“Never mind,” she said. “So anyway, how’d you become friends with those demon-possessed men?”
She’d stopped herself because she’d wanted to speak of the future, their future, but had thought better of it.
“You will stay with me, Annabelle,” he said.
“For now,” she replied.
“Far longer.”
“I know. For our month.”
That sounded like the beginning of a brush-off speech. “You are planning to leave me afterward?” he ground out.
“Well, yeah. And why are you suddenly so cranky? My plan should make you happy.”
“I am not happy.”
“But you said you wanted to part after our month on earth.”
“I said no such thing. You will stay with me and that’s final.”
“Actually, no, I—”
He spoke over her. “Now I will tell you my story.” He didn’t pause, didn’t give her a chance to talk over him. “One of the warriors was being tormented by hundreds of demon minions. Because of that, he was inadvertently poisoning those around him. I was part of another army at the time, and we were sent in to save him, or kill him if we couldn’t. His friends…protested. I had never before interacted with their kind, and soon realized they’d fought their demons, were still fighting the demons every day, somehow braver, better, more honorable than others I’d encountered. They would never allow the evil to dominate their lives.”
“Well, you’re brave and honorable, too, Zacharel.”
He did not taste a lie. She truly thought so. “Then why would you wish to leave me?”
“Because” was all the stubborn woman would say.
Because she did not know the truth about him?
He had never spoken of the events that had led to Hadrenial’s death. Not to another angel, not even to his Deity. But he would tell Annabelle, he decided. He would tell her everything. She would finally know, and they could build some kind of future from there.
“My brother was abducted. We were together, escorting a spirit to the heavens when a horde of demons attacked us. I fought them, and I thought Hadrenial managed to whisk the spirit to safety. But…” He swallowed a mouthful of bitter regret. “Though the spirit made it to the heavens, Hadrenial did not. He had simply disappeared.”
She traced a heart over the smudge on his chest. “Not knowing what happened must have been torturous.”
“Yes. I searched. For an entire year I searched, yet there was never a sign of him. I interrogated every demon I could, and always they denied knowledge of him. But then, one day, I came home and he was there. Just…there, tied to my bed. He was a mere shell of himself, for his captors had starved and beaten him. Worse, they had pitted his morals against his need to survive. For every scrap of food, every day without a fist in his face or gut, he had to do something reprehensible, like hurt a human they threw into the cell with him.”
Warm liquid dripped onto his chest, and he knew tears were sliding down Annabelle’s cheeks. “I’m so sorry,” she said again.
“I am not the one who was forced to endure such misery.”
“But you were miserable.”
“Not like my brother.”
“Pain is pain.” She kissed the center of the heart she’d traced. “Did you remain celibate all of these years because of what he endured? He found no pleasure in life, and so you wouldn’t, either?”
“No. Of course…not,” he said, catching himself there at the end. He had never thought about it that way, but stated so bluntly, he found it hard to deny. “I do not know.”
“When I was first arrested and taken to the institution, I didn’t fight back when other patients harassed me. I didn’t argue with my doctors, and I took every pill handed to me. I wanted to be numb, but more than that, I had seen how much my parents suffered and knew I had failed them in every way, so I felt like I deserved whatever bad things happened to me.”
“You were a child. What more could you have done?”