2. The Witness
THE WITNESS
Seraphina
Uriella save us, a witness was never part of the plan.
“Y-You killed him.”
I nod slowly, then clear my throat. “Sinners with no virtue don’t deserve to live,” I recite my father’s words. The mantra is the only thing that makes looking in the mirror bearable after so many years being his blade.
“W-Why did you do that?” she asks, her gaze on the cobbles between her feet.
Isn’t it obvious? He was more demon than man, despite his part human, part angel bloodline.
“He deserved it.”
He had fallen so far that there was no point in catching him.
Will she tell anyone what she witnessed here tonight?
What are you going to do about it if she does?
I take in the scene around me.
My mark, dead on the ground, dark crimson filling the cracks between the cobbles like tiny rivers.
Katana bloodied and hanging loose by my side.
The girl who wasn’t supposed to be here…
Her back to the wall, wings matted with dried blood where the chains are wound too tightly, knees drawn into her chest.
Unable to look you in the eyes.
I glance between her and the blade, then quickly banish the dark thought before it can fully form, extinguishing that hideous spark inside of me before it becomes brighter and harder to ignore.
She lifts her hands, burying them in her hair.
It’s long like mine, but more a mousy brown than the chestnut color I get from my father.
Both colors are uncommon among the nephilim, who almost always have pale hair to match their pale eyes.
Is that why my mark took a liking to her?
Or was it as simple as him being an opportunist?
It doesn’t matter, he’s dead now. You killed him.
She tugs at the matted locks and squeezes her eyes shut, tears running down her cheeks.
My stomach sinks. What she saw…
No one should see such ugliness.
How long before she realizes closing her eyes won’t help? That death will be imprinted on the backs of her eyelids forever now, no matter how much she tries to banish the images. To think of something else, anything else.
This is not Scelus or one of its seven demonic kingdoms. These are the lands of peace and virtue, not chaos and sin.
Virtishans are not exposed to this sort of thing.
Yet, because of me, this poor girl will have to live the rest of her life with memories of murder. Memories that I’ve forced upon her.
I should have told her to look away first. To run. But there wasn’t time to make a new or better plan. He was going to kill her, or worse.
Crouching down, I try to make myself look smaller, less of a threat, and set my bloodied weapon flat on the ground. “I’m so sorry.”
Her head lifts slightly from between her hunched shoulders. For several moments, she meets my amber eyes with the pale blue of hers. The same pale blue as most of her kind, and that of my seraphim siblings too.
Can she see all the stains on your soul?
She glances skyward briefly, then her eyes meet mine again. There’s a familiar sight in them. A broken girl. Does she wish her wings were unchained so she can disappear into the night? Return home to write a letter to the High Seraph of Industria with a tale of what I have done?
Murder in cold blood.
Should I come clean, tell her I was sent here by that very man? That I only kill those who Virtus is better off without? Would she understand, or hope that my name appears inside the next envelope left on the bottom step of my turret?
She tugs at her hair, not even flinching when her fingers catch against all the knots. When she meets my eyes again, something is different.
Sharper. Fiercer.
“You should be sorry,” she snaps, making me flinch backward at her sudden fury. “You shouldn’t have gotten in the way. You should have let him get me first!”
I gasp at her words as her long fingers of skin and bone pull at her hair even more violently.
“Please, stop that.” She won’t have any hair left at this rate.
“You should have let him take me. It would have been a mercy.” She glances to the sky again, then drops her hands from her hair and hugs her knees. “A blessing compared to what’s waiting.”
I frown, certain I’m not understanding her correctly. “You wish for death?” I ask. “To fall into the hands of evil?”
She shrugs. “Anything is better than what they have planned for me.”
I frown again. In the week since I arrived in Industria’s city center, I’ve been stalking the streets around the Ministry every waking hour. I’ve not seen this girl before, I’m sure of it. Not until tonight.
She’d been running. What was she running from? Something worse than an Unrepentable? I shake my head. That’s not possible. Not here. Not on Virtus soil.
“He was deemed Unrepentable.” I whisper the last word and tilt my head toward the body behind me. “You have no idea what he was capable of.”
“Exactly.”
Her eyes skim the skies again. Scared. Searching.
“I don’t understand.”
“I failed! Okay?” she snaps. “I failed and so they made good on their promise. They sold me to the demons. Like they swore they would.”
“They sold you?”
She nods. “A slave for the devil’s daughters to play with.”
The devil’s daughters? No. Surely she doesn’t mean…
“Unlike the man you murdered,” she rants. “I can guess exactly what they are capable of.”
I reach out, gently resting my palm on her shoulder. Her hands are back in her hair, and I can see the bruises on her arms now. Between bitten down fingernails, patches of raw scalp catch the moonlight.
What happened to this poor girl?
The white shirt she wears swamps her the way my clothes used to hang off me. On the left breast pocket of the shirt is a pin. Not any pin though. I have to squint to be sure.
The pin is silver and bears more than mere resemblance to the sigil of the Repentance Academy.
The infamous academy is not far from here, situated next to the Ministry, and the design is identical to the markings carved above the imposing oak doors of the white marble building.
I must have walked past it a hundred times this week.
Is she an academy runaway? I shake my head. No. She said she’s been sold, that she failed…
“You failed the Academy?” I keep my voice purposely as soft as I can make it. I need her to keep talking, because what she alluded to, if there’s even the smallest chance…
The sob that leaves her chest sounds like a “Yes.” But the single word is so full of pain, it hurts to hear.
“I’m sorry you weren’t successful this time,” I say truthfully. “But, why run? You can remain in the program until you pass.”
“Three strikes, you’re sold to the Sisters.” Her voice trembles around the last word. My heart skips a beat. “I failed for the third time today.”
She glances across to the body bleeding behind me, and I try to shuffle a little to block the unholy sight from her view. I need to clean up before there are more witnesses I won’t know what to do with.
Something flashes across her face. An idea maybe. One I know I’m not going to like before the words leave her lips, but my mind is spinning too much to care, a new plan coming together.
“Kill me.”
The two words are like a dagger to the heart.
But it’s not as though she can do it herself. Suicide is a sin, and even if it wasn’t, it would be incredibly rare. There’s not much to be depressed about in Virtus.
Sure, she failed to graduate a few times, but so long as she comes out a good person in the end, she will have a good life.
Did you and your mother have a good life?
Were we good people?
Not always.
Thin fingers wrap around my cloak, and she tries to pull me closer. “You swing that sword like it’s an extension of a limb. You made his death quick. He didn’t even scream. You can do the same for me. Please.”
She tries to shake me, but she’s too weak.
The people she thinks she’s been sold to… could it be some delusion? Perhaps she’s confused. Or crazed. Maybe the weight of failing again is messing with her mental state.
That has to be it.
Everyone knows the Repentance Academy was created for good. Those who work there have selflessly dedicated their lives to helping the tempted and sinful within its walls, they would never do anything close to what she alludes to.
She shouldn’t be out here on her own, not like this.
Peeling her hands off me, I cup them in mine. “Come on,” I say, my tone as calming as I can make it. “Let’s get you back to the academy. Take the program again. You can pass next time.”
“No!” Her panic filled eyes bug out of her face. “You can’t take me back there!”
“You do not deserve what that man got. You are not beyond saving.” If she were, it would have been her name inside the envelope. Whatever crime landed her in the academy, it was not murder, theft or rape.
Her wings, with feathers the dull dove gray of the nephilim, twitch at her back, but the chains stop them from being able to open.
“If you won’t kill me, I need to go. Get away from this city. They will be looking for me already.”
She looks up again, then slams her back against the stone wall, rattling the chains.
“Calm down,” I plead with her. If she wriggles free and takes to the skies before I’ve come up with a plan for her, there will be nothing I can do to help her.
But I can’t leave her like this. I know better than most how it feels, the vulnerability. The suffocation of not being able to spread your wings and let the wind take you.
She isn’t the only girl in this alley who’s been broken.
There’s hope for her, though. Only tangled metal stands between her and the freedom of the skies.
“Stop that, I can help you.”
“You’re not listening to me! The carriage, it’s already there. It pulled up at the bottom of the steps at nightfall, like they said it would if we failed again. I saw it. I saw them. Three of them. Huge.”
I reach for the chains.
She doesn’t pull back.
“Who?” I start working on untying her wings.
“Demons in men’s clothing.” Cambion men? Here in Virtus? My chest starts to hurt but I shake my head. She must be mistaken. “They started loading up the carriage with the others. I was at the back… I slipped away when they weren’t looking.”