Chapter Seven
Eve
I froze, surprised by the danger in his voice. “No,” I answered honestly when I could find my tongue. “Of course not.” I forced a laugh. “Humans don’t hire women to be reporters.”
He eyed me, lips pursed. “Then why so many questions?”
I spread my hands wide, as if opening myself up to his scrutiny. “I can return the favor. What would you like to know?”
A muscle feathered in his jaw. “How old are you?” he barked.
“Twenty-seven,” I answered.
He squinted, as if trying to figure out how old that was to a human, since that would still be a child to the seraphim.
“I should already be married and have children,” I explained.
His brows lifted out of their frown, perhaps in surprise. “Are you?”
I shook my head. I was betrothed to the reverend, Zorababel Grimshaw, but he didn’t need to know that. Honestly, I tried to forget about it myself.
“Why?”
I laughed self-consciously. “I know I said I was an open book, but goodness you drive right to it. I’m not considered a good catch.”
“Good catch?”
Heavens, I had to spell it out for him? I pointed to my face, my hair.
“I’m not the prettiest girl in the congregation—the community,” I quickly corrected.
“And I’m not the best cook.” I also tend to quietly, secretly disobey.
I don’t believe anymore. I can’t believe Erlik demands worship like this.
I don’t believe I was born to further Erlik’s glory.
And they can sense that about me, even if they don’t know quite how.
He scowled at his empty plate. “I didn’t hate the eggs.”
A frisson of pleasure rushed through me. I bit my lip to not laugh at the faint praise. For a seraph not used to eggs and tea, this was as high praise as one could expect. “That and I tend to be opinionated.”
He barked a laugh. “You scurry around like a mouse. Up until today I didn’t think you had a backbone.”
Hurt flashed. “You’re my employer,” I got out between gritted teeth. “Scurrying is part of my job description.”
Regret shone in his eyes, as well as surprise. “Eve, I—”
I waved his words away. It didn’t matter. It was better, actually, that I knew what he thought about me. A seraph wouldn’t be attracted to a mouse. After the sting wore off I would be able to walk away without a backward glance. “My family is religious.”
“The Church of Saras.” He declared it proudly, like a pupil who studied for a test.
I nodded, amused. “Yes, she is our goddess. Her brother, Termus, is also worshipped by all. but my parents joined a smaller church called the Church of the Love of His Divine Saints, to worship their father, Erlik. It’s…
smaller. Less known.” A cult. It had taken me years to see that.
To realize normal communities let their people come and go and learn from others.
My church, this church, didn’t permit it.
Many of the women never left our community just outside Lownden, at least while unmarried.
I was the first in a long time, and only because Zorababel could command me to do whatever he wanted.
In front of me, Gabriel frowned. “Your people are quite religious, aren’t they?”
I held in a snort. “My people certainly are. All humans? I don’t know.
We’re not encouraged to go out much.” There was Emmas, the mother goddess, Erlik, the god of death and beyond, and their twin children: Termus, the god of commerce, and Saras, the goddess of humanities.
Most people routinely worshipped Termus and Saras, but I had been raised to obsessively venerate Erlik and only Erlik.
He cocked his head. “Then…how are you here?”
I’d walked right into that one. Foolish, foolish.
“My parents are aging. They don’t have much in savings.
” True, especially since Father had donated everything to the church for the good of the community.
“And because I’m unmarried”—for now, hopefully forever “—I saw this opportunity to see another piece of Anglia.” I didn’t tell him about my growing unhappiness, my realization that I was cut off from the world, my decision to leave.
“Do many other young adults leave for a time, like you?”
No. “Yes.” I smiled. “But have no fear. I shan’t be leaving here any time soon. Without a betrothed, it’s best for my family if I work and send money to them.” And as soon as I’d gotten Zor what he wanted, I’d disappear. Even if this strange, alluring seraph made parts of me want to stay.
“I suppose I am lucky, then, that I was the home you chose.” The words were delivered quietly and with no fanfare. It took a moment for me to realize I’d been complimented.
I smiled. “I’m happy to be here.” Not quite a truth, not quite a lie. For so many conflicting reasons.
After a brief silence, I stood. I shouldn’t have been here so long, and he seemed to have run out of questions. I didn’t want to annoy him, especially due to the strange attraction I had toward him. “
Let me clear your dishes.”
He leaned toward me as I bent over and reached for the plate. Was he…sniffing me? I tried not to react, though my pulse raced.
“What are you doing the rest of the day?” he asked abruptly.
I paused halfway across the room, hands full. “Cleaning?” It was a question, for I wondered if he wanted something else from me.
His permanent scowl softened. “I would appreciate all that you do.”
Surprised and flattered by his gratitude, I blurted, “I’m working on cleaning the oriel, but it will take me a long time. It’s twenty feet high and I haven’t even begun the outside yet. But it will be beautiful once clean.”
He nodded. I couldn’t read his expression. He wasn’t frowning anymore, but I couldn’t call it a smile, either.
I glanced around the room. “I can clean these chambers, if you like.”
He looked, too. A hand rubbed the back of his neck and his wings hitched high and tight above his shoulders. “Ah, yes, things did rather get away from me.”
Did that wing movement mean embarrassment or self-consciousness?
I hid a smile, absurdly amused to see such a strong, authoritative being express embarrassment in front of his housekeeper.
“I’ll start here tomorrow,” I promised. “And should I make enough supper for you? I can deliver it, if you please.”
“I am willing to try it. I did purchase the food,” he rumbled, not quite meeting my eye.
“Perfect.” I bit my tongue, trying to think of something a seraph would be interested in eating. Like I’d mentioned, cooking was not a great skill of mine.
“And you may stay during the meal,” he offered magnanimously. “As you did just now.”
I blinked at him. Surely this was against protocol.
But I had broken the rules first. And perhaps things were different with seraphim?
I nodded. “Thank you, sir.” The skin between my shoulder blades itched until the door closed behind me and I was in the hall once more, as if he stared at my back until I’d disappeared from his view.
* * *
Gabriel
The rest of the day I had the oddest compulsion to go practice tight flight maneuvers in the Great Hall.
I resisted, because I knew Eve was downstairs cleaning the oriel windows in between her other tasks.
I had peered over the minstrel gallery and caught sight of her, hair wrapped up and stretching on her tiptoes on a stepladder to wipe thick dust and cobwebs as high as she could reach.
The curves of her body lengthened, and I imagined flying up behind her and wrapping my hands around her waist.
She hummed and whistled as she worked. A key, dull from age and use, hung around her neck. Her breasts shifted under her dress, and I imagined pressing my mouth right between them, soaking up her scent.
Charmed, I let my wings relax. It wasn’t dusty anymore, thanks to my lovely housekeeper—and the release of tension ached through my body. I’d never been so content to watch someone clean.
She was fascinating and odd and so human. I didn’t dislike humans. I just didn’t understand them. We were so different, and they lived such a short time.
Perhaps if I studied her longer, the fascination would end. I didn’t need to twist my feathers trying to understand her. We had secrets that kept us safe from a human mob, and I couldn’t risk sharing them, not even with Eve.
My mind drifted. If we were on Rundis and I was on military leave, if we had met…
she could be my mistress. She’d come from one of the lower echelons, several orders below me.
But in the military, people often looked the other way.
I’d even seen a marriage between a civilian and a warrior, though one echelon kept them apart.
Once the warrior left the military, though, she would drop down to his order.
But this was the human world, and she was my housekeeper, and I wasn’t interested in her like that. I shouldn’t be. My body didn’t care about that, though.
The next day I somehow gravitated back to my spot in the gallery when she showed up at the oriel.
She’d cleaned as high as she could reach—roughly a third of the way—on three panels of the five.
The dirt and grime on the outside still kept light from spilling through the stained glass, but red and green and blue squares dotted the design.
The curve of her face was perfect for my hand. A tiny mole dotted her neck below her ear. I had dreamed of it last night, and woke to spilled seed cooling against my thighs. I hadn’t done that since I was seventy years old.
Instead of whistling, Eve glanced up at me. “If you’re not busy, you can help,” she said with a smile.
My heart lurched, causing my chest to pang. Ruffled from a poor night’s sleep, I frowned down at her. “Help clean?”
Eve nodded. “You have wings. I can’t reach the top.” She wore a mulberry dress today that better fit her form. It made my hands clench at my sides and the ayim pump faster through my veins.
I scoffed. “You expect me to use my wings to help you with manual labor? That I already pay you for?” At home my family owned two estates and a city townhouse. My parents employed dozens of servants. I had led a much sparser lifestyle as an active military officer, but I still had some privileges.
Eve shrugged, undaunted by my attitude.
“If I ever use my wings for you,” I told her, “It won’t be to clean windows.
” I’d rather take you night flying, with your hair flowing in the wind and the world lost in the velvety blackness surrounding us, until it feels like we’re the only people that exist in the universe.
I turned away from her before she could see those thoughts cross my face.
I rubbed my chest again as I went to my open balcony door and launched myself into the fresh, clear sky.
Away from troublesome housekeepers with big brown eyes and mousy hair.
Over the next two weeks somehow she burrowed her way into my rooms, cleaning them during the day when I was busy out of doors and sitting with me during supper.
I tossed and turned in my sleep, waking to wet trousers and ruffled feathers—preferable to nightmares, but embarrassing. I would catch her scent in the hall and my cock would turn rigid as steel. It was growing untenable, and I could only take so many midnight flights before I went mad.
One night, after bringing me cabbage and leek soup—which was as disgusting as it sounded and I thanked the stars no such vegetables existed in my world—she stayed and picked at her own bowl.
“Do you really not need much food?” she asked bluntly after a pause. “Or do you hate human food that much?” Eve eyed me. “Your muscles certainly don’t look like they’re withering.”
I preened. I’d quickly learned humans almost never went around without some sort of shirt.
Their women, absolutely never. I hadn’t realized how intimate the lack of clothing was for humans, though.
She never requested I put on one of my vests, but I caught her eyeing my chest frequently.
Once I nearly called her on it, but her blush when she realized she’d been seen was so adorable I couldn’t bear to make her embarrassment worse.
“We have a fluid in our body,” I admitted, “called ayim.” Was this a good idea, sharing secrets of the seraphim with a human?
I didn’t know. It wasn’t like telling her about the space my parents inhabited at the royal court, nor how I survived barracks as a young seraph ages ago.
This felt more personal, potentially even dangerous.
My sedge had avoided intimate or vulnerable situations with humans so they would never learn our weaknesses, never have anything to use against us.
“Ayim?” Her brow furrowed, and my finger itched to smooth out the spot between her eyebrows. “What’s that?”
“Like blood,” I told her. It’s Eve. I can trust Eve. “We have a heart that pumps blood throughout our body, like humans.”
She nodded.
“But our heart has two extra chambers, and that’s where the ayim resides. Those arteries mix further away from our center with the arteries for our blood, so it eventually blends together. And then separates again when pumped back into the heart.”
She shivered, and I realized she huddled in her seat, a shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders. I cursed mentally. I’d forgotten how sensitive humans were to the cold.
I stood, making her flinch at the sudden movement. My eyes narrowed. She did that sometimes, at quick, unexpected movements. What is her community like, that made her learn this habit?
I turned as a gust of winter wind swept through the open balcony doors. Reflexively I half-spread my wings, creating a buffer between outside and the woman at my back.
She sucked in a gasp, and it went straight to my cock.
Is she gasping from the cold or my wings?
I shut my doors and paused, pretending to study the horizon at twilight.
I was really waiting for my cock to soften.
Once I wrestled it back under control, I stalked past her, a few feathers ruffling at her nearness, to the fireplace.
She’d lit it earlier, but we’d both allowed it to nearly go out.
Wood was expensive on the moors, and I didn’t need fire most of the time anyway.
I uncovered one smoldering coal and blew life back into it, slowly adding firewood from the nearby stack.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
I grunted. Even seeing her shiver once made me uncomfortable.
She deserved better. She deserved far more than being stuck in a damp, drafty house with a surly, failed seraph in the middle of the moors.
“The ayim,” I told the growing flames, “absorbs the rays of the sun and makes us stronger. We cannot survive on sunlight and water alone. We are not plants, after all, but it helps.”
Silence, then a surprised laugh.
A smile curled one corner of my lips. Apparently I could still make jokes after all.