Wrath of the Fallen by Eve Archer
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Dominick
I stared at Uriel, not sure if I’d actually heard what I thought I had. At our fortress, he’d prevented Gabriel from using his sword, but was he now threatening one of the archangels with it?
Gabriel seemed to be thinking the same thing, backing away from Uriel with blazing eyes. “You can’t be serious about taking the side of the Fallen over me?”
Uriel leveled his sword at the other archangel. “I am only on the side of truth.”
“Then you are on my side,” Gabriel said. “The accusations Semyaza hurls at me are lies.”
Uriel cocked his head. “I know the demi-angel is your daughter. I came with you to get her and bring her to heaven, because you believed a fallen angel was not good enough for her.”
“That isn’t why he wants her,” I said through gritted teeth, fresh anger stoking within me as I thought about everything I’d learned. “He doesn’t care about her. If he did, he wouldn’t have abandoned her, ignored her when she was in need, or murdered her parents.”
The skies darkened at my words, rain lashing down from the sky again as Uriel held Gabriel’s gaze.
“I murdered no one,” Gabriel said, taking a threatening step toward me.
I took my own step closer to him, and Mastema stiffened, as if bracing for impact. “Then tell us which other angel had a reason to send a celestial storm to kill them. If it hadn’t been for a mix-up, you would have eliminated Ella as well. All evidence of your sin and disobedience wiped away with one well-timed accident.”
Gabriel fisted his hands by his side. “More lies.”
“There’s a witness to your crime, and no mistaking the type of storm that appeared from nowhere.” Rami jerked his head to the skies. “We saw it in Jerusalem, and we see it here.”
“Any angel can create this,” Gabriel said, shifting under Uriel’s blistering gaze.
“But which angel would?” Uriel’s deep voice cut through the sounds of the storm, then he waved a hand overhead and the rain ceased. Another flick of a fingertip, and the clouds no longer crackled with electricity or roiled with darkness.
As the storm evaporated, Gabriel staggered back, putting a hand to his head. “Azrael.”
“Azrael is dead because you sent him to do your dirty work,” I snapped. Azrael had never been my favorite angel, but I took no pleasure in killing him.
“I told you before and I tell you again, I did not send him,” Gabriel said. “But he did know of my troubles. More than any other angel. Before any other angel.”
“What does that mean?” Uriel asked.
“Despite my best attempts to hide my actions on earth, Azrael discovered that I’d fallen for a human. Maybe because he spent so much time here retrieving souls, but he knew what I’d done and confronted me.”
Gabriel scraped a hand through his hair. “I confessed all. What else do you do, when the angel of death asks you for the truth? It was he who convinced me to cut it off with Ella’s mother and never visit them again. He promised he would keep an eye on them.”
“Are you saying that Azrael took it upon himself to kill Ella’s parents and attempt to kill her?”
“He was the angel of death,” Mastema said. “There was no angel who relished the end of human life as much as Azrael.”
Uriel twitched at this. “He might have lost sight of his purpose as humanity spun out of control, and the souls he was retrieving were twisted and dark.”
It had been so long since I’d dwelled in heaven that I had no idea how the actions of man had affected the celestial realm. I locked eyes with Uriel. “Are you saying that you believe him? You think Azrael could have acted alone?”
Uriel swiveled his gaze back to Gabriel. “Not entirely alone. He had to believe that he was saving his archangel brother. Not even the angel of death would have killed for no reason. But not many aside from Azrael could have descended to earth and killed humans like he did. His role as the angel of death gave him the cover he needed to do what Gabriel couldn’t.”
Even if this was true, I could never fully absolve Gabriel. He was the one who’d set Azrael in motion, and he was the one who’d come after me.
“Azrael must have been convinced that eliminating Gabriel’s daughter would free him from any judgment,” Rami said, glaring openly at Gabriel. “He would have considered his acts those of a loyal brother.”
“Must be nice to skirt divine judgment,” Mastema growled. “The rest of us weren’t accorded that luxury.”
“You can’t compare yourself to me,” Gabriel scoffed.
Mastema straightened from his battle stance and swept his arms wide. “We were all angels once and we all fell—just like you.”
Gabriel’s expression twisted into a sneer. “I will never be like you.”
Mastema lowered his voice to a deadly purr. “The difference between an angel and a demon is all perspective.”
Gabriel’s wings trembled, the comparison clearly an affront. Uriel, however, smiled at Mastema.
“You always had a silver tongue.”
Mastema shrugged. “I would say it’s a God-given talent, but I’m afraid that wouldn’t be accurate.”
Since the wind had died down and the water on the paving stones was puddling, Paris was starting to rouse itself. Traffic had picked up, and patrons were emerging from cafés across the street. I tucked my wings in, and Rami and Mastema did the same.
“What now?” I asked. “I don’t care what Gabriel might think of me and my relationship with Ella, I’m not giving her up.”
“Even if you’ll ruin her?” Gabriel returned my fierce glare. “She’s part angel. She deserves more than a cursed fallen angel.”
His words stung, but I brushed them off. He might be right. Ella probably did deserve better than me but being with her made me be better. I was already better than I’d been before she came into my life, and I was determined to do whatever it took to deserve her. “She’s made her choice and so have I. There’s no going back when it comes to true love.”
Gabriel sucked in a breath, shaking his head. “Impossible.”
“If it was possible for you to love her mother as you claim you did, then you know that it’s entirely possible for me to love Ella with every fiber of my being.”
Uriel turned to face Gabriel. “We have no right to meddle in human love. I cannot support your claim to bring her to heaven anymore, brother. She is a mortal, and she deserves to live her life as she chooses, even if she chooses life with the leader of the Fallen.”
“Free will,” Gabriel grumbled.
“Now, about the prophecy.” Uriel pivoted back to face me.
“I told you I don’t care about that. My love for Ella has nothing to do with a prophecy that I’ve never fully believed was real.”
Uriel lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t care about the possibility of being restored at the final judgment?”
“Now that I will not allow,” Gabriel said, his gaze flicking to Uriel’s sword. “I would rather face the true death than allow the Fallen to be redeemed.”
“Dominick!”
Ella’s voice made me look past Gabriel and Uriel to where she was running toward us, flanked by Sara and a very worse-for-wear Caspiel. They snaked through the tents erected in front of the cathedral and then up the stone steps.
Her pace faltered slightly when she saw her father and Uriel brandishing the sword, her eyes darting to all of us as we faced off.
“We were just discussing you, dear,” Gabriel said, his expression softening, “and your future.”
“And his,” Mastema said, indicating me with a nod of his head.
“The prophecy,” I said.
She put a hand to her chest as she heaved in a breath. “That’s why I’m here. I know all about the prophecy,” she slid her gaze first to Uriel and then to Mastema, “and so do they.”
