The Witch's Toy ✔

37: a kind of disease

The girl a few meters away from me, skin a grayer pallor than usual, dark circles the shape of half-moons underneath her eyes, was unmistakably Mina. Mina — the girl who broke me into pieces those years ago, left those shards for the wolves to eat at night.

I felt it in my chest like a fresh wound, the throbbing never subsiding even as that transparent knife went in thousands of times, cutting away at that piece of me that barely kept me alive.

I'd felt anger. Pure anger and fury that made the blood rush to my head and heated my very core with something ill-intended and malicious, wanted nothing more than to make the rumors true so that I could summon the devil to take the demon in front of me away from the world. But halfway through, a summer after the height of all that gossip, I'd lost most of the anger to an emptiness that carved a hole in my heart. And it had kept on chipping away at the remains of that glass thing, taking one more piece by the day, draining my energy and giving me insomnia that wouldn't allow me to rest.

Never in these years did I ever think I would come to pity the girl in front of me, feel some kind of odd pseudo-sympathy for someone who probably didn't even deserve it.

When I looked into those eyes, the brown now turned to something more akin to sewage, I just wanted to drop everything and sink onto the floor — screw it all because what the hell.

Wasn't I already over this?

Apparently not. Orias had decided to possess the girl — feed off of all that bad energy and miasma that was coming out of her while making that feeling of insecurity and jealousy grow larger and larger within her.

I could see the outlines of him right over her shoulder, his pointed fingers digging into the flesh of her shoulder, the pin in her hair with embedded stones in that familiar burgundy color, making out the rough shape of face. It seemed darker though — as if someone had dipped them into one of the many fires of hell before crafting it into the pin.

Someone breathed out from behind me, their footsteps sending echoes through the long hallway. "Orias — the one who didn't like to show his face. The one who hid in his private library and only came out when Uriel decided to call upon him."

When Orias chose to respond, it wasn't his voice that I heard, but Mina's. "Raphael, the archangel who sacrificed himself for nothing."

For a moment, I expected Raphael to lash out, to deny the statement, but when I glance back, eyes flickering to his face, he was only wearing a small smile, amusement lighting up in his eyes. "Interesting to see how one who fell from heaven having fallen in love with his mistress could utter such words."

"I would have preferred to die, be ripped apart by that curse." Orias's voice was dark, the edges hardening. He stepped forward with Mina's body, evergreen fabric swishing around her ankles. Green with envy. "But you had to counter it, bind yourself, be that altruistic archangel matching the Father's footsteps. You thought he would be proud of you, but he threw you out of heaven as well."

Raphael shook his head. "As expected. I never thought he would welcome me with open arms, being as tainted as I was."

"Liar."

"I am unaffected by your words because they are not true." The corners of his lips curl up, biting into his pale skin and sharpening the tips to points. "Liar."

All they were doing was biting back at each other, the rally going nowhere. Taking in a deep breath, I stepped forward, about to say something, but Raphael held his arm out in front of me, the color in his eyes intense.

He didn't break away from Orias's gaze, matching it perfectly with his — burgundy to crimson.

"You would never understand," Orias growled. Mina's jaw tightened in response to his emotions. The miasma thickened around him, waves of the dark filter coming over me so strongly that any darker, and I was going to choke. "None of us wanted to fall; none of us wanted to leave the paradise that is heaven. That place was our rightful home where we could stay with the Father and follow his commands. We were his beloved messenger — his communication with humans. You were always there, walking around with your halo of light in a nest of demons. You could've chosen a different path, but you threw that future away the moment you decided to take the curse upon yourself."