The Wicked & Divine

Chapter 24- Denial

I thought Satan was a silly name. Halvieno was always more fitting, it is the name he was given when he was christened in the blood of angels- his sisters and brothers. 

My father was never admirable to me, he was a stranger in all ways. Every moment in his presence was a trepidation, it was the material of all my nightmares. Insistent on having me as a loyal second, he was ineluctable in all ways. I was his favorite organism, an animal to steal away peruse, studying any and every way he could fashion me into a thoughtless killer. 

To say he wasn't successful would be a lie, I was made in his image. I will reap his sins as promised to me on the day I served his head to the enemy. That was my father, a lie, turning everything that was preached to me into a false and distant illusion.

It was why it was so easy for him to lure me away from Kavyria and down into the icy depths that is Kashremi, a realm that I now have no option but to be bound to as I am bound Artemis, an insufferable and noisy woman to which I am at an impasse. Would things have been much different if I did not find her so long ago? just a small and fearful creature lost in the inbetween.

The day I saved her was the day I knew I was doomed much farther than any hell.

"Lucifer, it is me"

Death knew he didn't need to say his name, the stench of souls followed him everywhere.

"What is it? do you carry news?" I am eager, thirsty for any bit or morsel of information I can get. It has been almost a week since that feral woman loosened herself from my grasp, even I am fearing the worst. Death is hesitant, I narrow my reddened eyes. I have no patience.

"No, my lord, although I though I should tell you that Arte...the two misses guerrero have arrived with your brother and Gabriel should arrive within the hour." 

I hate her, I have decided, most ardently. I was never like this, I am not like this, like a simple human yearning and hoping and aching. I do not engage in these foolish endeavors for the very reason that I cannot spare it, and yet I have unknowingly indulged in a poison that has been made forbidden. 

I...no, I won't even say it because I will not allow it. She is my responsibility, a task, and that is all, she is not permitted to exist beyond that square of titles.

I am in a foul mood now. I was not interested in alerting her relatives of the issue, Mammon was the pest that urged me to do the humane thing. And now, I would have to house one failure of an archangel as I rehabilitated another.

Raphael was found comatose and bloody in the snow a few miles away by Death, in his hand was the head of a demon I have not seen in a very long time. A demon that was created by Halvieno to only know loyalty by his bound, the perfect war machine. And now...they were back and resurfacing and just happened to run into her. 

Yeah right, the coincidence was too complex to be just that. All it did was confirm what I already suspected...Halvieno was awake. 

There was no way that Gabriel did not know, I have heard that he has contested against Raphael to take Michaels place. He was getting information, I needed to pry what he knew out of his mouth at all odds. 

"Have the housekeeper arrange the extra rooms then, let us hope their visit is short" I am curt, it is what I do best. 

Death hovers near me, positioning himself to balance on the sloped tile of the roof. The moon glows over the valley below, illuminating the blanket of snow that has coated the trees and soil like the flesh on a flat bone. 

I don't make coming back to the castle a routine action, if I could hover in the sky and tear the mountains apart with no interruptions I would. Artemis is not my only duty, and I am called back when Mammon thinks he has new information. The train crash was reported, authorities have long exhumed it's contents and parts. Artemis was not logged as a rider, only a Kayla that was not found in the ruins of the overturned train- an Elijah as well. Both were most clearly using names to sneak through the country without my attention. It was made even more impossible that she momentarily had the protection and coverage of an Archangel.