Angelic Danger - 2nd Draft

Chapter 6

Months passed. My life had never been better. I was adjusting to being a king and the responsibilities tied to it. Sariel was a very good teacher and very patient as I learned everything I could.

Things seemed peaceful. There was no news from Abbadon. And Sariel constantly assured me that no news was good news. But I think even he was starting to get antsy from the lack of action. We had thwarted him. Kidnapping, torturing, and killing Sariel's fiance's had been Abbadon's favorite pastime. Sariel had not only rescued me, we were now married. No doubt word had spread by now. Abbadon had to know and he had to be furious.

So why hadn't he done anything?

My fear was that he was biding his time. Waiting for us to decide that the threat was gone, and then he would strike. I voiced these concerns to Sariel, but he reassured that the kingdom was well protected and we would never let our guard down. But I could tell from the look on his face that he was afraid of the same thing.

Sariel also kept a couple of Angels undercover in the human world, keeping an eye on my parents for me. As much as I hadn't gotten along with them, they were still my family and I was worried about them. An investigation had been launched into Sariel and my disappearance. Our apartment had been ransacked by Sariel's Angels and some of our valuables had been taken from there (they were brought to us for us to keep, but the human police wouldn't know that). By all accounts, we had been kidnapped. Perhaps a robbery gone wrong. My parents refused to believe that I was dead, and were constantly on the news begging for my kidnappers to bring me home. It hurt my heart to see them like this. My dad looked like he was about to fall apart at the seams. My poor mom always looked spaced out, in shock, like she'd felt so much grief that there was nothing left to feel anymore. But I knew I could never go back.

There was only one black stain on my near perfect existence. Not even Sariel knew about it. I was still recovering, mentally at least, from my captivity at the hands of Abbadon. Even though he hadn't really had a chance to torture me, it didn't stop me from getting nightmares on a regular basis. Something would remind me of the dungeon he kept me in and I would freeze up in fear. I knew that I should tell Sariel about it. He deserved to know. But he had a lot on his plate and I knew that he was already grappling with the fact that his childhood best friend was now his sworn enemy. He didn't need me to make it worse.

Any of my free time that I didn't spend with Sariel, I spent wandering the castle. I was trying to learn it inside-out and backward. The last thing I needed was the embarrassment if one of the kings got lost in his own castle.

It was one of those days that I stumbled across a portrait gallery. They seemed to start thousands of years back. If I had to guess, I'd say these were portraits of previous rulers of the Seraphim kingdom. It looked like I was standing by the oldest one, and they got more recent as the hall went on. I walked down the hall slowly, taking all of the portraits in. Some of them were of single people, some were of couples, and yet others had families with children. As I progressed further down the line, I started to notice specific features on some of the people bore a resemblance to Sariel. One queen had his eyes. A prince had his blond hair. A king had his nose.

I was so engrossed in the portraits that I almost didn't notice the sound of crying coming from down the hall. I looked up quickly. Sariel stood at the end of the portraits, a hand rested on one, his shoulders hunched.

"Sariel!" I called out in surprise and worry, rushing towards him.

His head jerked up, looking at me with wide eyes. Eyes that were rimmed with red. Tears streamed down his face. "Ken," I heard him whisper in a hoarse voice. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," I told him, reaching his side. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and pulled him into me. "What's wrong?"

Sariel's breath hitched and I could feel a shudder run through his body. He returned my hug, pulling us even closer together. He was silent for a moment, face buried in my chest, before looking up and meeting my eyes.