He steadied his hands on my arms, stabilizing me.
“Watch where the fuck you’re going, why don’t you?”he bit.
A sliver of moonlight shone through the trees, and I couldn’t deny the swell of desire forming in my stomach once more, amid the nausea, the panic.
Endor gently brushed some hair clinging to my face off, his lips pursed.
“I wasn’t—”
The faintest sound of a brush, of movement, alerted us.We hadn’t come to a clearing yet, but my skin prickled with goosebumps as I wondered if somehow the wolves had sensed us.
If we’d stupidly walked into a trap.
“Get behind me,” Endor said, his voice darkening.
“What are you going to do?”I asked, my breath catching as panic laced through me.
I watched as he slipped his hand in his back pocket, pulling out a slender, silver object.
A knife.
Looks like I’m not the only one with secrets around here.
We both breathed a sigh of relief as a small rabbit hopped out from under a bush beside us.Immediately, my muscles loosened.
“Come on, let’s keep going.We haven’t got all night.”
I followed as Endor led the way, trying to wrap my head around everything.
When I’d gotten my wings, when I landed here with Mercy and Endor, I thought I knew the structure, the order of things.
I thought I knew how the story was supposed to end.
But as Endor and I walked through the woods, glancing at everything, searching for a needle in a haystack, I was acutely aware that I knew nothing at all.
In fact, everything I knew, everything I had been told my whole life from beginning to end, was completely false.
Perhaps we existed in our own Hell, in the roles we’d assumed because we were too ignorant to question it.
Lost souls of our own making, seeking guidance, seeking salvation.
Without my wings, was I powerless?
Another sound alerted me, but I thought nothing of it.Another rabbit, perhaps.I kept on walking.
Until I heard the deep growl, the sound of predator in our midst.I stopped dead in my tracks, whispering to Endor.
“Endor...”
He’d already drawn his blade, as a flash of lightning kissed the sky.
I barely registered his movement as he disappeared into the night, the sounds of undulating growls and jaws snapping, of guttural crunching and whimpering in the air, and then it was gone.They both were.
And I was left standing alone, in the middle of a dark forest, stuck at the crossroad.
Hell was everlasting, but I was an angel.
And I’d always done the right thing.
