34 Finding Beauty

Bel

Bel wiped the mud and sweat off his face with a marginally clean rag, pacing around the tent they’d set up as a command post. The ragged hole the size of a fist that had been punched through his left wing throbbed, tendrils of fire shooting through his nervous system and exacerbating his foul mood.

Nine dead.

Unacceptable.

This was supposed to be a simple watch rotation. A simple line of defense to reiterate the point they’d made last time and deter the other Universe from any more violent bullshit. He was supposed to bring all his soldiers home a bit scuffed at worst , not in a fucking shroud.

He’d asked for their names. Maphias. Ingara. Dagon. Behe. Rihman. Uuli. Kikio. Ferneth. Jonereth.

Nine people gone. Nine families devastated. Children would grow up without a parent. Parents would bury their children. Lovers and partners would never again feel their warmth, hear their laughter, turn to them on a bad day.

All because one greedy fucking Universe couldn’t take no for an answer and leave their Universe the fuck alone.

Bel closed his eyes, grief and rage crashing through him. It hadn’t just been armed exploratory forces this time. It had been a planned attack, and they hadn’t been prepared for the intensity of it.

“Sir, please, let me take care of your wing,” a healer said firmly. Bel opened his eyes, and the healer pointed to a chair near the other commanders in the tent. Asmodeus had a bloody nose and a pissy expression but was otherwise fine. Morrigan had been outmaneuvered—a rarity—and was furious enough to make the air shake. One of her commanders was wisely giving her a bit of extra room. Bel didn’t blame him. A deity in a mood was…unpleasant. Depending on the deity, the sensations ranged from static to sandpaper to oil to heat to cold and everything in between. Morrigan’s wrath made Bel’s teeth and skin ache, like the sound of nails being drawn over a chalkboard made manifest.

Knowing that his mother would give a lecture for the ages if she heard that one of her offspring gave a healer grief, Bel sat as directed and spread his wing, focusing on anything other than that particular part of his body as they went to work.

“I’m sorry,” Asmodeus rasped, his voice uncharacteristically grave. “We didn’t know about the gegony until it was on you.”

Bel took the offered mug of water and downed half of it, grimacing as his wing screeched with pain, the fine muscles fighting his efforts to hold still.

Gegony. He saw them in his nightmares sometimes, had ever since his first brief encounter with them as a soldier all those years ago. Towering beasts with too-long limbs, razor-sharp claws, a twisted head set on a stubby, nearly nonexistent neck, with a maw that split their head vertically and almost completely in half. Fast, strong, vicious in the extreme, and damn near unstoppable. Their wet, shrieking roar sounded like babies wailing and flesh ripping, the latter a sound that had become painfully familiar thanks to their presence for a brief series of previous battles over some issue with an ambassador.

They’d killed it. Barely. It had taken nine lives to do it. Too many. The pain in his wing was nothing compared to the ache in his heart.

“Don’t be sorry,” Bel said. “There was no way you could have known about it. None of us did.”

“How many?”

“Nine.”

Morrigan and two of the other commanders began a heated discussion that, thankfully, didn’t involve him or Asmodeus for the time being. They’d had their moment of battle. They’d conveyed the information they’d needed to convey.

“It could have been worse, for a gegony. I’m sorry all the same.”

Bel just nodded. It could have been worse. Should have been worse. They’d all studied the reports of them through the millennia. Gegony could shred dozens, hundreds if they struck fast and hard enough.

The prickling, stinging pain of being healed scratched up his spine and dug into his brain like needles.

Find the beauty, Beleth. Even if it’s small. Find it.

Bel focused on keeping his breaths steady, centering his mind, acknowledging the pain—physical, mental, emotional—without letting it consume him.

A flicker of movement caught his eye—Asmodeus, mindlessly running the pad of his thumb over the silvery shine of his wedding band, his gleaming black claws a sharp contrast against the delicate patterns engraved in the metal. Simple, quietly powerful, lovely.

Love enduring in a dark place.

The flickering light from a lantern reflected merrily in the ring of water on the table left behind by a glass. A dancing circle of cheerful gold against rough grains of dark wood.

Simple beauty, but no less precious.

Lily.

She sprang to his mind unbidden, and he immediately felt like he’d planted both feet on the ground.

Beauty. She was the definition of it to him. She’d been so ethereally glorious those mornings ago in his bed, rising above him in one of his old shirts, auburn hair rumpled from sleep and gilded by the morning light. She looked like she’d been crowned with fire. But her eyes…the expression she’d had—

“This last bit is going to hurt, sir,” the healer warned.

Bel closed his eyes and thought of Lily’s hands on his face instead. She’d touched him so delicately, as if he were some precious, fragile thing instead of a demon and a warrior. No one had ever done that. Looked at him with such tenderness. Lily saw him. Saw the warrior, yes, but she saw the rest of him too, and she hadn’t curled her lip in disgust or treated him as less than. There’d been no pity in her eyes. Just understanding. One warrior to another.

You are more than enough.

He’d almost told her right then that he loved her, because for the first time in so long, he’d believed that he was worthy. Worthy of permanence and love, and that he truly had more to offer than his capability.

Then she’d told him to be safe.

His mother had stopped telling him to be safe while he’d still been in school. He’d never doubted that she cared, but telling him, a respected warrior, then a general, to be safe ? She, like everyone, assumed that he was Beleth. He’d either be fine or he wouldn’t.

It was nice to have someone…not worry, he didn’t like the idea of Lily worried. Care. It was nice to have someone care, to express their care and recognize that he wasn’t invincible.

He could practically hear her and Sharkie giggling together in the breakroom over something, could hear Sharkie cheering his name with the full force of her enthusiasm, and feel her flying over to give him a hug, shortly followed by Lily, who sauntered over with a sparkle in her eyes and a smile on her pretty lips. He craved those moments, even though they always made him wonder anew why his own young joy hadn’t had the same grounding effect for its recipient.

He opened his eyes. The residual ache from his wing was minor compared to before, the new skin darker and far more tender than the surrounding membrane.

“Thank you,” he rasped to the healer, who nodded and marched towards a resigned and sighing Asmodeus.

Bel drifted over to the rest of the meeting, offering his advice and insight when necessary. His and his legion’s rotation had come to a close, but with Lily and Sharkie burning bright in his mind, he would be damned if he didn’t do everything in his power to keep their Universe safe.

To keep them safe.