Revenant

“Do you blame me?” she asked, cursing the unsteadiness in her voice. “You’re an angel. You kill my kind for sport.” Sudden rage overshadowed her fear, making her reckless as she moved toward him. “You murdered my father, you son of a bitch.”

“Your father? Who the fuck was your father?”

“An angel named Rifion,” she snarled. “You slaughtered him.”

“Rifion?” Revenant laughed. The bastard actually laughed. “Did you even know him?”

“I never met him,” she spat. “Because you killed him before I was born.”

“Who told you he died before you were born?”

She stopped in front of him, fists clenched. Maybe she’d get in a blow before he squashed her. “My mother.”

“Then your mother is a liar.” He bared his fangs, which looked twice as large as she’d ever seen them. “I shouldn’t be surprised. Like mother like daughter, right?”

“You don’t know anything about my mother.”

“No? She’s the fallen angel you’ve been treating here, isn’t she? She’s the one who freaked out when she saw me in the hall the other day. It all makes sense now. She knew who I was. And she’s the one who texted you at my house. She’s the reason you suddenly hated me.”

There was no point in denying it. All she could do was make an idle threat or plead for her mother’s life.

“Leave her alone,” she begged. “Please. She hasn’t done anything —”

“She lied to you.” He seemed to relish saying that.

Blas clenched her teeth and ground out, “No, she didn’t. She loved my father, and she wanted me to know him, but I never got the chance because you slaughtered him!”

“Yes,” he drawled. “I did. And I enjoyed every second of it.” He flared his wings, and the storm surrounding him died down. “You’re lucky you didn’t know him.” He got right up in her face, practically foaming at the mouth. “When I caught him, he begged for his life.”

“So?” She shoved him hard in the chest, but she might as well have been trying to move a boulder. “Who wouldn’t?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, well, good for you. But not everyone is a great and powerful Shadow Angel with a black heart.”

He snarled. “He didn’t just beg for his life. He bartered. And do you want to know what he bartered with?” He didn’t give her the chance to ask. “Your life, and that of your mother.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“No? Well believe this. He cried like a baby. Said he could tell me where his mate and vyrmin daughter were if I would just spare his life.” Revenant spat the words like bullets, each striking a vital organ and making her stumble backward. His massive shoulders rolled as he prowled after her, pressing, stalking, never letting up. “Said he could tell me all about the machinations your mother fell into with an angel named Stamtiel. Now, how would I know that if your father hadn’t blabbed like a frightened child? He was ready to give you up to save his own skin. That is who I killed. A pathetic coward who didn’t deserve a family. Not an angel who fathered a vyrm.”

“No,” she whispered.

The backs of her knees bumped into a chair, and she nearly fell. Rev’s hand shot out to catch her, and wasn’t it gentlemanly of him to prevent her from being hurt before he killed her? But, she supposed, even death-row prisoners got a last meal before they faced the executioner.

“Yes,” Revenant whispered back as he released her arm. “He was scum, and he doesn’t deserve your denial.”

She wanted to deny it. Needed to deny it. But even as she shook her head in stubborn refusal, things started making sense. Something about the way her mother had talked about her father had been off. And that was on the rare occasions in which Blas had been able to get her to discuss him.

Deep down inside, Revenant’s version of Blaspheme’s father’s life and death resonated with her.

But if Revenant was telling the truth, it meant that her father had been alive longer than what her mother had claimed. Blaspheme could have met him. Known him. Maybe she could have saved him.

“Even if I believed you, you still killed him. You said yourself you used to hunt vyrm. Did you really expect me to assume you wouldn’t kill me if I told you the truth? You know damned well that vyrm aren’t safe from angels or fallen angels. That there’s a standing order on both sides to kill us. It’s a rule, Revenant. A fucking rule. So tell me, Destroyer, if you were me, what would you have done?”

A brittle silence fell, interrupted only by the voice on the intercom warning of a disturbance in the cafeteria. She hoped no security forces would try to get inside, because she didn’t doubt Revenant’s ability to slaughter every one of them with a mere thought.

Finally, the oily black pools in his eyes receded, and he gave a slow, shallow nod. “I’d have done the same thing,” he said gruffly.

She blew out a relieved breath she hadn’t even known she was holding. She’d gotten him to chill on the lie, which, admittedly, she’d started to feel guilty about. Until she learned he’d killed her father. But just because he was no longer spinning up hurricane-force winds didn’t mean he wasn’t going to slaughter her where she stood.

“So where do we go from here?” She eyed the exit, as if she had any chance at all of escaping. “Are you going to kill me?”