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AZRAEL managed to get Uriel alone. It took all of her bravery to stand in the same room with him without Meretta at her side. She didn’t like the way he had looked at Meretta, or the Queen for that matter. She would speak with him alone.
“Gabriel told me he brought you here to change the way things are. Didn’t he speak with you?” she asked. Her nerves wouldn’t let her relax, and she trailed her fingers along the wall, hoping courage would come with its warmth.
“Yes... He told me of your wishes.” He scoffed. “The reason I made Ceres tell you of Anark was to show you why there’s nothing you can do. The Council didn’t care if Ceres took Anark to her bed. But that’s not all she did. She filled his head with ideas to usurp the Council... To change the way things are. To undo the Contract.”
Azrael frowned. “But you said—”
“It wasn’t really your Queen’s fault. But I blame her, nonetheless.”
Azrael lost her grip on her resolve and slumped into a velvet chair. “So if the Council didn’t care they were together, why do you warn me to stay away from Gabriel?”
Uriel’s wings fanned in and out with gentle swipes. “Because, Azrael, you’ve already filled his head with ideas. He’s not careful. He’s dodged the Council for centuries and managed to stay at the edge of their mercy. But if you push him, he will cross that line for you. As much as I’m at odds with him...” He put his head in his hands as he lowered onto the stool.
Azrael inched closer to him, placing a hand on his shoulder and was careful to avoid his wings. Uriel looked down at her and smiled. “Gabriel told me how beautiful you are.”
Azrael blushed and pulled her hand away. He reached over and took it back, wrapping his warm fingers around hers. “If you were with me, then the Council would never suspect Gabriel. He could at least try...”
Azrael shot to her feet. “Excuse me?”
He laughed. “Azrael, it’s only practical. If we had a relationship, even a superficial one, wouldn’t the Council be so focused on us that Gabriel could move unhindered?” He stood and wrapped his hands around her arms. “Think about it, Azrael.”
He leaned down, his soft lips planting a kiss on her cheek. He lingered and his silvered hair brushed against her face. When he pulled away, he smiled and left her alone. Azrael let out the breath she’d been holding.
Everything about him told her Uriel was wrong and Gabriel was right. How could she ever agree to such an arrangement? She desperately wanted to talk to Gabriel.
But Azrael’s next session of the Acceptance was tomorrow. It would have to wait.
And tomorrow came all too fast. Azrael sat stiff in her bed, Meretta asleep only inches away. Today demanded the next session of the Acceptance take place. Dread pounded in her skull like tiny bees, and she wished fretfully that she could roll over and sleep through the trial to come.
Sinking deeper into her sheets, she sought comfort from the warmth of the puffy bed. She pulled at her silk robes to look at the Acceptance section she had already completed. The black outlines traveled up her spine and beyond her line of sight across her shoulders. But the Divine Material was there, low on her back in magnificent swirls. Its warm glow and staggering beauty left her feeling like any cost was worth its completion.
But, as she stepped out of the bed, she felt sick remembering all too well the cost she had to endure. She forced herself to get dressed, not daring to wake Meretta on the adjacent mattress. She knew every session could mean her death. Azrael could never say goodbye.
Azrael didn’t remember the way to the Hallowed’s room, so she decided to get some last minute studying done as she waited for the Queen. She ended up rereading the accounts of Alexandria’s Turn. Healers had written of the best salves used to rejuvenate the infant wings. Azrael fantasized what it would feel like to have wings of her own.
Azrael reread the passages that focused on the extrusion of Alexandria’s wings. They grew under her skin the moment her Acceptance had been completed. First they were tiny lumps, and then they were large sores. The detailed descriptions of the bruising and the pain made Azrael’s skin crawl.
Azrael licked her finger and thumbed through a few more pages. She stopped when she got to the part where Alexandria had recovered and an illustration covered the entire page. A sketch of a petite girl stared back. Her tiny face held an expression of calm victory, framed by dark curls that fell in waves down to her waist. The edges of the page were garnished by giant feathered arches protruding from her shoulders. Azrael wondered why the artist had chosen to render her wings with such deep shadows. It makes them look so dark.
To Azrael’s dismay, bells tinkered at her door. She turned and two servants beckoning her to follow. The Queen either was too busy to lead her herself, or couldn’t handle what came next.
Azrael followed the servants into the halls. In far too short a time they led her into the familiar Acceptance chamber. Azrael’s nerves overwhelmed all of her senses. The plain, dark room only added to her sense of impairment. Azrael’s eyes were glazed over, burdened by fear. In darkness, she was blind, not just visually but with the aiding conflicting of her blue and green eyes. She couldn’t judge the morality in those around her, and she didn’t like darkness. So she closed her eyes and listened, but the beat of her heart overtook any attempt to hear footsteps on the other side of the door.
Memories of agony and terror clawed out of the box she had shoved them in and thought that she’d locked up tight. But now, back in this room, she could smell the clinical clean. She could taste the flaccid air and feel the eerie stillness that rang its silence in her ears.
Will my soul slip into the Celestial Plane for good this time? Am I going to die? Will all of this be for nothing?
Her heart only beat faster in response to her nervous mutterings.
The door swung open and light cast into the room like an unwelcome visitor. Azrael’s eyes hardly had time to adjust before the door quickly shut again.
“My, it sure is dreary in here. How does Master get any work done in these conditions?”
The female voice was an odd contrast to what Azrael had been expecting.
Azrael stared blankly as her vision slowly adjusted. A girl stood, with very peculiar eyes that glowed with a life of their own...
A child Hallowed?
The girl silently eyed Azrael for a while with an eerie pupilless stare. She reminded Azrael of the marble woman in her chambers. It was too dark to judge her good or evil, even though a true Hallowed was equally impossible to read. But perhaps a child Hallowed hadn’t quite reached such a state of moral indifference. Azrael called upon her rusty skills of reading body language.
The girl’s stance seemed cocky; perhaps she was still young and naive. But as she stepped forward, her blossoming chest spoke quite contrary to a young age. Dumbly, Azrael realized that this girl could be older than her. Since she was Hallowed, she inherited their abnormal approach to aging which even outmatched an Aedium.
The girl sighed dramatically. “Well, I’m Hyanthia Mitralia. But you can call me Mita.” She extended a hand in greeting, seemingly exasperated with social graces.
It seemed odd to meet a Hallowed who still had their name, but Azrael smiled and regarded Mita’s face-up palms.
Azrael laid her hands on top of the girl’s. The action was significant. Whoever offered their hands palm up was displaying a view of lower rank and value. A Hallowed was of greater stature than a female Windborn, but clearly the girl viewed Azrael as important. Did the position of Princess change her status so much?
Formality extended, Mita withdrew her hands and trotted to the nearest stool. Once seated, she glared. “Well, do you have a name?”
“I’m Azrael.” She let her gaze stray to the floor.
Azrael listened to the soft rasp of her own breath. Mita broke the silence again. “Are you nervous?” She scoffed. “What am I saying, of course you are.”
Mita swung her feet child-like as she considered Azrael with a tilted smile. “How bad does it hurt? I mean, is it like getting cut? Or stabbed with a hot poker? Or maybe it’s not as bad as it seems. You know, I’ve never seen it done before. I’m kind of nervous myself.”
Azrael had never encountered a Hallowed with such an odd temperament. Weren’t they supposed to be religiously trained to iron out emotional responses? Much less immaturity. Azrael inwardly rolled her eyes at the rude string of questions.
“Why are you here?” Azrael asked instead.
Mita seemed surprised at the question. “I’m supposed to learn from Master. You know, tall guy,” she held up a hand to indicate height, “and eyes like mine?” She pointed at both eyes to make sure the point got across.
“Yes... I know him. So, you’re a Hallowed in-training, then?”
Mita nodded enthusiastically.
Light sprawled out into the room once again, startling both girls. The awkward moment was replaced with the somber presence of the Hallowed, and Azrael realized that her anticipation and fear had momentarily subsided with Mita’s arrival. Not anymore... It all came swirling back with a nauseating wave. The time had come.
The Hallowed’s blank gaze zeroed in on Azrael, effectively ignoring Mita as he closed the door behind him. He waved at the uninviting Acceptance table. His presence demanded the respect of a man with many years, yet the unwrinkled hand that slid from the long robe startled her in its eloquence. Azrael looked up into his glowing eyes with a shudder.
“Let us begin,” he said.
The shyness Azrael had felt the first time had left. It was now replaced with fear and a sickly weakness that pulled on her knees until she felt she’d collapse. She undid the thin tether that fastened her robe, lying naked once more on the table, a sacrificial lamb.
With grim familiarity, her ankles and wrists were tightly bound. She felt the watchful eyes of Mita as her blindfold was secured. It felt insulting to have an audience to what could be her last moments. Served simply as a learning experience for another Hallowed who seemed more fascinated than concerned. The thought prickled bumps across her skin.
Azrael didn’t need her sight to know the moment was frighteningly near. A wooden cylinder was placed in her mouth and Azrael bit down onto it.
“Sorry,” Mita murmured. Whether for putting a bit in Azrael’s mouth like a horse, or standing there while Azrael was naked, she wasn’t sure.
The hiss of the iron jar containing Divine Material sneered at the silence. A warm glow in the dank room beat against the backs of her eyelids.
A rustle of wood and metal sounded louder than the greatest thunderbolt in the world. It signified there was no going back now. Azrael stiffened as a cold, wet cloth was wiped over her back to remove oil and sweat. A clinical stink came quickly after along with a cold heat of evaporating ointment.
The first tap of the crude tools sank the raw material deep into her skin. All thoughts of objection were replaced with rage and anguished determination. The hot wave of Divine Material spread over her skin, reaching downwards and inwards with a razor’s edge. It crawled and growled its way through her physical body. It had no subtlety, nothing to ease her into the pain. It didn’t matter that she knew what was coming.
But this time was going to be different. Azrael wasn’t going to let it burn her soul to cinders.
Faster than she would have imagined, the pain welled up with an intensity Azrael wasn’t sure she could bear. It sang with a deadly beat, spearing in rhythmic waves with every tic of the wooden tools that sealed in more and more of the material to her body.
As she steeled herself against the onslaught, she suddenly was no longer alone with the Hallowed and his unseemly apprentice. A new searing flame burned as molten, ethereal fingers grasped her shoulders. Azrael cried out at the fiery explosion of fresh agony.
Fear gripped her at the arrival of the new presence. It was the Light.
Azrael wasn’t in the Celestial Plane. The padding of the Acceptance table stuck to her flesh and sweat trickled down her neck, along with the tiny streams of sticky blood that dripped down her ribs. The smell of burning flesh filled her nostrils.
But the presence of the Light was here. The entity that she had first encountered in the Celestial Plane had come to this reality. The feminine voice was unmistakable; the searing grasp on her shoulders was surreal. Yet, the agonizing tap-tap of the Hallowed’s tools continued without interruption.
The creature’s grasp was hot as coal and strong as steel. She ran her fingers over places newly embedded with Divine Material, sending waves of nausea through Azrael’s body. Azrael groaned, a sob catching in her throat. Azrael knew she couldn’t move, but she thrashed at the restraints anyway.
You could get out of this... so easily...
The coaxing tone in her soul sang through with a singular note. It wasn’t her own; it was placed there by the invader. It overpowered her own will, rushing an unstoppable feeling of power and freedom through her. Azrael felt her skin sizzle with heat, and the pain began to subside.
Like unbearable temptation, Azrael finally gave in to the call of the Light. The wooden chunk disintegrated in her mouth, the bindings burst into flames. She was released from this torture.
Azrael could hear distant shouting. It was panicked and surprised.
That’s it... come to me...
The warmth continued to surge upwards, like a faucet had been left open in her soul. Light poured out, unstoppable and unburdening.
Azrael transcended her flesh as her soul soared as a goddess in the sky. She overlooked the fields and the oceans. She could feel every soul around her reaching across the land and sea. Men raked the soil in the dying sunlight. Women nursed their babies in their sealed off homes. Azrael raised her hands to catch them. They sparked against her fist, but she scooped them all up in one fell swoop. Her hand was as a god’s, grazing across the expanse. She latched onto every single one of their souls and drew on their power.
It was unlike anything Azrael had ever experienced. She felt the harmony of all their souls unite into a single flow. They collided and merged in chaotic thrums. She sucked them in until she was the only one left with a pulse.
It came to an end with a sudden snap. It was as if a delicate strand that had been holding her up was instantly cut. Azrael felt herself falling and growing cold. She was slowly immersed in darkness until there was nothing.
Silence surrounded her, and the ache of her physical body chimed like a weak child. Azrael hid from it, pushing herself against the wall of darkness. Her body wailed for her to come back. She didn’t want to return to the pain, but she was so cold and alone. There was no choice. Azrael reached out.
The pain hit like a wall of thorns. Azrael cried out as fiery coals scorched her back in searing lashes.
A human hand rested on her shoulder, little comfort as it was. Azrael sobbed, crying in her nakedness, bereft of dignity. Azrael cried out for a mother. The only mother she had ever known.
“Majesty, please. Help me...”
The blindfold was undone, and the first sight was the radiance of the Queen. She held Azrael’s chin in her hand and smiled, as if she had heard Azrael’s plea. The Queen’s face was framed by thin smoke streaming off of her skin. Her eyes glowed like a Hallowed’s, and Azrael became lost in their depths. Azrael could see straight into the Queen’s soul, and it was beautiful.
“It’s over my dear. My darling. Rest now.” Azrael knew it was the Queen who used her magic to induce calm and assurance. A blanket of fatigue wafted like a sweet fog. She gladly welcomed a release from the pain and let her body fall into the Queen’s arms as unconsciousness swept her away.
#
AND so Azrael slept, fitful dreams plaguing an otherwise peaceful rest. She would awake groggily for a few moments, only to glimpse a sleeping Mita or a hovering Gabriel. And then she would fall back into unconsciousness once again. It felt like a night that would never end, a sleep that never bade restfulness. Azrael ached from head to toe, and every part of her desperately called out for relief.
Azrael didn’t know if it was the trauma to her body, or a realization of what she had encountered, but death undoubtedly knocked at her door. Azrael refused to answer. Now, it watched her constantly, leaving a stench in the room that would linger.
The dreams were fleeting, always how dreams are. But in that moment, so real and intense. Memories transformed into ethereal sensations of her subconscious.
As if once again on the Hallowed’s table, the scorch of Light wound across her body and dove straight for her soul. The feminine voice goaded a reaction. The ethereal being beckoned and pushed until Azrael would cry out in rage. Then it would all go black, save for one sparkling light in the distance. It was the Queen. But she was nothing but a speck, a reminder that she was there, only if Azrael made the effort to reach her. Whenever Azrael got close, the Queen’s face painted with worry before she vanished, and Azrael was once again left alone in the blackened abyss.
Those were the moments Azrael feared the most. The Light was mocking, searing and vengeful. But the Dark was worse. It was cold and dangerous. It haunted and frightened Azrael. She’d open her eyes wide, but she could see nothing. Every corner was too dark to cast a shadow; every space was filled with a seeping void. Even though she was cold and lonely, there was a presence that promised companionship and relief. Yet the pit of her stomach roiled with fear. Azrael mindlessly rolled into a ball and grabbed her ankles, pulling her knees close to her chest.
This was a world between the nightmares. Something that filled the silence with a deafening low tone...an endless drone of lamentation. While Azrael refused to embrace it, she added her own cry to its song. She bemoaned for her soul.