17. Raia
RAIA
Standing beside a carriage door is an older gentleman dressed in a penguin suit who bows the moment I step out of Lucen’s townhouse.
It’s a form of transportation reserved purely for leisure—for the obscenely rich.
Passing my eyes over the buildings and every possible perch nearby, Horus is nowhere to be found; such is the case more and more as of late.
As if their two masculine energies clash.
The driver opens the carriage door, and Azrael’s tall, broad form unfolds itself from within. Lucen is standing closely behind me.
Azrael doesn’t even look at him.
“Raia. Thank you for joining me.” His gaze doesn’t wander lower than my face as he bows and offers me an upturned palm. “You’re as beautiful as the soul beneath.”
The moment I slide my hand into his, Azrael’s eyes lock onto the engagement ring now decorating my finger. His jaw clenches. Gold eyes leap to mine before sliding to Lucen in a way that might send a shiver down my spine if I didn’t suddenly feel like such a fucking pawn.
The thought he had proposed to assuage my worries seems an obvious one, but his proposing to me as a form of retaliation...
The world around me seems to narrow—squeezing and choking me so intensely that my soul is forced from my body until I am free to observe this all objectively.
Each of my distant footsteps seems to echo with the words pawn, pawn, pawn as Azrael guides me up the steps of his carriage.
Only once I’m seated inside does he turn to acknowledge Lucen.
“Congratulations on your engagement. I’d invite you to celebrate with us, but you look as though you’ve fallen ill.”
My hollowed gaze lifts to the strangely spade-shaped, gold-trimmed window of the carriage. Lucen is rooted in place, staring daggers into Azrael’s back as he climbs back inside and takes a seat across from me.
The driver shuts the door behind him, and a few moments later, the carriage snaps into motion.
A golden orb of light, held in the hands of two gilded syrens swimming in opposite directions, decorates the ceiling of the opulent carriage.
It casts a soft amber light. The clop, clop, clopping of hooves is loud in my ears as Azrael stares at me.
Powerful legs spread wide as he leans against the dark green velvet cushions of his seat.
His presence—both physical and magical—seems to leave only a singular wisp of air for me to breathe.
He looks entirely displeased, and he’s not even trying to mask it.
His eyes dip to my engagement ring.
“Tell me about Lucen.”
My heart is in my throat, climbing higher and higher as if to leap out of this blasted, pompous carriage. “I beg your pardon?”
Azrael’s brows knit together, briefly scraping his teeth over a supple bottom lip. “Among a number of other things, you have a rare gift... One that allows you to discern soulbonds, yes?”
His discerning gaze is impossibly suffocating—makes me want to leap out of this fucking carriage. “What of it?”
“You don’t have to will it into action. It just does it. Like the parasympathetic nervous system quietly working behind the scenes, regulating your body’s autonomic functions…”
“You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t quite see your point.”
He purses his lips in a feigned smile. “All god-magic works in that same fashion. Innate. A constant unspooling and restoration of energy that stretches out into the incorporeal and corporeal worlds to serve its purpose.”
He pauses for a moment, elbow perched on the edge of the window, and drags the back of a single digit across the sharp line of his jaw.
“My own power lies not merely in the taking of life, but also in assessing it. Weighing the life and karmic debts of every soul. As any lucid person might imagine, walking through this corporeal realm is often like wading through shit—a cesspool, if you will. Eventually, you learn to compartmentalize these things, but when you come across a soul that does not belong in said cesspool, you notice.”
He studies me for several moments. “Imagine my surprise when I find you, a brilliant little beacon of light sharing dinner with a male that I cannot, for the life of me, find more appropriate words to describe him other than a steaming pile of excrement with pretty blue eyes.”
At this particular juncture, I can’t find the voice, nor the desire to disagree. At my silence, he continues.
“Do you know who it is you’ve agreed to marry?”
A knot of discomfort fists my chest.
Have I been so foolish this entire time?
How could I ever have questioned that Lucen was my soulbound when he is willing to use me as a pawn to pay his debts?
I don’t even truly know what Lucen does for a living. I can scarcely pry the words out of him.
And yet, I’ve agreed to marry him.
Am I that desperate to be loved?
That I fell for the first person who showed me any scrap of tenderness?
Dread and shame sink into me like heavy, dull talons tugging me down into a downward spiral of despair lined with comforting pillows of familiarity that are far too easy to confuse with safety.
Tears return to my eyes yet again, filling me with a fiery frustration I don’t know what to do with.
The tension in Azrael’s posture softens as he studies me. No doubt recognizing the toppling of my baseless circumstances. He shakes his head, murmuring words I can barely hear.
“Sweet seraphim..."
Sweet angel.
Drawing in a deep shuddering breath, I direct my gaze out of the carriage window as my first tears fall. The words are whispered and lack any venom.
“And who are you to judge?”
I wonder how your soulbound feels about the company you keep.
Azrael remains silent so long that it finally drags my watery gaze back to his. I have no doubt he’s well aware of his infamous reputation: death, manipulation, cunning, adultery, and all the sins the breadth of which cannot be encompassed by any singular word.
“No one. I am far worse, even if only for different reasons.”
Gradually, I nod. “I expected as much.”
His silence provides the window of opportunity to finally fling the burning question from my lips.
“Where is your soulbound?”
Azrael grows impossibly still as his eyes lock with mine.
“Hiding. As per usual.”
My ire is fuelled by his admission. I arch a brow.
“Oh? Are you so cruel that not even your own soulbound can tolerate your presence?”
The words, once spoken, make me nauseous. Guilt and remorse consume me. Despite his reputation, this formidable god has been nothing but kind to me... but then again, so was Lucen.
Azrael stares at me. His blank expression fails to mask the eons of suffering I see hidden behind it. His reply is barely a whisper. “Yes.”
A few moments pass before Azrael pulls on a latch in the wall of the carriage, where a brass horn unfolds from a panel.
Azrael’s voice echoes through the driver’s seat behind my head.
“Oleander, please take Ms. Vale anywhere she asks and ensure she returns home safely. Make yourself available to her in my absence—and if she needs a place to stay, please provide her with the keys to my estate. I need to return to Ourinessa earlier than anticipated.”
Oleander is swift to reply. “As you wish, my lord.”
He’s leaving...
Disappointment swells within me like a rising tide encroaching upon diminishing sands.
Azrael’s words are spoken softly. “You’ll forgive me if I’ve lost my appetite.”
I should be relieved.
So why the fuck am I mourning his absence already?
He studies me for several silent moments as if deliberating something before finally lifting thumb and forefinger to draw them together.
Flowery whirls of lilac, dark gold, and shadow radiate from his fingertips as a large golden pin with an elegant filigree head in the shape of a butterfly appears.
Its wings look so much like my own, I can’t help but be a little taken aback.
He offers it to me, and a buzz of oddly familiar magic zings up my arm the moment I touch it. Something about it seems so familiar, though I cannot place how or why.
The sight and feel of it strike a chord somewhere deep within me. As though echoing a melody that my mind has forgotten but my soul knows.
“Where did you find this?”
He stares at the pin thoughtfully, voice softened as if by nostalgia.
“I made it. For you.”
My gaze snaps to his. “Just now?”
He shakes his head. “The night we met.”
Oh gods...
My heart fucking aches hearing this admission, and I don’t know why.
Azrael is the first to break our gaze, looking mildly sheepish, and dare I say a hint of flush is on his cheeks. “I had a strange dream that inspired me.” He shakes his head. “Impulsive and foolish, I know, but…”
My hand is drawn to his arm, and I swear to Akash, even through the fabric of his jacket, I can feel his heart thrumming in rhythm with mine. “Not at all.”
His eyes return to my gaze. The tension between us grows so tight, I can’t even fucking breathe. My hand slides away from his arm and back into my lap.
“Will you tell me about the dream…”
Azrael huffs a small laugh, shaking his head. “You gifted it to me... the pin, I mean. Along with some much-needed words of inspiration.”
I rear back in surprise. “Oh…”
Azrael’s gaze drifts back to the pin, and his words are almost distant, as if he’s travelled back in time—or perhaps to his dream—just by looking at it.
The tension in the air returns, though I’m not even sure why.
“Did anything else happen in the dream?”
His gaze slides back to mine, eyes darkening with a certain possessiveness. A corner of Azrael’s mouth tips up in a half grin. “Oh, yes. Many things.”
Heart fluttering, I scarcely manage to stifle the moan that wants to escape—instantly filling with shame. He has a soulbound.
It’s only when I force my eyes away from his, and out the window, that I can finally manage to speak. “Nothing worth repeating, clearly.”
My throat works around an uncomfortable knot of emotion I don’t know what to do with, and I am beyond relieved when Azrael breaks the brief silence.
“I’ve enchanted it so that if you ever need any help, just prick your finger and think of me. It will take you to the gates of my palace in Vassileo. My nephilim will give you entrance. Share it with no one.”
I finally turn back towards him to find the pain in my heart is mirrored in his face.
How is it that someone renowned for his cruelty can be so kind?
I don’t trust my heart any longer. Not after Lucen.
Yet something inside my soul is certain that I know this person.
This god.
Not soulbound but kindred spirits perhaps.
“Why are you doing this?”
Azrael’s somber gaze dances between each of my eyes, taking several moments before finally answering. “There are so few who cast light in this world... I may not be one of them, but at the very least, I can try to save them from the darkness threatening to consume them.”
He hesitates only briefly before folding away, leaving me with only the echo of his words for company.
“Lucen is part of that darkness, little seraphim. Please don’t marry him. For all our sakes.”
I ask Oleander, Azrael’s driver, to take me to the sea.
It’s a place I still avoid because it reminds me too much of my father, but right now, I can’t stand to be away from it.
I can’t shed my clothes fast enough. My wings carry me across the sand, beyond the break of the unsettled waves, where I dive into its blessed, chilling embrace.
Sweet relief suffuses me the moment I finally allow my mer form to rise—for the first time in years. I swim as far and as fast as I can go, fingertips grazing the sand at the bottom of this dark sea, feeling as close to home as I’ve ever been. Predators and prey alike give me a wide berth.
Eventually, when my muscles burn and grow too heavy to part the water, I find a small underwater cave from which a large octopus frantically escapes upon my arrival, and it is there that I curl up into a ball to sleep.
I’m not sure how much time passes, but when I wake, watery sunlight dances upon the sea floor beyond the cave’s entrance. My gills draw in a sharp breath of water.
Poor Oleander... He must have waited ages.
Not that I expect him to still be there.
I make my way back, relishing the water, feasting upon fish and seaweed as I go.
The closer I get to shore, the deeper my dread at returning to Lucen grows.
Azrael scarcely breathed in my direction, but Lucen anticipated the opposite. And still he gave me to him.
The God of Death’s words of warning linger.
I thought that what Lucen and I had was irreplaceable and beautiful. Now, I can’t help but wonder if it was all just a farce.
By the time I reach the shore, Azrael’s carriage is still there. Though Oleander appears to be missing, he folds onto the sand the moment I shift and begin wading through the shallow water on two legs.
When I reach him, he wraps a towel around my nude form, averting his eyes. The tips of his pointed ears, peppered with wiry white hairs, twitch in the brisk wind.
“Thank you, Oleander.”
“Of course, madame. Would you like to head back to Sire’s estate?”
I can’t help but huff a laugh. Sire.
As much of a luxury and a relief it would be to hide away in Azrael’s palace, the idea of staying in a should-be-mated-to-his-soulbound male’s home makes my skin crawl. In addition to postponing the inevitable and prolonging my anxiety.
“No, but thank you, Oleander. I need to speak with Lucen.”
Oleander’s bushy, caterpillar eyebrows knit together as the bottle brush moustache shielding his mouth tugs down at the corners, concern crinkling his eyes. Recognizing my certainty, he nods with some reluctance. “Yes, madame.”