Page 77 of The Fallen
I’m the last person to believe in the divinity of Angels, but Azrael is stunningly beautiful, with her white-blonde hair down to her slim waist and genuine, no-shit heart-shaped face. Even her starkly Angelic white eyes can’t detract from her full mouth and sharp, model-esque cheekbones. She would have looked more fae princess than human in her Before state. Plus, she’s the same height as me, long in the legs and torso, which rarely ever happens.
None of that matters, obviously. Azrael could be the most hideous creature on this earth for all I care, and in some ways, she is, because even looking at an Angel can make me feel vaguely disturbed. I know too much about where they come from to ever be entirely comfortable being in the vicinity of one.
But still, I can’t help thinking that if I’d seen her in a bar when she was human, I’d have taken her home with me for a completely different set of reasons.
Eve and Adam are staring at Azrael in a mix of outright dismay and, in Eve’s case, mild hatred. Azrael, sensing Eve’s decidedly hostile reception, turns the full power of her scowl on my sister. I think she even hitches it up by a couple of notches. Whoever taught her how to convey her dislike via bitchfacedeserves at least three gold stars because wow, that shit is genuinely intimidating. Even my sister seems cowed by it, which is no small feat because that woman is an equal combination of both formidable and spiteful when she wants to be.
When Azrael continues to scowl her little heart out, Eve purposefully scoots away from her and drops her gaze to the table.
Score one for Azrael.
“Okay.” I try not to sound joyful about Azrael’s defeat of my sister. “Intro time. Azrael, this is Eve and Adam.” I lean towards her and lower my voice to stage-whisper, “Don’t worry, they already know all about your dark past, and they absolutely want to be your new best friends. Just don’t smite them; they don’t like that shit.”
Eve cuffs me over the back of the head and rolls her eyes. Adam, my fairer sibling, snorts out a laugh.
“Does anyoneliketo be smote?” Azrael asks, speaking for the first time in her low, melodic rumble. She seems perplexed by the idea.
Adam makes a thoughtful humming sound. “Depends on what ‘smiting’ is a euphemism for.” He waggles his eyebrows like a tosser and gets a flick to the forehead from me as punishment. He jerks backwards, slapping a hand over his own face and serving me a look of betrayal through his fingers.
“Don’t be crass to our guest, please,” I say primly, ignoring his whinging about violent sisters and who the fuck’s idea it was to invent them, turning my attention to Azrael again. “Do you want some tea?” I hold up my cup, brandishing it at her like I think she won’t know what I’m talking about.
Azrael still seems puzzled by the back-and-forth between my siblings and me, but she rallies fast enough. “No, I don’t need it.” Then she adds as if she thinksIwon’t know, “Angels don’t need to eat or drink to survive.”
“I didn’t ask if you needed it to survive, Az,” I say slowly, my heart clenching inside my chest at the idea she doesn’t understand there’s anything other than survival that matters. “I asked if youwantedsome.” I tap my ear with two fingers, winking at her. “Gotta listen, babe.”
“Oh, blimey,” Eve groans, wrinkling her nose like I’ve just done something truly distasteful. “She just gave it a nicknameanda pet name. It’s only been here one night!”
“Don’t call her an ‘it,’” I scold more fiercely than I thought I felt about it. Uh-oh.
Eve shoots a beseeching look at Adam, smacking her hands down on the table. “This is how it happens, then. This is how we all finally get murdered by Michael and his fan club, all becausesomebody”—she glares daggers at me, like we wouldn’t all have clarity over who she’s talking about—“wants to fuck an Angel.”
Adam sighs dramatically and bobs his head in agreement. “We’re doomed.” Although he can’t be that cut up about it, because he took the opportunity of my distraction to nab a piece of my brownie, the blastedfiend.
“I don’t know if I want tea,” Azrael interrupts, her mind still caught up on a whole other plain of conversational existence. She’s frowning now, which is less severe than her scowl but not by much, her pretty mouth tugged to the side like she’s resisting the urge to gnaw on it with those perfect teeth. She must have been a regular at the dentist in her Before life or something. No human justhasteeth that straight and white without any sort of dedicated intervention.
“What do you mean?” I ask, intrigued by her strange response.
Azrael tilts her head at me like a confused puppy, and I refuse to think of it as cute. Re-fucking-fuse, I say.
“I haven’t had it before,” she tells me.
“Not even once in all this time?” I ask, stunned. Angels are creatures of order and service, but they do have free will as proven by Azrael’s defection.
Azrael shrugs her shoulders. They’re slimmer than mine although I wouldn’t call her skinny by any means. She has defined muscle in her biceps that I absolutely donotwant to bite into, leaving a claiming mark on her creamy skin, thanks for asking. Bruises and bite marks would look good on her, but that’s inappropriate, so we won’t think about that, will we? Nope.
“Never needed it,” she explains haplessly, “so I didn’t have it.” And there’s no point asking about her Before, because she wouldn’t know it if she discovered the original tea leaf, let alone ever drank the stuff.
“Ah, okay, gotcha.” I nod. Then I peer at her consideringly and ask, “Do you wanna try it, though?”
I’m not sure why this is turning into such a thing, or why I seem to give a shit if this random Angel wants tea or not, except it really feels like a big thing. Angels have so much taken from them; the second they’re chosen, everything they were or could have ever been ceases to exist, all of it drained away like water disappearing down the drain of a bath. If I can just give this one small bit of humanity back to her, even if it’s something as small as her opinion on tea, then, at least to me, that’s worth doing.
Azrael hesitates at the question, seeming more than a little unsure of how to answer as if she’s forgotten what it’s like to feel desire in any capacity.
After a silence that is far too heavy given the fact we’re talking about bloody tea, Azrael dips her chin slightly. “Alright.” Then she seems to gain confidence in her decision, and she nods again, more firmly this time. “I want to try it.”
I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face. It’s such a tiny act of defiance, but that’s exactly what it is, and I wasthe original rebel, so I would know. Unless you count Lucifer, I guess, if you want to be all pedantic about it.
Azrael doesn’t smile back at me, but there’s a softness to her expression that feels like a win anyway.
