32. The Library #2
I copy, not answering right away. But given the guilt I already feel that I can’t confess to the lie I told him earlier, I decide to tell him the truth about this. “Murderers, thieves and rapists. Unrepentable crimes according to my boss.”
“But not according to you?” I shake my head. “Let me guess, you have a soft spot for thieves?”
I nod.
“And your boss was okay with that?”
I shake my head.
Silver drops the sponge in the water and cracks his knuckles. “Was it your boss who did that to your back, who did this to you?”
I shake my head.
“Words, Scar. Use fucking words. If I’m letting an assassin breathe the same air as the Seven Sisters and all of the people I care about and have sworn to protect on this island, the least you can do is answer me with words.”
“It was a hunting party from Ira. Wrath demons.”
He shakes his head, frowning. “Wrath demons after blood like that would be so blinded by rage, they wouldn’t have left the rest of your body untouched and just taken the wings.”
“Who says I was untouched?”
He looks me up and down. “Weren’t you? Aside from a couple of scars on your back, everything else looks like it was left pretty perfect to me.”
My heart rate quickens and I swallow. “They only took my wings.”
“And you saw them? You saw these wrath demons?”
“Why does that matter? Wrath demons, incubi, the green eyed monsters, they are all the same.”
“No, we are not,” he growls. “As I said, wrath demons become so enraged they would have torn you to ribbons along with your wings. An incubi,” he shakes his head again.
“An incubi wouldn’t have been interested in your wings, what interests them was not something one so young could have given them.
” He shudders and I want this conversation to end.
“A green eyed monster, I assume you mean those from Invidia?” I nod and he looks like he’s thinking about it.
“Possibly,” he shrugs. “Their sin is… no fun at all. It could certainly drive them to such cruelty. But you were nothing, no one, a weak child. What did they have to be so jealous of, that they would do that?”
I scoff. “I see you don’t save your compliments for off the training mats either.”
“I save my compliments for those who deserve them. Earn a compliment and it’s all yours. But these are observations, not insults. Of the seven kingdoms of Scelus, a demon from Invidia is most likely. A wrath demon? Sorry Scar, I don’t see it.”
“You don’t need to. There were witnesses to confirm it.”
“So you didn’t see them?”
“Of course not. One moment I was flying from my tu—bedroom window down to my brother who was playing on the lawn. I landed, asked him if he wanted to play with me, the next…”
For the first time since Silver’s healing, phantom flames set my back alight at the memory, lodging the words in my throat.
“The next?”
“What do you think?”
Something flashes across his face, and I turn away.
“Fine. But it wasn’t a wrath demon.”
“Fine. But what makes you so sure? You weren’t there.”
“Honestly? I don’t think a wrath demon, or any demon, would be so cruel.
They would take a life, in a way so awful you can’t even imagine, sooner than they would take wings.
We treasure our wings. When the Princes fell, they lost their wings and now have to spend eternity trapped in Hell.
No cambion would want that or even have it in them to enact it upon their worst enemy. ”
“Then who?”
“The only people I’ve known first hand with absolute certainty to do it. I told you about the Red General? About Eurya. Well she hadn’t meant to be in Luxuria when she came through a hellgate, beautiful wings sliced from her back and bleeding, and barrelled into the bars of my cage.”
I swallow. His story gets worse the more I hear. I wish I could turn back time and change it for him.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“With pity. I don’t need it. If I hadn’t been in that cage, if Eurya hadn’t been weak and injured and ended up accidentally opening a hellgate to Luxuria, rather than where she had been trying to get to, I wouldn’t be here now.
I wouldn’t have met the amazing Sisters, honed the ability to make hellgates, to absorb the pain and abuse my body was subjected to and turn it into flame to protect me and those I care about.
I wouldn’t have learned how to heal people like you. ”
I swallow. So Eurya hadn’t even meant to be there to have helped him escape Selmora and her sick sex castle. But…
“Where was Eurya meant to go if the hellgate worked?”
“To her father.”
He looks me dead in the eyes and pauses, like he’s waiting to be certain I’m listening. For some reason, I know what he’s about to say, and I’m not going to want to believe it, but that he is telling nothing but the truth all the same.
“To her father, Satan’s dominion in Hell, the circle of Wrath. The place she grew up and where she knew someone, her father, could and would heal her.”
“Eu-Eurya’s father is S-Satan?”
Silver nods, a smirk tugging at his lips. “But you should ask me who her mother is.”
Judging by the look on his face, I’m not sure I want to know.
“Wh-who’s her mother?” I stutter, not sure why I’m asking when I don’t even think I’m ready for the answer.
“The Archangel of Patience.”
“Zadkiella,” I mutter, then look up to meet his eyes, shaking my head. Because nope. No way. He’s lying. Except there isn’t a flicker of deceit in his voice. “Fuck. Off.”
Silver laughs. “Language, Little Nephilim. Then again, I’ve never desired the pure. It’s the flawed, the sinful and the stubborn, who burn brightest.”