Page 84 of Architecti
“You going to tell me why you want that Demonic Favour?”
I shift, untangling us.It was easier making her talk than having to admit what happened to me.
“There’s not a lot to tell, really.I thought she was the love of my life.She got sick.I sold my soul to save her.”
She gets out of bed and roots in a couple of still unemptied boxes until she finds a set of pyjamas.
“Then why aren’t you with her now?”she asks, sitting back on the bed and picking up the drawing of her symbol.
“She broke us,” I say.But Lucy’s frowning at the image, turning it this way and that.
“What is it?”I ask.
She shakes her head, staring at it.“It just can’t be.”
“Can’t be what?”
“They’re contract runes.”
I frown at her.“Why do you have contract runes on your body?”
“I wouldn’t.Not unless…”
“They’re your own contract runes?”
Her head snaps up.“I think this is how we break my contract.”
27
Architecti
It’s our thirteenth birthday.A special celebration in any angel’s life.When we’re born, a moth egg is placed against our mouths, and our first breath gives life to it.The breath reshapes its genetic structure and bonds the egg to our soul, forming the source of our magic.
While we’re babies, our parents nurture the eggs, but as soon as we’re walking, we’re taught to care for and nurture these eggs.It was a challenging task for Interitus.
It’s in her nature to break things, not care for them.This, it seems, was the one exception she made.Probably because she understood that if it died, so would her magic.
The eggs turn to little larvae by the time we’re five and spend the next few years growing and developing until our twelfth birthday—the last day we spend with them as they cocoon themselves in a pupa, sealing them, and our magic away for an entire year.
Penance, the elder angels call it.The year when we discover what it’s like to be mortal—of a sort, anyway.When we understand what it’s like to be powerless.
Interitus did not like it.
Not one bit.
She changed.The visceral anger she carried beneath her skin mutated.Grew like a tumour, thick and fibrous until she became nasty.
Bitter.
Feral.
I found the first dead rabbit three weeks into our powerless year.
It didn’t get better.
I don’t want to make out like Interitus is all bad.She isn’t.The morning of our Emergence Ceremony, she trotted into my bedroom with a replica pupa.She handed it to me, a smile wide on her lips.
“It’s for you,” she says.
