Interlude
The Beginning
Sabriel was gone again.
The shift had been subtle at first. Shorter nights, longer stretches of silence during meals, the distracted way Sabriel would nod during briefings, only ever half listening.
Yuri had known him long enough to recognize the signs.
Sabriel was as radiant as he was reckless, but he was never distracted from a mission without reason.
These days, however, his friend’s mind was elsewhere, his head perpetually tipped toward the wind as if waiting for something to call him away.
Ever since they’d rescued that woman from the gluttonborn, Sabriel had begun slipping away from Sanctuary under the cover of night.
Yuri let it go at first, hoping the woman was but another one of his partner’s fleeting fancies.
But on the third night of Sabriel disappearing into the mortal realm, Yuri followed after his friend.
The glade where they’d fought the gluttonborn was still as he arrived.
Cool air drifted between the trunks, brushing over Yuri’s wings like soft breaths.
Moonlight scattered in fragments across the forest floor, catching in the dew-slick leaves as he wove silently between them.
The demon’s body had been disposed of, and ahead, the woman’s cottage stood dimly lit, its chimney spilling a crooked thread of smoke out into the night.
There, nestled in the branches of an old weeping willow, was Sabriel.
The fool sat with his back to the bark, legs dangling and wings loose behind him. The smile he wore was unlike him. It wasn’t the sharp grin of a warrior flush with victory, but something quiet and longing.
The cottage window creaked open, and Yuri’s pulse quickened as he saw the reason for his friend’s expression.
The woman was even more beautiful than he remembered. She perched on the edge of the windowsill, the glossy waves of her hair catching silver in the moonlight. As she stroked a comb through her long tresses, the forest itself hushed in reverence, as if waiting for something.
Then her voice floated out into the darkness, the sound as delicate as spun glass.
Yuri had never heard anything like it. The song slipped through his ribs and into the hollow of his chest, filling a place he hadn’t known was empty.
He settled behind a tree, hiding as he watched her through the trailing vines, unable to look away.
The night tangled gently in her hair as she closed her eyes, lost to the music.
Yuri looked back at Sabriel, still nestled in the arms of the willow.
His friend sat as if spellbound, bathed in silver, and for a moment he saw not the battle-hungry angel he’d trained beside but the boy he’d met all those years ago.
The reckless, eager fool who could charm people with a smile and who wanted only for him and Yuri to become Soldiers.
Now there was only one thing he had his sights set on, and Yuri knew better than anyone that once his partner’s mind was made up, there was no reining him back.
Sabriel knew that such things were not meant for beings like them. Sanctuary was built on rules and order. To go against its laws was treason, and if there was one rule that all angels must abide by, it was that unsanctioned relations with humans were forbidden.
But Sabriel had never been one for rules. He was forged of fire, while Yuri had always been the stillness to his storm, the cold edge that tempered the flame. And so it fell on him to bring Sabriel back.
Carefully, he rose into the branches, shifting closer to his friend. Sabriel didn’t so much as flinch at the sound of Yuri’s wings rustling in the leaves of the tree behind him.
“I was wondering when you’d show up.” He spoke softly, as if anything louder might break the spell the woman had cast across the glade. “She’s amazing, isn’t she?”
“We need to go,” Yuri told him, his tone sharpened by urgency. “We can’t be caught here, Sab.”
Sabriel leaned against the trunk, his sigh stolen by the breeze.
“Have you ever just watched them? Not on a mission or because they were your charge, but just to watch?” There was a wistfulness to the way he spoke that Yuri had never before heard in his friend’s voice.
“Mortals find so much joy in the little things. She speaks with the trees as if they’re old friends.
She thanks them when she brings in wood for her fire, and laughs as the wind tugs at her hair.
We’ve spent years protecting the humans, but I’ve never really watched them.
They’re remarkable, Yuri. She’s remarkable. ”
Yuri didn’t answer at first. His gaze drifted to the woman in the window, still singing to the quiet night. Then he looked back to his friend, seeing not just a fool lost to a dream, but the shadow of what might come if that dream took root.
“She’s not yours to know,” he said, and the words were as heavy as iron.
“Maybe not. But I’d like her to be.”
Silence hung between them. The forest was beginning to stir, the wind picking up and the song of an owl threading through the night. Yuri’s world, however, had gone terribly still.
There was nothing he could say. The angel could only grab his friend by the shoulder, his wings stretching behind him. “Let’s go before anyone realizes we’ve left.”
Sabriel put up no protest, though he was gone again the next evening. And the next after that.
Each night Yuri followed him, feeling his friend slip further from his grasp.
Where the battlefield had once filled Sabriel with life, now he fought as though it were a chore.
He moved slower, letting his guard drop.
The spark of battle that once burned so brightly within him flickered, dulled as his thoughts strayed elsewhere.
And so Yuri compensated.
He struck harder. Moved faster. Shot arrow after arrow as he covered for his friend’s weakness. Again and again, he intercepted what might’ve ended in blood. He was always where he needed to be, not just for himself, but for the partner who now fought more behind him than beside.
It was exhausting.
Every mission, he carried both their weight. Every briefing ended with him biting his tongue as Sabriel drifted through, half listening.
All those years ago, he’d chosen Sabriel.
He was young, and it’d been a foolish thing to do, but the way this boy had looked at him made Yuri feel as though there were no other option.
He had dedicated everything to this life and to being a Soldier.
Had let Sabriel’s dreams of glory become his own when they were just boys staring up at the skies of Sanctuary and imagining their legacy.
And now all of it was unraveling over Sabriel’s whims and some woman in the woods.
Yuri held it together for as long as he could, smoothing the cracks Sabriel left in his wake and praying that no one looked too closely.
Because night after night, he was still slipping away to that woman’s cottage.
Each night he climbed into the branches of that same willow and listened to her song, and by midnight Yuri would drag him away.
The only blessing was that, all the while, Sabriel never spoke to her. Some small part of him must have known the inevitable, because he never crossed the space between them.
Until one night, the moon itself took pity on his longing and poured its silver light across the trees.
The pair had fallen into such a routine that neither of the angels noticed how bright the clearing had become until the woman’s song faltered mid-verse. And suddenly her eyes were upon Sabriel.
Though fear should have stolen her breath, it was curiosity that drew her to the window’s edge.
And to Yuri’s surprise, she looked at his friend with a smile that was quiet and knowing, as if she’d been expecting him all along.
As if every song she’d sung had been for the one listening in the trees.
Sabriel stared back at her, and before Yuri could stop him, he unfurled wings as white as a swan’s and swept toward the woman’s window.
Yuri prayed for terror. He begged for the woman to shrink back, to slam the shutters and draw the curtains tight. He wished for something, anything, that might break this spell.
But the woman delighted in the angel’s splendor so much that he continued to visit her each night, spinning stories of all the demons he’d chased away that day, or weaving his Glory into trinkets he’d bestow upon her.
Yuri continued to watch from the shadows, anguished as the bond between the two grew stronger.
One evening, the woman didn’t appear at her window at all. Instead, she left it open in invitation, the curtains drawn back and the soft glow of firelight spilling like honey across the sill.
“Go home,” Sabriel told Yuri. “I’ll be back later.”
His hands ached to seize Sabriel by the collar and drag him back home to all the laws they’d sworn to obey.
Because why wasn’t their life enough? Why wasn’t he enough?
But Sabriel slipped away before Yuri could even gather his words, and there was no choice but to flee.
He hurried home to Sanctuary. To order and structure, and to a place where his world made sense. Because for the first time in his life, Yuri did not understand his own emotions. He felt fear, yes, but also an aching in his chest that he couldn’t name.
His blood had burned so hot when Sabriel disappeared through that window. And while Yuri would one day come to realize that what he felt was jealousy, right then he’d had no name for the bitterness that seared his heart.
He could find no distraction. No prayer that stilled his mind, no routine enough to exhaust his thoughts.
When Sabriel returned just before dawn, his glow rivaled the moon’s.
He spoke of how the woman’s lips had tasted of ambrosia and of her body’s warmth beneath his hands.
He spoke with that same infuriating, reckless ease he’d always had, as if the world would simply bend to his wants despite him breaking one of their most sacred laws.
Then, finally, he said, “I think I love her, Yuri.”
And that was the moment that would damn them forever.
Yuri turned away, desperate for air. The room was too small, Sabriel far too close, and everything felt painfully wrong.
“She’ll grow old,” Yuri said. “She’ll die.”
Sabriel dragged a hand through his hair, sighing as if he were speaking to a difficult child. “I’m not asking you to understand.”
“No. You’re asking me to look the other way. You want me to pretend I didn’t see this, and that our laws don’t matter.”
Sabriel’s lips thinned. “I’ll talk to the commander. I’ll step back if I have to. Can’t you just take my side this once?”
“This once?”
Yuri’s laugh cracked out of him, cold and hollow. This once.
Every single day he thought about that fluttering heartbeat beneath his palms. He thought about how it felt not to take life, but to give it.
“I gave up everything for you,” Yuri whispered, his voice cracking. “We were supposed to be partners.”
“We are.” Sabriel’s eyes softened, and he reached to touch his friend’s shoulder. “That’s never going to change. But I love her, Yuri.”
What about me? The voice rose sharp and aching within him, though he kept it buried behind a mask of calm. Don’t you love me?
That strange, bitter burn returned, hot beneath his ribs. He looked at Sabriel—his partner, his brother-in-arms, his everything—and felt the weight of the choice settling between them.
“I can’t stand by this,” he said at last. “I can’t watch you throw everything away.”
Sabriel flinched. For a moment, Yuri wondered whether he might laugh it off. Whether he’d tell Yuri that he’d been joking, and turn this moment into something lighter like he always did.
Instead, Sabriel looked at him with something wounded in his gaze. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I thought if anyone could understand, it’d be you.”
When Yuri’s voice came, it was void of emotion. “You thought wrong.”
He couldn’t stay. Not with Sabriel looking at him like he was the one who’d broken them.
He had to turn away before he slipped up. Before Sabriel’s sorrow could break him any more than it already had.
And so he left, and not once did he look back.
Yuri had no experience with this kind of resentment. This slow, twisting ache that no sword could strike down, and that no discipline could silence. He didn’t know how to exist with it, much less soothe it.
So he leaned instead on the only things he understood: Order.
Structure.
Rules.
Of which Sabriel had broken many.
Surely, if he told someone—if he brought this to Xadriel’s attention—the commander would handle it. The angels would do what needed to be done. Strip Sabriel’s access to the human world.
Reprimand him.
Correct him.
And maybe, just maybe, that would be enough to bring him back.
Yuri didn’t let himself hesitate.
That night, as Sabriel slipped away to his lover, he turned his steps toward the Celestial Palace, where the commander’s chamber awaited.
And when he arrived, he told Xadriel everything.