Page 193 of Breathe Like Hell

“The Angelakia can also become risen,” he continued, making my pulse spike. “If an angel gives their remaining neon at the moment of death, the mortal soul can carry it. The human rises. The angel does not.”

The casual way he spoke made everything seem even more surreal.

As if he wasn’t dropping an atomic bomb on my entire fucking life and understanding of the world.

I stared at the page, chest tightening, eyes skimming words printed in a language that I barely remembered on Earth. Heaven’s language. Something that didn’t require being taught once within those celestial bounds, a universal tongue.

“So Heaven gets an angel,” I said slowly.

“Theoretically.”

“And loses one.”

His expression didn’t change.

“No. It loses a fallen one.”

That was the distinction they had apparently built an entire secret around. And it was exactly why angels were never informed of the existence of these Angelakia. This secretive phenomenon was a trading mechanism. I gritted my teeth, discomfort and something uglier coiling in the pit of my stomach.

“Was this designed?” I questioned.

“There is no record of it being designed,” he answered, deliberately choosing his words, his light eyes flicking across my face. “But there is a record of Heaven knowing what it does.”

He gestured to the book, though most of the words printed there still eluded me.

Of course.

And the supposed lack of record didn’t mean this wasn’t purposeful, or that it hadn’t been exploited.

The rest of my conversation with the Syndesmos angel was brief and only vaguely informative—largely focused on pregnancy specifics rather than lore explanation. But I’d decoded enough words on the page held open between us to feel unsettled and antsy to leave. I didn’t dare search his emotions for false truths, but I doubted it would’ve been helpful had I tried. While Sigeians in Heaven had specific uses and outlets for their powers, those on Earth did not. So, our morals slipped further. He’d be prepared for any invasion I attempted.

Once I left the building, I shrouded myself in invisibility and took to the cloudy sky, making an attempt to organize my thoughts in my head. I wouldn’t tell Dakota all of this. Not at first.

I needed to work through my feelings on it. Needed to consult with Mason.

A human became one of the Angelakia when an angel touched their soul during the first year of their life, but it did not require a blessing, a ritual, or even intention. An angel could hold an infant for a moment and never know anything had happened. But the contact was imprinted on the soul then.

Afterward, the Angelakia lived a human life, yet could become an angel.

Literally transform species.

Not through death, not naturally, and certainly not by any process the human could initiate themselves. An angel had to give their life willingly—or…be forced to give it by a corrupt Sigeian—and the human would use that sacrificial neon to transform.

The mortal became risen. The fallen was gone.

Balance was restored.

Most angels never learned this. We were told that the boundary between Heaven and Earth was absolute. Something irreversible. Apparently, there were exceptions to every rule so long as you knew how to uncover the right things.

I understood why they had never bothered telling us. Why they’d kept this secret.

Angels on Earth generally had no strong desire to give back to Heaven.

Angelakia complicated this.

Heaven cared about fallen angel death—it was why they employed Thrausians to keep control of demon activity—but not more than they cared about gaining risen angels. Angelakia were the huge invisible exploit to the fragile balance of fallen angels. Because now I had the desire to kill one of my own kind. To force one of them to give their life for Dakota, so I could make her immortal.

The phenomenon did not say the sacrificial angel had to know the human. It did not even say they had to understand what was happening. Only that the final breath had to be surrendered.