Gabe let out a broken laugh before he pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “That’s our girl.”
I saw the mirth dancing in Steele’s eyes momentarily before he snapped back into commander mode. “She needs to be moved to somewhere she can rest in peace. Now.” His hand lingered at my chin a moment longer before he shifted, scanning the field for threats.
My gaze drifted past him to the decapitated body sprawled in the dirt just feet away. My father.
Snow-white robes soaked scarlet. Wings bent and broken against stone. His head laid apart from his body, severed clean by Steele’s blade, his once-proud features twisted in death. His hair spilled across the ground so bright red and vivid it could have been blood itself.
The sight made my stomach twist, but I couldn’t look away.
Red was everywhere: on his robes, in the cracks of the ground, heavy in the air with the iron tang of angel blood.
He had always seemed larger than life, untouchable, eternal. Now he was just another body cooling on the floor. An Archangel of Alfemir…dead.
I would never know if he could have been the person I needed as a father without the upper triad’s involvement in shaping this world. Perhaps without their ideologies and penance for killing all that stood in their way as the Archangel’s guide, he could have seen things differently.
My fists drew closed tightly as I let out a shaky breath.No. He was an evil man all on his own.
There was no commandant to treat his wife and daughter like the dirt beneath his feet. There was no excuse for him being so terrible that his own soulmate took her life to be rid of him.
Memories cut through me, sharp as glass. My mother’s hidden bruises. Shadows I hadn’t seen for what they were. His voice, smooth with false kindness, condemning me before all of Alfemir when I stumbled in the placement tests. Unworthy and weak, according to him.
The sting of his palm on my cheek. The copper taste of blood on my tongue. His eyes gleaming as he named me a failure, time after time.
He wanted that. He wanted me broken and gone. And now he was the one sprawled across the ground, his head lying apart from his body.
A twisted sense of satisfaction coursed through me. There would be no grief. No mourning. Only the truth: he would never lay another hand on me, and I would never allow someone to tell me my worth ever again.
Steele gave me the biggest gift with that blow from his weapon. Amidst the grief of what happened to my mother, and needing to process my own father killing me, there was still an immense weight lifted with the knowledge that he was gone now.
Steele’s hand lifted to my shoulder and squeezed. As our gazes locked, he offered a small nod of affirmation as his eyes shone with unspoken words:You’re safe now.
The sounds of battle remained, loud but fading as it drew away from our area. Wyverns trapped the Archangels between them and forced them onto the ground. Once revered leaders were forced to their knees in filth, feathers bent and broken, their weapons torn from their hands and cast aside like scraps.
Their voices followed, guttural and raw, echoing across the space.
“Release us!” one bellowed, thrashing as a wyvern crushed his arm beneath a talon.
“You dare hold us?” another roared.
“You will burn for this!” a third spat, silenced when fire seared the stone an inch from his face.
The sounds of struggle were worse than the battle itself: bones snapping and anguished screams rising beneath a sky streaked gold and crimson.
And around them, the majority of the Alfemir citizens faltered, even the low-ranking soldiers. Blades slipped from trembling hands as the law and order the Archangels clung to suddenly evaporated. No one was looking at their leaders with awe anymore.
There was only fear.
Whispers rippled through the crowd, urgent and shaking.
The Archangels have fallen.
The Archangels are prisoners.
They’ve lied to us all.
A few darted glances toward me, eyes wide and uncertain, as though they couldn’t decide whether to recoil or kneel. All that remained was disbelief in their expressions as every gaze turned to us, to the ones who brought this ruin down upon them and the might of Alfemir.
Before I could blink, suddenly all of my guys stood in front of me, forming a line as Gabe continued supporting my weight. Niz hissed from the sky right above us, daring any of them to make a move against us.
