Page 4 of Angel I Am Not

I hummed, unconvinced, and traced my thumb across his knuckles. “Sure.”

Miel let the silence sit for a moment before shifting behind me. “You could make things easier on yourself if you went back to lessons.”

I tipped my head enough to look at him, joking. “Parisa, is that you?”

His mouth flattened. “I’m serious.”

“So am I. You sounded exactly like her for a second.”

The problem was that he wasn’t entirely wrong. I’d spent enough hours standing in training circles while guides told me to reach for an essence that never answered. Everyone else eventually produced something worth teaching. Fire. Water. Light. Whatever little miracle had decided to live inside them.

Mine sat there doing absolutely nothing.

“You gave up,” Miel said quietly.

“They gave up first. There’s a difference.” I shifted against him, already tired of the conversation. “I’m not wasting another afternoon performing failure for an audience.”

Miel’s annoyance didn’t disappear with the subject. “And stop calling me Miel.”

I twisted a little farther in his arms. “No. Three syllables every time I need something sounds exhausting.”

“It’s Domiel. You know that.” His expression tightened in that painfully patient way he used whenever he thought I was being difficult. “Full names strengthen our essence. You know why they matter.”

Unfortunately, I did. Names carried more than letters here, and saying the whole thing strengthened whatever already lived inside us. For angels, naturally, that meant purity, another tiny shove toward everything Heaven thought we should be.

“Ariuk,” he said pointedly, purity prickling beneath my skin at the sound of my own full name, proving his point in the most irritating way possible.

I glared at him. “See? Annoying.”

His mouth twitched like he was fighting a smile. “That’s the point.”

“Asshole.”

“Language.”

I was opening my mouth to give him several more examples of inappropriate language when a terrifying screech echoed across the plane.

My attention snapped toward the main gates as Uriel stormed through them and headed straight for the palace, his white linens snapping around his legs with every furious step. Beside me, Miel sat upright so quickly his arm disappeared from around my waist.

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know.” Uriel didn’t storm anywhere. I’d watched angels scream in his face while he answered with the same expression he used while drinking tea. Calm was practically woven into his essence, which made the rage carved across his face now feel wrong enough to put me on my feet.

I tore away from Miel and ran after him as I shouted his name. Uriel didn’t so much as glance back.

Uriel took a left beneath the first marble arch, and my stomach dropped.

“No. Uriel!” I pushed harder, chasing him deeper into the palace while Miel’s footsteps pounded behind me. Gold trim flashed along the marble as Uriel disappeared and reappeared between the arches, passing the open court and the rooms where the council conducted its business without slowing.

The palace itself wasn’t forbidden. The altar was. Nobody approached it unless they had been summoned, not an ordinary angel and definitely not an archangel who should have known better.

“He’s going to the altar,” I shouted when Miel finally caught up.

“Ariuk, slow down.”

“Tell him that!” I cried out.

Uriel ignored both of us, disappearing beneath the final arch into the open space surrounding the altar. I lunged after him just as Miel caught my wrist and yanked me back against his chest hard enough to knock the breath from me.