Finding Heathcliff

Thirty-Five

A flutter of wings stirred Astrid from sleep, a whisper of feathers so soft as if it belonged to her dream.

Or maybe it was the flutter of the fabric Rigel's balloon was made of... Her heart thrashed against her ribs like a caged bird, her lungs struggled for air as she recalled the vision-- in her dream, their balloon fell into the sea and Astrid was drowning, the rainbow-coloured envelope morphed into a spiderweb she could not escape, trapping her, pulling her underneath the cold, agitated water.

As she sat up on the bed observing her surroundings, remembering where she was, she heard the soft flutter again. What was it?

"Are you all right, Lady?" Azrael's voice seeped through the fabric of the curtain, startling her. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," he added as if he could feel her panic either from the sound of her crazily beating heart or her racing thoughts.

"What are you doing out there?" she whispered, deciding quickly that the fire was burning so low that the angel wouldn't see what a mess she looked, just awoken. "Come in," she added, unable to resist.

Azrael chuckled softly, setting her cheeks ablaze when he walked in through the heavy curtain without bothering to move it aside, two doves perched side by side on his shoulder.

Astrid smiled at the sight, wondering if they were the same pair she used to find in her castle's library, even as one of them flew towards her, cooing, expecting her to feed it. She reached out towards the table that stood behind the bed, remembering her uneaten dinner, reducing a piece of bread into crumbs, then offering them to the white bird who studied her expectantly.

"They always liked you," Azrael observed as the second dove left his shoulder to join the first, who was now pecking at the crumbs on Astrid's bed.

Astrid smiled at him, then shivered as the memory of the doves pulled another into the forefront of her mind, the memory of his bow ready to send an arrow into her heart through a crowded ballroom, the bow she could see even now slung across his back.

She could hear the hitch in his breath when the image reached his mind and he removed the bow, dropping it on the floor next to the entrance before he approached her, saying, "It wasn't personal, and I'll never forgive myself for it."

He ran his hand through his blond hair in a gesture of discomfort which made Astrid want to abandon the subject, even though she wanted to know why he had tried to kill her, why the fallen angels killed her people every Black Night.

"Only demons, Lady, and humans of demon descent who sympathise with them. No one else. We believed that you, Arcturus' niece, were as much of a demon as he, but I know now that your demon part is insignificant... Arcturus and your fiancé, on the other hand, descend from the last few ancient bloodlines; they are almost pure-blood demons."

Demons... Astrid started to shake her head. It sounded impossible... But what if he was telling her the truth? She already accepted the existence of fallen angels, she was on her way to meet an archangel... Seeing that Azrael was willing to talk, she patted the place on the bed freed by the doves who were now perched on a tall bookcase on the other side of the room which Astrid had not noticed before.

"My book says that you, the fallen angels, are demons. The angels who sinned, and thus were banished from Heaven," she said even as he sat down, so very close to her that it took all her will not reach out and touch him. Why was it so difficult to keep her distance from him, what was he doing to her?

A ghost of a smile fluttered over Azrael's lips before he replied, "That's a very simplified truth. Yes, some people call us demons, but there's a difference. The true demons were cast out from Heaven for having committed a sin, and then, unrepentant, they repeated their sins until they lost their souls and any trace of their angel magic. All that remained to them, what they pass on their offspring, is a talent of manipulation, persuasion, the power to make others believe that they still have the powers they don't possess any longer, making them see what they want them to believe. That's why your uncle..."