Angels are reared by the collective, we are all family.So love isn’t the sort of thing that happens all too often back home.Angels have children when there is a need for a new angel rather than because of a love match.
And yet.
Gellara surprises me and delights me in ways I struggle to comprehend.Angels and demons don’t mix.And yet, I find myself fascinated with the way she talks about our laws and justice and fairness and how she is determined to campaign for change.
We didn’t catch Interitus that day.Nor the next.Nor the thirty consecutive days after that.
Far too much time for one woman to fall in love with another.And that’s what happened.Slowly but surely, one shared glance after another.
It was the way she would nestle her hand into mine, all warm and calloused from the many deals she had struck.She’d tug me along as we explored yet another street, another field searching for my seemingly lost sister.
Some days, like today, she will take meetings before we search.She stands outside the apartment and shakes a demon’s hand I don’t recognise.“And you’ll make sure Arcadius gets the message?Our campaign paper is almost finished, I don’t want to sit on this.We must lobby him before the year is out.”
The demon inclines his head in acknowledgement and leaves, making her way up to our room.
“Now, where were we?”Gellara says.
I smile at her, the sunlight glimmering in her yellow gaze.Her eyes are curved and round and full of an odd innocence that doesn’t match the fire of her political self.I love the way it rubs inside me like sandpaper.She blinks; her gaze eats me up from across the room.Like she’s ravenous and starved and holding herself back on a leash.
The problem is, I am too.
The more days have passed, the hungrier I am growing.I want to devour her skin and feast on her scent.
“I’m sure I’ve seen Interitus,” she says, waving a lazy hand.
“You’ve seen her, have you?”I say, my words smoothing into silk.“I think I’m going to have to call bullshit on that.”
She huffs and pouts, her golden eyes smouldering heat that screams fuck me.
“I’ve seen her, and I’ll prove it to you.It might just take another day… or five.Or a hundred.”
“And in the meantime?”
She shrugs.“I guess you’ll have to entertain me.”
“Is that so,” I say.“But you’re certain she’s out there, stealing souls and eating them and leaving their carcasses in the street for anyone to find.”
“Mmmhmm.So you’ll have to stay with me, you see.It’s for the best.”
For all our joking, Gellara is right.I’ve seen enough posters calling for the capture of a beast.How ironic.A beast.They think that’s what she is, though perhaps she is now.
It’s not just immoral, it’s against the very fibre of our beings as angels.Fallen or not, what she’s doing must be fundamentally changing the essence of who and what she is.It makes bile claw up my throat.A sickness that plagues my insides, that crawls under my skin and writhes like sand and worms and fleas.
“Hey, where did you go?”Gellara asks.
Her hand is on my jaw.Her fingertips grazing my skin so lightly I startle.I’ve not been touched like this in so long.My life has been dedicated to stopping my sister from doing the next thing and the next.I didn’t have time for comforts or pleasures.I only had time to stop her.
She’s standing so close to me her body heat warms my feathers.
“We shouldn’t…” I say, but my words are weak, there’s no impetus behind them because I do want this and she knows it.
“Shouldn’t we?”she purrs.
“We should focus on finding her.Stopping this tirade to end our system of fate before someone gets hurt.”
“She hunts at night.The bodies are always found in the morning.It’s still daylight.Give yourself a moment to breathe.To rest… Let me look after you.”
“Angels aren’t really supposed to partake of the flesh unless it’s to procreate.”
