Her dream angel was Lucifer.
Lucifer, who was Edvardiel's father. Who, according to Edvardiel, was now a pile of ashes save for some errant organs.
Issa splashed some water onto her face.
Why couldn't it have been someone else?
She'd been ready to tell Edvardiel about the strange angel in her head. She'd even considered telling him about Michael. But this?
Issa gripped the sink as water dripped from her chin.
She should've guessed. Why else would Michael have raised another angel's child? Her own mother had raised her to kill her father. To their caretakers, they'd been more weapons than children.
A soft knock on her door.
"Issa?" Edvardiel called.
She'd been hiding long enough. She wiped her face and finally pulled open the door.
"I was in the bathroo—" she began, but Edvardiel had swept her into his arms, holding her so tightly she could barely breathe.
"Your glory is amazing." He kissed her on the forehead and then tugged her to the window, where her flowers of fire continued to burn in the skies. "Look. "
While he was looking outside, she was looking at him. He was getting better and better at hiding his emotions from their bond, but she was getting better at reading him. Edvardiel was worried. She could see it in the tense lines of his neck and shoulders. She supposed he was worried that she'd be shaken by her own glory like he had been.
She was nothing like him.
Anger burned within her, white-hot and acrid. She didn't know whom she hated more–Lilith, Michael or Eve. Perhaps she'd kill them all. Violent fantasies played in her mind where she'd hunted them down one by one. Here's the weapon you wanted, Mother, she'd say, as she'd back them into a corner. And the seraph you wanted, Father. How do you like me now?
As she watched her fire reflecting in Edvardiel's eyes, her palms tingled, glowing.
She was happy. The thought of pulverising her own parents pleased her sick, twisted mind. She truly was Michael's daughter.
Edvardiel turned to her and she shoved her hands into her angel dress.
He smiled at her. "I told you about my glory and how I never wanted to summon it again. But it felt different the second time." As he spoke, a trail of angelfire began to circle them. Issa started. Edvardiel's angelfire was so different from his father's. For one, his flames were scarlet instead of gold. For another, there was something lively and playful about them. They leapt and bounded past her ankles, frisky and warm as a hearth.
"I thought you preferred lightning?" she murmured.
"After I heard what they'd done to you, angelfire came first." Edvardiel's mouth formed a hard line as his flames blazed high, all playfulness gone. "I'd never appreciated it more." It was a strange, seraph-like thing to witness on her sweet angel and Issa didn't know what to feel.
"I see you've grown that backbone we've been talking about," she said in an attempt to lighten the mood. "Good job, seraph."
His lips curved. "We're back to forgetting my name, huh?"
"I could never forget your name."
The words slipped out, unbidden, and he stilled. Issa's heart thumped in her chest. She felt too much for him. She didn't know if she could bear his rejection once he found out who her father was. She gripped his sleeve. As though he were already leaving her. As though she could hope to stop him if he chose to leave.
His gaze flickered to where her fingers curled around his shirt and then back to her face. Emotion shifted in his eyes, his ring of golden glory burning high as though he were on the verge of telling her something. One of his arms curled around her waist, holding her tighter, pulling her closer, so close that if she lifted her head, her lips would brush against his chin. She hardly dared to breathe.
Then he broke into a sudden smile.
"Do you want to see my new party trick?"
His angelfire slinked around on the ground, completing its circle.
Except it wasn't a circle.
She blinked
"Of all the things you could do with angelfire…" She shook her head, looking at his heart-shaped fire in disbelief.
"Come on, it's the perfect colour. Or do you prefer roses?" The scarlet fire shifted and reformed itself into a spiral of misshapen roses. Edvardiel rubbed his chin. "Hmm. I have to work on that."
"Ugh. Do you have to be so corny?"
He tilted her chin upwards, his expression teasing. "Why wouldn't I be, when I can see you glow like this?"
She looked down at herself—and realised he was right.
Embarrassed, she jerked her chin free from his warm fingers. His chuckle only made her glow all the more.
She tried to glare but didn't quite manage.
Her angel hadn't just grown a backbone, he'd grown insufferable too.
And she loved him all the more for it.
Heavens, she was in trouble.
She loved him.
She'd loved him for a while now. She just hadn't wanted to think about it. She hadn't wanted to be vulnerable in any way. It made her all the more similar to Michael and she wanted to be nothing like her father.
Issa caught her angel's sleeve.
"Edvardiel…"
"Mm?"
"Edvardiel, I…" God, why was it so difficult?
She pursed her lips.
How many times had she regretted not telling him? After every nightmare, after seeing him die in a hundred different ways, she'd woken up wishing she'd said something to him.
"I…" She squirmed.
Edvardiel's growing amusement was not helping. The damned seraph had learned how to fucking smirk, and he'd learned to do it too well.
Damn it all.
"I love you," she mumbled, hiding her face in his chest. The words came out garbled and sounded more like an unintelligible "arlfyou."
His only response to her painstaking efforts was to chuckle.
"Sorry, what? I didn't quite catch that."
She was not repeating herself.
"Liar."
He chuckled again. "Drat." And then: "I know you do." He mussed her hair affectionately. "You're not very hard to read, my love."
A thrill ran through her at his casual use of the endearment. She was his love. She smiled at him like an absolute idiot until she caught herself and looked away. Her cheeks tingled and she knew she was glowing.
Edvardiel tipped her face up to him once more, his eyes drinking her in. He was looking at her with so much reverence that it made her uncomfortable.
"You're beautiful."
"Stop that," she mumbled.
"You are," he said. His angelfire floated around his wings, the scarlet vivid and passionate. He seemed to be fighting with himself. "I have to tell you something."
She swallowed. "Me too."
They looked at each other.
"You first," she said.
He hesitated. "Actually, it's two somethings."
Whatever he had to tell her, it couldn't be worse than what she had to tell him. "Go on."
Edvardiel pressed his lips together. "While you were unconscious, I tried to fly to Heaven."
She froze.
He misread her reaction. "Trust me, I wanted us to go together. But then I thought about everyone dying beyond Eden's gates." He exhaled. "I tried to go up. But I couldn't."
"What do you mean?" she asked. "You couldn't open the gates?"
"No, I couldn't go up," he said. "I couldn't ascend high enough." He sounded strained. For a split second, his troubled feelings poured through their bond, hitting her like a dam, and she inhaled sharply. Flashes of fear and panic hit her but before she could examine them more closely, Edvardiel had shut her out again. The little glimpse was enough to leave a bad taste in her mouth. I couldn't ascend high enough? Bullshit. He was hiding something from her.
She was about to say so but he was speaking again. "I haven't told anyone. I couldn't. Everyone's counting on me. You can't imagine… It's been an endless barrage of Eden's son this and Eden's son that." He looked at her. "Luckily I'm not the only one who can fly. We could go up together like we originally planned."
Issa shifted her weight. "Why?"
Edvardiel looked at her as though she'd grown demon scales. "What do you mean 'why'?"
"We have glory. You and I both. We have Edenium. Nephilim are stronger than seraphim anyway," she said. "We don't need Heaven."
The more Issa thought about it, the more it made sense. She wanted to pave a new path for herself and for Edvardiel, one free of bloody vendettas and avenging angels. Heaven's gates was a Pandora's box and she wanted nothing to do with it.
Edvardiel's expression was hard to read. "You don't want to go to Heaven?"
"No."
"Even if… even if…" He ran a hand through his hair in the way he always did when he was particularly agitated.
"Even if what?"
Edvardiel's hand continued their trail through his hair. "What if I told you I wanted to go back?"
She jerked back, shocked. "What?"
"Not forever," he said quickly. "I don't want to stay. I just…" He sighed. "Issa. I know you hate the archangels. And I see now that they aren't the perfect beings I imagined them to be. But believe it or not, Michael was the closest thing to a father I had."
Issa gazed at him. Hearing that hurt. It hurt because Michael was a monster and Edvardiel deserved better. But it also hurt because she wished that her father had seen it fit to take her to Heaven. It was silly and childish and made no sense and she hated that she felt that way at all.
"You don't know what a father is," she said, and this she knew in her bones. Her scattered memories offered glimpses of Adam—her human father had been far more a father than her angel one. "Michael is not a father."
"He could've killed me when I was a child," Edvardiel said. "But he didn't. He kept me safe from the other seraphs."
"Because he wanted to use you," she said.
"Maybe," Edvardiel said. "But he also protected me when the other seraphs tried to hurt me. He taught me everything I knew—how to wield weapons. He taught me how to empty myself of emotions. He was harsh but all seraphs are. He's not human, Issa, and I don't think he knew a different way to be."
Issa kneaded her temples, hating herself for what she was going to have to tell him. "No, Edvardiel," she said. "He wanted to use you."
"Issa…" Edvardiel looked at her with something oddly like compassion in his eyes, as though he were the one who felt bad for her. He looked outside at the skies where traces of her glory were slowly fading away. "I know who your father is."
Issa's blood froze in her veins.
Time trickled by, agonisingly slow, as she tried to make sense of what he'd said.
"You do?" she managed to choke out.
Edvardiel gathered her into his arms with a gentleness she didn't deserve. "Yes," he said. "His glory is a thing of legends. I never suspected that he… But it makes sense now. The reason I was allowed to live. The reason I was allowed to remain in Heaven. Issa, your father is—"
The front door burst open.
"Michael!" Mike hollered from the door. He was holding up a dog-eared book, breathless. The page showed a watercolour illustration of blooming flames in the skies. The others crammed around him, their gazes comparing the fire in the picture to the fire in the skies.
They were identical.
Her fire didn't even have the decency to be a different colour or a different shape from Michael's.
"Holy shit," Paul's eyes were round as plates. "Holy shit."
Mike was beside himself. "Your glory came from Michael! The king of angels himself! I knew I'd seen it somewhere!"
Beside her, Edvardiel had stiffened, his wings unfurling as though he were about to grab her and fly. She leaned against him, so relieved he didn't hate her that she felt weak with it.
"Who'd have thought that the king of angels himself had a kid?" Jessica marvelled. "When? How?" She eyed Issa speculatively. "Are you a Jumper, maybe?" Then she scratched her head. "And what about the angelfire? Did we see that wrongly? Was it smiting all along?"
"No clue but that's definitely not angelfire," Mike jabbed a finger to the skies. "I told you! I told you it wasn't angelfire!" He put the book down on the table. "This changes everything. We can get rid of the demons. Hell, we could get rid of the angels if they come after us!"
One of Edvardiel's wings curled around Issa at the same time Rosalie slammed the book loudly shut.
Edvardiel opened his mouth but Rosalie was faster.
"Excuse me, but did anyone ask her if she wants to do any of that?" Rosalie folded her arms. "You realise smiting is basically the angelic form of going nuclear, right? Look how well that went the last time."
"What are you going on about?" Mike was indignant. "Are you saying that her glory doesn't make a difference?"
"No, I'm telling you to hold your horses and give her some room to breathe," Rosalie said. "Imagine if I burst into the room screaming that you're the descendent of Lucifer–" Issa winced, "and that you're now solely responsible for stopping the fucking Apocalypse."
Mike opened his mouth, caught sight of Issa's face, and closed it. He rubbed his neck, looking sheepish. "Right. Sorry. It's just… we've been hiding here forever with no end in sight. And now you dropped into our lap like a gift from Heaven. Literally. You're a ray of hope. A beacon of it. A…" Beside Issa, Edvardiel crossed his arms, and Mike hastily changed track. "I mean, I got carried away. It's a big deal, you know? But yeah, you probably need everything to sink in properly."
That was an understatement.
Issa looked at Edvardiel, still half-afraid that he was going to run screaming.
"You look like you're about to faint," he only said, guiding her to a nearby sofa.
"What are you talking about?" she managed to say, as she sank into the soft cushions. "Fainting is your speciality, not mine." She'd meant to sound haughty, but her voice came out mildly hysterical.
It was a testament to her condition that Edvardiel didn't remind her of all the times she'd fainted.
One cat was out of the bag, one more to go.
Fucking hell.
That last part was also my reaction to writing this chapter lol. This one was a toughie, that's why I'm late. Hope it was worth it! Would love to hear what you think. Going to my 24-hour shift soon, keep your fingers crossed for me. Till next week :)
A big thank you to the amazing JoVersify for going through this chapter!