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“GAVIN, SHE’S A CHILD, YOU CAN’T do this!”
I was standing behind Victor’s leg, peering up at King Gavin as I clung tight. This was my first time in the Celestial Palace, but I’d already heard many stories of what went down in the throne room. Those stories rarely had happy endings.
I was supposed to be graduating from Angel School (the private school all little angels went from from ages three to six where they learned how to be angels as well as be trained for the ranks they would officially assume at eighteen) today. However, little did I know that I wasn’t going to be doing any such thing.
This was all because I finally stood up for myself against an angel that had been taunting me since we started going to school together at the age of three. His name was Jared and he was a son of two Seraphim, a rank that we all would’ve shared had I not come out wrong.
From the moment that I could comprehend their words, all of the archangels, Gavin, my parents, and most of the other angels told me that I was wrong. I was the daughter of two of Gavin’s favorite angels (one of which ran an organization that Gavin strongly endorsed). Gavin blessed my parents since my mother had been having serious infertility issues and Gavin felt that they would’ve made a perfect child - possibly even a prospect for a new archangel. I should’ve been the prime example of what it meant to be an angel, but I wasn’t.
Instead, I was a Defect.
I never understood what it was that warranted the treatment I was given, but I suppose that was my first problem. I didn’t understand that being born on Christmas Day and interacting with the king of Hell or any of his kind were bad things. I didn’t understand that, for the angels, there was no such thing as a victimless crime and they were always the victims no matter what the truth was.
Even when Gavin lost His temper and sent me plummeting through the open circle in the center of the throne room (the one that Gavin used to look down at the world below Him), I didn’t understand what I did wrong. I was just a six-year-old girl that was looking for some semblance of comfort and found it in the one person that I everyone told me I would never find it in.
I know now that it was when I began talking to Victor that I became too dangerous for the angels’ liking. Instead of blindly believing Gavin as I and every other angel in my class at Angel School were taught to do, I began to think for myself. Then, when I began to think for myself, I realized that there actually wasn’t that much truth behind Gavin and His teachings.
As I fell, I heard the sound of gospel music blasting. There was always gospel music playing, but this time it sounded like they were using it to drown out the sound of me begging for my life and Victor losing his temper.
The sad part was that I wasn’t shocked by it. No one ever listened to me. Either no one ever heard me because I was afraid to speak up for myself or no one cared to listen in the first place.
That day, I should have died, but it was because of Lucifer that I didn’t. He couldn’t fix everything - Gavin had taken away my immortality (which Lucifer managed to craft a potion to replace later on) and my ability to fly. Almost all of the bones in my wings had been shattered when I hit the ground and, though Lucifer tried his best, he wasn’t able to completely heal them. The only thing he was able to do was make it where I wouldn’t have to live the rest of my life in excruciating pain.
I was a patient at the demon hospital and kept in a medically-induced coma for six months after that, but I never forgot that moment - my nightmares didn’t allow me to.
When I woke up, I didn’t know much of anything. I had to relearn how to walk, how to get around without my ability to fly, how to teleport now that Victor had given me the power in place of flight.
I think the most painful part was that I didn’t even know who I was anymore. I was no longer one of God’s angels, but I never truly was to begin with. I was no longer a Defect - though the angels would continue to call me that.
I wasn’t sure that I could call myself a fallen angel since I held no characteristics that would label me as one, but I knew I was not a demon. I didn’t know if I belonged in Hell, but I doubted there was any hope of reconciliation with Gavin and the angels.
There was one thing that I did know, though: Gavin, God, and all of the angels were either liars or they didn’t know a quarter as much as they thought they did. The angels weren’t saints and Gavin and His father were not saviors.
I was unaware at the time, but Victor had already made the decision on the night that I fell from Heaven that he was going to take me in as his own. My parents didn’t even put up a fight and I was from that point on the Devil’s daughter.
Oh, and spoiler alert: I still wouldn’t change that fact for the world.
❀
I tried several times to get myself to wake up from the nightmare that I was having, but every time I got close, I saw His face or heard that music again. I couldn’t shake free.
Gavin’s curse - the one that made it where I couldn’t hear His name, hear the name of His realm or hear any of the music about Him or His father without forcing me into as close to a seizure-like state than an angel could be in and making my blood begin to literally boil - was making sure of that.