Page 5 of Demon Touched

Then she starts to move. With another awful groan, her arm shifts into a less awkward position, and she draws her legs up underneath her. Slowly—so slowly it hurts to watch—she pulls herself up off the floor, shuddering with the effort.

“Th-thank you, your honors,” she says thickly. Her chin is bloody, and I realize she must have bitten her tongue.

There’s a ghost of a smile playing on the male seraph’s lips. “Leave this place with your head held high, Miseia, and consider your honor restored,” he says.

A ripple of relief travels through the crowd as the woman turns and starts to limp toward the exit. Her face betrays the excruciating pain that must cut through her with every step, but there’s a lightness to her that only grows stronger as the ephilium she passes on the way out give her proud smiles and respectful nods.

Their leaders nearly burned that woman to death, and everyone seems…happy about it? Even the woman herself?

Goddess, what crazy shit have I gotten myself into?

For a moment, I expect Syrus to second my thoughts—waiting for his sardonic voice in my mind to offer some wry commentary on pale-bloods and their insanity. When it doesn’t come, I want to shake myself. I’m spending all this effort shutting him out. I have no business missing him.

“Captain Pellery, I didn’t expect to see you at today’s muster.”

I whip my head back toward the seraphim, where I see the male seraph’s eyes on the captain.

“Neither did I, Seraph Orelle,” Pellery replies. “But there is a matter I think requires your attention.”

One of my escorts nudges me, and I reluctantly edge forward to stand beside Pellery. My mouth is dry as I straighten my shoulders, trying to look strong and confident under the scrutiny of everyone in the room. My mask falls apart, however, when the seraph stretches his huge wings out, and I discover—there, nestled in among the feathers, one on each wing—there’s another set of eyes watching me.

That’s something you don’t see every day.

I’d heard rumors that the most powerful ephilium develop eyes on their wings over time. I kind of thought it might be some stupidly literal Stratan interpretation of their “second sight,” but nope, there they are. At first glance, you might think they were part of the feather pattern, like an albino peacock, but a closer inspection makes it clear the pale, small-pupiled orbs are definitely real.

And they move.

The eyes shift in my direction as the white feathers around them ruffle like they’ve been caught in a breeze. Seraph Orelle raises an eyebrow.

“She’s nephilim,” he says, a note of interest in his voice as he examines me. I suppress another shiver.

“She is,” Pellery says. “She has recently come into her powers and wishes to be claimed as a child of Aradis.”

“She’s been in the Mire this whole time?” the female seraph asks.

“Yes, Seraph Wyvier. She claims she didn’t know she had ephilium blood until her power began to show,” Pellery says. I can’t help but throw her an accusing look at her use of the word claims. It makes me sound like a liar.

Which I am, admittedly, but not about this.

The seraphim pick up on it too. “You think she cannot be trusted for some reason,” Seraph Orelle says as he steeples his fingers. A statement of fact rather than a question.

“Today is not the first time I have met this woman,” Captain Pellery explains. “I first encountered her a few weeks ago trespassing near the rift. At the time, I suspected she may have had contact with the demons.”

Shit. So this is the case against me Pellery didn’t want to get into before. She still suspects I’m working for Infernum. She’s not wrong, except about the timing. Me turning up and revealing I’m nephilim must look very convenient. I need to get ahead of this before she digs my grave for me.

“She found a knife on me, that’s all,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady and clear. Several of the ephilium standing around us look surprised, like they hadn’t realized I could speak for myself. Or maybe they just thought I wouldn’t be brave enough to try it. “It was carved with Cyrax runes, but I found it on the plains.”

It’s possible telling them about my scavenging will piss them off—certainly there was more than one demon in Infernum with an opinion about it—but if I have to choose between that and actually admitting to working with the demons, I figure they’ll consider this the lesser crime.

“There may be some reasonable explanation as to why she had a knife so recently touched with demon shadow,” Pellery says, probably assuming I stole it off a demon or got it by some other crime I don’t want to admit to. “But there’s also the issue of her magic.” Pellery offers me an oddly apologetic look—I can’t help but feel she doesn’t really want to be throwing me under the carriage like this, and yet she continues on. “If it developed this late, then something triggered it. I don’t know a lot about nephilim, but they need to be in regular contact with us to fully develop their powers, correct?”

“That’s correct, Captain,” Seraph Wyvier says. “Though there’s a lot most of us don’t know about nephilim. They are so rare, after all.” She fixes her bright blue eyes on me, intrigued. “If she’s a scavenger, then proximity to the bodies and magic on the plains may have been enough to awaken her.”

It wasn’t, as it happens. It took being pumped full of ephilium blood and living around demons to trigger my magic, but I probably shouldn’t mention that.

Seraph Orelle rises from his chair, wings still open. There must be some unspoken understanding between him and Wyvier, because she stands and opens hers too. The uncanny sets of pale eyes stare out at me from the feathers, and I take a step back, only to end up brushing against the armor of the soldiers still standing behind me. There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide from those eyes that I sense see far too much.

And just as I’m trying to stay calm under their scrutiny, I feel him again.