The Heart Of Asariel

9.2 || Mistakes

The continued race of Micah's heart beat in time with his wings' itching protests, but still he forced himself to lower, the grit crunching beneath him as he sat awkwardly atop it. His tensed shoulders might have welcomed the support of the wall, but his wings were squirming enough without pressing them into ragged stone. He shifted instead to partially face Corinne, squinting to pick more of her shape from the darkness she'd huddled into.

She sighed and turned her face aside. Her knees were drawn to her chest, her rifle resting on them. Her fingers curled more tightly over its handle. "So much for subtlety."

"I can be subtle," he murmured, fumbling for the back of his coat.

"Yours doesn't have a hood."

"Oh." His hand drifted up to the back of his neck. He cleared his throat. "Corinne, I... I'm sorry. About what happened." He swallowed, the prickle of tears returning, their ache creeping down his throat. "It was my fault."

His voice shook. Accepting it as truth was one thing, but admitting it aloud was a whole other feat, and it placed cracks in his resolve. He threw a glance at the house's door flap. It had been more carefully sealed shut since he ventured through it.

Corinne exhaled, but for once it wasn't exasperation that weighted her breath. He jerked back towards her to see her gaze fixed on her knees, her hand dragging over her forehead. "No, it wasn't." Her fingers dug into her hair. It was tangled considerably; he was used to it being far more straight and neat. "I shouldn't have killed him."

"You had no choice." Wavered as the words were, he believed them. If Kasper hadn't died, wouldn't Corinne have been killed in his stead? Claws dug into his heart at the mere thought.

"I did. Not about shooting him, perhaps, but killing him..." Her hand dropped back to her rifle, nails digging into its side. "That was instinct."

Micah might have flinched at the anger in her voice had it not fallen so soft and quiet, vanished within the instant. Guilt. His chest squeezed. His tongue ran over his lips, desperate to grasp any kind of words that might have helped, but he came across nothing.

Witnessing death was bad enough. Causing it carried another, deeper weight he could never imagine.

The thought tumbled into another question, one that tripped out as a whisper before he could stop it. "Why did Kasper want to kill you?"

She met his uncertain stare. Hard and sharp as her gaze was, the fire within it still burned, not enough to chase away its bleakness but still preserving a spark of warmth. Her expression flattened, unreadable. "Why did the angels send you?"

The same question as last night, accompanied by the same twisting thorns. "If I explain," he said, "will you answer me?"

Her chin dipped in a nod.

"Okay." He swallowed, the thorns scratching at his throat. They were sharper this time, armed with the poison of the day's events, the further proof that any faith placed in him was unjustified. His voice came out unsteady. "I lost the Heart. I was playing a game, and I... I took it too far. It slipped through my hands. I was sent to fix my mistake." He rocked his heel back and forth, watching the gravel shift. "But all I've done is make more mistakes."

He pictured Nerezza's doubtful frown, Siofra's pleading gaze. The desperate way Jinx had defended him. They'd all known he couldn't cope with this, that all he'd do was mess things up further. If only he'd tried harder to talk Eike around.

When Corinne didn't fill the silence, he found his tongue wandered onwards. "I'm one of the youngest angels. I don't even remember the times when we used to visit Duine. I guess I... I was never really sure why they needed me." His heels scraped back over the gravel as he drew his knees in, resting his chin on them as he kept his gaze on the ground. "I started causing trouble. I made it my... my thing, you know? My dance with danger, my purpose. But now..." He scrubbed at his eyes, determined to hold back the tears. They only made him more pathetic than he already sounded. "Now I'm just ruining everything. And maybe that's worse than doing nothing at all."