If angels knew nothing else, they knew beauty. We were born of it. We recognized it without needing to learn it. But the female before wasn’t merely beautiful. She was…devastating.
I froze, every thought screeching to a halt. My wings curled tight against my back. My hand hovered above the water, trembling. I yearned—yearned— to touch her skin.
She took a step backward, and something about her expression was unlike anything I had ever witnessed. Her lips curled upward—familiar, like what I’d seen humans do, but her eyes….
Her eyes were hooded. Her gaze curved like a secret, a promise. It wasn’t the placid joy of our golden garden. It was something heavier, darker, hotter.
It set my entire body ablaze the longer I stared.
Angels needed nothing. We had nothing because there was no need for anything. We lived, breathed, and walked the same golden paths, the same homes. It was endless peace, quiet, sanctuary.
The sound that left me was not angelic. It was low, hoarse, ragged.
“Mine.”
The word shocked me as much as the burn searing through my chest. I plunged my hand into the golden liquid as if I could pluck the woman out, as if my fingers could grasp a being that wasn’t even here. My hips jerked against the well without my bidding, and a flare of fire tore through me—raw, electric.
Then she vanished.
The blonde dissolved into ripples of gold, and the humans returned when it stopped. I slapped at the well, sloshing the liquid again and again. “No, no, no!”
“Come back—come back.”
Wait. I gripped my head as a throb zipped through it. My eyes widened when I glanced at the liquid gold. “No, what was it?” I asked myself as I smacked at the well. There was something else in the well—I knew it! I saw it, but why couldn’t I recall it?
A terrible feeling swelled in my chest—loss, hunger, something unnamed. I knew I’d seen something more, something important, but the harder I reached for it the further it drifted away.
I staggered back from the well. My body felt strange—tight, heavy. Looking down, my robe shifted unnaturally, and for the first time I noticed a bulge straining against the fabric. My breath caught. My hands shook as I peeled it back and stared.
The appendage given to male angels only as a matter of form was no longer passive; it had transformed, hard and alive. Something had awoken. Something immoral.
Heat flushed through me. My hands hovered over it, then closed. A sound escaped me—low, guttural—as waves of sensation crashed through my body, unfamiliar and overwhelming. I dropped to my knees, clutching myself, gasping as the tension built and broke, releasing like lightning splitting the sky.
White streaks spilled onto the gold, bright against bright, an unholy contrast.
I knelt there, trembling. The feeling was good—too good—and yet incomplete. Empty. Something was still missing, something I couldn’t name.
I peered back into the scrying glass. The humans had returned to their forest. It wasn’t them. My thoughts were a thick fog. I rubbed my temples. What did I see? What did I touch? The memory danced just out of reach.
Hunger struck me suddenly sharp, gnawing, new. Saliva pooled in my mouth. I staggered to the nearest tree and devoured golden fruit one after another, the sweet pulp bursting between my teeth until my stomach ached and stretched.
I had never eaten before. Angels did not eat.
And yet now my body demanded it.
Even with the fruit heavy inside me, I felt hollow.
That had given enough time for a twisted ache to build in my chest.
The reality of angels crashed into me like broken glass—sharp, undeniable. All the peace, all the gilded joy…it hit me for what it truly was: an illusion. A dream. A life we were told was paradise, but that I now saw for what it was.
We weren’t meant to live like that. I wasn’t meant for gold.
The sensation from before—the groan that tore out of me, the fire in my limbs—I wanted that again. But more than that, I wanted to use it. Not for indulgence. Not for rebellion. But for something important. Something that mattered.
I’d never seen the male human use his appendage either. But maybe…maybe he could. Maybe we’d see.
My thoughts drifted to the dark garden. The fruit. The forbidden place.
