Warning: Violence.
The image of the three archangels sharpened. Michael stood in the centre. He was the one with the fiery sword. The Flaming Sword of Michael, Edvardiel had once told her. The one that was an amplifier. Two seraphs flanked him on either side. Issa recognised the lily on Gabriel's robes and the healing staff at Raphael's back.
Issa cared little for them, her eyes drawn to Michael. Where had she seen him before?
A quiet beating in the air made her turn.
Her brows rose.
It was Edvardiel and he had wings. While the archangels had wings that were glossy and aflame, Edvardiel's wings looked soft and downy, as though they would feel fluffy to the touch.
He was wincing with each wing beat and as he came closer, Issa saw that he was heavily injured, an arm clutching his side, his robes soaked scarlet. One wing was bent as though it were broken, and some of his pale feathers were askew or missing, blood trickling where they'd been torn off.
Grim determination shone on his bruised face as he landed in front of the gates, lowering himself before the archangels.
"I, Edvardiel of the Seraphim, bring you the heart of Lucifer," he said. His hand was shaking so badly that the organ tumbled out of it and flopped onto the ground before the archangels' feet. The heart was still beating and shone a curious gold-silver.
Edvardiel reached into his robes again. "I bring you his eyes."
Two golden orbs clattered to the ground.
From this close, Issa could see that Edvardiel's left eyelid drooped, swelling in his face. He sucked in a breath and withdrew something that looked like oddly shaped golden sticks. "I bring you his bones."
Those, too, rolled down to join the eyes and the heart—brutal offerings to cruel angels.
Edvardiel kept his head bowed as he waited expectantly, but the clouds around the three archangels darkened.
"And what do you expect us to do with these?" Raphael thundered.
Edvardiel's good eye flickered up in surprise. He looked at Michael.
"Sire—" he began, but Michael held up a hand, his expression dark.
"It is an angel killer."
"An abomination."
"It dares to call itself seraphim."
Edvardiel looked stunned. "But I—"
"Silence!" Michael's voice was a clap of thunder and Gabriel and Raphael shifted to flank Edvardiel instead of Michael. Their hands closed around his upper arms and his wings.
They were holding him down.
"You are not welcome here." Michael's lips curled, and his flaming sword glowed. "We tolerated your presence but it is clear you do not belong in Heaven."
Everything happened so quickly, it was as though the archangels had prepared for this moment.
Michael raised the flaming sword.
Issa swallowed but kept her eyes on the wings.
It was far from a clean cut. His wing joints were robust and the scorching fire came down again and again, hacking at it bit by bit. Skin, muscle and then bone.
It was a scene straight from Hell.
Killing him would've been more merciful. She covered her ears to shield herself from the horrifying sounds but kept her gaze fixed on the mutilated wings. They'd come all the way here for this—she'd be damned if they failed because she couldn't stomach some blood and screaming.
Finally, there was silence. Or mostly silence, anyway.
The raw, jagged wounds bled profusely. She avoided looking at Edvardiel's face. She tried not to look at anything too closely—this already felt like an obscene invasion of his most vulnerable moment. She focused on the bloody, amputated wings in Michael's hands.
This was it.
Now they would see where his wings went.
But Michael only raised his sword again.
"No," Issa breathed. "No fucking way. Don't you dare—"
Blood spattered gruesomely and soft feathers rained down around them.
"I declare this creature Fallen."
"Let it be so."
"Let it be so."
Raphael and Gabriel released him, carelessly discarding his limp form before returning to the gates. Issa swore and caught him before he plummeted down. His eyes were closed and his head lolled against her shoulder.
"Edvardiel," she tried.
She couldn't feel him. But she hadn't been able to feel him throughout the memory either. Was it the void or was it because it wasn't real? She held him to her, despaired. "Come on, Edvardiel. This isn't real." How was she supposed to wake him from a memory this intense?
The answer was too easy.
She had to distract the void. Use herself as bait.
Closing her eyes, she imagined the cathedral.
The bright skies and the golden gates disappeared, thunder rolling in. The gothic cathedral's two towers shot up from the ground and Edvardiel stirred in her arms as the blood rain soaked them.
"We need to go," she said as Edvardiel's face blurred, shifting into Yassper's, and then back.
Edvardiel lifted his head, his eyes red-rimmed as he gripped her arm. "I missed it. Again," he murmured. "Did you… did you see what happened to my wings?"
Fuck, she was supposed to break the news to him?
"I did."
With that, she grabbed the threads and got them the hell out of there.