Page 81 of Light Magic

“It has been so long, Leviathan,” Ylena said, her tone almost eerie. “I heard you were helping Ariella.”

I snapped my head to her. “What?”

Levi turned to me and grabbed my shoulders. “Remember I wanted to tell you something a couple of days ago?”

I nodded, confused. “What does that have to do with this?”

“Everything!” he almost shouted. “Fuck it. You’ll hate me again anyway. Ariella, Ylena is?—”

“I’m his mother,” Ylena said.

I blinked, I shook my head, I almost fell back. What? That didn’t make sense. Ylena was an archangel and she was thousands of years old. She went through the academy when she was young, and she had become sterile then …

But Levi was twenty-eight.

I took a step back. “It can’t be.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Ylena said. “That I can’t have children. It turns out, I can. I am the only angel who went through the academy who still can.” She took a couple of steps closer.

Levi retreated, taking me with him. I was too numb to protest. “Stay back!”

“You see,” she went on, ignoring him. “I created that rule over a thousand years ago when I had my first child. He had become one of the most powerful angels I had ever seen. One day, we went on a mission together, but we underestimated our enemies. I got distracted, trying to protect him, and let our enemy win. Adona almost stripped me of my rank. Not long after, he died in battle while I was benched.”

“So, you proposed the sterilization process,” I muttered.

She nodded. “Adona and the other archangels thought it was a marvelous idea.”

“But you didn’t go through the process.”

“I should have, but I think I was too distraught. I felt like … if I went through the process, then it was like I never had my son.” She swallowed hard. “That was when my hatred for Adona gained roots.”

My jaw slacked. “What?”

“You’re the one behind it all, not Rhodes,” Levi said, sounding as stunned as I was.

“I shouldn’t feel pride for your intelligence, alas …” She shrugged.

Levi snarled. “You don’t feel anything, bitch. If you did, you wouldn’t abandon a baby minutes after he was born.”

“When you were in my stomach, I could feel you were ninety-nine percent demon and almost nothing angel,” she barked back. “I wanted nothing to do with you.”

Levi tried to hide it, but he flinched. “How about not sleeping with a demon in the first place?”

“As if you haven't slept with the wrong person before.”

I stared at them, trying to process what they were saying, what was happening here, and I felt like I was drowning in molasses.

It was Ylena who started all of this. She was the one who wanted to take over Elysium. She had recruited Rhodes and the others.

And to top it all, she had slept with the enemy and had his child.

Levi knew Ylena was his mother, but he hadn’t known she was the one who had?—

I gasped. “You sent me on that mission to die!”

“I didn’t!” Ylena shouted. “I had sent Cyan, but he couldn’t go so you volunteered! I told Soren that you weren’t qualified enough to go, a lie, to get you out of it, but Soren thought you were amazing, so he took you. Before you left, I was already mourning you.”

I took a large step back, my chest heaving, my heart hurting.

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