Chapter 3 Prey in the Palace
In the week that followed, Dahlia's strength returned. The doctors were shocked beyond words, having no explanation as scan after scan showed her bones had already knitted themselves back together. And at an impossible rate, too.
"A medical miracle," they kept saying. Dione just smiled tightly and went along with it.
It was better than the truth.
It was better than telling her sister that she had knelt in chalk and blood and sold her life... her soul, and her future to a fallen angel who wasn't even showing his true size.
True angels, especially one of his ancient rank, were colossal beings who compressed themselves only when they desired to walk among mortals.
She had felt the sheer scale of him anyway.
By the second week, Dahlia was insistent on going back to campus.
"I've missed too much already," she said, linking arms with Dione as they walked into the sprawling grounds of their college.
Her voice was bright with life, the very opposite of how it had sounded for months.
They parted at the crossroads between faculties, Dahlia heading toward her literature lecture with a wave and a happy smile that made Dione's heart swell with content.
Alone again, Dione slipped into the back row of her history seminar, as she always did.
Her baggy black clothes swallowed her slim frame, and her loose raven hair fell around her shoulders.
She preferred it that way because it hid the way her too-sharp collarbones became prominent when she breathed.
Dione hated how small she felt. And dressing in clothes that hid her size was the only time she could feel at ease.
The less of herself she had to see, the better.
She tried to focus on the lecture; she really did, but her eyes kept drifting to the bare skin of her left wrist, as it had been for the past week now.
The sigil had vanished without a trace, leaving no scar or evidence of the pact that now owned her.
Yet she felt it.
Felt him. Even though he hadn't called yet.
What could The Second Light... The Once-Beloved possibly require from someone like her? What could a celestial who had walked the earth long before her ancestors had names want with a mortal girl who hid in baggy clothes, who still flinched at her own reflection?
The lecture ended, and students spilled out into the hallway. Dione gathered the last of her books, packing them into her backpack, when a sharp but familiar burning pain sliced up her wrist.
She gasped, yanking up her sleeve.
The sigil reappeared, glowing and pulsing like a heartbeat, mildly burning.
Ephemiel was calling.
A shiver of panic ran down her spine.
She bolted from the hall, heading straight for the bathroom.
Students turned with judgmental glances, which she had grown used to.
Looks that said "freak" before any word was spoken.
There she goes again.
What's the weirdo up to this time?
She finally slammed through the swinging bathroom doors and locked herself inside the farthest stall, her fingers trembling so badly she had to try twice before the latch caught.
Dione pressed her back against the metal door and waited.
Ephemiel had warned her he would give her enough time to reach safety before pulling her through. So she waited anxiously, her eyes alternating between the glowing sigil on her wrist and the timer on her phone.
She counted every second, despite the wild thumping of her heart.
The sigil continued to pulse.
Nearly thirty minutes passed before the sensation changed.
Slowly, her body began to feel… wrong.
It felt too tight, and then too warm, like her bones were melting and reforming inside her very own skin.
Then came the painless sensation of being pulled somewhere.
One moment, she was resting against the metal door; the next, the world folded, and she opened her eyes inside a mansion far too vast to belong to any mortal realm.
The ceilings were impossibly high, the furnishings rich and ancient.
Even the air felt different.
This palace had to be where Ephemiel dwelled.
She wondered, with a fresh wave of dread, whether the others were here too.
Clutching her backpack to her chest as if it would protect her, Dione crept forward.
She wandered down a long corridor lined with massive, shimmering paintings depicting the Fall, each drawn by a different hand and era.
In one, the angels descended like burning stars. In another, they were dragged downward, screaming, their wings torn.
In yet another, they walked willingly into shadow.
She paused, transfixed at the sight, when low, masculine voices drifted closer.
Before she could duck behind a statue, the great double doors beside her swung open.
Two Fallen strode out and stopped dead at the sight of her.
Dione froze in absolute terror.
Fallen angels. Right in front of her.
Not one, but two.
The first was Rok, First of the Violet Winged, whom she recognized instantly from the ancient texts.
A grotesque scar gouged half his face and continued across one wing, where dull purple feathers unfurled.
Beside him stood Dhuraval, First of the Silver Winged—taller, broader, his silver hair woven into intricate braids. He carried himself with the authority of a Fallen above Rok in rank.
Rok's black eyes widened, then narrowed with delight. "Do my eyes deceive me?" he rasped, his voice like broken glass.
"No," Dhuraval answered, his golden eyes raking over her with cool bewilderment. "They do not."
His wings were a beautiful shade of silver. "A mortal, here in our realm."
"A mortal," Rok repeated, hunger in his voice. "And a rather pretty one."
Dione's stomach churned. Rok's words made her tremble.
That was how it always began.
"And the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose."
They had looked at mortal women the way starving men looked at food… with wonder and greed. With the certainty that something so soft could never refuse them.
They seduced these women and left them pregnant with children who grew too fast. Children who tore their mothers apart on the way out and walked the earth as giants. Nephilim. Half-divine abominations.
And now Rok was looking at her the same way.
His black eyes lingered on her throat, the slight swell of her breasts beneath the baggy black hoodie, her legs in ripped jeans.
She felt naked despite being clothed.
You're too thin. Too small. Too breakable.
There's nothing to worry about.
Her own insecurities whispered the words she'd heard in her head a thousand times before.
She wanted to shrink into her clothes and disappear.
Dione had read that the Fallen did not love the way men loved.
They coveted, and they collected, and they broke what they could not keep.
Ephemiel's mark still pulsed lightly beneath her sleeve, a brand that said she belonged to someone far more dangerous than either of them.
She wanted it to be enough; hell, she needed it to be enough to keep Rok's hands off her.
But then, marks could be removed. Favors could be traded.
Dione was suddenly, sickeningly certain that if Ephemiel ever lifted his sigil from her, even for a second, they would pass her around this palace like a slab of meat until nothing recognizable remained.
