Page 25 of Trick Of Light

Gabriel’s gaze went cold and hard. “You would leave now?”

“I left because of lies. You don’t think I’ll do it again?”

“You left because of him!” Gabriel roared, pointing at Anahel. “You left because you kept him from falling, from following The Morning Star, and then you argued that just because he’d sinned in his heart didn’t mean anything, but we all knew better.”

Raphael shrugged. “Michael didn’t see it your way.”

“Michael…he banished you here, to the third heaven, but only for a time.”

“Is that what you heard?”

“It’s what he said,” he thundered at Raphael. “He said you were to cool your blood here, but he didn’t say you had to stay forever. It wasn’t a life sentence.”

“Oh no? Are you so certain?”

“You know him better than that.”

“Those were strange times, after the fall. Nothing made sense.”

“And so you left,” Gabriel rasped, and I could hear the hurt in his voice.

Raphael squinted at Gabriel. “Michael said, ‘An angel has to rule there, and so I’m sending you.’ Those were his exact words. You weren’t there. You don’t know. The important part is he never said an archangel had to rule the third heaven. I know. I paid attention.”

“So you stayed a day.”

“I did. I stayed from sunup to sundown, and that, after everything else, was too long.”

“And then Anahel stepped in.”

“And has done an amazing job,” Raphael defended his friend, who bowed at the compliment. “Has he not?”

“No one is saying he has not, but by Michael’s word, it was supposed to be you here.”

“Again, that’s not what he conveyed,” Raphael countered. “But we’re getting off-track. Explain how you know about the witch Moira that’s been plaguing our clutch.”

He shook his head.

“You’re bound to the truth, so tell me.”

Gabriel suddenly reached out and put his hands on Raphael’s shoulders. “Michael only ever listens to you, and he’s bound to this war with Lucifer, to continual, endless strife. You and I both know it’s not necessary. We need only be separated, angel and demon, not fighting. There doesn’t need to be conflict or struggle, only vigilance, only guarded borders. We needed you to talk to him, to get through to him, to make him see, but you were gone.”

Raphael remained quiet, just listening.

“And then we couldn’t find you, and Remiel went to investigate the account of a kyrie, of all things, killing a demon lord.”

“Of course,” Raphael said, sounding resigned. “He would have questions.”

Gabriel chuckled. “A demon lord, Raph? Really? You thought a kyrie capable of that?” With a wave of his hand that included me, Leith, and Ryan, Gabriel said, “I bet none of these warders have ever even seen a real kyrie. They don’t know how small and powerless they are, how craven and cowardly. Someone saw those fangs of yours and thought that’s what you were, not Raphael the healer who gives his grace to others through his bite.”

I could only stare at my mate. He was an archangel, and all this time I’d treated him like he was mine. But how could he be?

“And then Remiel discovered this demon lord Saudrian had a mate,” Gabriel went on. “He told me that he thought, perhaps, she was a creature to be watched.”

“Which you did.”

“Which I did,” he agreed. “I saw the warder fall through the door down to hell, and I sent the shell to speak to him.”

By shell, I knew he meant Tanner King’s doppelgänger, Tarin, who was made by the Labarum, the warder council.