When Angels Fall In Love

Chapter 1: Prized Catch

Her eyes were far too heavy as she laid limply in the corner of the cell.  Night had fallen.  The dim light of the moon making shadows on the floor as her breath clouded and hung in the air.  She was thankful for the light.  It was better than sitting in pitch black, but the moon, it taunted her.  It shown upon the barred cell window unremorseful of its beauty as it rose high into the star blanketed sky.  She wished she could touch it, to reach out, and hold the moon's sacred light her scarred palms, but she was stuck here.  Too weak to move and too broken to dare resist.

She rested a hand on her pregnant belly, her eyes dropping from the window, staring instead at the dirty stone floor and her reflection in a puddle.  Her heart aches at the sight of the rippling appearance in the water.  Her cheeks were hallowed, and her eyes were sunken into their sockets.  She looked like a skeleton with skin stretched thinly over bones.  Pathetic...Squeezing her eyes shut she tried to ignore the whispers in her head, subsequently breaking eye contact with the broken woman that stared back in the muddy water. Leaning her head back against the rough stone, the whispers slowly faded out until finally everything was silent once again.  Something hot trickled down her face, a bitter taste coating her tongue as she tasted her own sorrow, utterly silent as the tears slowly traveled down her face and neck.

Somewhere in the dark, a mouse skitters across the stone floor, the only life keeping her company as she rotted in the cell.  Besides the mouse's occasional squeak, her ragged breath sounded loud in the still silence.  It was too quiet for her waning sanity.  Straining to hear, she taps into the little power she had left to listen to the movement in the castle above.  She could hear footsteps and a child's innocent giggle.  Muffled conversation greets her as well, but her heart clenches as she hears the endearing words shared between lovers.

The tears started anew, running rampant down her face as she pulled harder on the tethers to her power and tried with all her strength to listen closer.  She caught soft conversation from the same voices but quickly released the power when a burning sensation began to rise in her chest.  The voices vanished, and finally, a sob escapes her lips as the words she did catch echo in her ears.

The ache in her heart was a comfort though, as strange as it sounds.  The fact that it did ache reminded her that she was still alive even though the rest of her felt numb.  It's all she's been able to feel as of late.  Not the pain in her limbs or the wounds inflicted upon her body; but the continuous out bleeding of her heart as she slowly perished.

Her eyes threaten droop closed.  The exhaustion weighing heavily on her limbs before pulling at her with renewed vigor as she tried to stay awake.  She had to stay awake.  Her life and the life of her child depending on staying awake, just in case the castle's master above and his men decided to pay her another visit.

They frequented the cell far too often, only leaving when she was half-dead and her body was sprawled out, unmoving on the cold unforgiving floor.  Sometimes she hoped she was dead, but when she found the constant ache still occupying her chest, she knew she still lived, still breathed while he was dead...Never again to open his eyes nor air to be inhaled into his lungs, never again would she lay an ear against his chest and hear his heartbeat.  Because he was dead...and his death was her fault...

They would never kill her though.  The sick bastards who kept her prisoner always stopped when she just a hairs breath away from death.  And so like the moon, death taunted her as well, always out of reach but close enough for her fingertips to brush against its promised end and subsequent comfort.  She was never so lucky...She was their prized catch...an angel.

Or that was what she used to be...with her fiery golden halo and grand white wings; she was no such thing anymore.  Her halo was stripped away and broken, and when she showed to be fighting back, they took her wings...Ripped from her back to be kept as a trophy.  That was until they crumbled into dust; reduced to an ashy pile on the stone.  Not a single feather remaining.  She remember screaming out in horror not in pain as she watched it happen.  She had wept for days over the loss, and again was beaten within an inch of her pathetic now mortal life for somehow being the cause of their destruction.  How was she supposed to know they would do such a thing?  Removing an angel's wings was just as insane as being able to capture one.  Yet, the humans had accomplished the impossible, and she was the living truth, however dead she might feel.

Something echoed in the distance, and even through the thick stone and iron door, she could hear the approaching tap of boots against tile.  She raised her head as they grow louder before stopping before her cell door.  Her heart thumps harshly against her ribcage, a shiver running down her spine as the heavy lock clicks and the door groans on its hinges.  Light illuminates most of the cell now, the light almost blinding as she raises a hand to shield her sensitive eyes.  In the doorway stands two men, their faces obscured by shadow, but she recognized one of them just by the way his hand twitched and the way he stood.  The humans were all equally bastards, but this one that stood before her now had a bloodlust that rivaled that of a demon as he sneered down at her.

If she ever had the strength and the means, one day she would see to it that he died a slowly and painful death at her hand.  One day...she promised herself.  One day.

The jingle of chains made her flinch as she was brought out of her vengeful thoughts.  Both of them were before her now, a disgusting smirk pulling at the brute's lips while the other human male only stared at her with emotionless eyes.  She didn't struggle as they pulled her up by the arms, having learned a long time ago to no longer fight against their grasping hands and incoming strikes.  She had lost the will to fight, and it was better to obey like a dog than fight back like the wild animal they saw her as.  Held between them, they drag her to the center of the cell and proceed to clamp manacles around her wrists.  The manacles were made of iron, and immediately she felt what was left of her power disappear.  After being beaten so often, she had become used to this feeling; that sensation of being truly powerless when the iron was shackled to her limbs, making her wonder if this is what it felt like to be human.