Page 6 of Angel I Am Not

I tore myself out of Miel’s hold and pushed through the last few angels between me and the altar. “Uriel?” His eyelids fluttered as I reached the bottom step, and for one breathless second, his soft brown eyes found mine.

Relief hit me in the chest as I reached toward him without thinking. His mouth moved, but nothing came out, and I leaned closer. “What? What are you trying to say?”

His head rolled weakly against the marble before I could make out anything. I stepped forward again, but Jophiel moved directly into my path, silver hair spilling over the shoulders of his white tunic as he blocked me from Uriel without so much as acknowledging what I was trying to do.

Jophiel’s gaunt features had always seemed harsh for the angel of language and art, but there was something colder about him now as he turned away from Uriel and faced the crowd. “Uriel, archangel, challenged God without provocation. He will be punished according to his crimes.”

“Without provocation?” I stared at him, then at Uriel bleeding onto the marble behind his feet. “You dragged him behind a locked door before he could explain anything.”

Jophiel barely spared me a glance. “He approached the altar.”

“I watched him. I’m asking why.” My voice shook, but I didn’t care. Uriel had a reason for everything he did, even when I disagreed with him. I refused to believe he had suddenly decided to challenge God for the fun of it.

Jophiel turned away from me, and I tried to move around him before he could dismiss me completely. Michael caught both of my arms and pulled me back, his grip tightening when I fought him.

“Let me go. He’s hurt.”

Michael’s gaze flicked toward Uriel before settling on me again. “Don’t make this worse, Ariuk.”

“For who?” I snapped, trying once more to wrench free. His hands only tightened, the warning in his expression making it clear that I was getting dangerously close to joining Uriel on the wrong side of the council.

Jophiel stepped forward, beginning the condemnation. His lips curled up just slightly, his eyes glittering with the power of reigning judgment over a fellow councilmember. His usually melodious voice carried something darker, something that made me uneasy. “To set forth a lesson to keep this from happening again, God has commanded that Uriel be perished out of existence. He will be unable to return to this realm or any other, his essence permanently made into nothingness.”

For a second, I stopped fighting Michael because I couldn’t make Jophiel’s words mean what they obviously meant. Uriel wasn’t being exiled or stripped of his title. They were going to erase him so completely that there would be nothing left to find.

“You can’t do that.” I shoved against Michael’s chest, panic making my movements clumsy. “You didn’t even let him explain.”

Michael caught my wrists before I could hit him again. “Ariuk.”

“He raised me.” My voice cracked, and I hated that every angel around us could hear it. “He taught me everything I know, and you’re going to make him disappear because he touched a fucking altar?”

A few angels recoiled at the language. Uriel had stood beside me through every lesson I failed and every reason Heaven gave him to be embarrassed by the thing he had created. He had never once treated me like I was something he needed to apologize for.

I looked past Michael to Jophiel. “At least ask him why. Please,” I pleaded.

Jophiel ignored me. He raised one hand over Uriel and began reciting words from one of the holy books, each syllable carrying through the sudden silence around the altar. I lunged again, managing to pull one arm free of Michael before Miel caught me around the waist and dragged me backward.

“Ariuk, stop.”

“No.” I clawed at his arm, trying to make enough room to slip free. Light had begun gathering beneath Jophiel’s palm, spilling over Uriel’s bloodied linens. “Uriel, look at me. Please.”

His eyes opened and I stopped fighting long enough for our gazes to meet. I couldn’t tell how much he could see or whether he even understood what was happening, but something in his face softened when he found me. It lasted barely a second before the light swallowed him.

“No!” I fought Miel hard enough that we stumbled together as Uriel’s body began breaking apart beneath Jophiel’s hand. His essence lifted from the marble in pale threads, disappearing into the air one by one while I waited for something to remain. A feather. Blood. Anything that proved he had been there.

Nothing did.

Jophiel lowered his hand and clasped it with the other. “It is done.” My knees threatened to give out as he turned toward the palace, Michael and Gabriel falling into step beside him as though they hadn’t just erased someone from existence.

The silence around me didn’t last. Whispers started at the edge of the crowd and spread quickly, angels glancing from the empty marble to me. One of them murmured that I was Uriel’s creation. Another pointed out the dark feathers peeking from beneath my linen, and a third wondered aloud whether I had known what he planned to do.

I turned toward the voices, and all three angels looked away, which hurt more than I expected. A few minutes ago, I had still been the strange, giftless creation of an archangel people were careful not to openly antagonize. Now Uriel was gone, and so was the protection that came with his name.

Miel reached for my hand. “Ariuk, come with me.”

I stepped away before he could touch me. “Don’t.”

His brows drew together. “I’m trying to help.”