2. The Witness #2
Full blooded demons, or even the more common halfblooded cambion, in Industria? It’s not possible.
The truce.
The balance.
Except, it is possible, they’ve been here before. Ten years ago.
A shiver runs down my spine, ice seeping into my bones.
What they did to me... I can’t let this girl experience even a fraction of that.
The pain.
The scars.
The way they left me broken forever and the long years since.
The relentless training, trying to prove my worth to my father and siblings, while not believing it myself.
I only left my turret that day because my half-brother looked lonely playing out on that big lawn by himself. The others, the ones who were allowed out with him but chose not to go, had outgrown silly games. I didn’t want him to feel lonely.
Lonely like you.
“I ran, but I had nowhere to go, no one to run to.” The girl begins to sob. “My family… they washed their hands of me years ago.”
Students graduate from the academy once a year. She just failed for the third time. Her family hasn’t visited her in all that time. Why?
“What did you do?” I ask.
She looks embarrassed or perhaps shocked that I’d be so bold to ask.
But she takes a deep breath anyway. “M-Me and the boy from my college… we gave ourselves over to the lust. It only happened once, I swear it. And I’ve spent the entire time since trying to make up for it. To repent. Repent. Repent. Repent…”
She repeats the word, over and over.
“It’s okay,” I cut her off.
Her crime is uncomfortably familiar. Only, I wasn’t signed up for the academy for mine.
I’d wanted to go. Truly. The farmer's son had gone the very next day, after the incident.
Me, out of my turret without permission.
Him, failing to pretend I didn’t exist while he delivered my food.
Both of us were caught in the cow shed in a ‘compromising position.’
I’d asked my father if he would send me to repent. I was grieving and lonely and desperate for… something. Anything to break the boredom between the delivery of envelopes with new marks’ names inside.
Sometimes, I wait months between assignments.
But my father had explained that in my unique situation, it was more important I remained at the citadel to carry out his work. Work, he’d pointed out, that he had invested a lot of his children’s time and efforts in having me trained to do.
I’d tried to argue that I could do both. He’d quickly explained that a person had to first exist to be able to register for the academy, and as far as most of the world knew, I died with my mother.
My estranged father had been kind enough to take me in, but I look too much like him to be allowed to wander freely like the farmer's son and his nephilim family had. Having my existence seen by folk around the citadel was out of the question.
But the boy who brought my food… he was kind to me. Being nephilim himself, he didn’t care that half of my blood was not pure and powerful like my white winged seraphim siblings.
I shake the thoughts away and focus on the girl. “You can come back from that. You will repent,” I promise, unknotting the first chain and starting on the second.
“I’ve tried! I have taken all their classes, suffered all their reconditioning. I’ve taken vows of chastity sealed with blood. I didn’t even fight back when they chained my wings.”
She sucks in a quivering breath between sobs and wipes the tears from her eyes.
I swallow my gasp. “They would never—”
She scowls at me. “I’ve been to Hell and back inside those walls, and still, they do not believe that I will not sin again!”
I shake my head, refusing to believe it.
She glances at the sky once more, and when she continues, her voice is void of all emotion.
“When that man followed me…” She swallows. “I knew my fate. I accepted it. You ruined it. Please, you have to kill me.”
The beat of wings sounds from above. Her eyes widen with obvious terror. I grip her face in my hands, palms either side of her cheeks.
Focus on me.
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
Her features relax.
Azraella spare her, she thinks you are going to snap her neck.
I rip my hands away as though her skin burns them. “You will not die today,” I promise. “And you will not be sold. Do you hear me?”
She swallows again and I go back to work on freeing her wings.
She’d said she allowed the academy staff to chain them, but that cannot be. Yet here they are, chained. And if that’s true then…
“Who did you say you were sold to?” I ask as the final chain comes loose, trying to make the question sound casual.
She shivers. “They called them the Sisters.”
If there’s even a small chance she’s right…
Don’t be an idiot, Seraphina.
“Give me your shirt,” I tell her.
She stares at me, clearly confused. I can’t blame her. Even the intrusive thoughts relentlessly whispering in my head know this is a terrible new plan.
“Come on. Give me your shirt.”
Wincing, she conceals her now free wings with glamour. Then slowly begins to lift the hem of her shirt. She doesn’t trust me, and I don’t blame her for that, but what better option does she have?
“Hurry,” I whisper, watching the skies myself now.
She hands over her shirt and I stand, turning my back to her and pulling off my cloak.
Then goes my tunic.
“By the angels,” she gasps at the sight of me.
I try to ignore the stab of hurt her reaction triggers. I’ve seen what she sees. She’s right to be disgusted.
We swap clothes, and I remove the small journal from the cloak pocket, tucking it into the band of my underwear.
“What-what happened to you? Your back, it’s… it’s—”
“Not important right now,” I cut in before she finds the right words.
Hideous, repulsive, disfigured.
All accurate.
Once we are both re-dressed, I fill her in on her role in this potentially suicidal new plan.
“You will head South. Find the village of Tidecrest. It’s on the Industria coast, as southern as you can go. They’re mostly human there, but they welcome nephilim. They will take you in. Tell them that Addilyn’s daughter sent you. Got it?”
She nods, but I’m not convinced.
“Repeat it back to me.”
“South. Coast. Tidecrest. Addilyn’s daughter.”
I raise my brows. “Good,” I nod toward the body. “Now wait here while I deal with him.”
The dumpster at the top of the alley will have to do. I’m usually much cleaner, but this isn’t a usual circumstance. Far from it.
“What-what about you? Why do you need my shirt?”
If what she says is true, the demons won’t give up when they can’t find her. They need to take someone. “I’m going to make sure no one comes looking for you, ever again.”
Her brows furrow. She’s suspicious of me. Of course she is. I just killed someone in front of her eyes and droplets of his blood speckle the clothes she now wears.
“W-why would you do that?”
“Just, trust me, okay? Do exactly as I say from here on out, and I promise you’ll be safe.”
I mean it.
You’re an idiot, Seraphina.
Maybe. But what she said… it could change everything.
The girl spoke of the Sisters, and there is nothing I won’t do for a chance at taking down the Seven Sisters of Scelus.