His green eyes flashed as he glanced over at his mate, the human named Eve. “You know Aerie would not accept her. She is wingless, and they would immediately consider her an outcast, below even the lowest echelon. Besides, this world is her home.”
Shock rippled through me. My captain had worked long and hard trying to find another hole in the sky or rip in the earth we could slip through to get back to the world of Rundis, our land called Aerie. When fifty years had passed and we hadn’t found anything—and we’d lost one of our sedge while crossing an ocean—he’d dropped into a deep melancholy nothing could break through.
Nothing except a headstrong human woman named Eve.
And, apparently, she’d discovered a stained glass window with the image of a seraph with black wings Falling. The window was original to the manor, built two hundred or so years before Gabriel had purchased the property.
Only the Aerie royal family had black wings.
So Gabriel would call to the rest of our sedge, scattered in this world but still in communication with one another, to find the seraph with the most knowledge of our histories to ask if he knew of a lost prince.
I would take Gabriel’s place as a “Herald of Death,” a strange term the dead reverend had come up with. Or perhaps it was his grandfather? I wasn’t sure. I glanced down and saw Lilith’s hair shining despite the murky weather. I’d have to ask her more, but in a way that didn’t make her suspicious.
She was sharp and quick, and she’d seen my shocked reaction to the stained glass window once Eve had cleared the dust and grime away. She’d already questioned why Gabriel and I cared so much about the manuscript she’d once seen.
Although the humans venerated four gods, there were a few small churches here and there, radicals or nonconformists, who worshiped as they saw fit. Reverend Grimshaw and Elder Absalom Meadows, the two dead men in the back of the cart, were leaders in the Church of the Love of His Divine Saints. It was, Eve said, a cult. Restrictive, oppressive, coercive, and isolating.
So that would be fun. Infiltrating a cult as their new Herald of Death.
I was still unsure exactly what a Herald of Death was.
Gabriel and Eve hoped everyone else would be pretty unsure, too. And based on the uncertain looks Lilith had shot me and the stiff groveling Elder Tomes had done, it seemed like they were.
Well. I’d never been a spy. The war back home in Aerie had been between two races who looked nothing alike—the Seraphim and the Gar.
But why not? I’d always try something once.
Lilith glanced up as if searching for me.
I gave her a jaunty wave, the way I’d seen humans do when being overly friendly.
She scowled and glanced away, and I didn’t try to hide my laugh from the wind.
They stopped at nightfall at a coaching inn. At first I was surprised when Tomes handed over the cart and two horses. Then I remembered humans couldn’t see as well as seraphim. I landed on the edge of the roof and leaned against the brick chimney, watching as Tomes gave instruction to a stable boy, then turned to enter the inn.
Lilith Meadows paused, staring at the cart with a conflicted expression. It wasn’t just her leader dead in the back of the cart. Her brother was there, too.
My heart pulsed at the look on her face. It wasn’t grief, exactly, but certainly confusion, apprehension, and sadness. Probably all the emotions I’d feel if I learned my brother died. Probably exactly what he thought when my family was given the news that my sedge had disappeared mid-battle.
Her face was the picture of uncertainty, as if she’d been cast adrift in a thunderstorm and didn’t know where to land.
I glanced around. No one was near the stable, so I stepped off the roof and glided down to land beside her.
She jerked, then shot me a wary look.
“Lily,” I greeted.
She opened her mouth, then shut it. Then gave me a bland, placid smile. Her eyes turned shallow and empty. It was unnerving. “Herald.”
I nodded to the cart, now tucked inside the stable, far from the animals. “Were you close with your brother?”
“He was my brother,” she said quietly. Which wasn’t really an answer at all.
“I am sorry for your loss.”
She glanced into the darkness. “How did he die?”
I sighed. Had she not been told any further details? She deserved that, at least. “Your brother…fell off a cliff. It wasn’t a tall one, but there were sharp rocks at the bottom.”
