Chapter 20 - Beloved

Jael

Walking steadily through the halls of Evadne at night, Jael stumbled upon Uriel at the opened door of the young Prince Castiel's chambers. Their heart rose into their throat. The Prince, now officially betrothed to the oldest Prince of Hera, had just returned from his most recent visit to the kingdom, in celebration of the engagement. Castiel was a quiet, bright thing. Jael had never said this, because King Michael hardly needed more reason to dote upon the boy, but Abra's light shone clear upon him. The child was chosen for some great task, Jael could tell.

Jael was able to make out the faint outlines of the boy's soul, it burned so bright. Few Angels had this gift, the ability to see another's essence—Jael hardly had it; save for the light of the young Prince, Jael would see nothing. But it was clear, something in Castiel was sacred, set apart. Planned and enshrined in the sands of time for wonders.

But Uriel—stood like a spectre at the open door of Castiel's room in the dead of night—could surely have none of these wonders planned for Castiel. Jael took a silent, steady step forward, and in the catching light of the Angel's eyes was able to gleam—

Their blood rose to a searing magma.

Uriel had entered the Prince's mind and was scouring it, rummaging, invading.

Jael took a sharp step forward again, this time loud enough for Uriel to register; he flickered his gaze from the focus of his mind-plunder, for a fragment of a moment, but Jael had him slammed up against the wall before he could so much as falter.

"Jael," Uriel greeted with an innocent smile which made Jael's skin crawl. "How nice it is to see you, this fine evening—"

"What are you doing, Uriel," Jael spat, forearm to Uriel's throat. "What new game, new perversion, is this? Robbing the mind of the Prince in his sleep?"

"I was doing nothing of the sort, Jael," Uriel shook his head, raising his hands innocently either side of him. "The Prince was having a nightmare—I overheard him crying out in his room—"

"—You honestly expect me to believe—"

"Deciding it was best not to wake him," Uriel continued, "I thought perhaps to soothe his mind—"

"Liar," Jael snarled. "You know the crime you've just committed—you know the penalty for this assault—"

"What assault?" Uriel asked, cocking his head. "I've committed no wrong—"

"Of entering the Prince's chambers, the Prince's mind, uninvited—"

"I stood only at the door," Uriel smiled. "In every sense."

"You deceitful—"

"Now, Jael," Uriel smirked, "before you say or accuse me of anything you'd regret—consider your position. Two years ago you persuaded our King to withhold forces in the Demon war. How would he feel if he knew that you had been a conspirator with myself and Raphael? How would he feel—"

"You have no grounds to blackmail me," Jael spat. "And if you did, you think that I would care? My position with the King is incidental, what matters is God's will, what's right—don't think me foolish, Uriel, I saw you in the boy's mind, rifling through his thoughts, examining his memories—"

Uriel shoved them back.

"Ever the obstruction," Uriel spat. "These past two years, that's all you've been. Handling you has been like managing a wild colt. You bray and buck and refuse to be driven in the direction needed—well, Jael," he glared, "I have what I came for. By tomorrow night, events will transpire that shall curl even your stubborn blood."

"What does that mean?"

But Uriel's lip curled again, he lifted his chin high and arrogant and defiant.

"You were right about me," he stated, voice trembling with hatred. "And right about Lucifer. How does it feel, Jael, to know you were right about so much, and yet did nothing?" Jael blinked, bewildered, hands shaking at their sides. "The day will come when you will rue the hour of your birth, where the sight of your reflection over the waters you so devoutly pace in the crystal caves will be repulsive to you, the day will come when your faith turns into ash and you shall understand, truly, the price of reticence. Perhaps you should not have trod so carefully, after all," Uriel leered.

"What—"

But Uriel lunged at Jael, and with the swift hands of a soldier, knocked their head clean against the wall in an ugly flash of red and white. When Jael came to, hours later, the cold light of dawn creeping through the ajar door to Prince Castiel's room, the boy was yet fast asleep, and Uriel had long vanished.

He was not seen in Evadne again.

Michael

The stable boy lit torches around the walls of the paddock. He and Michael were sat on the floor of an empty stall, on sweet-smelling straw, knees drawn up to their chests, talking. David's shoulder leant against Michael's left wing, the touch like the flames of the torches on the wall. It was growing late, and Michael should have returned to his quarters hours ago—perhaps the city was in uproar, perhaps Michaels parents were besides themselves with worry—well, perhaps the King was beside himself with worry. The Queen, perhaps, was merely furious at his absence and the impudence of it all. Perhaps the Eofori nobles had taken it as insult that one of the princes was not present at their celebration.

Perhaps none of that mattered, anyway.

Sat beside the Human boy, Michael found it easy to believe.

"So," David picked up a piece of straw and began to chew on it thoughtfully, "your name is pronounced Mih-chai-el," he sounded out the syllables slowly, frowning in concentration, lines appearing on the bridge of his nose as he attempted to pronounce Michael's name as the Angel himself pronounced it. "Mih-chai-el? Is that right?"

"Uh," Michael smiled, unsure of the affection that warmed his insides as he answered, "sort of. Not so slowly, though."

The boy rolled his eyes at Michael's diplomacy.

"'Sort of,'" he repeated scornfully, "just tell me what I got wrong, won't you? You have no problem pronouncing my name."

"I've been learning your language since infancy—"

"You have no problem pronouncing my name, either as Daf, Dafyth, or David. Why shouldn't I learn yours?" The boy asked again, stubbornly. "It's only fair."

"You're a little obstinate," Michael commented, which earnt him a light elbow.

"I prefer to think of it as determined," David countered. "Now, teach me how to pronounce your name."

"I've no issue with you pronouncing it in whatever way you find easiest—" but the boy groaned again, "Mike-el. That's fine. That's how many of you Humans—"

"Well, don't lump me in with them!" David exclaimed. "You're an Angel, you have an Angel name, I want to be able to say it as an Angel would."

Michael was strangely touched by the stable-hand's determination.

"Okay," he said slowly, "but you are a Human. So it's natural that my name on your lips would come out as a Human sound."

"But—"

"And," Michael continued, over David's protests, "perhaps I'll call you Dawid, as in the tongue of my people, to make up for it."

David looked thoughtful.

"I like my name in your tongue. What did you say it means?"

Michael swallowed, skin flushed.

"Beloved," he answered.

"Beloved," David repeated. "I like that."

And, for the first time, he smiled.

It was slow and grew so gradually that it was like the dawn, the moment that you realised it was happening was the moment it had already passed, but it lingered and reached the very depths of his eyes even if, compared to other smiles, it was marginal.

"You'll call me Beloved, then?" David asked, peering at Michael innocently, intently. Michael had never met another creature like this stable boy; both rude and earnest and invested. Humans were hardly ethereal, indeed, they were of the soil itself, and David was certainly rugged and earthy. But there was something in him, perhaps in his intensity or strangeness—he whispered to the horses at intervals, interrupting the ebb and flow of his and Michael's conversations, and claimed to understand them. This something—animated and new to Michael—rendered the boy not only Human, but heavenly. "At least, in your tongue?"

Michael flushed, squirming on the straw he sat on. Crisp and sweet smelling, it rustled beneath him. Each time a thick golden thread was snapped, the air filled with a little more heavy sweetness.

"I—would you like me to?"

"I wouldn't be asking, if I didn't."

Michael swallowed.

"Right. Of course. Then, Dawid it is."

"And what does your name mean, in your tongue?"

Michael shifted.

"It's a question," he explained.

"Your name is a question," David repeated, deadpan. Michael watched the sceptical frown knit across his features.

"Yes," Michael bristled, on the defensive. As his wings shifted with discomfort, they caught the stable-hand's eye, and Michael observed the boy as Dawid distractedly monitored Michael's wings' minute movement. This paradox of observation inevitably made Michael shift uncomfortably, even more self-conscious, a mood which of course his wings managed to track and convey, fascinating the Human further. A horse stamping its foot and huffing a few yards away from them tugged David from his observation. Jumping and glancing over to the horse, David's gaze returned at last to Michael's face.

"I've never heard of a name that was a question, before," David's brows knitted loosely, lips parted.

"Well, now you have…"

"Funny," the boy rolled his eyes. "But what does it mean?"

"It means," Michael swallowed, looking away. The lights of the torches round the wall flickered and shimmered, the amber hay paired with the golden glimmer of flames washed their surroundings bronze, yellow and ruddy. The light caught in the black and glittering eyes of one of the horses closest to them, which seemed to watch everything that passed between the Angel and the Human.

"Well?" David pressed, obviously impatient. Michael glanced back over to him. Brought out in the candlelight were flecks of gold set deep amid that wash of green that were the stable-hand's eyes.

"Who is like God," Michael answered, unsure of his creeping sense of embarrassment.

"Who is like God?" David repeated, balancing a quizzical expression with a remarkably dismissive tone.

"It's rhetorical," Michael bristled. "The point is, no one is like God."

"You have a rhetorical name…" The boy frowned, peering at Michael with disbelief. Michael prickled and straightened

"Yes," he stared back defiantly. "Is that so strange?"

"All of you is strange," David answered with a shrug. "So it is hardly a surprise that your name should be, as well."

"You're awfully rude."

"And you're awfully strange," the boy returned. Michael glared. "Oh, don't pull that face. I never said it was a bad thing, and I never said I disliked it—"

"Being strange is a bad thing—"

David peered at Michael for a moment. It felt invasive, but for some reason, Michael left himself open to the attack. There was something heavenly in those green eyes.

"Did your mother tell you that?"

Chayal

She was gone. She was gone. Gone like the dusting of snow blown away by wind on mountaintops, gone like the summer rain, gone where? Into mist, into ether, into air, into shadow, dream, night. She was gone.

He bent over her, kneeling on a floor so cold perhaps it ought to ground him, but nothing could: Chayal was ether, too, and floating further away with every second. Nothing around him was real, the air tasted of nothing, the sky outside was white, something had come inbetween the High King and the rest of the world and cut him off. All, but his motionless wife, was static. Her curls pirouetted, sleek and black and beautiful, around the oval of her dark face, fanning out around her. It was as if she had drowned and now lay, immobile in moving waters that guided her hair into swaying out around her.

He grazed his fingertips against deep brown-black eyes, the kindest he had ever seen, and would never see again, and closed them. Her brow, usually sloped in an intense, albeit compassionate thoughtfulness, had now softened forever. She was more than asleep. Further in, further out, further gone. Gone, forever.

She, who had forgiven Chay of all the wrong in his heart, of all the wrong he had done her, hurt he had caused, years of alone and hatefulness and sorrow and separation. She had forgiven him, and now she lay, gone from the world, into the hands of God. And all to birth a son who had caused her so much pain, even in carrying him.

The hairs on her forehead and about her face were stuck down there, still curling, by sweat and tears, all for an infant who would not even thank her for he sacrifice.

"Come back," Chayal whispered, brushing back the short hairs stuck to the face of the once-High Queen. He did not realise he spoke until the words left his lips. "Come back," he said again, "as dream, as light, I don't care. Or, if I ask too much, take me with you. Take me with you, my Beloved…"

But Ahava did not reply, could not reply, never would reply again. She was gone, into a land beyond speaking, and Chayal was trapped here, with the little boy who killed his wife.

Silence all around him, save for a cold wind whistling mournfully through mountaintops, and the quiet, subdued sobs of Chay's only daughter, Anna, who had loved Ahava almost as dearly as the High King himself.

He slipped his fingers through his lost wife's delicately ringletted hair.

"Father, you have another son," Michael's voice slid anger into the cracks of the High King's heart.

Michael, inheritor to the throne, who had been loyal to his father to a fault, but who could not love the King's own wife, his own mother. Who had spurned every one of her attempts to comfort him, speak to him tenderly, sit with him, cradle him in her arms when he missed his own Beloved beyond the grave, cry with him, Michael, who could not comprehend the tenderness of a being so pure that paradise itself couldn't stand to wait for her and had stolen her away from the earth, centuries too early. Michael, who would not weep, even now, but idolise the creature that tore Ahava from the land's surface, cradle it in his arms, praising it, no doubt, for what it had done for him.

"I have lost my wife…" Chayal mumbled, continuing to slip his fingers through Ahava's jet black, ringletted hair, knowing with everlasting pangs of sorrow that this would be the last time he could do it.

"And you have gained a son," Michael replied, kneeling down beside his father and presenting the newborn to him.

Chayal had no desire to look upon the wretched creature.

What kind of evil could there be, in this boy's heart, to make his first act but to kill?

Michael lifted the creature in his arms toward the King, who wanted in an instant nothing more than to lash out, hit it away, across the room, away from the limp body of his wife, surrounded by blood-stained sheets and the reek of loss.

He turned instead more fully toward his wife, staring upon her face that was in life so much like the sun, and now, in death, the moon. Paler, and iridescent, it seemed to shine with all the purity the High Queen had embodied, her thick lashes closed, unfluttering forever, with the still, untainted shimmering of moonlight.

His gaze was disrupted by the swim of his own tears, which he could not wipe away, nor would he: Chay let them plash down upon Ahava's silent face, watched as they followed the ridges of her cheeks and lips and brows, and wept, wept, wept for his lost Queen, High Queen of his heart.

"Father, look at him," Michael pressed, with the voice of a king he had no right to consider himself, yet. "He is beautiful."

"She was beautiful," Chayal contested, ignoring his son's pleas.

"She is gone." Michael's voice, steady and unyielding as ever, made the High King's lip curl. He would not, could be reached by Michael's words, would rather stare down at the deathly form of Ahava for all eternity. "He is here. Hold him."

"I cannot…" The High King trembled, which was the truth. He could not, and never would hold the child. The boy felt, strangely, not even his to hold.

"He has her dark hair—"

Anna burst into tears behind them. The sound rattled around the chambers and mingled with the clamour growing in Chayal's head. Michael turned from where he knelt, beside the bed, to look at her.

"Anna," he said, voice even and authoritative, "hold him."

"I can't. He killed her."

Chayal continued to stare at his wife's motionless form.

"He did nothing of the sort; he is a child."

"His coming into this world tore our mother from it."

Michael got up and approached her, slowly, footfalls heavy with death.

And of course, Chay would sigh too himself, were his head not such a chaos at the time, Michael would resent Anna for even the word, mother—just as he resented all mothers, it seemed, regardless of their crimes, or indeed innocence. Just as he resented Ahava, and loved the creature that killed her by extension.

"Look at him," Michael said, voice gentle.

"No," Anna refused. Her voice trembled and cracked with defiance as it escaped her throat, clearly distressed, but still Chayal could not look up from Ahava's face.

"He is beautiful."

"His first act was to kill the one who bore him."

"His first act was to cry," Michael challenged. "He mourned the loss of his mother as soon as air reached his lungs."

"All newborns cry," Chay's daughter spoke bitterly. He could hear her mother in the emotive cruelty of her tone. "There is nothing special in this one. Only hate can live in his heart."

"And his mother's last act was to bring him into this world. She saw how beautiful he was. She saw how important—"

"Don't speak of her!" Anna snarled. "Don't you dare speak her name!"

"Hold him," Michael said again, after a pause in which the room rung with Anna's shouts. "Sing him the lullabies that were taught to you. Sing him Ahava's favourite songs. He misses his mother."

Anna must have taken a hold of the boy, for in a moment wailing began, so loud and incessant that finally, Chayal looked up. Anna began to cry again, too, as if encouraged by the infant, and looked terrified at appalled at the bundle in her arms.

"Keep looking at him," Michael instructed—but clearly Anna could not. Her lip trembled, she broke her gaze away from her brother so many times her eyes wandered madly about the room, begging, wordlessly, for help. The desperation of a grieving girl.

"Take him back," she pleaded, attempting to force the little boy back into Michael's arms. "Please, Michael, take him back—I cannot hold him; I cannot stand to hold him—"

She was sobbing now, and so was the baby, both of them crying so loudly that the wetnurses were ready to scurry over and take the screaming infant out of her arms, but Michael held up a hand and stopped them from doing so. They stood back, staring at Anna, at the baby in her arms, as Anna's face filled with the fire that was already evidenced in her hair.

"Take him back!" She shouted, face soaked with tears, hair damp, and the baby's crying grew louder and still more maddening.

"Michael, for God's sake!" Gabriel had grown so irritated that he had snapped out of his daze, the torches lighting the room bursting upwards for a moment in his anger, orange fire spitting from Gabriel's eyes. "She doesn't want to hold him! Listen to her! Take the boy back!"

Michael did nothing, only flickered his eyes, mildly frustrated, over to Gabriel for a moment. Not otherwise responding to his brother's anger, he turned back to Anna.

"You are his sister."

"I am not anything to him," Anna's jaw was clenched, her body shook. "I am his enemy—"

"You say all these things of a child."

"I say all these things of a killer."

"Look at him," Michael instructed again. He changed his tone, and his tact. "Look at him, and tell me that you see a killer."

Anna bit out a sob, but looked down. Her gaze travelled over the baby, in apprehensive disbelief, still defensive. She trembled a little more. Her lips moved, as though in soundless questions, or in wordless prayer. Her fingers brushed against the boy's scalp for a moment, pushing back the hair that Chayal could not see, but that Michael kept remarking was so much like his mother's. The boy's crying subsided. Anna's did not.

"Look at his wings," Michael instructed gently. Anna pulled back the linen covering them.

"Blue and black…" She frowned, looking up at her brother.

"Blue and black," Michael repeated.

"And Ahava's wings were black and gold," her voice cracked.

Chayal, sickened, turned back to Ahava.

"Yes, they were," Michael confirmed. Gabriel's footsteps sounded, working across the chamber to where Anna and Michael stood.

"Blue and black…" He mumbled, too. Words, words. Incessant, useless words. Chayal would bellow at them for silence, if he felt that he could speak. "You know what this means…"

"I cannot know what it means," Michael's voice sounded quickly, firm. "Only Abra."

"This little boy could be the one that—"

"No," Anna said, roughly. "Let him be—he's only a child—"

"Anna, you know what his wings mean, don't you?"

Enough! Enough words! Enough of language, of sound, now that Ahava could no longer take any part in it! What was speech, now, that she was parted? What good could it serve? Conversation could only act as a symphony of despairing sound to the King who had lost his Queen.

"What are we to name him?" Gabriel asked

"Cassiel," Chayal rose, approached his children, stood just behind Michael and looked at the baby in Anna's arms for the first time. "Name him Cassiel."

"Why Cassiel?" Gabriel frowned.

"It means Speed of God."

"I know what it means," Gabriel continued to frown. "But why that?"

Chay's chest had grown hollow.

"To remind me of the speed with which Abra may send one to take those we love most from us. To remind me of the speed with which Ahava lost her life."

"Ahava's death was not quick," Michael protested, expression sombre. "She died every day for nine months carrying this boy. She brought him life with her last breath. Abra did not take your wife quickly, nor did She take her to spite you."

Anger surged through Chay. He would have Michael ripped from the skies and thrown down into the realms of man, whom he claimed to love so dearly, were the Angel not his oldest son.

"Besides," Anna said, quietly, "Cassiel is a name for Angels of Saturdays."

"The days will hardly make a difference to me now, Anna," he replied bitterly. "My wife is dead for the one you seem to want to name so perfectly."

"Cassiel is said to be a name of solitude and tears," Gabriel said, looking thoughtful.

"Then it is perfect," Chay spat. "And he should be happy that I have not named him Azrael, for the Angel of Death. That is what he is to me. This child haunts me; and he has not taken more than an hour of breath."

"You blaspheme, father," Michael glared. "Death is not a punishment, we should not view it as such. And this child does not haunt you, how could he?"

"It is said that Azrael's wings are black and gold," Gabriel said slowly.

"Just as Ahava's are—" the King faltered, casting his eyes back upon his beautiful wife. "Were," he corrected himself. Anna began crying again, yet now only with sorrow, and none of the anger that Chayal still felt, burning at the edges of his heart. "He shall be named Cassiel, then—he does not deserve to be associated with his mother in such a way."

"Father—" Michael glared.

"I will let his name remind me of what I have lost, but I will not let it place him anywhere close to where her light shines," Chay decided.

"Cassiel was said to be a prophet of doom…" Gabriel stated, looking at the floor.

"Cassiel was also a Na El who is said to have been shown the creation of the cosmos by Abra," Michael replied. "He could have taken sadness away, but he chose not to—or so it is said."

"He was also said to preside over the death of Kings." Gabriel's expression was utterly unreadable, perhaps caught between troubled and despairing.

"Then it is perfect," the King repeated, still bitter. He glared at the baby in Anna's arms, lip curling. An ugly creature, eyes cold, not warm like his mother's, hair certainly black like hers, but not beautifully curled as if by the force of life itself—this child's was waved at best. Paler, like Chayal, rather than dark like Ahava. Paler than his brother Michael. Wings blue and black, where hers had been black and gold, so understated and noble and so divine, holy and undefiled as the stars.

"It was not a King who died, but a Queen," Anna pointed out, sorrow in her voice surpassed with a firm courage. "Name him for all those who are lost, as we are now, without Ahava, that he might watch over them, and us—name him for travellers, name him that he may guard your heart from sadness and keep you with God. Name him that he may shield Abra Herself from all those who would seek to defile Her, or Her name. Name him for Thursdays—he was born on one, after all."

The three men in front of her looked up and stared at Anna. It was a long while before Michael finally spoke.

"Castiel," he stated, gaze filled with wonder. "As Ahava's ancestor was named."

"Castiel," Anna nodded. She looked down at the infant in her arms. He pressed her lips together resolutely. Then she took a step toward her father and pressed the boy into his arms. "Hold him gently," she instructed. "He deserves all the tenderness of his mother. There is only goodness in his soul, it is the same as hers, and it sings to mine. I can hear it. I can see it."

The High King looked down at his son, lips open, eyes watering, for what felt like days, tears falling onto the babe's face as they had fallen onto the dead face of Ahava's. But this little boy was alive, alive, and so much like the mother that had left this world too soon, no matter what the King tried to tell himself in poisoned bitterness. Something in the child burned with purity, with kindness, just as his mother had, had burned with love for which she was so named. Ahava. And her son, Castiel. Gifts from the Mother God.

Guilt and wonder surged through Chayal. He, so unworthy of Ahava, had already proven himself unworthy of her son, another son she would never be able to know or see grow. But the child was heavenly, so unlike his father, which was a blessing, Chay was sure of it. Ahava, if she had reached the stars already, would look down upon her husband in shame at the way he treated her boy. But no more. Chay would be forgiven for this, and all his sins.

There was a miracle in the nature of atonement, and further marvel in forgiveness. The boy—Castiel, would be as divine as Abra, Chayal was sure, in this regard. He lay still and peaceful and beautiful as his beloved mother in Chay's arms. What sorrow it was to lose Ahava. But what joy it was to gain this son. This son, this son, Castiel.

Chay looked back up at Anna. He had seen all the faces of Abra Herself, and all in the expression of an infant.

"You are right," he nodded, still crying. "I can see it too." He looked down, touched the boy's forehead. "Castiel," he mumbled. "It is perfect… He is… my son." Chayal's son. Ahava's son. Beloved by her, though she had never known him. "And he is perfect." And then, again, "I can see it, too."