Page 21 of Angel's Vengeance

He lifted his eyes to the sky, asking for patience from mages knew whom, and sighed.“We can return.”

When she didn’t say anything immediately, he risked a glance at her and was pleased to see that she had taken up stride next to him.

He was even more pleased to see that full lower lip twitching as she fought for how to react to his offer.Was there a smile struggling to break free?

And more distressingly ...Why the hell did he care?

His chest contracted with a strange sense of pride at the success of his tactic.Yes, it was his method for getting her to do as he wanted that pleased him.Thatfit, even if his logic didn’t entirely feel as right as it used to.Still, he had to remind himself why they were there and what real success would mean for him and the others.

Neela took a deep breath.“Okay, so ...origin story.Well, for as long as I can remember, I’ve always lived underground, like the rest of my kind.And for most of that time, I viewed it more as a sanctuary than a restriction.Wherever Cyro and the others migrated to, it always came with a special secluded area just for me.I didn’t know any different, you know?Despite the circumstances of our living arrangements, whether they were prolific or sparse, I always had spacious accommodations with free-roaming access to any parts of the hideaway that I wished.But after a while, things just felt ...weird.I began to question why there were no others like me.No females, I mean.I even wondered why I didn’t share any of the features common among the male charmers, outside of my eye color, that is, and even that is a shade or two off from the rest of my kind.”

Rhode nodded.“I noticed as much.”

“Yeah, kind of hard to miss.”She unzipped the upper part of her coat and exposed the bare column of her throat.“No gold bands either.Or swirling gold and dark teal tattoos covering every inch of my skin.And let’s not forget”—Neela grabbed a fistful of her curls—“I ain’t bald.”

A sharp traitorous chuckle pushed against the seal of his lips, but he managed to swallow it down.“No, you are not.”

“My conversations with the other charmers were always minimal at best.I got the sense they tolerated me as much as anyone who was forced to interact with neighbors in the same apartment building.But the relationships always just kind of hung there, you know?Real surface-level stuff.Still, I didn’t mind so much.We all had the same goals, the same understanding, the same way of life, for the most part.”

“You make it sound like some sort of nomadic colony.”

“In a way, it sort of was, I guess, except I didn’t have the same tasks as the others, nor was I treated the same.I never knew why.And then, one day, Cyro called for me.”

Rhode’s footing faltered, but he quickly caught himself and hid the misstep under the guise of adjusting his posture.

“It was not long after my inception that he wanted to speak with me.”

“Inception?”

“What you would call our birth.I would say it was about a year or so after that.”

“He waited that long to speak with you?As in,everspeaking to you?”

“We’re not a particularly chatty crew.Our existence is more utilitarian than that of the mortals.Don’t get me wrong, we conversed when needed to accomplish tasks or convey information, but beyond that, things were pretty quiet.Some charmers, however, show signs of disease in that first year following inception.We don’t know why, but not everyone makes it to their first or second year of life.Perhaps it has something to do with the part of himself Cyro chooses to create us from or the strength of the dark magic he uses during the casting.Who knows?But a year is kind of a big deal for us.So, shortly after I made it through my first year, he called for me.”

Neela stopped in front of a tall maple tree and ran her fingers over its brown and tan bark.The particular genus wasn’t one Rhode could even easily pronounce, but she seemed to recognize it instantly.“Cyro handed me a stone and instructed me to portal to the surface and place it at the base of the nearest tree.That was all.Once I did that, I was supposed to open a portal and return.”An errant piece of bark had begun to peel from the trunk, and she swiped a thumb over it, trying to reunite it with its home.“I couldn’t portal.I tried, in addition to other charmers helping me, along with Cyro himself, but none of us could get the magic to work on me.When he finally ordered me to take the stairs to the surface instead, I was elated because at leastthiswas a task I could do.If I couldn’t portal, I could sure as hell climb some freaking stairs.So I scrambled up the stone steps, eager as anything, flung the door open, and immediately screamed my head off at the shock of it all.”She took a deep breath.When her voice returned, it resonated with heavy pain.“It was pure daylight outside.Before either of us knew my capabilities, he sent me into the heat of the sun with no warning, no explanation for how he expected me to complete this task without succumbing to the light or why I was even called upon to do so in the first place.None.”

Rhode’s jaw ticked.“He was grooming you.”

“You could say that, yeah.”Then she turned her back to the tree and let the great maple support her.“But at the time, I was just so eager to be useful, I couldn’t see beyond my sire’s disappointment or the disappointment of the others.”A flicker of hurt crinkled the corners of her eyes.“Then he tried to kill me.”

Rhode’s muscles stiffened.“What?”

“Over and over again.”The ghost of something harshly familiar danced within her eyes, but she blinked it away before he could identify it fully.“I’ve been set on fire, drowned, electrocuted, all by his dark magic.Charmers I knew my whole life were tasked with holding me down, forcing me to drink all manner of vile potions, you name it.At one point, he even tried to dissolve me particle by particle by placing me in some magical chamber.”

Somehow, even the forest knew to quell its tranquility, though Rhode hadn’t realized a thing was possible.The birds winter hadn’t yet managed to chase away even choked off their subtle squawks.It was as if no sound existed ...except the thundering blood pounding a war drum in his ears.

“But my sire isn’t a fool and doesn’t tolerate failure for long.He figured out that something in my inception process had been different.Whatever object he’d nabbed from that battlefield and used to create me didn’t give him the end result he desired.He’d also learned, through lots of fucking trial and error, that not only was I not what he was hoping for but that I also couldn’t be killed, in the sunlight or otherwise.”

Rhode clenched his fists and stuffed them in his coat pockets.He wouldnotsay anything.He wouldnotask the thousand questions lighting his tongue on fire.

“It was determined that, ultimately, I wasn’t just powerless, but power didn’t work on me in general.No magic, no spells, nothing.But because celestial angel fire is the only thing that can truly destroy a charmer, as you so helpfully pointed out earlier, and it’s not like Cyro can touch the stuff or even have access to it without torching himself, he was left with a wonderfully immortal and utterly worthless creation.Something that reminded him on the daily how much of a failure his highest hope had been.So, what does anyone do with their skeletons?They build a huge state-of-the-art decked-out closet for the suckers and shove them in there good and tight.And over time, if those skeletons are lucky and quiet and promise not to disrupt anything or get in the way, they’re given bits of freedom around the grounds but never more than that.I’m allowed to be helpful, so long as I never remind him of just how harmful I truly am.”

“Why?”Rhode breathed out, though he wasn’t entirely sure what he was asking.Why did you stay?Why didn’t you fight back?Why are you truly telling me all of this, despite my asking you to?You could lie.I’d know if you lied.And then ...Pleasefucking lie to me.

Thankfully, Neela seemed to read his scattered thoughts.“I stayed because, even with my limited freedom, I still had my plants.Growing, breathing things that relied on me to keep going each day.When some would overgrow their pots, they needed me to transplant them into an environment they’d flourish in.When some branches or leaves would show evidence of disease, they needed me to prune away the pestilence for their flowers to bloom.To them, I was useful.I wasn’t some grand mistake that didn’t deserve to take up space.I was vital in a way, and to me, that feeling went both ways.”Her throat worked on a swallow, and his eyes snapped to the slender column that she hadn’t yet zipped back up from the elements.Tiny goose bumps dotted her delicate flesh, and his nostrils flared.

She took a deep breath, one that sobered as well as strengthened.“It took an eternity, but eventually, once Cyro realized I wasn’t going anywhere and, likewise, couldn’t interfere with his plans in any meaningful way, I begged him to let me care for something else, something that brought me a new type of joy that tending to my plants couldn’t quite achieve.”Then she flicked those golden eyes to him, and her attention struck him so hard, he had to take a step back.“Not something else, exactly, but someoneelse.”

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