"I don't know how you were captured. I only know that I tried to free you because my parents told me you were a weapon they had to protect."
Moonlight glinted off his pale skin and behind him a dark light spread around his shoulders. I gasped as I watched obsidian wings unfurl around him, seemingly made of the night and moonbeams. "Thank you, Scarlett. For saving me as I saved you. We should leave at once and report all of this to the Twilight Queen."
I pulled my gaze away from his wings, a longing growing inside of me at the sight, and realized what he had just said. "You don't know?"
He cocked his head. "Know what?
"Zorin, you are the last of your kind… though I guess, that's not technically true since I'm now Nephilim," I said, the words still so strange to speak out loud. "There is no Twilight Queen, no court, no Nephilim. They are all dead."
He stepped back, his face frozen in shock. "I don't understand. What do you mean, dead? What happened to her? To them?"
"You must have already been captured when it happened. The Twilight Queen was overthrown by a Nephilim called Nyx and his apprentice, Erebus… Nyx waged a war against mankind, but he lost, and all the Nephilim were wiped out. Except you."
We stood staring at each other a moment and I felt compelled to finish this awful tale. "The Orders wiped out the Nephilim, but they kept you alive. In case they ever wished to make an army of Nephilim… that's why you were considered a weapon."
"So… they are all gone?"
This time I reached for his hand, conscious of how heartbroken I would be if I'd woken from imprisonment to find that all of my kind had been destroyed. It was genocide, or nearly.
He squeezed my hand gently. "We must find safety. We must hide before the Church seeks us out to recapture or kill us."
I eased my hand out of his and straightened my back. "I can't go with you, Zorin." I was surprised part of me wanted to, and surprised equally that part of me wanted to return to Castle V.
"You're in danger, Scarlett. Not only because of what you are, but because of me. Because of what I know and what those in power will assume you know. They will use you to get to me."
"What do you know?"
The forest around lacked the normal sounds of the night, and the quiet was… disquieting. I could only hear our breaths on the cool air as I waited for him to tell me his secrets.
I could see the struggle on his face, whether or not to tell me.
"Zorin, you said yourself they will assume I know whether you tell me or not. You aren't protecting me by keeping me in the dark." A logical flaw that nearly every stupid movie and superhero trope seemed to rely on in situations such as these, which bugged me to no end. How is someone ever safer not knowing what is coming for them or why? Who has that ever saved? Not my parents. Not me last night. And not me now, that's who.
He nodded in consent and pulled me toward a large boulder under the silver tree. We both sat, our bodies pressed against each other, his wings of light and softness brushing against my back as they moved to the wind around us.
"Many years ago," he began, his voice deep and his accent more pronounced, "I uncovered an artifact, a device of great power. I suspect that is the reason I was kept alive, the real reason, and not to make more Nephilim, though undoubtedly some might have wanted me for that, too. They must have been looking for some way to extract the information from me."
"What was the artifact?" I asked, when he didn't continue on his own.
"It was one of the seven seals, designed to bring mankind to its knees."
"The seven seals are real? Not just myth and folklore?"
"They are real. Very real," he said gravely.
"Where are they?"
"I will not speak of that, for they must never be found again."
Did my grandfather know about this? Did he deliberately lie to me about Zorin and my parents? Did my parents know? Every answer seemed to bring about a dozen new questions. "So, is that why the Angel was after you? For the seal?"
"I believe so," he said. "Angels once ruled this earth, many ages ago, and with the seals they could do so again. The Nephilim fought them during the Angel War, but with the Nephilim gone… all might be lost. For both of our kind."
I wondered who my kind was now. Was I still human? Or was I entirely Nephilim? In a war between the two, where would I land?
Zorin's face hardened as he stared into the darkness. "I must find out what happened. The Twilight Queen could not have been easily overthrown." He faced me, shifting on the boulder to touch my hand. "Come with me to Italy so we might uncover these truths together. You are Nephilim now, Scarlett. For better or worse, we are all we have left."
I felt the pull again. To leave with him. To leave behind the bodies and the pain and the lies and secrets and fly—fly!—to Italy to uncover the truth. But… "I can't. I must stay. I have to train to become a Knight Templar so I can destroy the Angel who killed my family. I must avenge them."
I pleaded with my eyes for him to understand.
Revenge. A universal motive amongst any race. Surely he would understand.