Chapter 03

That dagger had flown inches from Mori’s head. Though her sisters knew she would've been able to duck it, she didn’t appreciate the brush with such painfully sharp steel.

Even as an angel of death, close calls like that weren’t enjoyable.

Mori scanned the rooftops to figure out which of her sisters had stolen her kill. Sure enough, a figure crouched on the tavern’s roof four stories up. The newcomer’s enchanted bow was backlit by the full moon, and her wild brown curls shivered in the winter wind. Moonlight cast a soft silver glow around her frame, and two glowing silver eyes glared down at Mori from the depths of the silhouette.

Lottie.

Mori frowned, but this could’ve been so much worse. At least she wouldn’t have to deal with any of Tia’s lectures… provided Lottie kept this a secret, of course, and that wasn’t a guarantee.

Her sister leapt off the roof and momentarily blended into the shadows above. Her boots landed on the dirt nearby with a barely audible thump, and only a thin plume of dust kicked into the air around her ankles as she stood with ease.

On her shoulder sat a small auburn creature that roughly resembled a tiny fox. Though he could’ve easily fit in Mori’s palm, he raised his fuzzy little chin in what she could’ve only assumed was an attempt to intimidate her.

How adorable.

Sol—Lottie’s familiar—curled his long tail and flicked it behind him, back and forth, until his furious twitching left soft blurs in the air. The soft auburn glow to its fur gave the illusion of fire.

Without a word, Lottie tugged her dagger out of the corpse at our feet and wiped the man’s blood off on his sleeve. When it was clean, she shoved it back into the sheath on her thigh and frowned.

“Unfair,” Mori chided. “I didn’t even get to use my battleaxe.”

Lottie huffed impatiently. “Then be faster next time.”

“I had this handled.” Mori didn’t bother masking her annoyance as she stowed her brilliant weapon in the elaborate sheath on her back.

“Handled?” Lottie raised one skeptical eyebrow and shook her head. “What the hell are you doing, picking fights with mortals? You were supposed to be trailing—”

“They attacked first,” Mori interrupted. She retrieved her dagger as well and wiped it down with a rag she kept on hand to clean her beautiful blades. “Besides, I was mid-mission. Our mark is in the tavern now. Let’s go, or we’ll lose him.”

She walked into the depths of the alleyway, toward the two familiar red eyes watching them from the shadows. The fire in her chest had already begun to fade, and Cricket’s body slowly shrank back to its proper size. By the time she reached him, the furry little ball of black fluff and sharp claws only came up to her ankle, and she leaned down just enough for him to jump back on her shoulder.

Her sister huffed in irritation and gestured to the bodies littering the alleyway. “Right, because I’m the one slowing down the mission.”

Mori shrugged and scanned the rooftops again in case Tia had heard the screams, too. Her body tensed with each passing moment at the thought of their eldest sister unleashing hell on her again, but Mori had been forced to live in the shadows for long enough. She needed an outlet, or the pent-up tension would’ve exploded at exactly the wrong time—just as it had so often before.

“This way,” she hissed under her breath, ignoring her sister’s biting sarcasm as she led the way toward the gravel pit behind the tavern.

Though Lottie followed with all the practiced stealth of an assassin, she didn’t bother masking a weary sigh. “You can’t keep doing this, murder bunny. You’re going to get caught.”

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Mori’s shoulders relaxed, same as they did every time Lottie used her strange little pet name for her, and she paused with her back against the tavern’s outer wall. She tried to ignore the tremor of fear in Lottie’s voice, but she cast her sister an apologetic glance anyway.

After all, Lottie was right. Mori didn’t want to admit it, but denial wouldn’t change the truth.

Lottie’s somber frown faded, and she pointed at the darkness ahead of them. “Come on. We should get out of here before—”

“Before what, exactly?” a familiar voice asked from the shadows.

In unison, Mori and Lottie winced. The two of them stopped dead in their tracks and braced themselves for the worst.

Boots crunched across the gravel behind them as Tia’s steady footsteps closed in. Mori peered over one shoulder to find her towering older sister glaring intently at her. Tia’s long blonde hair perfectly framed her flawless face. Her familiar, Lex, sat on her shoulder, and his white fur glowed with all the magic of moonlight. He watched Mori with the same somber expression as Tia, and neither of them even attempted to mask their disappointment.

With the hilts of her twin swords sticking out from the custom sheaths on her back, Tia crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes in silent rage.

Damn. Mori hated when Tia did this.

“We have a sheriff to find,” Mori said impatiently. “He’s—”

“—in the tavern,” Tia interrupted. “I know because I trailed him after you got distracted.”

“Great,” Mori said dryly.

“Oh, how lucky!” Lottie nervously clapped her hands together. “I guess we should go find him, then.”

“No need.” Though Tia spoke to Lottie, she never looked away from Mori. “His companion—the local priestess, turns out—went to get him some whiskey to calm his shakes. That bought me some time to find you two.”

“Oh,” Lottie said with an anxious chuckle. “Then maybe—”

“Control,” Tia interrupted. Her eyes flashed red in warning as she glared down at Mori, and her brows furrowed with anger. “Little sister, you absolutely must learn control.”

“I thought I did just fine,” Mori said with a shrug. “I mean, I didn’t even set anything on fire this time. That’s progress, wouldn’t you say?”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” A muscle twitched in Tia’s jaw, and her nails dug into the leather sleeve of her custom-made armor. “One hit can push an angel over the edge, Mori. One blow can take away our rational thought forever. You know that, and yet you’re as reckless as the day you were made. If you don’t control your magic, it will burn you alive.”

Mori met her sister’s furious glare as long as she could, but the defiant resolve didn’t last. After a moment, she swallowed hard and looked down at the pebbles beneath her boots, knowing damn well that Tia was right.

Annoyingly so.

Mori had seen this for herself too many times before, and she had heard this lecture even more often than that. She had it memorized, but that didn’t make it an easy rule to follow.

White lines burned to life across an angel’s skin when they accessed magic. That was safe, and that was all Mori had done back there in the alley. But when the fight pushed their boundaries, an angel would inevitably cloak. Their skin would turn as dark blue as the night sky, and pinpricks of starlight would hum to life across their bodies. With the surge of power that followed, a fog would drown out reason and conscious thought.

Most of the time, an angel could claw her way back to sanity. But if an angel spent too long in that form, or if the hellfire in their blood finally consumed them, they would get their wings—and a winged angel always lost herself to the bloodlust.

With her point made and lecture apparently over for the moment, Tia turned her back on them all. She led the way into the shadows behind the tavern and shook her head in disappointment. “Come on, you two.”

With a shaky sigh of relief, Lottie followed Tia into the darkness. Mori had gotten off easy, and that meant Tia was waiting to unleash her true anger this time. Mori groaned in frustration, but nothing could be done to help it now. The longer Tia waited to give a lecture, the worse it would be.

“At least we actually did something worthy of a lecture this time,” Cricket whispered.

A flicker of mischief bubbled through Mori’s connection to him as he spoke, and she barely restrained her own dark chuckle. “Let’s see what that sheriff of ours found out.”

Mori jogged off into the shadows after her only surviving family, and with each footfall, the smile on her face slowly faded. Part of her didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Part of her simply didn’t want to know if the rumors were true.

Because if one of her sisters truly had earned their wings, hell would come for them all… and everyone she loved would burn in the sort of hellfire not even she could survive.