen. It was all-consuming. Dangerous. A great change in the air itself.
A violent shudder wracked my body. My hands trembled where they gripped the edge of the well.
I sagged against the lip, breath shallow, wishing—no, aching—to smell her.
Her stomach appeared next, then the mounds on her chest, also blurred by the strange fog, and yet still…
still the shape of her was undeniable. Long blonde hair tumbled like threads of light down her shoulders.
Then the mist parted just enough, and I saw all of her.
If angels knew nothing else, they knew beauty. We were born of it. We recognized it without needing to learn it. But the female before wasn’t merely beautiful. She was…devastating.
I froze, every thought screeching to a halt. My wings curled tight against my back. My hand hovered above the water, trembling. I yearned—yearned— to touch her skin.
She took a step backward, and something about her expression was unlike anything I had ever witnessed. Her lips curled upward—familiar, like what I’d seen humans do, but her eyes….
Her eyes were hooded. Her gaze curved like a secret, a promise. It wasn’t the placid joy of our golden garden. It was something heavier, darker, hotter.
It set my entire body ablaze the longer I stared.
Angels needed nothing. We had nothing because there was no need for anything. We lived, breathed, and walked the same golden paths, the same homes. It was endless peace, quiet, sanctuary.
The sound that left me was not angelic. It was low, hoarse, ragged.
“Mine.”
The word shocked me as much as the burn searing through my chest. I plunged my hand into the golden liquid as if I could pluck the woman out, as if my fingers could grasp a being that wasn’t even here.
My hips jerked against the well without my bidding, and a flare of fire tore through me—raw, electric.
Then she vanished.
The blonde dissolved into ripples of gold, and the humans returned when it stopped. I slapped at the well, sloshing the liquid again and again. “No, no, no!”
“Come back—come back.”
Wait. I gripped my head as a throb zipped through it. My eyes widened when I glanced at the liquid gold. “No, what was it?” I asked myself as I smacked at the well. There was something else in the well—I knew it! I saw it, but why couldn’t I recall it?
A terrible feeling swelled in my chest—loss, hunger, something unnamed. I knew I’d seen something more, something important, but the harder I reached for it the further it drifted away.
I staggered back from the well. My body felt strange—tight, heavy. Looking down, my robe shifted unnaturally, and for the first time I noticed a bulge straining against the fabric. My breath caught. My hands shook as I peeled it back and stared.
The appendage given to male angels only as a matter of form was no longer passive; it had transformed, hard and alive. Something had awoken. Something immoral.
Heat flushed through me. My hands hovered over it, then closed. A sound escaped me—low, guttural—as waves of sensation crashed through my body, unfamiliar and overwhelming. I dropped to my knees, clutching myself, gasping as the tension built and broke, releasing like lightning splitting the sky.
White streaks spilled onto the gold, bright against bright, an unholy contrast.
I knelt there, trembling. The feeling was good—too good—and yet incomplete. Empty. Something was still missing, something I couldn’t name.
I peered back into the scrying glass. The humans had returned to their forest. It wasn’t them. My thoughts were a thick fog. I rubbed my temples. What did I see? What did I touch? The memory danced just out of reach.
Hunger struck me suddenly sharp, gnawing, new. Saliva pooled in my mouth. I staggered to the nearest tree and devoured golden fruit one after another, the sweet pulp bursting between my teeth until my stomach ached and stretched.
I had never eaten before. Angels did not eat.
And yet now my body demanded it.
Even with the fruit heavy inside me, I felt hollow.
That had given enough time for a twisted ache to build in my chest.
The reality of angels crashed into me like broken glass—sharp, undeniable. All the peace, all the gilded joy…it hit me for what it truly was: an illusion. A dream. A life we were told was paradise, but that I now saw for what it was.
We weren’t meant to live like that. I wasn’t meant for gold.
The sensation from before—the groan that tore out of me, the fire in my limbs—I wanted that again. But more than that, I wanted to use it. Not for indulgence. Not for rebellion. But for something important. Something that mattered.
I’d never seen the male human use his appendage either. But maybe…maybe he could. Maybe we’d see.
My thoughts drifted to the dark garden. The fruit. The forbidden place.
My eyes widened, lips curling in awe—the same expression I’d seen on the female’s face.
Faye was wrong.
That wasn’t a bad place.
It was truth.
Why did something exist if we weren’t supposed to touch it? To taste it?
I returned to the well. The gold shimmered under my breath as I whispered into it. Inside, Eve gazed at a slithering creature as if it spoke. On arms and legs, the serpent led her to the edge of choice. And she reached for it.
She ate the apple.
She ate it for both of us.
“What have you done, Lucifer?”
Faye’s voice cracked the silence. Her lips were parted, like she couldn’t catch her breath. And her eyes…
They looked through me like I was already gone.
Maybe I was.
The change inside me hit just as the consequences rippled across their world. Creatures who once walked beside humans now turned on them. The skies darkened. Wind and cold and weather—pain—entered their land like invaders.
Sickness took root.
Mortality spread like fire.
And to make more of their kind, humans would now have to join in a sacred violence of flesh.
The appendage swinging between our legs? It had a purpose.
One He never intended to use.
Not until Eve bit the apple.
Their world changed.
And I did along with it.
Heaven remained the same. Gilded. Quiet. Empty.
I couldn’t go back. I wouldn’t. Not to a world without taste, without desire, without whatever I should remember.
Others felt the same. Other angels saw what I saw, and they swore to follow me when I rose up to seize something more.
I failed.
And I was cast out.
Lucifer perished—
so the Devil could thrive.