Page 16 of Azriel

He looked up at her. “I don’t want to go to the Fallen realm and live in a place ravaged by war.”

“I don’t mean that. Uh, fairies exist too.”

Nothing could truly shock him at this point, but he blinked at her. “Wha-?”

“Fairies are real too. Your Father met one here, and…it’s Mr. Lambin. He came here with me to set up a new shop. Your Father said it would be easier if you went to the fairy realm someday because while the fairies don’t particularly like your kind or demons, you could live there. They don’t mind humans to an extent. Some fairies even marry humans once in a while. Your long lifespan wouldn’t seem so strange, and…you could live a fairly normal life. The fairies don’t live that long, but you could possibly find a wife and have kids. The people there wouldn’t think you’re the devil when you turn a hundred and still look the same age as you are now.”

“So she’d die before me too?”

“Yes, but…you could have some normal life at least. I’m not sure what a quarter angel would be like. Maybe they don’t live that long, but you could have someone even when I’m dead and gone.” Mother looked away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you. I wanted you to have as much normalcy as possible.”

“You tried to convince me to find a wife!” he exclaimed.

“If you did, I’d tell you. Maybe she could move to the fairy world with you. I know you can’t stay here forever, but I wanted to keep you as long as possible. If you go there…Mr. Lambin told me about it, and since it seems so amazing, I thought you might not want to return. If you were mad at me, you might not even want to visit and talk to me again. There’s magic and different kinds of people there. I’m sorry, son. It grew harder the older you got, and Mr. Lambin thinks I should have told you already so you can decide what to do.”

“Do Ihaveto go now?” he asked.

“No, but once you hit forty or forty-five, you’ll probably still look twenty,” she replied. “You’ll start to seem suspicious. You could move around and lie about your age, but in the fairy world, you could have a permanent home. You can’t feed or do magic, but your neighbors would get used to you, and nobody would care in a hundred years when you still look young.”

He pushed away his plate and thought for a minute. “I’m not running off and never speaking to you again, Mother. I still wish you had been honest earlier, but…I guess I can see why. No one else knows?”

“No, and I couldn’t tell my parents the truth,” she said. “I’d look insane if I said I had sex with an angel and smoke appeared.”

He fiddled with his fork. “Why couldn’t he have stayed around? Even if you didn’t get married, why couldn’t he at least come visit me? Why not come in the later years?”

“He didn’t want a child.” Mother picked up her glass of water. “Some human men are like that too, and if they accidentally get a woman pregnant, they’ll leave her. The man doesn’t have to carry the baby, so it’s easier for him to walk away. He saw me as easy, I fell for him, and I was left with the consequences. But if I had to go back and relive my life, I’d do it all again because I never regretted having you, Vali.”

Azriel

The window was dark when Azriel finally woke up, but Vali must have come up earlier since a lantern burned on the stone square that sat on his bedside table. Azriel almost couldn’t believe he had slept for so long and still felt tired.

But he hadn’t slept enough lately, and what little rest he did get was shitty and often filled with nightmares. He had been on edge since he’d gotten the notice that his time in the army was approaching. The edge had only grown sharper and narrower after the incident with Unvern.

This was the first time in a while that he’d felt safe in any way at all. Vali could have tried to kill or hurt him, but he’d seemed genuinely concerned.

He tensed as Vali entered the room with an expression that he couldn’t quite decipher.

“I asked her,” he said in a low voice without preamble as soon as the door was shut. “My Father was an angel.”

Azriel blinked at him. “Oh. I wasn’t lying.”

“I didn’t think you were lying, but I thought maybe you made a mistake. If orange hair isn’t abnormal in your world, it didn’t have to mean that I was a nephilim.”

Vali came around the bed to sit on the edge. “She told me my Father was honest about what he was, and he seemed great in her eyes since she was nineteen. She thought they had something special, but he didn’t want kids or to marry a human woman. He gave her a ton of money and left. I was a mistake to him, and one that he was quite eager to walk away from.”

He looked so dejected by it, Azriel felt guilty as if he’d been the one to run off. Not that he had any kids, thank the Heavens.

Vali flopped backward on the bed. “At least I have time here. Mother says I can live in the fairy world in the future when it becomes too obvious that I never seem to age.”

Azriel fiddled with a loose thread on his sleeve. “How does she know about that place?”

“There’s a fairy that lives in town. He knew my Father although not very well, and he knows what I am. Mother said he’s a rifter, and that means he can make rip between the realms. Er, I’m not really sure how that works. Anyway, that means I could go see the fairy realm, but I’m not leaving Mother right now, and I think I’ve had enough of new stuff for the moment. She told me about the war too since Father discussed that. I can see why you left.”

Azriel looked away. It was so much more than that.

“Do you feel better now that you slept?” asked Vali.

“I’m still tired. I want to sleep some more.”

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