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The mouth of the smiley face opened and more indigo smoke poured forth, forming into words:
A choice.
To serve or rot.
The term is one week
then freedom.
Say yes and you are bound.
Say no and all is nothing again.
Not exactly poetry, but succinct and to the point. What kind of service? What degradation would he be forced to endure? Was this revenge? The concept of agreeing to serve a mortal sent rage boiling through his veins.
He opened his mouth to refuse. "Yes."
The smiley face and words vanished. The labradorite oval flared brightly. Silver filaments wriggled out of it. They lengthened and wove together into flat straps before closing around Shoftiel's wrist, snugging tightly, though not uncomfortably. Arcane symbols glowed on the metal, then faded.
By his own hand, he was bound.
Panic exploded like a rabid porcupine inside him, sending quills of terror drilling deep into his soul. He panted as adrenaline spiked. Before he could come to terms with his sudden slavery, the bracelet grew heavy and pulled him downward. He beat his wings to stay aloft, but to no avail.
He plummeted. The white mist dissolved. The real world blurred into a kaleidoscope of blue, green, gray, and yellow.
He jerked to a halt in midair. His surroundings came into focus.
He hung a foot above a broad meadow. Green shoots pushed up between winter-dried grasses. Obsidian mountain peaks rose up from behind a turquoise forest a short distance away. The sky was cobalt and clear.
Just before him, a complicated pattern of sigils and symbols coiled within a brilliantly lit witch circle, perhaps twenty feet in diameter. It consisted of an outer circle with a five-pointed star inside, and in the center of that, a triangle, and inside that, the witch. Her hands were bandaged, indicating she'd drawn the circle in her own blood.
Shoftiel's lip curled at the sight of Giselle, though he'd known the message could have come only from her. She was the only witch who both knew of his banishment and was strong enough to summon and bind him.
A petite woman with long chestnut hair worn in two pigtail braids that hung down below her breasts, she wore torn jeans and a long-sleeved blue plaid shirt. Her feet were bare, despite the chill. She was the lead witch of the Horngate covenstead in Montana, where his two brothers had inexplicably bound themselves in service.
It was hard to imagine this diminutive insect had the kind of power to establish and hold her own coven, much less convince two powerful angels to submit to her service. Three now, at least for a week, he corrected himself. Sitting cross-legged with a smudge of dirt on her cheek, she looked like a homeless waif, hardly more than a child.
Power crackled in the air, a purple sheen rising up in a column from the witch circle. One by one, the inner triangle, the star, and the exterior circle winked out along with the sigils and symbols. The purple sheen evaporated and the magic scattered like sparks on the wind.
Giselle stood. She dusted off her backside then turned her attention to Shoftiel, scanning him from head to toe. He slowly drifted to the ground.
"We don't have much time," she said, kicking at the remnants of her spell circle. When she'd destroyed any evidence of its existence, she walked away. Shoftiel burned at her silence and lack of deference, which fought against the feeling of unholy joy at his freedom from the Mistlands. Whatever the witch wanted of him, it was surely worth the price to escape that hellish place.
He flew to catch up with her, dropping down to match her stride.
"What do you want of me?"
"Protection." She didn't bother to look at him.
Shoftiel bit back hard on his annoyance. "From what?"
"Bad guys."
The answer was entirely unsatisfactory. "Explain. You have Shadowblades and Sunspears of excellent quality." She couldn't argue that. The best of them was Max, the warrior he'd mistakenly punished for crimes she hadn't committed. "And you have two other angels in service to you."
"I don't want to risk any of them. They'll die."
"And I won't?"
