“Do you see what you’ve done, child?” Michael’s gaze rips towards me, burning and blazing, as if he’s trapped the sun inside them. “This is why we do not wed humans. The impulsive, fleeting nature of your kind is a corruption to our immortality.”
A strange calm takes over me, as if the anxiety I feel so often finally matches the gravity of the situation I’m in. Either that, or I’ve simply accepted the likelihood that I’ll experience death today.
Whatever it is, I feel abnormally fearless, tilting my chin up to look him dead in the eye with confident defiance.
“No, Michael. You’re wrong. Your immortality, your complete detachment from the purpose of life and death, has made you rotten to the core. You cannot rule humanity when you have none. You do not speak for us.I do.”
Faster than the speed of light, Michael has a hand wrapped around my throat.
A millisecond later, Abaddon lunges, pushing darkness anddestruction like a spear of power at the other angel—but it’s futile.
Without even turning to look at his attacker, Michael lifts his free hand in a movement that cracks the wind and the sky, throwing Abaddon back like a rag doll. I watch his limp body fly through the air at an impossible speed until he disappears from my line of sight.
I don’t see where he lands, if he’s okay, or anything. All I hear is a sickening crack as his body crashes into the ground, as if a meteor had just struck the desert, leaving me with cold, hard shock.
It’s hauntingly quiet for a brief moment.
Then Michael acknowledges me again.
He glares down, still gripping my throat in his massive hand. His hardened, cruel face seems to have every intention to suffocate me to death—but not without a lecture first.
“You’re an innocent, and he preys on you. I am a shepherd, Kaelene. My sheep are ignorant, but I protect them regardless.”
Protection. Is that what this is supposed to be?
With all the strength I can muster, I push against his armored forearm and try to twist out of his grasp, as if I could possibly free myself. No such luck. He doesn’t budge.
This is the day I die my first death.
“I am not your sheep,” I rasp in a constricted voice, accepting that it’s time for me to speak my last words. “I am…a lion…”
His face twists even more with insult, compounding the fury and insanity already floating at the surface. He grips my throat harder, the force crushing me?—
And then something completely unexpected happens.
A sword plunges out of his chest.
Satin red blood sprays out from the punctured, golden chest piece, misting onto my face.
His eyes slip down to the wound, wide with the horror of finally facing death, however temporary it may be for him. The hand around my throat becomes sickeningly limp, and his glow rapidly diminishes, until…
I watch the life slip from his eyes.
Sheer terror, the likes of which I’veneverfelt before, sends my heart into a roaring frenzy.
I had already accepted my death. It would have been a relatively peaceful one, with the most powerful being on the planet crushing the life out of me in sheer hatred. Simple, quick, and straightforward. But this? A weapon capable of killing Michael so easily, now inches from my face? That is a horrifying uncertainty.
For a moment, I don’t think time is even capable of moving forward. I think it might be frozen.
Then the sword slides out of his torso, and as if it were the last thing tying him to this plane of existence, his body quickly turns into ash on the wind.
I expect to see Abaddon, maybe, or another Council member.
But it’s green eyes that meet mine.
“Hello, Kaelene. I’m afraid I need to steal the rider after all.”
40
