Chapter Thirty-Nine
CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE
Yuri’s body tensed as he stood before the barrier, his wings spread wide, feathers still drying. He was counting his breaths, trying to quell the unfamiliar way in which his skin crawled. He wanted to peel from his body and flee far from this place. Never had he felt anything quite like it.
If not for Aurelie beside him, so set in her determination to see this through, he may have left then and there, regardless of any potential cure that awaited them.
But Aurelie didn’t falter, and Yuri had no choice but to swallow his nerves as he followed behind her.
She’d cleaned up beautifully, having scraped beneath her nails and scrubbed until her skin shone pink.
Her hair was braided and sat over her shoulder, and she looked as clean as Yuri had seen her since their bonding ceremony.
Dressed in the clean tunic and hose Severin had gifted her, she cut a striking figure that he found himself struggling to pull his attention from as she stepped through the barrier, trying to forget everything he’d seen while bathing.
Every curve of her body. Skin he felt a strange yearning to touch if only to see if it was as soft as it looked …
The ruins welcomed Aurelie, swallowing her into their depths. He took a step to follow, though a leaden weight settled in his bones before he could manage. Ahead, she swayed, gripping the nearest tree to steady herself.
“What are you waiting for?” Severin hissed from behind. “Go after her.”
Yuri gritted his teeth and forced away his thoughts, wishing he’d managed to do so before the demon had begun ordering him about.
“Come on, Vex,” he offered, extending a hand for the vesper to join. Yet while Vex fluttered forward, she hesitated near the barrier, her ears flattening.
“I’ll stay with the demon,” she decided before quickly flitting back to Severin, peering out from behind his horns to watch.
Yuri knew better than to try to make sense of the strange creature.
He pressed through the barrier, relieved when no pain came to his wings, meticulously plucked clean of demon blood.
Each step after that felt like wading through a bog.
Like his wings were being hauled back as he tried to surge forward.
Part of that heaviness, he guessed, belonged to Aurelie.
“You’re bonded to a demon,” he told her, stepping forward to offer her his arm. “I’d wager that your bond with me is the only reason you’re still on your feet.”
She grimaced, her face so ashen it appeared almost gray.
No Nyxaris had made it through the barrier.
Only Luminels roamed the ruins, their bodies flickering like candlelight against a heavy mist. They clung to the trees, elongated fingers curling around twisted branches and eyes widening as the angel passed.
Some hung in the air like drifting embers, vanishing and reappearing in a different spot while others stared, transfixed.
They were curious creatures, and brighter than he remembered. While Vex’s glow was more of a soft bluish white, the Luminels here shone a vivid silver, illuminating the path ahead.
The rubble of an old church loomed in the mist, broken arches swallowed by creeping ivy. The stones almost seemed to whisper as wind slipped in through their cracks. Through it all was a familiar presence he couldn’t quite name.
“What is this place?” Aurelie’s steps were hesitant as they approached.
Closer now, Yuri’s stomach lurched at the sight of familiar images scratched onto the stone.
They were near-perfect illustrations of Sanctuary.
Of the Celestial Palace and its rival skies, one half aglow in sunlight, the other silvered beneath the moon.
Aurelie dropped to her knees beside the carvings, tracing their delicate lines. “It’s beautiful.”
Perhaps. But that wasn’t the word he’d use for it.
You should leave was his first thought. There’s something wrong with this place. It took a great deal of effort to quiet that voice, not wanting to frighten Aurelie. But the air here was too dense, and every breath felt as though he had to pull it from somewhere deep within him.
His breath caught when he glanced up to see several statues looming in the distance. Most were destroyed, their cracked stone shattered upon the ground. There was a single statue that remained standing.
It depicted an angel. A Soldier with one foot forward and her sword held high, mouth open in a soundless scream. A battle cry.
And yet, the angel had no wings. While the rest of the statue stood tall against the test of time, the wings alone had been chiseled away.
The sight of it clawed at him like talons across his stomach.
Could an angel have sculpted this?
None were meant to spend so much time in the mortal realm, but who other than an angel could know what Sanctuary looked like?
Yuri felt the sharp pulse of Aurelie’s horror a second before she screamed.
Severin prowled forward, stalking the barrier’s perimeter. “What is it?” he demanded, voice edged with impatience. “What do you see?”
Aurelie was breathless by the time Yuri reached her, trembling as she covered her mouth. She said nothing, but he understood her horror a second later as he followed her gaze to the ground, where a single silver eye stared up from beneath the mud.
The eye blinked as if it had just noticed them. Aurelie stumbled backward, colliding into his chest. He caught her reflexively, attention ahead as he realized with increasing alarm that the first eye was far from the only one watching.
The earth stirred, and Yuri saw with great horror hundreds of silver eyes staring skyward.
Wings. There were dozens upon dozens of angel wings buried beneath their feet.
He crouched, hands unsteady as he brushed dirt off the nearest one. The wings were heavier than they looked as he peeled them free, trying to ignore the silver irises that tracked his every movement, blinking as if waking from a long slumber.
“I thought you said an angel’s body disappears once they die.” Aurelie’s voice was barely audible.
“They do.” He dropped the wings as if they burned. His stomach twisted violently, and he barely made it past the barrier before he doubled over, retching at the base of an old oak. Overhead, Nyxaris chittered in amusement from the branches while Luminels hovered, restless.
“How long?” he rasped at them. “How long have they been here?”
A Luminel’s soft voice answered. “Always. They’ve been here as long as the vespers themselves.”
A deep chill coiled within him.
Severin turned from them, staring at the unearthed wings. “Fallen angels,” he spat, the words like ice. “These are their wings.”
Aurelie had turned to follow Yuri out, a hand on his shoulder as she crouched at his side. “How do you think they ended up here?”
“I’ve no idea.” That was what terrified him more than anything. “Angels aren’t meant to survive when they’re cast out of Sanctuary. Their wings are stripped from them and all their power is taken to avoid the risk of them surviving and creating Nephilim.”
She wound her arms around herself. “For that punishment, I’d assume the offense to be made a Fallen must be severe?”
“Not always,” he admitted. “A single step out of line is enough to get your wings torn. Refusing an order, questioning the wrong person … even falling in love.” His chest ached, though he begged the pain to stay buried.
Curiosity prickled through the bond, but Aurelie didn’t press. Severin, however, watched with unwavering focus.
“We can’t just leave them like this,” she whispered, and though Yuri agreed, he doubted it was for the same reason. He glanced back at the wing beneath him, its eyes still wide and blinking.
Does it understand what it sees? he wondered. Impossible. How could it have any thoughts at all, if not attached to a body?
He tucked his own wings in closer, stroking his fingers down the length of his feathers. It felt wrong to be here. Like their very presence was somehow destroying the sanctity of these grounds. But Aurelie, he knew, saw the wings as her chance to save Azriel and her father.
If the cure demanded something from a dead angel, then at last they had it.
They gathered the wings in silence. Each unearthed pair felt like uncovering a grave, and yet there was something even more unsettling about the eyes that tracked them. The silver irises blinked slowly, as though the wings themselves were aware of being disturbed.
Aurelie’s hands trembled as she lifted another from the dirt, brushing away the layers of earth that clung to its feathers.
They worked for hours, roaming the ruins in search of every pair of Fallen wings. Some were half-overgrown by lichen, others buried beneath the rubble or hanging from the branches of a tree.
The Luminels had taken to helping, working together to drag pairs of wings to where Yuri had set them near the edge of the barrier. The pair they carried was a beautiful ivory, and for a moment Yuri felt a surge of panic before he turned away, refusing to scrutinize any of them too closely.
“Why do you gather so many?” Yuri called to Vex. She was still across the barrier, sitting atop the demon who was breathing hard, miasma writhing around his figure like a serpent.
Vex seemed to find this a deeply curious question. “They’re magic. What more of a reason does one need?”
“But what makes them magic?” Aurelie pressed, though it seemed a fruitless venture to try to wrangle straight answers from a vesper.
“I’ve always heard that a pair of angel wings is the only way to reach Sanctuary,” Severin said, his voice distant as he stared up at the sky. “Perhaps we should test the theory.”
It could very well be that the demon was jesting, and yet something about him had Yuri tensing. He eased closer to his bonded, helping her with a pair of wings. “Aurelie.” He spoke the words to her mind. “Tell me what you feel from Severin right now.”
“Hunger,” she answered immediately, needing no time to consider. “Can you feel it, too?”