I took a small step towards him, and mirroring my moves he did the same. The air was still, but the forest behind me still whispered quietly as the leafs brushed against one another. One very creepy thing about the magic world: everything is alive that is created by nature, and they have their own way of communicating. In the human world, trees can't talk. Obviously, even here, they don't use a language that we could understand, but they whispered in the old tongue of the fairies, and the fairies could understand them.
The earth beneath my feet was furred with soft grass and the sky above me was spotted with countless stars, but the moon was just a black spot on the ink-blue sky. There were no clouds, just the stars, shining like many jewels of the unknown.
"Aren't you here because you have questions?" - He asked with a mocking smirk on his face. Rider climbed out of the water, and his black jeans were dripping.
"Not exactly. I am here, because I was sent here. Why are you here? Clearly, we are not in Greece anymore." - The air didn't smell of sea and sunshine, like it did in Greece. Here, the air smelled of grass, pine, and fresh black soil.
"We are in Scotland." - He replied. - "But why the hell would I be in Greece? I have left the castle a while ago. Ever since the Consilium ripped my wings off, the mansion belongs to my cousin." - His words confused me. I closed the distance between us, and went closer to him.
"What are you saying? Just the other, you were sitting in the meeting hall with the other lords, talking about the negotiation with Haniel and Jophiel." - To that, he smiled, and pushed back a lock of hair that had floated front of his eyes.
"I feel offended that you still can't tell me and my cousin apart. Of course, no one could, right from the first time we were seen together, but those others never mattered. They never spent enough time with any of us to feel the difference." - He reached his arm out, and brushed my cheek. His hand was warm with the golden flames, but wet with pond water.
"What cousin?" - I asked back. - "Marcus had died when I was captured and dragged for a postaquam. He was killed. You are the last living member of the Vower clan. You said it yourself." - I reminded him.
"Really?" - He smiled, and lifted his chin a little bit. A thin white line ran across his neck. A scar. I backed away, terrified.
"Who are you?!" - I asked, as I put more and more distance between us.
"I am the lover you cried over in the stadium." - He snorted. - "I was there to die. I was the one who had to deal with all the bullshit that Rider didn't want to face. And you know why? Because I was still an angel when they killed me. Since I didn't sin, they gave me back my life, but I had to say goodbye to being an angel." - He came closer to me, and grabbed my arms. - "I switched with Rider, because he is my cousin, and I knew that I will be killed, but then I would recover. However, every time he sent me to be with you, I had to play that I was him. Do you have any idea how many times you said his name to me? How many times I wanted to tell you the truth, but my vow forbade me?" - He shook me angrily. His grip was painful on my upper arms, and I cried out in pain. He pushed me away, and I fell on the ground. I tried to block the fall with my hands, but the push was so powerful that I felt my left wrist snap.
Pain spread from the inner side of my wrist,
Again, a cry left my lips. I could tell that he was angry. He was angry with me, he was angry with Rider... he was angry with the world. - "You ask who am I? I am Marcus Vower."
Sitting on the ground, healing my wrist with the green flames, I was speechless. Many questions raced through my mind. It never even occurred to me that maybe I was spending time with another person than Rider. How could I ever tell them apart, if they never showed their true self to me? Not once...
Then I remembered the dream I had in Seattle about him laying dead in my arms. I took a deep breath. - "So... in La, when the demons attacked the Institute, you were the one with me in the bathroom, trying to convince me to run away with you?" - I asked back.
"Yes." - He stared at me from above. My wrist cracked back to its original position, and the green flames turned back to golden fire. I stood up, and faced him again.
"You were the one who kissed me for the first time?" - I asked.
"No." - He shook his head.
"You were with me in Seattle?" - The last question hurt the most. That day, I thought I knew what I wanted. I knew who I was, what I love, what I want, who I want, and the world seemed much simpler than at this moment.
Marcus rolled his right shoulder backwards, and his collarbone popped. The muscles moved smoothly under his skin. Visibly, he wasn't comfortable with the topic.
"I was the one you slept with, but I wasn't the one, who hit you in the kitchen." - He replied. My eyes widened.
"How could you switch so quickly?" - I asked.
"Magic." - He pulled on his shoulders. Hatred was inside of me... hatred that burned like a storm of fire in the dry savanna. It burned with insane heat, and I was hating Marcus and Rider all the same.
"You both played me, like I was just a toy. It wasn't just Rider, but you as well!!" - I shouted. - "What did you expect to gain from this situation? What did you think would have happen... Now that Rider had proposed to me? You would keep playing him in bed, while he does the public appearances? Not that I feel like marrying you... nor him." - I felt like I have never been so angry in my life. Marcus came up to me, and tried to touch my face, but I slapped his hand away.
"You wanted the truth, now you have it." - He murmured. I threw my hands in the air. I couldn't believe that he took the whole thing so lightly. Was I the only one who cared about who she has sex with, and who she spends her time with?
"You know what? Yes, I had my truth, now I better leave." - I turned around, and then realized that I had no clue how to get back to the castle.
I closed my eyes, and reached out towards Joel. He was the only one I knew how to reach through the mental strings. But at the end of the string, he wasn't there anymore. I remembered that I have sent him away from the castle, and he probably hates me now, but why does this keep happening to me?
Why couldn't be Rider my one true love, like in the fairy tales in books? Where the girl finds the boy she had always dreamed about, and he just happens to be the one who dreamed about her as well... then they live happily ever after.
I gasped as the first teardrop rolled down on my cheeks. The world was a cruel place... and as I was mourning over my dreams of who I wanted to be, suddenly the world began to spin around me, and the ground slipped out of my feet. Strong arms grabbed me, and suddenly I was in a dark room, smooth stone floor under my feet. I turned towards the person, who got me away from Marcus, and my eyes met a brilliant sky-blue glare.
A smile spread across my lips.. a sad smile, and soon tears took over it's place. Morgen hugged me tightly as I sobbed.
"I know it's awful... I should have warned you.." - He whispered into my hair. I wanted to tell him that it doesn't matter because I wouldn't have listened anyways. I wanted to tell him that I was too naive to believe such thing about a man I loved, but all I could to was grip his black shirt, and not let go as the tears flowed down on my cheeks endlessly.
I cried until I fell asleep. But at least I felt safer, because he was there with me. The only person who had never betrayed me.
***
Morgen had brought me to Skydown. Since everyone escaped or died during the siege of the palace, the consilium had no use of it anymore. All of the windows were broken, and at some places, bloody hand-prints covered the walls. The blood had already dried, so the blackish brown flakes exfoliated when I walked by, leaving an ugly imprint on the wall.
The castle was hallow, and just sad. I never felt like this place was truly my home... never. But why was I so sad still? I walked up to the highest tower, and when I stepped into the balcony, a pair of snow white wings were at my feet. Ambriel's wings. I knelt down, and brushed the soft feathers with my fingertips. Once these wings belonged to a man as powerful as he could be, with many people standing by his side, but he still died. He died because of Jophiel... because who else could have given the command to siege Skydown, if they killed the current head of consilium, and he stepped up to take her place? It was clear as sunlight that Jophiel was a man to be feared.
Jophiel
People surrounded him in the meeting hall of Hell-Blossom. The Depth and the Main consilium worked as one, like never before, but he could still feel the hatred in the eyes of the heirs on their thrones. Especially the new Severio, called Darren, whose father had been killed at Skydown.
Jophiel knew that trusting him would be a terrible mistake. But he was forced to depend on people he didn't trust, and he didn't trust them for good reasons. He was the son of the man who had started this conflict by kidnapping the daughter of Ambriel. He knew goddamn well, that nobody around him agreed with what he was doing, but he wanted the Princeps girl... he needed Iris, to see her with his own eyes, to see that it is possible to turn a halfblood into something great and powerful.
But there were several problems, let's say many of the lords had 'spit in his soup' because secretly they all wanted to go to that other Princeps, that whore... she had escaped the siege, even thoug the main reason was to get a hold of her.
She was a soul-whisperer, possessed a great power that only the nephilim could, a power that made her even more powerful than her now-demonic sister.
Also, the new head of the Vowers, Raguel (or Rider as most of the people called him...) was the head of the rebellion that was meant to destroy the consilium, wipe it out, burn it to the ground, destroy even the memory of it... his family, once so noble, used to be one of the three families, who created the consilium in the first place, but by now everyone knew that Guardian Angels couldn't protect the magical world, nor keep the demonic powers from rising. All they did was looking after some weak ass humans, useless creatures, and they sucked at doing that too... Jophiel hated the Guardians, because their powers were greater than any other angels' but they were so dumb and naive, they never knew what they could do with all they got.
Especially the Vowers... they were selfless creatures all. The head of the clan before Rider gave up his life to take his place at the postaquam, trusting his abilities, thinkikg that Rider would have been captured to fight in the arena. Jophiel had seen when the guards had killed him. His last words were that It is not the end. I will come back, |I will come back for you all, and pull you down with me to the deepest pits of hell. Then you will be where you belong.
Obviously, he did not come back. Even if he did, he was a powerless creature, because Spirit took all the power that was left in his body. The most phatetic thing about the whole situation was that Spirit believed that she was mourning over the dead body of Rider, not knowing that she was actually two-timing Raguel and Marcus... she never knew what the cousins were doing to her, made her look like a fool, a wench, a useless bitch... yet these people sitting around him still wanted to follow her.
Sitting on that wooden armchair made his ass ache, and he realized that no mater how much time he will spend in these halls, no matter how much time he spens with the others in the meeting halls, they would never look at him with the desire to die for him as their true leader.
He was nothing to them, even though most of the people sitting around him were other heirs who had grown up with him, they used to be kids playing together, later on training together, yet they still want that stranger sitting here instead of him.
Damian appeared in the hall. Without his white and gold wings, he looked more like a ghost than an angel. Jophiel had to sentence him to be a fallen angel after he figured out that Spirit had escaped from Skydown mainly thanks to him. Damian said he never did anything, the nephilim princess left the building by her own will, he just went after her... but who wanted to believe such a tale. Now, even Jophiel's own lover was against him...
Of course, nobody knew the relationship between Jophiel and Damian. Jophiel was to marry a daughter of a Lord... and he was going to do so, otherwise the power wasn't his... but he wasn't really fond of women. He never really was.
He knew who to marry that best benefitted him, but since she was a fairy, he couldn't do that. He needed an angel, and a highborn of those. Sadly, none of the current clans had daughetrs of full blooded angels, but there were daughers that were Nephilim. Spirit, for one... and a demon, Iris.
If he could get a hold of one, he could force the Sub consilium to obey him... But rummor had it that the soul-whisperer was engaged to that stupid Vower, and Iris was nowhere to be found. He could force his men to capture Spirit, force her to break off the engagement, and to marry him, but what was the use? Forcing the Nephilim princess was like oil to the fire of hatred in the hearts of his lords.
"Lord Jophiel!"- Damian came up to him, whispering in his ear. - "They say the Nephilim Princess had disappeared from the Vower castle. She is not engaged, but the trackers can't find her either."- Half of the news had pleased him, half had annoyed him.
"These Princeps women seems to be harder to find than they worth..."- he murmured. Surely, they worth more than he dared to say, but the fact that both of them could hide from him, and anyone he could hire annoyed him to no end. - "Find her. I don't care what it costs."
Damian bowed his head, but he didn't bother to hide the frown on his face. They haven't slept together since he had sentenced him to be fallen. It was clearly understandable, because in a reverse situation, he wouldn't even bother to stick around Damian, and just take off to work for the Sub consilium... but his frowns and comments made Jophiel mad. He had given Damian more than he had deserved: his wounds were treated after his wings were torn off, he was allowed to stay in the castle, to serve him... which was a great allowance from Jophiel's side. Some even said that he was too soft to be the head of the consilium.
That was not true, he was just soft when it came to someone he had loved. - "As you wish, m'lord."
With that, he left, and the meeting continued. Jophiel was pleased to hear that the engagement was just a rummor, and that he didn't need to be the bad guy, the one who forces the great nephilim princess to break her love-dovey vows to Rider. Soon enough, he would have her, he hoped.
Spirit
We sat at the room that once was the meething hall, eating hard cheese, and dried bread. It was an awful taste, but there were onthing else we could eat, unless we went out in the woods to hunt. I had no weapons on, and Morgen was too concerned about safety than to leave me behind while he is gone hunting.
"You have to make the move." - He said.
"What move?"- I asked back, as I tried to chew my bread, but it was like the leather of my gear boots... and tasted like it as well.
"You know, choosing a husband." - He said, pointing at me with the point of his silver dagger.
"I really don't want to talk about that right now..." - I replied.
"Well, you sort of have to. You are the princess, everyone expects great things from you... and that includes great choices." - He smiled, and put aside his half eaten bread. When I looked at him, all i saw was the moment when he told me he loved me, but what was there to guarantee it?
What was love anyways, and why did it matter to me? I had to arrange my own marriage, and had to make it count. Morgen was a simple Grigori, known by few... they didn't look up to him, like I did. but still...
"Then I choose you."- I mumbled, feeling my cheeks turn red as a tomato. He told me i shouldn't kiss him or do anything like that as long as I looked for Rider in him. I hated Rider now, just as much as I hated Marcus, and they all were out of the picture.
So did that mean I was allowed to choose him?
He looked shocked when i finally had the courage to look up. His blue eyes were open wide, and he raised one of his eyebrows.
"You can't."- He said finally. - "You have to marry someone noble and worthy of a princess."
"Oh, fuck that!"- I yelled. - "I am just a girl, raised in Santa Fe. I was never a princess, nor want to be. I only keep playing this part so I don't disappoint anyone. I want to be with you." - I said finally, and threw the rest of my bread angrily at the other side of the room. It hit the wall, and crumbled into small pieces.
I turned my head towards Morgen again, and suddenly he reached down, and kissed me. I ran my fingers up on his neck, into his hair, and he pulled me closer with his strong arms. I felt happy... I felt happy, because this time he didn't refuse me.
That kiss tasted sweeter than any of Rider's (or Marcus' for that matter) and suddenly I knew I made a good choice. Silently I thanked my ancestors for the help as I wrapped my arms around Morgen.
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