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I looked down at where she now sat, down at her lightly freckled tear-stained cheeks and her big brown eyes filled with something akin to hope as I spoke. Just like all angels, she was beautiful, but something about the way her plush pink lips curved at the top and the soft slopes of her cheeks made her seem more ethereal than the others here. Her soft shoulders were slumped as I gazed down at her, the scars from having her wings removed a bright red around the edges as if it hadn’t been more than a few days prior—my heart thumped roughly for her. I’d never had wings like the angels, but I did have magic before coming to St. Mary’s and I knew how painful it could be to part with something so intimate.
My eyes returned to the demon. “Look at her, she is a cherub. One that clearly fell from grace, or she wouldn’t be here.”
I heard the dejected puff of breath that left her lips, nearly silent but full of protest at the statement. I was sure she had hoped I would hear her pleas of innocence. Unfortunately for her, I had no power here to make those kinds of decisions. None of us did but the Archangels and from personal experience, I knew that she would get no sympathy from them, angel or not.
Malphas’s lip curled, venom spat from his words, “Fallen or not, she is still an angel. One that deserves to rot in the pits of Hell.”
The angel near me shuddered in a meek cry, and I raised my voice, “Leave, Malphas. That’s than order.”
With a disgruntled sneer, Malphas did what I ordered, but not before he tossed his clipboard onto the ground with a loud clap. I bent to pick it up, scanning the page to read her name scrolled sloppily on the first line—Esther. My eyes landed back on the angel. “Malphas is only a second year here and has yet to overcome his hatred for your kind.” I sat the clipboard onto a vacant chair before continuing, “If I were you, I’d stay clear of anyone who isn’t a third or fourth year.”
“And what year are you?” she asked, her voice broken from her earlier tears but no less beautiful than I would have expected it to be—soft and lilted like plucking the strings of a harp.
“Fourth. This is my last year.” She shifted in her seat, and I swallowed at the soft waft of rose and cardamom that lifted from her skin. I had few interactions with female angels up until now, but part of me knew she smelled different. That shewasdifferent.
Her hand raised, fingertips brushed against my arm in a featherlight touch that almost burned. “So, I can trust you then? Since you’re a fourth year?”
My eyes stared down at her fingers, then blinked away the feelings that her touch provoked. My mouth opened to respond but a loud voice boomed throughout the room, making my head snap toward the doorway.
“Theodora.”
Bile rose in my throat at the look Rafael gave me when our eyes met. I turned my face back toward the angel. “If you want to make it out of here alive, cherub, trust no one.” I swallowed, straightening my back. “Not even me.”
raphael
chapter two
Proverbs 27:4
Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?
“my eyes flicked up from the leather-bound book resting on my lap toward the man standing in the doorway of my office. His wings were held tight to his back, his lips pressed thin despite the mediocrity of his statement.Something was wrong.With a loud sigh I slapped my book shut, the smell of worn pages and leather wafting up from it. My fingertip pressed along the golden engraved letters etched into the cover as I rose from my chair to set it on the edge of my desk.
My shoulders rolled as my eyes found the man once more. “And what is it, Sariel, that has you looking as if you’ve sucked on a lemon?”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “There is an angel amongst the students.”
“An angel?” I felt my brow raise and the tips of my wings lightly brushed along the floorboards as I moved toward the doorway. “We have many angels here, Sariel. It should not matter that one is now a student.”
Sariel moved aside for me to walk past him into the hallway, his feet scuffled quickly behind me as we walked toward the admittance hall. “Possibly. But this one is a female.”
I cast a quick look over my shoulder at him. “Female?” He nodded at my questioning tone, coming up to walk beside me as I looked away from him. An angel at St. Mary’s was already odd to say the least, but a female, no less? Despite my surprise, I doubted it would be an issue. Angel or not, she was sent here for a reason, and St. Mary’s would do what it was created to do, bring her back into the light of God. My attention turned back to Sariel. “And why does that seem to bother you?”
Sariel didn’t say anything immediately, his silence replaced by the sounds of our feet on the tile below us. “Perhaps I was just startled to see an angel cast down here.” I eyed him as he licked his lips. “She won’t be a problem, I’m sure.”
With a nod I pushed open the door to the admission room, and my eyes fell immediately to Theodora.
Ah, Theodora.
From the moment I’d seen her, standing defiantly before the arched cathedral doors of St. Mary’s, I’d known she wasspecial. Despite being a lowly demon, she had an alluring sense of mystery locked within her rib cage that I could sense even at a distance. Typically, I’d find demons to be sickly, disturbing little creatures, but not Theodora.
No, never Theodora.
Her hair was black silk and her body curved in a way that begged me to sin. I wholly believed that God had sent her here as a test of my faith. He wanted to remind me of who I was and where I belonged. Theodora stood as a living, breathing temptation that I fought daily, but I did with a heart loyal to thy Father. No matter how the devil woman tempted me, I would fight not to succumb to the treacherous desires she lit within me with every prayer-laden breath I took. Just as she was put here to test my faith, I was put here to remind her of her place. To bring her into her higher self. I was to be the one who pulled her soul from the pits of Hell to bathe in the light of thein Father.
I was to be her savior.
My heart thumped wildly in my chest as I watched her, the dark sheet of her hair whisking along the edge of her breasts as she moved across the room. I loathed myself for noticing the way her milky flesh shined in the beams of light that streamed through the windows. My gut grew even tighter when she strode toward a woman that cried in the far corner, and her lips curled as she sent off the demon who had previously been talking to her. The other woman had a glow about her that was unmistakablyangel.
