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[Xoriah]

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Better. Xoriah could scarcely express her relief as the Angel had uttered the word. She slipped out onto the balcony to watch him take to the sands of the arena with the gypsy. He took up his swords with new life, and sparred with a vigor that he had not since his radiance had begun to slip away into the bleak weakness that consumed him.

Little had she thought, that the freedoms she had tried to afford Mikhaeil would be in direct violation of the covenant that shackled him a slave. And so, in shackling him again with her own hands, and in confining him to a cell night after night, he had begun again to regain his strength. In allowing not his touch unless specifically requested by her own lips, his glow had begun to return in slow increments. His wellbeing paramount to anything else in this realm, her heart was alight.

Xoriah returned to the sitting room and took up a thick leatherbound volume from the table, flipping through it to find her marked place. Beginning to end, she leafed through the pages, but the book did not fall open to the page where she’d left off. The single white feather she’d pressed in the book was gone. Furrowing her brow, she unfocused her eyes, wondering how it could have happened.

The feather was one that she had retrieved from the Angel’s cell, shed from his wing. She kept it with her always, without fail. This token, shed without pain or coercion, a piece of him that kept him close to her always. Her heart sank as she looked on the table, then the floor around her. Could she have simply lost it? Or could it have been taken?

Taken? By whom? Who would want such a token? Xoriah wracked her brain as the clash of wooden weapons outside on the sands reached a frenzy. A cry went up as a heavy thud in the sand indicated the gypsy had been caught off his guard and fallen. She walked to the balcony again, letting the heavy tome slide down onto the table as she passed by. Below, Mikhaeil helped Agostino to his feet with quiet instruction. The gypsy nodded patiently and took a defensive stance again.

Her gaze flitted again to her angel, poised, ready to strike. His wooden swords were more extensions of himself than weapons clutched in his hands. Centuries of battle had finely honed him. He was as invaluable to her as he undoubtedly had been to any who had ever held him as their own. This thought evoked another, which took mere seconds to settle onto her spirit and cast her into near panic: If suspicion were aroused, minions would certainly have been sent to see what they could find.

A feather from Mikhaeil would be more than enough to bring the Archdaemon himself to Stonegate.
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Come with me where chains will never bind you...all your grief at last, at last behind you. ~Les Miserables

[Mikhaeil]

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"You give me orders now?"

Mikhaeil grimaced at the memory of how harshly he'd responded to Agostino's appeal. His having drawn blood in redress had been an unnecessary act of impulsive pretension. Completion of his task could not come soon enough as he'd made quick excuse to be away from the undeserved infliction. And so he'd run, the miles swiftly fading behind his fleet endeavor, his pace unrelenting until he was home.

Home. The sanctuary he shared with the beautiful succubus who'd taken immeasurable risk to rescue an angel from the clutches of hell. He stood beside the bed smiling down at her slumbering form, yearning to touch but daring it not. It wasn't so much that she'd mind as it would be a breach of the convenant that bound them.

"I love you." The words caught in his throat as excrutiating agony slashed across his back, severing flesh with singular purpose and sending him reeling in collapse upon the bed.

[Mikhaeil]

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I shall have returned to me that which is mine!

Blood flowed from Mikhaeils wound, flames rising higher enraged, as the archdaemon's words tore through his mind.

Never! , he hissed through clenched teeth in reply. Or do you forget in whose hand lay the final option?