Page 127 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

How he’d drive past on the street when she had taken the long way home after a bad day at school and given her a lift home. When she’d missed the bus home, or got stuck in some storm, and that time she got her first flat tire when he’d just shown up in his car to help her.

He’d appear at the bookshop as one of their regular readers, chatting with Aunt Claudine and staying for tea. Where, of course, Angela would wander from the office and somehow the conversation would end up being about whatever Angela was quietly worried about that week.

Father Michael was her responsible adult, the one they’d call to the school because Aunt Claudine had argued with the principal so badly security had to be called. Twice. So, Father Michael had become her parent by proxy and would arrive on time every time, as if he’d been expecting the call. Which, in her defense, wasn’t that often.

But then again, being a victim of bullying for being different, or just having different colored eyes, it was more often than she’d like to admit.

And let’s not forget the simple passage of life that every child goes through: learning to ride a bicycle. For her, it had been the patient Saturday afternoons in the car park behind the church, where Father Michael’s steady hand held the back of the bicycle he’d built for her out of spare parts. Her mother laughed from the nearby garden bench, while Angela insisted she didn’t need either of them, right until she did.

But then her mother was gone.

And yet Father Michael still showed up. School sports days. Debate finals. The regional moot competition in the second year of college, when she’d stood at the podium so nervous she’d gone blank for three full seconds. She’d found one face in the crowd to anchor herself, the way you were taught to face a jury, and found his. All he did was nod—just once—like always, and the words came back to her.

It was Father Michael who’d found the scholarship and helped her fill out the paperwork. He’d sourced the second-hand legal textbooks she couldn’t afford. Supplied the reference letter, written in that unhurried, careful hand she’d read so many times it lived rent-free in her memory: Miss Duboise demonstrates a quality of thinking that is rare in students far beyond her years…

There were those lunches where she’d needed to argue a case out loud and needed someone with an in-built confidentiality clause. Someone to practice her closings or openings for court, because she got little help as a junior lawyer. Who better to see than the man who gave weekly speeches on a podium? Father Michael had never once told her she was wrong. He had only ever asked her what the other side would say.

And even when she’d quit and lost her belief in law, magic, love, and so many other things, she’d still visit the graveyard to see her mother, and he’d be there, either simply passing through the garden paths or sitting on the bench nearby, but always present without intruding—which was, she now understood, an extremely specific skill set.

Cunning was nowhere near the right word for it. Especially if he’d been her father, who she’d called Father all her life. And he would call her little one.

She hadn’t seen it then, but the illusion of being deceived so cleverly was shocking on so many layers. Here she was, a woman who could smell a lie in a deposition from across a conference table.

It was right in front of me. This entire time.

She didn’t know if she was angrier at Father Michael or at herself for not asking the right question sooner.

“You’re a priest?” Zarek’s warrior’s tone carried that razor edge. He had not lowered his guard and wasn’t going to soon.

Father Michael smiled. “Well…”

“No, he’s not.” Angela held the medallion out from her chest, the one Father Michael had pressed into her hand. She now understood it had never been a gift but more of a signature as a direct link to what he was. “This is the Archangel Michael. Protector. And the Angel of Death.” Her favorite angel. Go figure.

“Angels can’t—can they?” Bellus reached instinctively for his spectacles that were no longer there. “Have children?”

“Bullshit,” said Condorr.

“Watch your tongue.” Father Michael’s voice didn’t rise. It simply expanded, filling the space from floor to rafter, and with it came the rest of him.

The room’s shadows leaned away as his form grew; the priest’s suit dissolved into leather, blade, and armor. From behind, a pair of vast and unmistakably real wings expanded that had nothing soft about their feathers. He was no Renaissance painting, but an ancient and lethal warrior, clearly capable of making the remaining walls tremble with the simple act of just appearing as himself.

Angela swallowed as she craned her neck to look up at the man she had known her whole life, was an Archangel.

To think she’d argued with him over the theology of justice. She had complained about the injustice of her mother being taken. Told him that certain religions were nothing more than a structurally organized loyalty program with better marketing. All while telling him that angels did not exist, like so many other things she did not believe in. And yet—

Father Michael had laughed at her then, with that same irritating shine in his eyes, which now she understood as the humor of someone who always had the upper hand, and someone who could see the bigger picture of a game that no one else knew they were playing. She recognized that look from others she’d dealt with in court, but this time it was much more, and she knew it. She just had to ask the right questions.

Now she finally understood why he’d say that. It was the rules.

But where did she even begin? Especially when most of his answers were in riddles.

All she could do was grasp on to what was happening right now.

“Leave Condorr and the rest of the Sworn Exarchs alone; they’re only being protective over me, and well… They have a right to be angry, considering what happened to this room.” She frowned at the mess. “Wait? Did I do this?”

That irritating, slight smirk, along with the amused shimmer in the archangel’s eye, told her a different story.

“You know I swear worse than that, so can we dial this back a little?” Especially the lethal power coming off Father Michael.