Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
MICAH
I didn’t want to leave Dakota alone, but I needed to go speak with someone who knew how this was possible.
I wanted to believe she hadn’t had sex with anyone else recently, and I did believe that, but I’d also gone my entire life believing humans couldn’t get pregnant by angels.
Which might very well be a false belief.
Because despite only having sex with angels, both pregnancy tests had given the same impossible result.
Pregnant.
There was a Syndesmos about two hours away if I flew, and I could go there to speak to someone, but the idea still made me incredibly uneasy. Being Sigeian, I wouldn’t be punished for allowing Dakota to know I was an angel, because they trusted I’d take all her memories of me if it came to that.
I wouldn’t. But they didn’t need to know everything.
A Thrausian would get in more trouble, however. Probably losing whatever housing contract they’d been granted in exchange for keeping the demon activity lower.
But I didn’t really want Heaven to know about Dakota at all.
I wanted to keep her safe, tucked in my palm or the pocket of my shirt. Not on some fucking registry of humans who’d somehow gotten pregnant by angels. Or, even worse, if she was the first one to ever have this happen and they’d need to steal her to figure out why.
Heaven wasn’t a place absent from sin, as humans on Earth believed it was. Maybe for the humans that died it felt that way, but the angel part of it functioned as most societies did. And while I was good at hiding, would be good at hiding Dakota, Heaven had resources.
I’d just have to hope she wasn’t the first person to ever have this happen to her.
After a very stern conversation with Mason and ensuring Dakota was comfortable on the couch with a movie and whatever else she needed, I left, heading for the Syndesmos.
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“Angelakia,” the Syndesmos angel said as he set a large record book on the table between us, flipping through the old pages.
“It refers to a human soul that has been touched by an angel during infancy. The first year is the important period. After that, the soul has settled too deeply into mortality.”
Angelakia.
The word twisted in my mind, shimmering in the way obsidian shimmered. Pitch dark and razor-sharp.
Apparently, Dakota had been touched by an angel long before I ever knew her.
It took me a minute to come up with a response.
“And what does the touch do?”
“Nothing dramatic. Usually.” He turned another page. “The child remains human, but their soul retains a resonance with ours. They perceive things ordinary humans don’t. Angels are drawn to them. Their bodies are more receptive to angelic essence.”
I looked at him.
“Receptive enough to conceive a child,” I surmised. And be affected by kapnos, and dampen a Thrausian…
He didn’t answer immediately, which was answer enough.
“The Angelakia can also become risen,” he continued, making my pulse spike. “If an angel gives their remaining neon at the moment of death, the mortal soul can carry it. The human rises. The angel does not.”
The casual way he spoke made everything seem even more surreal.
As if he wasn’t dropping an atomic bomb on my entire fucking life and understanding of the world.
I stared at the page, chest tightening, eyes skimming words printed in a language that I barely remembered on Earth. Heaven’s language. Something that didn’t require being taught once within those celestial bounds, a universal tongue.
“So Heaven gets an angel,” I said slowly.
“Theoretically.”
“And loses one.”
His expression didn’t change.
“No. It loses a fallen one.”
That was the distinction they had apparently built an entire secret around. And it was exactly why angels were never informed of the existence of these Angelakia. This secretive phenomenon was a trading mechanism. I gritted my teeth, discomfort and something uglier coiling in the pit of my stomach.
“Was this designed?” I questioned.
“There is no record of it being designed,” he answered, deliberately choosing his words, his light eyes flicking across my face. “But there is a record of Heaven knowing what it does.”
He gestured to the book, though most of the words printed there still eluded me.
Of course.
And the supposed lack of record didn’t mean this wasn’t purposeful, or that it hadn’t been exploited.
The rest of my conversation with the Syndesmos angel was brief and only vaguely informative—largely focused on pregnancy specifics rather than lore explanation.
But I’d decoded enough words on the page held open between us to feel unsettled and antsy to leave.
I didn’t dare search his emotions for false truths, but I doubted it would’ve been helpful had I tried.
While Sigeians in Heaven had specific uses and outlets for their powers, those on Earth did not.
So, our morals slipped further. He’d be prepared for any invasion I attempted.
Once I left the building, I shrouded myself in invisibility and took to the cloudy sky, making an attempt to organize my thoughts in my head. I wouldn’t tell Dakota all of this. Not at first.
I needed to work through my feelings on it. Needed to consult with Mason.
A human became one of the Angelakia when an angel touched their soul during the first year of their life, but it did not require a blessing, a ritual, or even intention. An angel could hold an infant for a moment and never know anything had happened. But the contact was imprinted on the soul then.
Afterward, the Angelakia lived a human life, yet could become an angel.
Literally transform species.
Not through death, not naturally, and certainly not by any process the human could initiate themselves. An angel had to give their life willingly—or…be forced to give it by a corrupt Sigeian—and the human would use that sacrificial neon to transform.
The mortal became risen. The fallen was gone.
Balance was restored.
Most angels never learned this. We were told that the boundary between Heaven and Earth was absolute. Something irreversible. Apparently, there were exceptions to every rule so long as you knew how to uncover the right things.
I understood why they had never bothered telling us. Why they’d kept this secret.
Angels on Earth generally had no strong desire to give back to Heaven.
Angelakia complicated this.
Heaven cared about fallen angel death—it was why they employed Thrausians to keep control of demon activity—but not more than they cared about gaining risen angels.
Angelakia were the huge invisible exploit to the fragile balance of fallen angels.
Because now I had the desire to kill one of my own kind.
To force one of them to give their life for Dakota, so I could make her immortal.
The phenomenon did not say the sacrificial angel had to know the human. It did not even say they had to understand what was happening. Only that the final breath had to be surrendered.
I hated that I could see the design so clearly. I hated even more that, for the first time since I fell, Heaven had given me something I wanted badly enough to succumb to their plan.
There were always angels that Mason could find, ones he was meant to save.
All I had to do was convince one of them to exchange their life for hers.
Convince, or compel with my aspect.
It was abhorrent.
I knew that.
Dakota would know it, too.
But she’d have to forgive me.
There was zero chance she was going to remain human for the rest of her life. I would ensure that. This foreign concept was solving a problem I’d never allowed myself to think much about.
When I arrived home, Mason was preparing to leave.
He had questions in his eyes, but there wasn’t time to ask them now.
I’d smelled the ichor somewhere along the route back home, and Mason needed to go take care of whatever was happening to the angel the ichor came from.
He was out the door only a few seconds after I returned, leaving me and Dakota alone in the living room.
By the number of dishes on the coffee table, Mason had been feeding her just fine.
I walked over to her and scooped her up in my arms, sitting on the couch with her on my lap, her blanket still draped over her body.
“So, why am I pregnant?” she asked, peering up at me.
Hearing the word pregnant from her mouth was surreal. I took a steadying inhale.
“An angel touched you during your first year of life, which then changed you,” I started, brushing some hair off her forehead.
“I’m an angel?” She began to sit up more, panicked.
“No,” I said quickly. “Not at all. You have some qualities of an angel, like being able to smell kapnos, and being able to get pregnant. You’re still completely human, and none of this would’ve affected you had you not met me or Mason. It would just be unknown.”
“Why?” she questioned, her expression puzzled.
I hesitated.
The right thing to do would be to explain all of it to her.
Explain how Mason had been relying on her, even when he hadn’t known it.
Explain how I knew she would become a Sigeian because of that.
Explain the fact that she could become an angel at all—and such transformation would require sacrifice of the kind Mason could find in his line of work. Another angel’s life for hers.
But I couldn’t find the words to explain all of it.
She’d gone through so much already today, and I wasn’t ready to unleash all the bitterness and overwhelm in my brain on her in this moment.
“I’m not sure why. It just happens.”
“Oh.”
“Are you hungry for dinner?”
“I already ate a lot of stuff today.” She gestured to the plates and bowls. “I guess most of that is from Mason, but still. Maybe I’ll just eat mini pancakes for dinner.”
“If that’s what you want…” I leaned down to kiss her forehead.
“Yes. It is what I want.”