“We’re starting a new game!” Eva shouted, pulling Lila along. “Come on, we’re gonna win this one!”
On bare feet, Lila stumbled after her best friend; they swerved around their classmates who were chasing each other and crossed through the middle of the play set to the opposite side of the oval where the Crescent Arch rose above them like a glittering stairway to whatever hid in the Void above Heaven.
Lila glanced back once, but Luc was bent over his work, as if he’d noticed her leave as little as he’d noticed her appear.
Eva’s voicehad been an assault to Luc’s senses. She was always loud when she didn’t need to be—especiallywhen she didn’t need to be—but her appearance had annoyed Luc more than usual.
He was used to being alone, but Lila’s presence had been unexpectedly pleasant. Unlike most of his classmates, she didn’t ask annoying questions, and she actually paid attention to what he said. She’d copied his new, nameless creature precisely, and it hung in the aether above him, indistinguishable from his own handiwork.
Glancing behind him, Luc thought he spotted her when an angel with Lila’s dark, reddish brown complexion and a single dark braid skipped past, but it wasn’t her. The angel in question had gold and silver flowers pinned throughout her braid, and Lila never wore adornments in her hair. Unlike Eva, who pinned her strawberry blonde hair with every metal and jewel available so that it was impossible not to identify her by the back of her head.
Luc shook his head. It didn’t matter.
He was used to being alone, and he needed to focus if he was going to figure out why he’d been created. The masters wouldn’t tell him anything except that he had a great purpose, whatever that meant. He’d beenchosen—a vision had been seen upon his creation—to undertake an outstanding task, but no one would reveal the nature of it to him. He’d been told heneeded to figure it out for himself in order for his purpose to unfold naturally.
Did his purpose have something to do with the cloud creatures he’d just designed?
Luc frowned. He didn’t know.
Dispersing the creatures with a wave of his hand, he slipped off the ledge and floated down, down until he reached the backside of the dormitories. He wasn’t supposed to wander off by himself—chosen angel or not, he often got chastised for it—but no one would notice he was gone as long as he made it back by mealtime.
The construction site of the Great Hall was located on the opposite side of the Library from the dormitories, and Luc snuck around the back of the Library to get there. At the site, stacks of abandoned building materials, mainly creamy yellow limestone, surrounded a beige marble foundation inscribed with the master architect’s blueprints.
In lessons, Luc and the other students had viewed a wooden model of the Great Hall, but it was overwhelming to see the scale of it up close. To see how far the base of the structure extended from one corner to the other. The adult artisans hadn’t even begun to construct the walls yet, though that seemed imminent, judging by the volume of materials present.
Luc wondered how much stone a building of this size required. He chewed his lip, trying to decipher the coded markings on the floor from what he’d read about blueprints in the Library.
“This site is off-limits to students,” a stern voice reprimanded him.
Luc spun and saw Master Michael, the warrior on Heaven’s highest Council, perched on the foundation’s edge. Dark curls spilled boyishly about his tan face, but this did nothing for his severe countenance. The humorless slant to his mouth. The rigid set of his broad shoulders. Those deep-set brown eyes that always seemed to be noticing something he didn’t like. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, straight as a sentry.
Luc had never spoken to him, and he hadn’t heard him approach, absorbed as he’d been in studying the building plans.
“In fact,” Michael continued, “it is off-limits toeveryoneuntil its completion.” He inclined his head toward Luc and sharpened his gaze, as if to say he knew who Luc was and didn’t care in the slightest. Michael was ancient, one of the original eighty-four angels, formed aeons ago and placed on the Council by the Creator Himself.
Luc puffed himself up to show he wasn’t intimidated.
“I was just studying it. For lessons. I’ll be taking advanced courses soon.”
“Is that so?” Michael raised a derisive eyebrow. “Well, I’ll give you an advanced lesson right now.” He padded across the stone, silent as the aether and solid as the marble under their feet. “Proper construction means that everything is put in its place. Didn’t the masters tell you that details are important? One careless mistake, and the entire structure loses its integrity. We can’t afford to have students running amok among building materials and disturbing the construction process. Now off with you before I tell your masters to keep you in the most remedial courses possible.”
Michael uttered this last sentence with complete distaste for Luc’s person, and Luc cried, “You can’t do that!”
“Can’t I?”
“My instructors won’t let you.” Luc lifted his chin. He was beloved by all the instructors; he always impressed them with his work, and some of them gave him extra lessons and access to materials the other students couldn’t dream of possessing.
“Your instructors?” Michael’s mouth twitched. “And who do you think determines whether your instructors stay in their current positions? I doubt they will help you much once they’ve been reassigned to other tasks.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I’m on the Council of Twelve, boy. Or did you not learn what that means in your studies?”
Of course, he knew the Council of Twelve. The highest Council in Heaven, they presided over the twelve lower, guild-specific councils and included a member from each of the twelve artisan guilds.
Luc wanted to be on the Council; once there, the purpose of his existence would have to come to light. They even met with the Creator Himself!
“Of course, I know what it means,” he assured Michael. “I’m going to be on the Council when I grow up.”
