“Please,” I whispered to their backs, “please don’t hide me away. I want them to see me. I’m done hiding who I am and what I stand for.”
Slowly and begrudgingly, they moved inch by inch, parting just enough for me to see the gathering crowd once more. The angels’ stares clung to us all, thousands of eyes heavy with questions. They weren’t just looking at me anymore. They were looking at the men who stood at my side, the men who had led an army of wyverns to my rescue.
The panicked voices turned to whispers and then to nothing. In the place of nervous sound came silence, heavy and taut, the kind that waits to see who will speak first in the aftermath of such wreckage.
The crowd parted as two familiar figures strode through.
Gabe’s arms went rigid around me. His breath stuttered, blood draining from his face. For a heartbeat, I thought he might let go of me altogether, his whole body locked stiff as stone.
The first was an Archangel I knew well. She was in a white military uniform, silver trim flashing in the last light of the sun. Dark hair whipped in the wind as wary glances were tossed herway. White wings were tucked against her back, casting long shadows across the carnage as she crossed the space to us.
I wasn’t sure her thoughts or what side she would take, but nonetheless, I was glad she was here to see Gabe. Her son. I remembered vividly how distraught his parents were at his funeral, and now they would be reunited.
Beside her was his dad. His tunic hung torn, blood spattered across the front, leathers scuffed and worn from the fight.
“Hey, Dad,” Gabe whispered, the word scraped raw from his throat.
As soon as he spoke, his father’s eyes changed from disbelief into warmth. They burned, wet with unshed tears from grief and shock, I’m sure.
Gabe’s grip on me tightened as his attention switched to the Archangel. His whispered word was drenched with warning.
“Mom.”
2
GABE
I couldn’t seemto get my feet to move at first. The battlefield was still chaotic with wyvern wings cutting through the smoke above and some soldiers scattering in confusion, but all I could see were the two figures walking toward us.
My parents.
For years, I’d told myself they were gone to me. That the night I vanished, the night Noah smuggled me out of Alfemir, was the last time I would ever even think of them without pain gnawing at my chest. But here they were. Flesh and blood.
My heart stuttered, unsure how to feel, or how to act around them. After all, they went all these years thinking I was dead.
My mother’s dark hair was whipped wild by the wind, her uniform still pristine despite the blood staining the ground around us. Her expression was taut with the cool detachment of an Archangel, but I knew that mask—I’d grown up with it. My father, by contrast, looked shaken, grief and shock etched into every line of his face.
“Gabriel?” My father’s voice broke in a way that it hadn’t in all the years I lived with him. His eyes searched me as if I were some phantom, on the cusp of fading if he blinked. “How? This isn’t possible. We buried you. We mourned you.”
My throat closed tight. The urge to go to them, to let them hold me the way they had when I was small and scared, slammed into me so hard my chest ached. For a moment I wanted to let myself believe it…that I could fall into their arms and pretend I’d never been without them in the first place.
But then my gaze flicked over my shoulder to Kieran, swaying on her feet, Steele’s steady hand at her back. My eyes settled on the faint scar at her throat and my stomach knotted. She was nearly ripped from me—because of what she was, because of the secrets we weren’t allowed to speak in Alfemir.
Proof that we weren’t safe to be who we were.
Glancing back to my mother, it hit me hard…she was an Archangel, just like Kieran’s father. She wore the same robes, bore the same white wings as the ones who tried to erase people like Kieran and me from existence. She was a part of the first triad, the lowest tier of the much larger problem in history. She was complicit, but had she realized whose will she truly served?
That instinct to embrace my parents soured as an over abundance of caution poured through me. Yes, they were my parents. But my family wasn’t just them now—it was Kieran, Steele, Ronan, Bash, even Niz. My mother could very well be our enemy.
So I forced my legs to move, one heavy step at a time, until I stood just a few feet away. They looked at me like I was a miracle and a ghost all at once.
“I know,” I rasped, my voice rougher than I intended. “You thought I was dead, but I’m right here.”
My father’s throat worked like he wanted to say more, but it was my mother who stepped closer first. Her gaze raked over me as if she was trying to memorize every detail, her lips parting with disbelief.
“We buried a coffin,” she whispered, her hand lifting a fraction before faltering, as if she was afraid I’d vanish if shetouched me. “We stood at your funeral, Gabriel. How is this possible?”
The words clawed down my spine. Funeral. They’d mourned me like I was gone forever, while I had been hiding in the shadows of the Rebellion, carrying the truth alone.
