Page 45 of Angel's Enemy Omega

Nur lets his hand fall. “Of course.”

“You can see into the aether?” Arsene asks.

“It’s part of my nature. All hollows are close to the aether.”

Arsene sits back down with a sigh. “It shouldn’t matter out here. I’m a hundred leagues from home. No one will lock me in a closet if another living creature sees my wings.”

Nur chuckles at the idea of anyone putting the brawny angel in a closet, until he realizes Arsene isn’t joking. “You would let them do that?”

Arsene flicks a strand of hair out of his face and frowns coolly. “Of course not—that’s a pup’s punishment. I’d be more likely to get a dressing-down from my commander on the subject of indecency. Not that I’d be caught in that position. Haven’t you ever been disciplined?”

“The King’s army is more about the whip and chain than a dressing-down,” Nur says dryly, sitting next to him. Arsene’s wings brush his arm and he shivers. “If I was ever a pup, no one but time remembers what I would have been punished for.”

“You don’t know your own origins?”

Unbearable light. Endless snow. Burning away from the inside, unable to die.Nur pushes the flickers of memory away.“What is there to know? As far as I’m concerned, my life began when I met the King and he gave me a purpose. Before that I was just a ghost.”

“You’re anything but a ghost now.” Arsene’s arrogant brow softens, his eyes turning pensive. “Sometimes I think it would be better not to be burdened by our pasts.”

Nur shrugs. “The universe remembers, though. The soul remembers. Whatever acts I committed in the past to be reborn as this…someone, somewhere, knows the truth.” He gestures to his face, lip twisting at the sight of his own scarred hand. Hands that have killed, a mouth that devours.

Arsene catches his hand. The warmth of his fingers is shocking. “Your nature is not your fault.”

Nur looks away, dizzy from the heat of Arsene’s stare. “Save your sympathy for someone who’s innocent.”

Arsene doesn’t let go, tracing the fine, overlapping lines with a gentle touch that makes Nur’s heart want to crawl out of his throat. He pulls his hand out of Arsene’s grip, ignoring the burst of desire that swells in the pit of his stomach.

The temperature falls. Ice crystals gather in a halo around the moon. The stars of both realms gleam like pricks from the point of a knife. But Nur isn’t cold anymore—Arsene’s wings encircle them, creating a haven of warmth.

Arsene flips the comb between his fingers, making it wink in the moonlight. Backward. Forward. Backward. He hisses suddenly and drops it with a clatter. The smell of coppery blood hits Nur immediately and saliva gathers on his tongue. To distract himself, he fetches the comb and brushes the dirt off its gleaming surface.

Arsene puts his finger in his mouth and sucks the blood off. When Nur hands him the comb he takes it with a rueful smile.

“I stole this from the sentinel house before I left.”

“Not always a rule-follower, then,” Nur replies.

“There are so many rules in New Yden, it’s impossible not to break some. But there are even more you’ll end up following unwittingly, so perhaps that’s the Council’s goal.”

“To create so many rules that the average person abides by them simply by virtue of existing?” Nur snorts. “Rule one—breathe.”

“Rule two—eat.” Arsene returns his smirk.

“Rule three…be assured of your peoples’ superiority.” Nur nudges Arsene in the ribs with his elbow.

“Naturally. Rule four would be to kill any demon you come across.”

“And rule five would be to do what the Seraphim Council says, I suppose.”

“Exactly.” Arsene’s smirk twists into something unhappier. “And so on. Accept your assignments without question. Don’t indulge in unnecessary connections. Be loyal to the Council and the High Prince. Don’t tell our secrets to those outside New Yden.” He lists them on his fingers. “I never heard so many rules spoken aloud until I entered the sentinel house. I was eager to do whatever the Council required of me to become a sentinel. I believed I was a lawful citizen. But they treated us as if we were disobedient by nature, making us repeat them over and over.”

“You’re speaking secrets now,” Nur points out to deflect from how Arsene’s admission disturbs him.

“As we established, I’m not always a rule-follower.” Arsene shrugs. “I was ejected from the program for a reason.”

“So what rule did you break?”

“I asked too many questions. Such as…why do we recite the rules every day?” Arsene’s gaze turns faraway. “And I didn’t like the punishments.”

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