Page 10 of Even Angels fall
Weirdly, when I look at my father, it is the only moment I feel like I see pride in his eyes.
I don’t want to think about it or I’ll have nightmares.
“Good.”
He pauses, and I think it’s going to be the end of it or that he’s going to ask other questions, and he could, because he didn’t ask anything about shooting with a bow and arrow, sword fighting, or even poison making. No, he doesn’t ask anything else.
But I think I would have preferred he asked anything.
“You’re to marry Elhyor, and on your wedding night, while he’ll be buried in you, you’ll kill him.”
5
Angélique
Elhyor…
“I’m to kill the dragon?”
Weirdly, that’s the only thing that reached my mind. I don’t think about the fact that, in less than a week, I’ll be free from Versailles or that I’ll have to go through at least part of my wedding night before I have to do the killing. I only think about who I have to kill.
The dragon.
I’ve never seen him—how could I have, with him being the guardian of Notre Dame while I’m stuck at the Palace—but he’s said to be a force to be reckoned with.
And he has Notre Dame.
That’s when it strikes me. Notre Dame is the biggest religious building of Paris and the shape-shifters might not be religious—like, at all—but appearances are more important than anything, and if the archangels want to keep the human citizens of the world under their thumb, they can’t live in a city and not havethe biggest and most beautiful religious building of the city as their property.
“Five.”
Oh, shit. Did I ask that question out loud?
“Planning your escape must be the first thing you do when you arrive,” he continues, without even addressing my question.
I guess he thinks my question was dumb, but I’ve got so many more questions, and I’m now scared to ask any. Maybe Ariël will answer some of them when my father is gone.
I have five days to come to terms with the fact that life as I know it ends.
There’s an awful silence in the room and I wonder if, once again, I’ve done something wrong.
I’m still sitting on an imaginary chair, even if my thighs are burning and I’m feeling like all the eating I’ve done is going to be for nothing because my abs have started to contract in spasms, even if, on the outside, I look calm and collected.
My hands are back on the sides of my cutlery, and I didn’t mess with the order of the spoons, forks, and knives.
My face is the perfect mix of aloofness and softness one can only bring with a subdued smile that doesn’t reach the eyes.
No, I don’t see what I did wrong.
My father didn’t ask a question I could have missed by zoning out, because for once, I didnotzone out.
“You’ll train until Friday evening. No training on Saturday morning. You’ll get your haircut instead, and then you’ll walk there,” my father finally says when he breaks the silence.
Well, at least it wasn’t about something I did.
Then I register what he just said.
I’m supposed to walk there.
