Azrael Starfall's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The rabbit followed them to the sanctuary. Its rainbow fur caught the morning light as it tugged the hem of Azrael's cloak. Verity waited for him in a grotto below the temple, a place of pale stone and hanging willow fronds where no mortal ever came. Azrael went to meet her. But the rabbit would not let go. It pulled harder, teeth catching the fabric. Azrael crouched and pushed it off. "Enough. She's waiting." The rabbit sat back and stared. It had led him across the countryside to Verity's garden. It knew things he did not. He almost stopped to listen. Then he saw her in the grotto and forgot the creature entirely. Verity sat on the stone lip of a pool. She turned a small arrangement of pastel bells in her hands, lilies he had left for her. Her braid hung to the floor. When she looked up, she did not smile. "You keep coming back," she said. "I want you to. I also want you to stop." Her hands tightened on the flowers. "Because I saw what this costs you." "It costs me nothing," he said. "You can't say that to me. I always know a lie." She stood. "Your wings. I dreamed they took them. I woke and my chest hurt and I couldn't breathe. That's my fear. It isn't the wedding anymore. It's your wings." Azrael reached into his coat. He drew out a ring set with a fragment of fallen star, a piece of the sky he had carried down. He held it between them. "I already chose. I brought you here knowing they'd see. My own kind watched me carry you past the gate. There's no undoing it." Verity's face went white. "Then it's already happening." Behind him, the rabbit shrieked, a sound he had never heard it make. Azrael turned. The willow fronds had gone still. No wind moved them. A cold weight pressed on his shoulders, the same weight he had felt every day at the gate above. They had found the sanctuary. They had followed his trail to this exact stone. He felt it start between his shoulder blades. A pull, slow and deep, like hands closing around each wing. He gasped. The rabbit bolted into the dark, gone. "Azrael!" Verity dropped the flowers and gripped his arms. "Tell me it's not real. You can't. You can't tell me, can you." He could not. He pressed the ring into her palm and closed her fingers over it. The pull deepened. One white feather drifted down between them and settled on the wet stone. Then another. "I chose you," he said. "I'd choose you with no wings at all." The grotto filled with cold light. Verity screamed his name. Above them, unseen, his own kind began to take back what they had given.