I swallowed hard, dragging in a steady breath that felt like glass scraping my lungs. “Because if I hadn’t disappeared, you really would’ve been burying me.”
Shock covered her face, but I kept going before the hesitation could catch me.
“I don’t have a normal affinity,” I said quietly, forcing the truth into the open for the first time to them. “I was told during testing that if I didn’t fall, I’d be killed for what I am. Noah, a previous Text Keeper, helped me get out before they carried through with it. That night…I had no choice but to vanish.”
Their silence pressed heavily around me, my father frozen, my mother’s brows knitting.
“You should have come to us,” she whispered, her composure cracking enough to let warmth break through her Archangel duty.
For a moment, I saw the mother who used to kneel at my bedside and sing to me when the nightmares came. Her voice trembled, softer now. “We would have figured it out together, Gabriel. You could have told me.”
I shook my head hard, my jaw aching with the force of how hard I clenched it. “No. I couldn’t. Not with what I saw every day in Alfemir. Not when I found out Archangels were deciding who was allowed to live and who wasn’t because of their powers.” My voice cracked as I gestured back toward Kieran. “Look at her. Her own father just slit her throat because of what she is in front of everyone. How could I risk it being the same with you?”
The silence that followed was worse than shouting. My mother’s eyes widened as she finally looked beyond me to Kieran.
Her throat bobbed as tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, her breath catching on a sound halfway between a gasp and a sob. “How could any parent want to kill their child?” she choked, shaking her head like the thought itself burned. “It’s unthinkable.”
The words tore at me, because as much as I wanted to believe them, part of me still remembered the cold distance she’d been forced to wear in public—the Archangel mask she’d carried into every room. I wanted to believe this was her truth, that the woman in front of me wasonlymy mother now and not an Archangel foe…but the battlefield between us made it hard to trust anything.
I froze as the tears rolled down her cheeks in earnest. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen my mother cry, if ever. Early in my teens, she had been promoted to Archangel, and from then on she had always been stone, wrapped tightly in duty and pride, the mask never slipping.
But here and now, the shimmer of tears made her look less like an Archangel and more like the woman who brushed dirt from my scraped knees when I was learning to fly and fell countless times. The woman who once kissed my forehead and told me I was her greatest joy.
My chest clenched hard, torn in two directions. The son in me wanted to close the distance, to let her hold me and pretend the world around us didn’t exist. But the man I’d become—the one who belonged to Kieran and the family I’d found in the Rebellion—remembered exactly what Alfemir had cost us.
I clenched my fists at my sides, the urge to reach for her warring with the instinct to protect the only family I couldtruly trust now. Movement in my periphery dragged me back to reality.
Kieran.
She was incredibly pale, her legs still unsteady, but she pushed past Steele’s steadying hand and closed the distance between us. Every instinct in me screamed to go to her, to catch her before she fell, but I forced myself still. If she needed this moment—to stand on her own, to face my parents—it wasn’t my place to take it from her.
Her hazel eyes lifted to my parents, calm despite the exhaustion dragging at her frame. “Hello, it’s been awhile since we’ve seen each other,” she said simply, her voice roughened from the wound that should have killed her.
My mother’s gaze fell to Kieran’s throat, at the still-fresh scar, and something shifted in her expression. Reverence, maybe. Or awe.
“What’s next?” my mother asked her quietly, like the answer belonged to Kieran alone.
Kieran blinked, surprise flickering across her features the same way I felt inside. She swayed slightly, but her voice didn’t falter. “Why are you asking me?”
My mother didn’t hesitate as she wiped her fallen tears and brought back a bit of the steel composure I was used to. “Because you stared death in the face and still chose to speak your truth—to try to save us all. That kind of courage deserves to be followed.”
A small gasp left Kieran and I swallowed hard.
For a second, I couldn’t breathe. Not because I was hurt by her words not being directed at me, but because I recognized the weight behind them. It filled me with something else entirely. Pride. Relief. Gratitude that she saw the woman who meant everything to me and valued her with the same reverence I did.
It reminded me that the love I’d once known from her wasn’t gone, just buried beneath years of duty and the mask she had to wear. And maybe, just maybe, there was still room to believe she could stand with us now. This wasn’t the time to focus on what’s next, however. Kieran needed time to rest.
She looked like she might crumble under the weight of people looking to her for guidance right now, so before she could even attempt an answer, I stepped in, grounding us all.
“We regroup first,” I said firmly, my arm brushing against Kieran’s. “Then we figure out the next step together.”
Her eyes flicked up to me, soft relief threading through the weariness in her gaze.
The moment didn’t last.
Two soldiers that had turned on Alfemir’s hierarchy broke through the silent crowd and came straight for my mother, weapons raised as if she were no different from the other Archangels pinned in the dirt.
Instinct surged hot in my veins. I shifted in front of her before I even thought about it, my body braced to take them apart piece by piece if they touched her. “Back off,” I snapped, my voice sharp enough to cut. “She’s not your prisoner.”
