Chapter Forty-One
CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE
As desperate as Aurelie was for sleep, she was a knight through and through. And as such, it took only a strange noise in the night to rouse her from the slumber she craved.
Wrapped within the wings of an angel, she looked first to Yuri, slumped beside her and breathing softly.
He was beautiful. She’d thought as much when he was awake, but with his eyes shut and his body relaxed, there was a gentleness to him that hadn’t been there before.
His jaw wasn’t clenched, and there was no furrow between his pale brows.
There was a simple peace to him that she didn’t want to spoil, and so she shut her eyes, telling herself she was anxious and inventing sounds in her sleep.
But then it came again.
Her eyes flew open to focus on a sound so quiet that at first she thought it was one of the vespers. But the next time it came, the sound was accompanied by a hiss and a deep ache against her skin.
Aurelie stilled her breath, waiting to see if Yuri noticed. The angel didn’t stir.
They must have been able to rest easy in Sanctuary.
Careful to avoid waking him, she peeled herself from the cozy warmth of the angel’s body.
His crystalline dagger remained at her side, and she drew it as she prowled silently toward the sound.
Above, Nyxaris chittered from the trees, their eyes trailing her.
They had a glow about them that illuminated the woods in shades of soft red, while the Luminels surrounding Yuri gave off a gentle silver, providing just enough light so that she could see ahead of her.
“Severin?” she called, though her voice hardly carried over the soft murmurings of the vespers.
He wasn’t tucked away near the tree as he’d been when she’d fallen asleep, and unease stirred within her.
Her steps were a dance across the forest floor, and she balanced herself carefully against every tree she came across, hunting down the source of the noise.
She found it soon enough when she saw the demon standing outside the barrier of the graveyard, his clawed hands fisted and his chest rising and falling with ragged breaths.
Swaths of miasma as dark as pitch plumed behind him, and his eyes were the shade of the richest ruby.
His curled horns glinted beneath the light of more than a dozen Nyxaris who circled him.
There was smoke in the air, though it didn’t come from Severin.
The Nyxaris threw themselves across the barrier one after the other, flitting several feet ahead to snatch at the angel wings. Each Nyxaris managed to move them only a fraction of an inch before they had to hurry back, writhing in pain as their bodies smoked.
Aurelie held her breath, trying not to alert the demon who prowled the perimeter like a hunter.
He’d removed his shirt, every muscle in his chest and arms tense as he waited for the Nyxaris to drag the wings closer.
He spoke to them with words she couldn’t hear, but that kept the vespers moving despite how painful this must have been for them.
But Severin wasn’t making them work alone. He helped to save one of the Nyxaris behind the barrier as it began to fall, wings shriveling. Severin got it out just in time, and Aurelie bit back the sudden pain in her hands. His were scorched.
The demon crouched, cradling his palm to his chest. He must have known the pain would alert his bonded, and she guessed that was why he moved faster.
The Nyxaris glowed brighter, their tiny fangs glinting in a curious mix of delight and frustration as Severin drew a breath and threw himself past the barrier once more.
His claws raked the earth, scrambling for the set of wings the vespers had been dragging closer. He gripped it tight, hurling it past the barrier as he hurried out.
His skin was peeling, fire licking up his arms, and this time Aurelie couldn’t contain herself. She stumbled forward into the tree, gritting through the phantom pain.
It was lucky that demons healed as quickly as they did.
Were Severin any weaker, he might have succumbed to the burns along his skin.
He was a husk of himself, charred and smoking, but with each passing second his skin regenerated and Aurelie felt her own pain ebb.
It’d be some time before he healed completely, but still the demon looked satisfied with himself, wearing a vicious slash of a smile as the Nyxaris buzzed around him.
Severin pulled the wings into his chest with surprising reverence.
An eye stared back at him, a brilliant silver that blinked furiously as he assessed it.
What was reverence soon became rage as he plucked through the feathers, examining the wings as if searching for something.
When he didn’t find whatever that was, he tossed them back on the ground unceremoniously, monstrous eyes gleaming.
He snarled as he dropped to his knees, and the single eye stared back in horror as he grabbed a jagged rock from beside him.
Aurelie could feel the dull ache in her palms throb harder as he clutched it tight.
The vespers grew louder, beating their wings, but Severin didn’t need their encouragement.
Using every ounce of power at his disposal, he drove the sharpest point of the rock straight through the center of the eye.
Aurelie gasped in horror as gilded blood poured from it.
Alerted by the sound, Severin whipped to face her, startled to find her watching. It was the motivation she needed to lunge for the set of wings he held captive beneath him. He hissed when she went to grab for them, looking feral, but she didn’t relent.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Let go of it!”
His claws curled around the feathers. “Walk away, Aurelie.” Every note was punctuated, as sharp as a blade striking through her.
She couldn’t, even if she wanted to. The eye was half-shut, the blood leaking from it in rivulets. Despite this, it still blinked. Still searched their faces with a desperation that made her insides twist.
A wave of nausea rolled over Aurelie as she lowered to her knees. She didn’t speak. Didn’t threaten the demon again, or demand that he let go. She only reached for the wings with gentle hands and smoothed her fingers along the feathers. The bleeding eye watched her, and all she could see was pain.
Pain from the blood, shimmering gold as it stained the feathers beneath it.
Pain from the eye that was forever forced to watch the world around it, able to do nothing.
And, most potently, the pain of being destined to exist eternally, waiting for an angel who would never return for it.
She couldn’t say what came over her, but Aurelie soon found herself reaching for her dagger as if compelled.
It seared silver in her palms, and as the eye looked upon the Glory that came effortlessly, that pain seemed to ebb.
It looked at her once more, as if thanking her, before it fluttered shut one final time.
“May the Light guide you home,” she prayed, making the symbol of the Divine before she pressed her dagger through the eye. Glory flared on contact, and within seconds the eye disappeared. One by one, the feathers followed, disintegrating until they blew away like ashes into the night.
Only then, when she and Severin were alone beside each other, did Aurelie turn to him. She wanted to yell. To curse this foolish demon for ruining something so valuable. But there was a darkness stirring within him that she didn’t understand. One that felt almost pained.
She reached for his hand, and at first the demon pulled away, seething. Aurelie, however, reached out again, and in his shock, Severin allowed her to take it.
“We both still want a cure, don’t we?” She drew his hand into her lap, inspecting the char of his already-healing skin.
“More than anything.” His voice was softer than she expected.
“Then why would you do this to yourself? What was so important about those wings that you couldn’t wait until morning to see?”
“I was collecting its parts. I could have taken its whole eye if you hadn’t come along.”
Her gaze snapped up, and the demon flinched under the weight of it. “Don’t lie to me, Severin. You forget that I know your soul.”
His rage festered, blurring her vision as it burned from the inside out. Her mouth was dry, and no matter where she tried to divert that anger, she couldn’t seem to shake it.
Is this what it means to be wrathborn? she wondered, shuddering at the feeling she couldn’t escape.
“What did the angels do to you?” she whispered. It was just a guess, but the hollowness that struck Severin told her she wasn’t far off.
All day he’d prowled by the barrier, hunting for something. Or perhaps someone.
Aurelie’s heart sank.
“Who was it?” she asked, holding his hand closer when the demon stiffened.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The angels took someone from you.” She dropped her voice as the Nyxaris loomed closer, not wanting them to hear. “Who was it?”
She hoped he would answer, though he didn’t need to. Aurelie felt his deep stab of longing wrench through her. There was something else, too. Regret, and something larger. Softer, and more overwhelming.
Love, she thought. It was ancient and burning, and so powerful that, for a moment, she wavered.
He must have understood that she knew, for there was a new tension in his body. An uncertainty of where he should look or what he should say.
“The story doesn’t matter,” he confessed at last. “All you need to know is that your precious angels are not so good as you’ve been led to believe.”
“How am I to trust you if you don’t tell me why?”
“Have you really not felt it? You’ve been in my village. You’ve seen my people. Can you truly say that all of us should die? That I should die?” Severin gripped her hand tighter, pulling her closer as the Nyxaris encircled them.