Page 5 of Dance with Me
“You’ll need to get up and come with me,” Morningstar said.
Uriel stared at him, unwilling to do anything. Existing hurt.
Morningstar approached the bed. Beneath the cracks of teal soul aura peeking through his mask of humanity, Uriel watched shadows move. He sat up, alarmed.
“They are supposed to be gone,” Uriel said.
“Dark and light have to co-exist. One without the other isn’t possible. You know that better than most,” Morningstar said as he took a hold of Uriel’s arm and hauled him out of the bed.
Uriel’s leg trembled, but Morningstar held him up.
“Who shot you?” Morningstar asked.
“Shot?” Uriel didn’t know that word. “Like with an arrow?” Had there been arrows?
Morningstar pressed his forehead to Uriel’s and for a half second Uriel felt his brother sorting through memories as if he could turn the pages of the book of Uriel’s life. He paused on the doctor and Uriel’s heart skipped a beat at the memory, Silas and Mason, a dragon, and Wade.
“The redhead died?” Morningstar asked gently.
Uriel flinched.
Morningstar tugged Uriel toward the door. “We’ll go slow since you’re still healing. But you need magic.”
“I don’t want it,” Uriel said.
“Will you abandon Raphael then?”
“No,” Uriel protested. “Can’t I just be like the other seraphim?”
“You will always be a creator, no matter how many times you Fall. Take the shadows or avoid them, they will seek you out. Right now, you look like a rag doll lost in the dirt for half a century.”
“Feel like it too,” Uriel agreed.
“You already made the choice in this life to take the shadows and use them. If you release them all and live without magic, you’ll age and die. Is that what you want?”
Uriel started to protest that he hadn’t taken any shadows, but remembered breaking the other’s chains by taking the magic from them. “Where are we going?”
“The celestial realm.”
“This isn’t the celestial realm?”
Morningstar laughed. “Right, cause your stuffy ass white fairies would let any color in their world? What you see is what I built, a small world between for the catalyst and me. The celestial realm is still boring bright lights and white everything.”
“I don’t want to see it,” Uriel said. Another failure.
“They refuse to change. Is that what you want for them?”
“They have that choice.”
“But a handful get to choose for everyone?” Morningstar insisted. “What about all the rainbow butterflies you and Raphael designed? The ones in your memory that escaped? The redhead who threw himself on you to save you. What would he have wanted.”
Wade had been chatty, full of life, interested in mortal books and helping anyone who needed a hand. Sweet to the very core as Raphael had designed.
They made it to the door and Morningstar waited for Uriel to make the choice. Raphael appeared outside; expression concerned. “What’s going on?”
“He needs shadows,” Morningstar said.
Raphael winced. “He needs more rest.”
