11. WEN

Istare at the massive angel curled at my feet as pandemonium breaks loose. Even if it’s the wrong academy.

Shouts of shock and rage inundate me. The floor shakes and the air vibrates with a stampede of boots and wings. It finally forces me to tear my stunned gaze from the angel to find an army of his brothers charging me.

Before I can process anything, I’m snatched off the ground and catapulted back so brutally, I leave all my heartbeats behind and the world goes black.

It bursts back to a terrifying sight. The ground coming up at me at a sickening speed, promising an impact that will splatter me over a mile’s radius.

My descent stops so abruptly, I flip head over heels in an organ-scrambling spin cycle, before landing on my feet with a slam that almost dislocates my hip joints.

I barely bite back a shout of pain. At least I’m not Academy pizza.

Godric crash lands in front of me, his terrifying runes blazing all over his wings.

It’s only because Academy grounds are made to weather Celestial-level punishment that there’s minimal destruction. But the shockwave of his landing should have swatted me off my feet, and crashed me dozens of feet away like that first night. He shielded me from it this time. He’s also keeping me upright, and unmoving—which I don’t mind right now. I’d collapse in a spaghetti swirl without his support.

“What in all the bloody realms am I going to do with you?”

I blink up at him, my head spinning from the turbulent flight, and violent landing as the pieces of what happened crash in place.

He yanked me out of the Hall. Not with the leash, but one of those nine Graces everyone talks about in such awe. The telekinetic one he uses during our training, in service of his no-touching policy.

He saved my life. Again.

I know that for certain. I recognize murderous rage when I see it. If he hadn’t zoomed me out of those angels’ reach, they would have torn me apart on the spot, and asked questions later.

“This is how you obey me?” His exasperation rolls over me like thunder as he paces in front of me like a caged panther. At least he’s given up the indifferent act. “This is your interpretation of doing nothing?”

“I don’t even know what I did?—”

He raises a hand that can bring down a mountain, cutting off my protest. “Didn’t I already tell you of the precarious situation with Azazel’s Cadre?”

“What do they have to do …?”

I interrupt myself as the realization hits me. Those angels were Azazel’s fallen, not his regular Pax Vis.

Godric stops to glare down at me. “I should have known. I did know that you’d do something to make all my efforts pointless. And I still paid—too much, to bind them and their master in a Requiem Concordia.”

Feeling his disappointment searing me to the bone, I swallow past the lump growing in my throat. “W-what’s that?”

He grimaces, as if at the taste of something foul. “It’s a respite pact, paid for by a pledge, and signed in blood. I was forced to instigate it, to stop them from exacting vengeance.”

I nod, nausea rising up my throat. “Yeah, after what you did, I can see them seeking revenge on you?—”

“On you.”

His furious correction hits my like a punch to the gut. My lungs stall, and my mind glitches.

When they both restart, I exclaim, “Why should they seek revenge on me? You’re the one who cut off their brother’s wings.”

His lips twist in that scary pseudo-smile of his. “Yes, but I’m me. They fear me too much to risk retaliation. Those goons

don’t have a death wish.”

I shake my head, confusion deepening. “But they attacked you before.”

“They were forced to engage me when I attacked their master to defend you. Without these extenuating circumstances, they wouldn’t dream of antagonizing me. Still, to them, my unforgivable crime is nothing to yours; a human daring to touch him, let alone attempting to prevent his wrath. If I hadn”t signed the Concordia, you would have been executed the first moment I wasn’t there to prevent it. Now, because you can’t help but disobey me, you may have undone all of my efforts.”

Bending forward, I fight off another wave of vertigo from his brutal rescue, and yet another of his terrible revelations.

So that’s why there’s been no repercussions of attacking Azazel so far. Godric has cleaned up that mess. My mess.

Still nauseous and at a loss, I hiccup. “I didn’t disobey you. I didn’t even get to the Amulet fitting part. I was only trying to stop them from branding Jinny.”

If anything, his fury doubles at her mention. “Your unhinged need to defend that vile demon, that so-called Hitman of Hell, may yet be the death of you.”

Hitman? That’s another Jinny story I have to investigate. Later. If there’s a later.

If there is, I might tell him of her same high opinion of him as the so-called Sword of Heaven.

For now, I try to defend my actions. “I just got out of line, literally, then that Cadre angel pushed Sarah off the platform—and …” Horror hits me all over again, and I stumble to grab him by the arms. “Take me back in there! She hit her head so hard, and?—”

His forcefield expands, shoving my hands away as he grits, “And nothing. She’s fine.”

“You can’t know that!” I exclaim as I swing around.

His power drags me back, pressing me into tighter confinement. “I do know.” I gaze up into his storming eyes for one more second before my tension drains. He isn’t only trying to silence me. She’s okay. His gaze grows heavier as it melts down my slackening body, then he exhales. “Just as I know your deranged love for your Sarah may yet cause Armageddon.” Before I scoff at that gross exaggeration, his frown deepens. “This time you didn’t only attack a fallen angel, White, you cut him down.”

I start to object before I choke on the memory of the angel keeling over at my feet.

It makes no sense. Harvesting Angel Essence has never had any effect on the angel before.

“Do you have it?” he bites off.

I look down at my hand, and shake my head. There’s nothing there. That’s another first.

Godric bears down on me, his eyes pulsing with a crimson glow. “I want you to replay what happened, and be very, very specific about every detail.”

I start to shake at his intensity, and with foreboding. “I-I saw his Essence, but it wasn’t a cloud hanging above him like always, but an outline. A glowing field of uniform thickness, all around him, body and wings. It looked like a protective covering, but—felt as if it seeped through his every cell. And it wasn’t bluish, but golden.”

Grimness deepening, he nods, urging me on. “And what did you do? Exactly now, White.”

“When Sarah’s head hit the ground so hard, and he tried to stop me from helping her, I felt fear and fury blowing out of me. It was then I saw that glowing outline, and I-I just knew I could weaken him, make him let me go, if I stripped it off—no, more, if I pulled it out of him. So I did. I grabbed it and yanked.”

He nods again, as if to himself. “Since you don’t have it now, I hope that you pulled on it so viciously, he went into shock, then you let go and it snapped back inside him. Still, with the way you dropped him, you could have put him in a coma, or turned him into a vegetable?—”

“Whoa, back up please,” I exclaim. “Why would pulling on the Essence he’s already expended do any of that to him?”

“Because that wasn’t Angel Essence, or Energy, which you haven’t been able to see so far. That was Life Essence.”

“Life Essence?” I repeat dazedly, feeling the ground wobble beneath me. “Where did you get that from?”

“From you. You described it to a T. In angels’ case, it’s a tight, dense cloak that permeates them, making them almost immortal. In humans, it is sparse and loose, making them the opposite.”

“How do you even know how it looks? Can you see it?”

“Only the highest Celestials can, and they recorded its properties in the Codex Celestia. But even they could only perceive it, not manipulate it.”

I gape up at him, my heart ricocheting in my ribcage.

“This is even worse than I feared. Before, you could see and harvest Essence once it was expended. Then you started tapping into Energy, on a minor scale, and that worried me enough. But this is an unthinkable leap in your power. Just like the rest of your Unitas. If you did what I think you did, it means you can now see, and forcibly extract, Life Essence. It means you might be able to kill angels.”

My legs buckle. Only his power keep me on my numb feet.

“You think I killed that angel?” I rasp.

For answer, he closes his eyes for a long, long moment.

I’ve never seen him this agitated. Not even after he cut off that angel’s wings. He’d been—frustrated. Now he looks almost—afraid.

For me?

That’s the only explanation. Godric fears nothing and no one. Not for himself. But if I harmed that angel, the consequences for me would be terrible. To say the least.

I feel him loosening his hold over me as he opens his eyes, and the crimson radiation in their whites makes them look bloodshot. “Instead of proposing the least damaging explanation for whatever the Amulet will reveal about you, which was hard enough, I now have to deal with the fallout of your insaneactions. If that angel is comatose or dead … No, I can’t even begin to imagine.”

“I’m sorry, Godric,” I whisper thickly. “I had no idea I could even do that. Things got out of hand?—”

He steps away, cutting me off. “They always do with you. I won’t have an ally left in existence by the time you’re finished messing everything up.”

Tears well up from my very soul. “Seems you’d rather I didn’t come back to you.”

This makes him go still, his gaze snaring mine in the inferno of conflict raging inside him. There’s so much in his eyes I don’t understand, and don’t dare guessing at.

I don’t breathe until his whole aura almost—sags, as if under the weight of resignation. “I tried to rip out my own Energy so you’d come back to me. I would have torn through the very fabric of existence if you hadn’t. I would do anything to get you back, always.”

A sob catches in my throat, even when my mind scoffs he would have done all that because he needs my power. But I don’t listen to it. I want to believe he would have done it for me.

A hint of softening touches the savage sculpture of his lips, and my whole system almost shuts down. “It doesn’t mean you don’t test me beyond endurance, my bane.”

My bane.Seems it’s his official name for me now.

I’ll take it. I’ll take anything as long as I’m his anything. Me, and no one else. And as long as he continues to look at me like that. As if I matter. As if I matter so much, he’s at a loss what to do.

Suddenly, his expression turns murderous. Before I can cry out with alarm, the perpetually overcast sky darkens.

Following his gaze upward, I see the reason for the eclipse.

A squadron of Cadre angels are charging straight at us.