Untouchable Darkness (The Dark Ones Saga, #2)(71)

That was my life.

The perfect rapture of darkness—light flirted on the outskirts, trying to seep through, but I knew better than anyone its chances of succeeding were slim. I held out my hand, and my fingertips kissed the sunlight peeking through the clouds. I twirled my hand around and let out a defeated sigh.

“Cassius.” Sariel, my father and one of the head Archangels—the same angels that hadn’t appeared to the immortals for over three hundred years—spoke my name with such authority and finality that it was impossible not to feel the effects of the words as he released them into the universe. They slammed against my chest, stealing every ounce of oxygen I’d just greedily sucked in. “You have failed.”

“Yes.” I swallowed the lie, felt it burn all the way down my throat into my lungs. My cold, rotten heart picked up speed, maybe I really was dead inside like she said, maybe it was hopeless, all of it.

“I taste the lie on your lips, half breed.”

“So taste,” I fired back, as my eyes strained to focus on the light. The yearning to be light, to fully allow it to consume me, was like a fire burning in my soul. “I have nothing more to say to you.”

“You realize what this means?” The once purple feathers surrounding his bulky body illuminated red. My heartbeat slowed to a gentle rhythm as droplets of blood cascaded from his feathers in perfect cadence with my breathing.

“I do.”

“Yet you do not fight?”

Finally, I lifted my gaze to his. His strong jaw ticked as his black hair blew in the wind. I knew I was the only one who could see him, compliments of my ancestors… my angelic blood.

“When one has lost everything worth fighting for…” I swallowed. “Tell me, what is the point?”

“You’ve never given up before,” he said quietly, his voice filled with disbelief.

“I’ve never been in love before!” I yelled, slamming my hand against the brick wall. If anyone passed by they’d simply think I’d gone insane, and maybe, maybe I had.

Because of her.

Everything was because of her.

“It’s best that I die. Best that I leave her.”

Sariel’s face broke out into a bright smile. The blood from his feathers pooled at his feet forming the shape of a heart. “Very well.”

I prepared myself for the pain, for the sheer agony of ceasing to exist. I knew from stories that when a Dark One died, it was horrific, terrifying, for we never knew if we would rejoin the light or the darkness.

I assumed I would go dark.

I assumed I would be consumed with evil.

I assumed wrong.

Because the minute Sariel touched my skin.

I felt nothing but empty.

“A gift,” Sariel whispered into the air. “For my only remaining son.”

His fingertips pressed against my skin, they burned, they seared everywhere they pressed.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer.

When he stepped away, light flashed in front of my eyes, and I was back in Russia, back where it had all begun.

Tears filled my line of vision as I imagined the pain and suffering of the mountain.

So it was over then.

Sariel’s lips twitched into what looked like a smile though I couldn’t tell, maybe I was hallucinating? Maybe this was death.

A lonely existence of living in the past, while still being able to remember the touch of the present.

“Watch,” Sariel instructed, crossing his arms in front of the golden armor placed around his body. His helmet had been restored along with his shield and spear.

A large tree with heavy branches twisted around the shield and then suddenly started to grow from the shield as roots grew into the snowy ground. I took a step back as the tree spread its branches from East to West, its trunk doubling in size, only to stop growing once it reached at least thirty feet into the air.

“The tree of life.” Sariel spoke reverently. “We watched. But we didn’t just watch… we watched over something very specific. My gift was life. I was to watch over life.” He hung his head. “So when I helped create it, it was not just an abomination that was created, but something that was never supposed to be.” He motioned to the tree. “Humans were supposed to born with limited knowledge of the unexplainable. When you were created you were born with both. Humanly, your brain cannot morally comprehend your angelic side, and as an angel, the human side not only fascinates you, but disgusts you, goes directly against everything you’ve ever fought for. So how, do the two co-exist? It will always be a battle. To kill you…” He sighed. “To kill a life that the Angel of life has created—would not only kill an entire race of Demon—or fallen.” He shared a look with me. “But humans as well.”

The heaviness of his words stunned me.

“But to tell you of your own importance… of how you, Cassius, keep the balance of good and evil within the world right along with your mate—what risk would I be taking? To give you knowledge that part of your soul will never understand? Part of your body may reject? It was not my place, nor did I see this far into the future to know that had I possibly told you sooner—war could have been avoided.”

The tree dissipated in front of me as twelve thrones grew up from the ground. They were made of pure gold. And like Sariel’s shield, each throne had a different tree.