34. Angélique
34
Angélique
T he next day passes in a blur. Elhyor keeps his promise to give me new clothes.
They look nice and maybe a bit too fancy to my taste. They’re also not the ergonomic kind I’m used to, and I feel it already because they don’t hug my skin the same, and they also don’t let my body breathe the same.
To make it short, they look nice but make me sweat like a pig.
I might exaggerate a bit, but it’s how they make me feel.
And don’t get me started on the underwear Elhyor picked—if he’s the one who really picked those lacy scraps of fabrics.
Oh, yes, they look extra nice, but I’ve been wearing that thong for half a day and it’s like the thing has tried to part my buttcheeks even more. I’m pretty sure it has even started to chafe.
Maybe it was made just to torture me.
I wouldn’t put it past Elhyor.
They were also accompanied by three perfectly white wedding dresses. They’re gorgeous and without even trying them on, I know they’re going to fit me perfectly, but they’re so white that they hurt my eyes.
I know that wearing white is a custom on earth on their wedding day. Virginal white they call it here, and as much as I fit the description, it’s also supposed to describe purity.
And my body might be pure according to the wedding rules, but my mind is so far from that purity.
I mean, who would call me pure when I fucked my fingers for most of a week with my future husband in mind?
Also, who would call me pure when I tried to murder said future husband just two days ago?
Yes, not the purest bride over here.
But that’s not what bothers me the most.
No, what bothers me the most is the color in itself.
White. Archangel white.
I hate it. I hate it so much that it took me a minute to calm down when I saw the dresses.
My first reaction was wanting to destroy them, to burn them, to tear them down and to stain them.
I never wear white and there’s a good reason for it.
White is their color. It’s the color of their oppression.
It’s the color of my failure, too.
Not that I could have done any differently. I didn’t pick my bird form after all.
But it feels like I failed the expectations of my father.
But I also could be wrong.
By force of habit, the men and the women who took the mantle of an archangel were all above twenty, but there is nothing that says one can’t do it while being younger, and yet my father is still reigning when my little brother is eighteen, an age the country we settled in already consider as an adult.
It’s been centuries that the French decided eighteen was the adulthood age and gave the right to vote for people above that age, not that it really matters anymore. They don’t vote for much anymore. Everything is decided by the archangels council.
Or used to be.
Léandre’s message hasn’t stopped spinning in my head.
I’m sure that it wasn’t too late to save Léandre, but he sent that message to me a week ago, and his father had already been poisoned. I hope we can save Gabriel, but deep down, I have suspicions that it might be too late for him already.
What is even surprising is that no one has reported it. There is absolutely no news that has been displayed on the TV—I would have noticed after dinner over the week—or not even rumors.
It is both scary for Gabriel and for the world as we know it.
It also begs the question of who will be the new Gabriel. Léandre has been ruled out long ago because of his wings, but no one has really been trained to be the new Gabriel yet. He had been in place for only twenty-seven years, so there was still time and now I’m wondering which of Léandre’s cousins will take the mantle.
Will they have enough of a brain to keep their positions against my father? Or maybe, no, will they be smart enough to satisfy him enough for them not to disappear, either?
I’m getting ahead of myself. I can’t get scared for whoever will be the new Gabriel when I don’t even know if Gabriel is still alive.
I come back to the display on my bed.
Three perfectly white dresses.
I can’t think about them yet.
As I shuffle them to get them to fit in the wardrobe again, I feel that damn thong rubbing me the wrong way again.
Enough.
I make my way to the laundry room that is on the other side of the corridor.
The new clothes that were brought this morning were accompanied by a holo and a card that said:
“Little Devil,
As long as you call someone that’s already in the holo, no one can listen to your calls. There’s a laundry room on the other side of this corridor.
Elhyor”
It’s a good thing that I went there first thing in the morning, because when I reach the laundry room, my clothes are all clean, dry and folded. If I didn’t know it was a machine that did all of that, I’d probably feel weird about having even my panties folded.
I hurry back to my room and change back into my own clothes.
I’m tempted to throw away what Elhyor got me, but I won’t be so petty. He might not know what I’m used to and had someone pick the clothes for him. At least he got me extra clothes.
And it’s not like I train here. I might not need the regulating temperature, helping with muscle contractions, kind of clothes while I’m here.
Especially if there’s nothing I can do to kill him. Maybe I should just join Cassiopé in the archives. If there’s somewhere I could find an answer to the invincibility of dragons, I bet it’s there.
But first, I have another battle to fight.