They’d told me to tell Lothaire to put Aran in more positions of danger.
I’d talked to Lothaire and made up a story about the High Court wanting to monitor Aran’s strength. I pushed him to give her more perilous tasks without revealing that she was an angel. He’d agreed to help.
His compliance was ultimately useless because the High Court had stepped in and instituted the Legionnaire Games.
Their timing had been a little too perfect.
After Aran had sacrificed her life to save Scorpius in the second trial a few weeks ago, the Consciousness decided she was more than a candidate.
They completely removed the blocker.
Aran was officially on the path to earning her wings.
The only step left was for Aran to act righteous enough to trigger the full expression of angel genes. Then she’d earn her wings.
It was obvious that the High Court was getting desperate for Aran to earn her wings because they kept choosing her for each competition.
It was the only hope we had.
Both our lives were hanging in the balance.
If only she knew.
The hourglass was slowly running out.
Aran was currently being shoved across a chessboard, barreling toward either success or failure.
Closing my watery eyes, I focused on the faint buzzing in my head that signaled the connection the Consciousness had given me to Aran.
The link that only I had been able to form with her.
She couldn’t be joined to the main line until she earned her wings, but guardians were given a separate channel uniting them with their angel when they accepted the role.
That hadn’t stopped the voice from the Consciousness trying to interfere in her life. He’d gone so far as to open up channels with random people near her to guide her forward.
Since the angel laws forbade guidance from anyone other than a guardian before wings were earned, he’d tried to speak indirectly in riddles and praise her when she did something positive.
Everyone was desperate for her to succeed.
If only she knew.
The things they’d done to her.
The things they’d forced me to do.
I shivered, a foreign sludgy sensation crawled up my throat. Regret burned like bile.
In my opinion, the entire process was convoluted and ridiculous; boundaries had been crossed in ways that could never be undone.
But nobody asked me.
Huffing, I opened the channel between us and repeated into Aran’s head, Do the right thing. Be righteous. Make the right choices.
I could link to her, but the connection was fuzzy and unclear.
It was broken because of what I’d done to her.
Once again, it was a result of the injustice that I had personally served upon her.
This was my penance.
Aran was asleep, but I hoped my words would sink into her subconscious. It was all I had.
Or we were both dead.
Night was the only time I could try to cajole Aran. It was when the connection between us was the strongest.
During the day, she was constantly zoned out and spiraling in her own head. My mental words barely got through.
The only way to get her attention was to snap at her in person.
Aggressively.
When I taunted her, the glazed, faraway look would disappear from her eyes and she’d actually see me. The resulting rage always brought her back into the present.
It was exhausting.
All my muscles spasmed at once, and I sobbed silently in the dark room.
Sometimes I felt so alone. No, Warren did not count as company.
Every time I made a pained noise at night and Jax or his mates found me convulsing, I had to wipe their memories.
It was exhausting.
The first few nights after I’d partially revealed my ability, Sadie had tried to sleep beside me in bed and hold me. Dealing with her insufferable mouth breathing had been worse than any migraine.
They thought the worst of my transgressions was wiping their memories.
If only they knew.
The truth was heinous.
None of them would talk to me ever again.
Not even Jax.
He’d never hug me as he smiled down at me. He’d never call me his little sister like it was something to be proud of. He’d never ask me again if I was okay with worry in his eyes.
I’d seen a glimpse of it the night they discovered I’d wiped their memories.
They no longer looked at me like I was theirs.
I’d felt the distance between us, and a chasm splintered through my chest.
There was no longer a we.
It was a them, and a me.
For some reason the realization hurt worse than the electricity vibrating through my bones.
Moisture welled in my eyes until everything was blurry.
Maybe Dick was an expert at breaking people after all.
It was nights like these where all the facts, logic, and reality coalesced into one throbbing truth: everyone would be better off if I had never been born.
I twitched silently in the sleeping room.
The showcase was here.
I didn’t know how tomorrow would play out, but I knew my heritage had something to do with it.
Aran had somehow convinced herself she had a special relationship with me. She’d deluded herself into thinking she cared about my well-being.
They would use that against her.
The voice I spoke to in the Angel Consciousness wanted her to succeed—he was most likely working on behalf of the High Court—but while the rest of the angels had approved her as a candidate, they didn’t think she’d actually prove herself righteous enough to earn her wings.
The voice had said they’d been pleasantly surprised by her actions in the third and fourth competitions.
They needed her to do something big.
The genes wouldn’t express themselves without a monumental display of selflessness.
I gnawed harder on my teeth.
Aran had sacrificed her physical well-being repeatedly in the games, yet they claimed it wasn’t enough for them.
From what the voice had told me, anyone else would have earned their wings already.
They’d put more blockers inside her than normal. She was being punished for her bloodline.
After all, even when her angel genes had been inhibited, Aran had been able to access some of her powers.
She could create ice claws and summon her feathers.
Most angels couldn’t wield any power until they earned their wings.
There was only one other angel in recorded history who could do so, and they had been the most powerful political pawn ever to grace the High Court: her mother.
Aran was being punished for the sins of both her parents.
The Angel Consciousness didn’t care that a daughter was being treated unfairly or that a guardian was being tortured nightly. All they cared about was controlling the powerful angel population and preventing another mass genocide. That was their directive. Period.
Any collateral suffering was beyond their purview.
That’s what happened when a species valued strength over intelligence. Power didn’t exist without the weak.
A twisted cycle of damnation.
As I convulsed on the bed, tears dripped down off my cheeks and soaked my pillow.
Many factors were weighed against us.
The odds of Aran earning her wings today were low.
Extremely low.
Her life was a tangled web of politics.
According to Dick, civilizations would rise and fall by the choices Aran made, and the High Court knew it.
Her power was so unfathomable that the Angel Consciousness was scared of her.
Yet she moped around and lived inside her head.