Page 52 of Beyond the Storm
Surprise flickered across his usually refined features. “Gratitude? For what?”
I remembered being curled up in the dirt as the Spartan youths kicked and punched me. I thought of how I’d imagined myself floating away so I could be anywhere other than in that dirt, hearing their shouts and laughter as I bled, healed, and bled some more.
“You took me away,” I whispered.
Lazarus stared at me for several quiet moments before finally leaving the room. The door softly shut.
In the following days, I learned more about the boys who would become my brothers.
Raiden had a kind heart and could always be found eating between our drills. Galen spoke very little but was always watching. His silence only added to the animosity that rolled off him, one that could be seen in his clenched fists and tight jaw. Daman was bitter and grouchy, but when Bellamy was around, some of that bitterness smoothed. They bickered a lot, though it was never mean-spirited.
And then, the last boy arrived.
Alastair. He had hair so pale it looked like moonlight, and when he spoke, it was with a haughty tone. He came from wealth. That much was clear in the manner in which he carried himself and the fine clothing he’d worn the day Lazarus brought him to us. He claimed he’d come to help us escape. He claimed he’d take us to a castle where the king would protect us and punish Lazarus and all the other angels.
That day never came.
Instead, the eight of us trained together every morning and into the afternoon. We dined together every night. We laughed, argued, and laughed some more. Well, they laughed. It was harder for me. As more time passed, our bonds strengthened. I sensed their presence, their life force. That connection eventually allowed us to sense other things, like when one of us was greatly upset or hurt. When we were angry.
Lazarus trained us hard, but I never thought him to be cruel. Compared to the training I’d undergone in the agoge, where we’d been beaten, starved, stripped of our clothing, whipped like beasts, and forced to fight weaker youths to the death in order to show our strength, the days spent training with the angel were tough but never at the level of brutality I was accustomed to.
“Do you still wish to escape?” Bellamy asked Alastair late one evening as we sat around a firepit beneath the starry sky.
We were no longer boys. How many years had passed? Ten? Defined muscle had replaced the soft roundness of boyhood, and our bodies had sprouted up like weeds. All except for Gradyn, who I felt would remain small his entire life.
“No,” Alastair answered, staring at the flames. “The king I knew, the king I loved, is no more.”
“He is your family,” I said, remembering how highly he’d once spoken of Lucifer. “Do you not miss him?”
Alastair shook his head. “The seven ofyouare my family. I need no one else. You cannot miss someone who never truly existed. Lucifer fed me lies. It was all part of his manipulation.”
The crackling firewood filled the night. Those quiet moments gave my mind time to wander. I thought of my mother. Despite her adoration for my father, I had never felt her love. She had viewed me as a type of god. Her attention on me had been that of a disciple worshipping their liberator.
I was no god. No. I was the son of a fallen angel. And the young males around me were my brothers.
“Tell me a story,” Bellamy said to Daman before eating a cube of cheese. And just like that, the prolonged silence came to an end, as did my recollections.
“No,” Daman answered. “You’re a grown man. Tell yourself a story.”
I listened as they bantered back and forth. It was so familiar. Comforting, even. Gradyn jumped up and told a story instead, making it up as he went.
Conversation then turned more serious. They spoke of our fate. It was the night before we would be released from our training grounds and free to walk among mortals again. All to defeat Lucifer and his army—to save the world.
“Do you suppose one day, many years from now, men will sit around the fire telling stories about us?” Raiden then asked. We all looked at him. “Or will we be forgotten?”
Galen said it depended on whether we were victorious in our fight. Bellamy somberly countered that even tragedies were spoken around fires. Alastair, ever so confident, proclaimed we would rise above our flaws, that we wouldn’t fail.
“You will fall,”a voice only I could hear whispered.“You are unworthy of honor. They will be heroes while you will be forgotten.”
Melancholy. The name of the curse that lived inside me. The reason why I felt so empty. Each of my brothers had their own curses to bear.
“I believe I will be forgotten,” I said, the truth of my words settling over my chest like a pile of stones. “My story will end, and with the closing of the book, my life will become nothing but a memory that fades more and more as the days pass. I’ll be like the smoke rising from those flames, here one moment and gone the next.”
“That’s Melancholy speaking,” Alastair said.
“Just as your Pride speaks to you.” I lowered my gaze. “I only hope that before I draw my final breath… I get the chance to truly live.”
Little did I know in that moment that my prayer would be answered in the form of a dark-haired male with brown eyes and a voice like honey. He would come into my life much like that first break of daylight on the horizon, sudden and bright.
