Chapter 3
Three
Castiel
It was a bad day for flying, but I grimly kept beating my wings through the foggy, misty afternoon light.
I’d suffered through fifty of this country’s miserable winters, and was beyond ready for my own home.
It turned cold enough to be uncomfortable and wet, but not enough for crisp, frozen air filling the lands to the north.
Below me the cart rattled along a dirt path, two dead humans surrounded with ice chips and straw in the back, two live humans huddled in cloaks in the front.
Part of me felt sorry for the sharp, biting girl with the white-gold hair stuck beside that dour man.
But she was a part of a cult, as Eve had explained to me, and I could not trust her.
Even if I liked the way her eyes sparked when I called her Lily and the way she pressed her lips together as if trying to build a dam against all the words she wanted to scald me with.
They were so slow. I couldn’t even fly as slow as them. I'd press forward, glide, draw back, hover in the air so they could catch up, then repeat. It was maddening, and we’d only been traveling for a few hours.
I thought back to my last conversation with Gabriel before I’d left.
“My charge to you is this: discover what you can about this image of a royal seraph Falling,” he’d said, wings tightly folded. “If you find evidence another has Fallen and returned…” He took a breath. “I won’t be returning. But if we can get the rest of you home, that is enough.”
I’d cocked my head. “Gabriel.”
His green eyes flashed as he glanced over at his mate, the human named Eve. “You know Aerie would not accept her. She is wingless, and they would immediately consider her an outcast, below even the lowest echelon. Besides, this world is her home.”
Shock rippled through me. My captain had worked long and hard trying to find another hole in the sky or rip in the earth we could slip through to get back to the world of Rundis, our land called Aerie.
When fifty years had passed and we hadn’t found anything—and we’d lost one of our sedge while crossing an ocean—he’d dropped into a deep melancholy nothing could break through.
Nothing except a headstrong human woman named Eve.
And, apparently, she’d discovered a stained glass window with the image of a seraph with black wings Falling. The window was original to the manor, built two hundred or so years before Gabriel had purchased the property.
Only the Aerie royal family had black wings.
So Gabriel would call to the rest of our sedge, scattered in this world but still in communication with one another, to find the seraph with the most knowledge of our histories to ask if he knew of a lost prince.
I would take Gabriel’s place as a “Herald of Death,” a strange term the dead reverend had come up with. Or perhaps it was his grandfather? I wasn’t sure. I glanced down and saw Lilith’s hair shining despite the murky weather. I’d have to ask her more, but in a way that didn’t make her suspicious.
She was sharp and quick, and she’d seen my shocked reaction to the stained glass window once Eve had cleared the dust and grime away. She’d already questioned why Gabriel and I cared so much about the manuscript she’d once seen.
Although the humans venerated four gods, there were a few small churches here and there, radicals or nonconformists, who worshiped as they saw fit.
Reverend Grimshaw and Elder Absalom Meadows, the two dead men in the back of the cart, were leaders in the Church of the Love of His Divine Saints.
It was, Eve said, a cult. Restrictive, oppressive, coercive, and isolating.
So that would be fun. Infiltrating a cult as their new Herald of Death.
I was still unsure exactly what a Herald of Death was.
Gabriel and Eve hoped everyone else would be pretty unsure, too. And based on the uncertain looks Lilith had shot me and the stiff groveling Elder Tomes had done, it seemed like they were.
Well. I’d never been a spy. The war back home in Aerie had been between two races who looked nothing alike—the Seraphim and the Gar.
But why not? I’d always try something once.
Lilith glanced up as if searching for me.
I gave her a jaunty wave, the way I’d seen humans do when being overly friendly.
She scowled and glanced away, and I didn’t try to hide my laugh from the wind.
They stopped at nightfall at a coaching inn.
At first I was surprised when Tomes handed over the cart and two horses.
Then I remembered humans couldn’t see as well as seraphim.
I landed on the edge of the roof and leaned against the brick chimney, watching as Tomes gave instruction to a stable boy, then turned to enter the inn.
Lilith Meadows paused, staring at the cart with a conflicted expression. It wasn’t just her leader dead in the back of the cart. Her brother was there, too.
My heart pulsed at the look on her face. It wasn’t grief, exactly, but certainly confusion, apprehension, and sadness. Probably all the emotions I’d feel if I learned my brother died. Probably exactly what he thought when my family was given the news that my sedge had disappeared mid-battle.
Her face was the picture of uncertainty, as if she’d been cast adrift in a thunderstorm and didn’t know where to land.
I glanced around. No one was near the stable, so I stepped off the roof and glided down to land beside her.
She jerked, then shot me a wary look.
“Lily,” I greeted.
She opened her mouth, then shut it. Then gave me a bland, placid smile. Her eyes turned shallow and empty. It was unnerving. “Herald.”
I nodded to the cart, now tucked inside the stable, far from the animals. “Were you close with your brother?”
“He was my brother,” she said quietly. Which wasn’t really an answer at all.
“I am sorry for your loss.”
She glanced into the darkness. “How did he die?”
I sighed. Had she not been told any further details? She deserved that, at least. “Your brother…fell off a cliff. It wasn’t a tall one, but there were sharp rocks at the bottom.”
Lilith sucked in a breath. “How did that happen?”
I hesitated. “I believe…there was an accident. Both Eve Lovejoy and your brother fell.”
“She’s alive and he’s not,” Lilith said sharply, her blue eyes finding mine and then darting away again. I could practically taste her bitterness in the air.
Nodding, I crossed my arms. “She may have landed on top of him. I wasn’t there; I was with you.”
She stiffened, but I couldn’t see her face. “Was he in pain?”
“Gabriel told me he died instantly,” I said truthfully.
Lilith nodded, crossing her arms, and sniffed. “Herald, can you help him pass quietly and easily? He…he might not deserve it. But I know it would comfort my mother.”
I stared at her. Damn, this was the Herald part I knew nothing about.
I knew that, of the four gods in the human world, the Church of the Love of His Divine Saints worshiped Erlik, God of Death and Beyond.
I’d even seen some statues of Erlik, always shrouded in gray, always depicted with an hourglass and a shepherd’s staff.
He was not as popular as his twin children, but there were still plenty of churches and reverends around.
Everyone died, so I supposed Erlik’s services would always be needed.
Erlik was supposed to have messengers and guides—spirits who brought the newly dead into his realm and guarded the edges of the Beyond to make sure nothing escaped into the world that shouldn’t be there.
But a Herald? Especially a Herald as defined by cult leader Zorababel Grimshaw? Not a clue.
“I will do what I can,” I murmured, hoping it was the right answer.
She sniffed again, and I imagined draping one wing around her shoulders. I didn’t; I wasn’t stupid. “He..he wasn’t a kind man, but he truly believed in what Reverend Grimshaw preached. Belief matters, doesn’t it?”
“Mmm.” I should probably find Erlik’s scriptures and familiarize myself with it. Though hopefully I’d be in and out. Lilith had said she’d seen the illumination of the stained glass in an old manuscript sitting on Grimshaw’s desk. So a couple of days. I hoped.
Lilith turned abruptly toward the inn, closing the conversation. Then she stopped. “What about you?”
I did not feel like handling a group of people desperate for favors or blessings or the suspicious people who viewed me as a threat.
When we first Fell we’d stayed hidden while we learned about the world we were trapped in.
We’d mostly kept to that code. Everyone had their own reasons.
Mine was that while I enjoyed watching humans, I didn’t like the expectations that came from them once they saw my wings.
“Those beds aren’t made for seraph wings,” I told her, stretching one wing out as an example.
Her breath hitched as she watched the nearly six feet of wing unfold. It was dark, so the bronze didn’t glint from the sun, but perhaps the strength of the wing and the long primary feathers were eye-catching enough, because her face changed to…not quite awe. Perhaps admiration.
I’d nearly forgotten how beautiful humans found wings, no matter the color. Brown was quite ordinary in my world, found among farmers and tradesmen typically. My heart lifted at the light in her eyes.
Then Lilith snapped free and glanced at my face, her expression turning wide, open, and completely shallow. Like a veil had fallen. “See you tomorrow.”
I nodded, smothering my disappointment. She’d been all spark and flame when I’d taken her into the air yesterday, but that had been snuffed out. Or she was hiding it from me now. “In the morning, then.”
That night I slept under the stars on a soft bed of moss.
It wasn’t luxurious, but I was a warrior.
My body ran hotter than humans, and I’d been in a war.
I’d slept in far worse places. My last thought before drifting to sleep was of how small she’d looked, how worried and uncertain, when she didn’t think anyone was watching her.