Page 26 of Seraph's Tears
Eve shook her head again. “My church doesn’t approve of magic. It doesn’t exist anymore anyway.”
I scoffed. “Doesn’t approve of magic? That’s like saying someone doesn’t approve of the wind.”
She shrugged awkwardly. “Hundreds of years ago many people worshipped the mother goddess, Emmas. I didn’t know there’s entire covens out there anymore. Magic is gone, and so are most of Emmas’s followers.”
I made a sound in the back of my throat. I wanted to come back to that later. The witches told us in this world women had better awareness and ability to weave magic into the physical world around them.
“I used to craft magic,” I said softly, before I could think better of it.
She stared at me, eyes wide. “Truly?”
I nodded, flushing. My wings hitched. “I can’t anymore. There’s not enough magic in your world for seraphim to gather and use.”
“What could you do?” she breathed.
“I could call wind and lightning,” I told her, wishing more than anything I could show her. Living without my magic for fifty years had been more painful than I ever imagined. The only thing that could hurt worse was cutting off my sword arm.
“All seraphim can do magic?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Only the upper echelons—the royalty, nobility, and seers. A few artisans and academics can do some spellwork, but not much.”
Her face turned wistful. “How you must miss it.”
Clearing my throat, I changed the subject before grief overtook me. “A few of us took up guardian work, keeping some people safe. We pooled our money as we made it. A trusted human invested it for us in a bank.” I shrugged. “And then we let the money grow. We live long here, so it is easy to let the money multiply. Once I had enough, I bought this property. It’s remote with open space. Doesn’t require much upkeep, either.”
Eve had resumed her scrubbing, nodding along to my words. “Makes sense.”
“The village was…skeptical at first.” I recalled the first time I had met them, flying in with Castiel, Azrael, Daniel, and one or two others. Back when Azrael was willing to tolerate human contact and back when Daniel was alive. The villagers had arrived with pitchforks and torches. They’d seen our wings and had fallen to their knees, begging forgiveness for their sins.
We’d been in this world long enough to understand their religious beliefs about angels. Sometimes people’s religious fervor got the better of them, and they became dangerous. A handful of humans would never take down one seraph. But a mob gripped in a religious frenzy? I didn’t want to find out.
So we’d promised the villagers extra prayers to their god from our lips, blessings every other year, our guardian presence from demons and the Gar, and no tax or rent. That last bit hushed up any of the remaining naysayers. And they learned quickly to keep their mouths shut about me and Castiel, in fear a plague would one day take their village. Or I’d require rent in arrears. Both were terrifying.
I sketched out this information in rough terms.
She glanced sideways at me. “Do they still worship you?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Worship me?”
She wrung out the sponge, then dropped a few more soap flakes into the water. “You know. Like, honored. As a…celestial being or whatever. My church calls you the Herald of Death.”
I stared at her in surprise. “I was a warrior. I did bring death to our enemies. But why would your people call me this?” The thought unsettled me.
“The founder of our church saw you all fall from the sky. He says you kept hold of your weapons and you led the way to the ground.”
Unease churned in my gut. It was hard to hear of people watching my worst moment. I knew humans had seen it, but hearing about it from their eyes made my skin prickle.
“You were the first angel—the first seraph—he’d seen. You rounded up your people and raised your sword high in the air.”
I vaguely remembered doing that.
“And the demons fled from you.”
“Gar,” I corrected absently. “That race is called the Gar.”
“He went to the field, to find you,” Eve said, as if reciting a story. “But all that was left by the time he arrived was a feather. He took it home. And that night, his mother died.”
I jerked away from her. “I had nothing to do with that.” Good grief, what did these people think I was? A god?
