Page 64 of Even Angels fall
Those wings are pure beauty, but they’re also as dark as the night and shimmering like the stars.
She’s coated in her own blood and moves like a demon.
She’s a sight to behold.
She’s magnificent.
And, as her kind calls them, she’s one of the fallen.
She looks more like a queen than a fallen angel. A warrior queen. My queen.
And she deserves her nickname more than I thought when I picked it for her.
But when I see one of the men grab her around the neck, I decide I’ve seen enough.
“ENOUGH,” I roar as I walk to the pile of men surrounding Angélique. I grip the man who tried to strangle her by the collar and throw him away from the group.
The noise hadn’t died down immediately, but it only takes a few seconds before theparvisbecomes eerily silent; the onlysound resonating is Angélique’s harsh breathing and maybe mine.
My skin has started to itch, and I can feel that my claws have extended without me willing them to do so.
I want to burn them all.
I can already smell fire, see smoke. My vision is hazy, and if I don’t do something fast, the small tendrils of smoke that are slipping from my nose and rolling across my face will turn into a full inferno.
“Who dared touch my wife?” I bellow, and I barely recognize my own voice. It’s so scratchy and so much deeper than I’m used to.
I take in the people around her, but I want Bastian—the leader ofLibération—tocome forth.
I’ve never known the man to cower, and I don’t even know which one of the two of us he is the most scared of—me or her—right now, but the man advances on shaky legs as he walks to me.
“I’m not your wife,” Angélique spits at me.
“Yet, Little Devil. Very soon you will be. Very soon you’ll be mine,” I answer her, without looking at Bastian, still walking slowly toward me, and I can feel the words vibrate inside of me.
I finally turn to Bastian.
“Who is your second in command?”
I see a woman raising her hand, in an annoyed gesture, in the front row of the crowd as Bastian says her name. “Christina.”
“Good. She’s just been promoted,” I say with a snarl.
I see recognition in his eyes as I open my mouth to let my fire flow from my mouth in a white hot flame.
It doesn’t take long for the fire to eat at his skin and bones. He doesn’t even have time to scream before it’s over.
“May that serve as a lesson,” I tell the crowd and the new leader ofLibération, “Whoever comes for my wife, whoevercomes for what’s mine, will taste my fire. If they don’t taste her daggers first.”
I hold my hand out to her, and I see a spark in her eyes that tells me that she doesn’t totally agree with what I just said, but that she understands the power of appearances, so she slowly switches her daggers to one hand and gives me the other.
The hand that I pierced not so long ago.
“Elhyor? Can we—”
“Not now. We’ll talk later. Take care of your wounded and dead.” I cut Christina off mid-sentence and turn to walk back to my home, with a future I’m now scared to believe in.
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