Chapter 773: [The Rewritten Lost Past] [13]

"Are you sure about this, Amael?"

Belle stood beside him, arms folded.

"I am." He didn’t look at her. "And you didn’t have to come."

She’d taken it about as well as he expected when he told her, that he was willing to cooperate fully with Michael, with his father, to step into the role of Vessel without fighting it. That he was done running from what Samael Eveningstar’s gathering of the Sins would eventually make him.

Belle’s fear wasn’t loud. It was quiet and deep but it was real. She didn’t want to lose the son she raised to whatever thing her husband’s legacy would turn him into.

"I am your mother," she said. "I go where you go."

Amael glanced at her. Something softened in his face for just a second.

"Love you, Mother."

"Love you too, sweetheart."

"What a heartwarming exchange."

Neither of them had heard him arrive.

They looked up together. A man descended from above at a leisurely pace, white robes catching no wind, golden hair catching all the light. His smile was wide and overly bright.

Sapphire blue eyes. Four wings folded at his back, brilliant white, each one enormous.

Michael.

Guardian Archangel. Supreme Commander of Eden’s armies. One of the rarest titles in existence, and outside the Khaos Princesses and the Ymir Kings, one of the most powerful beings walking any world. His influence in Eden alone made him untouchable by almost any measure.

For Amael though, he was annoying and conceited man.

For Belle, he was a scumbag.

"You took your time," Amael said, hardly hiding his annoyance.

Michael smiled.

Then he was simply gone.

"...!"

Amael spun immediately.

Too slow.

-BAM!!!

The kick caught him square in the side, a blur he never tracked, and the crack of his arm bones folding under the block he barely managed was sharp and painful. The impact launched him straight through the golden garden, through flower beds and hedgerows, punched clean out the other side until the ground gave way to open air at the waterfall’s edge and he dropped, crashing into the water below with a sound like a boulder coming down.

-BOOOM!!

"Amael!"

Belle was already moving before the splash settled.

The water rippled. A bubble of pressure swelled beneath the surface and burst upward, spraying wide. Amael rose from it soaked to the bone, hair plastered flat, arm hanging wrong at the elbow and his eyes, when they found Michael floating above the falls, were burning quietly but coldly.

Belle hit the bank beside him in the same breath, her hands already moving to his arm. She wrapped both palms around the swelling, her skin lighting up silver-white, and stroked once gently. The bruising bled away. Bone shifted back into alignment with a sharp crack that echoed off the water.

Then she stood up straight.

Her whole body was shaking. The silver aura came off her in rolling waves and the water around their feet trembled, droplets lifting off the surface under the pressure she was throwing without even trying.

Michael looked at her with amusement. "You wouldn’t fight me here, Belle."

"I would kill you here."

Michael exhaled through his nose. "You say that every time." He let his gaze drift past her to Amael, and the amusement didn’t quite leave his face, but it cooled. "She has always been like this with you. Every scrape, every bruise, she comes running. And you let her." He tilted his head. "Weaker than ten years ago. I barely moved before throwing that kick and you didn’t see it coming. You didn’t feel it coming." He shook his head. "Gripping your mother’s skirt won’t make you what you need to be, boy. It never has."

"How many times I hold onto my mother’s skirt is my business and none of yours," Amael said, finger pointed up at him, a smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. "Just admit it. You’re jealous. You, Gabriel, the whole lot of your irritating siblings, all born from Raphiel’s blood and she won’t spare any of you a second glance. That must eat at you something awful."

The smile left Michael’s face slowly.

A golden circle blazed into existence beneath them, Edenic Circle burning bright across the water’s surface and Amael’s eyes went wide for half a heartbeat before instinct took over. He shoved Belle hard, sideways immediately.

-BOOM

The water detonated along a pillar of gold tearing straight up through the base of the waterfall, gouging rock and foam skyward like the earth had coughed something out.

Belle hit the water’s edge skidding, caught herself, and snapped her head back toward where her son had been standing in worry.

Purple crackling ribbons of it, threading through the smoke and falling spray.

"I’m fine, Mother."

The water settled enough to find him. Amael stood in the wreckage of it, chest heaving, blood running freely from a gash above his eye and another across his forearm. He’d thrown up a barrier of Wrath at the last possible second. It had held for exactly as long as it needed to, and then come apart like glass.

"What is wrong with you?!" Belle turned on Michael furiously.

He descended a few feet. "Training. Which is what you asked of me, if memory serves." The pleasantness in his tone was gone now, replaced with something blunt and without apology. "If you want me to put the Vessel through his paces without letting him bleed, find someone else. He stays exactly as he is right now and when Lucifer comes, or that twisted Altara of Samael, whoever reaches him first, they will take him apart and there won’t be a thing you can do about it. Is that what you want?"

Belle’s fists closed at her sides.

She knew. She hated that she knew, and knowing it didn’t make watching any easier.

"It’s fine," Amael said again, gently.

Silver light moved through him, something slower, like breath. Faint shapes rose beneath his skin, feather-like marks tracing up his arms and across his chest, glowing softly before fading back in. When they were gone so were the wounds. The exhaustion in his face stayed. His breathing was still ragged, but he was whole.

He looked up at Michael.

"Whatever you put me through," he said. "I’ll do it."

Michael’s smile came back, different this time approving but also satisfied that he was obeying.

"Good. That is how the Vessel of Samael carries himself." He turned, wings spreading. "Keep up. And tell Horus’ daughter to stay out of it from here." He didn’t wait for an answer before rising.

Amael let out a long breath and walked to Belle.

She was already looking up at him by the time he reached her. Her smile came, it definitely had a small tremor. Her hand found his face, palm against his cheek, thumb brushing once across the place the cut had been.

"I know you need this," she said. "But don’t you dare ask me to stop worrying. Not ever." She pulled his head down and held it against her, fingers moving slowly through his silver hair. "My sweet boy."

...

...

The Garden of Eden had no visible end.

It sprawled in every direction as golden grass and ancient paths and air so clean it almost hurt to breathe and at its heart the Holy Tree rose to heights that would leave even the strongest angels winded before they reached its crown. The whole of it seemed to hum with the purest mana and energy. Eden’s realm moved through the sky above in long streams, holding borders, maintaining wards, keeping the walls between the mortal worlds and everything that pressed against them from the outside.

A few, however, had stopped entirely.

They hung in the air in loose clusters, wings barely moving, all of them looking down at the same thing.

"Who is she?"

"Not an angel but is she mortal? A mortal in the Garden?"

"No. No, she’s not mortal."

"She’s..."

None of them finished the sentence, too much enthralled by the divine beauty sitting like a carved statue below.

Belle sat in the golden grass below, silver against gold, utterly indifferent to any of them. Her attention was fixed ahead, on the dome Michael had raised across the field, opaque to sound and damage both. From outside it looked peaceful. Calm light, no movement, nothing to suggest the one-sided beating happening on the other side of it.

Her brow said otherwise.

She sat with it furrowed, hands folded in her lap, watching the dome calmly.

A white light bloomed behind them then.

The angels in the air above registered it first. The bowing started before the gasp finished, a ripple moving through them, wings folding, heads dropping, the scramble of it almost laughable in how fast it spread.

"Lord Nihil!"

"Don’t you all have somewhere to be."

It wasn’t a question.

They cleared out right after.

Nihil’s white eyes moved from where they’d been to the silver woman sitting in the grass below him. He descended without hurry, touched down behind her without sound, and stood there a moment before speaking.

"He’s grown quite a lot."

Silence held for a beat.

"You don’t need to tell me how my son has grown," Belle said, not turning around.

Nihil chuckled softly.

"No, I suppose not." He reached a hand toward her. "Come. We can watch from closer than this."

"If I watch from any closer and see him bleeding, I’ll put Michael through the ground. Tell me that’s fine with you and I’ll happily take your hand."

Nihil looked at her for a moment. The smile that came was small and nostalgic. "You haven’t changed."

"Neither have you." She turned then, silver eyes finding his. "Still running errands for your God. I hope all those years of devoted service have at least left your tongue too worn out to keep lying with it."

"Still angry with me?"

"Why would I be angry?" Belle said, standing and brushing off her dress. "You’re nothing to me."

She walked.

Nihil followed, hands clasped behind his back.

"I don’t think you mean that. What started between us as something with purpose became something real. You know that as well as I do."

"The only things you’ve ever truly loved are Eden and yourself." She didn’t look at him. "In that order."

"That isn’t true. I love you. I love our son."

Belle slowed. She glanced around with an expression of mild interest, scanning the surroundings, the open sky, the distant paths between the hedgerows.

"Are you certain you should be saying things like that out here?" Her tone was light and mocking. "Aniha has eyes everywhere. She won’t appreciate hearing it. Has she ever heard it, come to think of it? You have a first wife, Nihil. Have you ever looked her in the face and said those words?"

"Your hatred toward her has always been—"

"Unjustified. Yes." Something in Belle’s voice went cold. "Go say that to her face. Then count, while you’re standing there, how many times she’s moved and threatened to end my son’s life. Count how many times you stood right beside her and did nothing." She turned briefly, just enough for him to see her eyes. "Though I shouldn’t be surprised. You never cared about him. You cared about what he carried. What he could become. What he was for."

"Aniha worries. She always has. She rarely acts on—"

"She better not." Belle’s voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to. "The day she does, I’ll put her so far under this garden they’ll forget there was ever anything buried there."

Nihil sighed.

"I think we are long overdue for a real conversation, Belle."

She stopped.

Turned fully this time, and the look she gave him could have stripped bark.

"We will talk," she said, "the day you stop lying to me. The day you stop deciding what I do and don’t get to know about my son." Her voice cracked at the edges. "Until then, Nihil, you have nothing to say that I want to hear."

She turned and walked away.

He stood where she’d left him, watching her with a complicated expression.