Page 134 of Even Angels fall
We have time before we get that second wedding, but I won’t dwell on it tonight. I retrieved Michaël’s holo so Léandre’s brain is safe, Brice’s team has been found, and everyone is alive. There are still Raphaël and maybe my brother to contend with, but they’re a problem for another day.
Until then, I’ll just enjoy the little moments of happiness like tonight.
The End
Epilogue
Cassiopé
I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not a warrior. I’ve never been on a mission for Elhyor or my dad, and yet, I left them no other choice and joined the recovery team.
Léandre tried to come with us, but wasn’t authorized.
White wings—especially with red tips—are kinda hard to miss in basements and dungeons and no one wanted to take the risk of being spotted because of him, so he stayed and they let me come.
Or so I—and everyone else—thought. He covered himself with mud and caught up to us before we got inside the castle.
I wanted to be here so badly, but now, I’m regretting it a bit.
Why?
Because everything went smoothly. The hidden entrance was right where Anna told it was. Only a dozen guards were stationed around the castle, and only half that were in the dungeons.
It was bloody. Obviously, it was bloody. We came flying in our fully shifted form so no one had any weapons. We didn’t even have clothes to dress once we arrived, so imagine the carnage we did with fangs and claws.
Nothing is pretty, and Léandre’s wing tips are right at home in the newly painted in red dungeons.
Marcus was in the dungeons. The rest of the team was in the dungeons.
But we still haven’t found my father and when I see the state that we found the survivors in, I’m starting to fear that he might be dead.
I’ve walked the dungeons in every direction. I’ve opened every door in the basement. I’ve found contraptions that seemed to be pulled right out of torture books.
I’ve found human remains. I’ve found shifters covered in their own excrements with missing limbs.
I’ve found any nightmare I could conjure and yet I feel like the worst nightmare is yet to come.
“Here,” someone yells from somewhere above me in the castle.
I know deep in my mind what they have found, so I run.
I probably should be careful, because I’m naked, not wearing shoes, and—most of all—because the ground is covered in blood. I almost fall on my butt twice before I have even reached the door to the inhabitable levels.
I have a mind to find something to wear or at least to clean my feet when I pass the door so as not to destroy the castle by smearing blood everywhere, but no one had that consideration before me. There are bloody footprints everywhere, but it’s not just that, all the castle smells like a mix of bleach and blood. This is definitely not the first time this castle is seeing blood.
I have no doubt it saw blood at the time it was built—French kings were rarely very merciful—but this is recent and pungent.
It makes me want to vomit.
I follow the voices up on the first floor—and the footprints—and face a group of five warriors all around one door.
They are whispering and I can’t hear what they’re saying, but the tone is one that doesn’t give me high hope for what—or who—they’re talking about.
No one seems to want to cross the threshold of that door, as if whatever is going on inside could attack them or infect them.
I know what is inside. I know who is inside.
“Let me see him.”
