Rebecca Lim: Muse

Luc raises his blazing blade aloft and light seeps up out of the mosaic floor in multiple locations, twines swiftly around the ankles of all the people pushing desperately for the exits, slides over the still bodies of the prone, before coalescing into shining shapes that move rapidly towards the catwalk and rise unscathed through fire. They gather upon the catwalk, a shining army, a score of them at least. All beautiful, all tall, all lethal. They must be part of Luc’s personal guard; the most fearsome of his legion: his daemonium.

They are winged as the archangels are — for that is what they once must have been. And they are still indistinguishable from us, save that most are in shining raiment that is high-necked or long-sleeved. Not for them, the glowing, sleeveless raiment of the six archangels they now surround. They are truly our opposite, in attitude and appetite.

Swords ignite in their hands as they fall upon Michael, upon Barachiel, Jeremiel, Gabriel, Uriel, until their shining forms are engulfed. I hear the sizzle as blade meets blade, and the air is a whirl of limbs, wings, ambient light.

K’el, the weakest of the six, is engaged by five of Luc’s forces at once, and immediately takes to the air, trying to shake them off. Uriel, too, suddenly ascends — as if he would protect K’el — parrying the blades of the two beings that harry him, one from each side.

People scream and point upwards as they flee.

I kick and twist within the grip of Gudrun’s crushing fist but she is like a creature of legend, a stone giantess. Darkness invades my sight once more as Irina’s body begins to suffocate, to die.

Luc turns to Gudrun and gives her the kind of smile that once would have brought me to my knees with love.

‘Give her to me,’ he says. ‘Alive or dead, I still have use for her. The moment is upon us, my dear. It begins tonight.’

Gudrun throws me down onto the catwalk, and I suck greedily at the tainted air, searching through the smoke and flames and darkness for Ryan. But he’s nowhere to be seen.

Luc’s sword vanishes into the palm of his hand and he crosses the short distance to me, looks down upon my bowed, human head.

‘I told you something once — in a fit of love-struck madness,’ he says. ‘Do you remember it?’

I close my eyes briefly and nod, remembering the two of us entwined in our secret garden, the air heavy with the scent of a thousand different blooms that no human hand could possibly have put together.

You are the best and most loved thing in my life — let nothing ever be possible, or complete, if you are not with me. And may the elements witness my vow in all their silent glory.

My eyes sting in remembrance. How happy I’d been then. I hadn’t known that happiness would be denied me, all the years thereafter.

‘That was my undoing,’ he whispers. ‘My vow was witnessed, and it has dogged me all of my days upon this earth. It is the supreme irony that without you, I am nothing. I have power, but only so much; a kingdom, but such a poor, mean kingdom with no hope of expansion or conquest. Until now. Now, your soul is mine again. And it shall free me.’

I recoil at his words as if I’ve been spat upon. He speaks of kingdoms and conquests when all the universe was once ours to play in. What happened to us?

Luc raises me up with one gleaming hand, and I am forced to look into his eyes, so far above me, that are so pale, so glorious, and yet contain so much darkness. I never saw that darkness when he appeared to me in my dreams. He is indeed a liar of talent, the best there ever was.

‘Tonight,’ he murmurs, ‘I begin the reclamation of what I have lost. And you shall witness me bring the kingdoms of earth and of Heaven to their knees, so that I may be God at last, over all.’

He places the heel of one shining hand upon my forehead and I am transfixed by his touch, as if by a live current. I can neither breathe nor struggle, though my mouth is stretched wide in a silent scream.

My left hand ignites. It bursts into a searing white flame that is as coruscating as it is beautiful.

And all around me, I see an answering flame — shining from Luc, from Gudrun, from all of his winged warriors, his daemonium.

Each of them bears a glowing wound that is suddenly visible beneath the long-sleeved, high-necked raiment that they wear. Some bear scars at the base of the throat — as Gudrun does — some upon the shoulder, the centre of the back. Many are scarred upon their forearms, or their upper arms. Some bear one scar, others two.

Even Luc bears a glowing scar right in the centre of his broad chest, visible beneath the human clothing he has assumed. The size of an archangel’s handprint.

They are all marked, as I am.

In some way, they are all exiles, too.

But there is no time to ponder the mystery. The pain of Luc’s touch is excruciating — it’s as if my soul is being destroyed, or transfigured.

His touch reaches down into Irina’s skull, into her flesh and bones, the very matter of which she’s made. He’s drawing me out, coil by resistant coil. He’s following the switchbacks and false trails, the broken pattern that I’ve somehow been cast into. He is irradiating me with his fire, seeking to remake me, remould me.

And I see, I see —

— that final, fatal moment in which Luc and I were the epicentre of something vast, a conflagration waiting to happen, an ache in time, a breath suspended. The Eight arrayed against us, weapons of power raised, a shining multitude gathered behind them. Behind Luc and me, another shining multitude. Two halves of a people that had once been whole and united.

I remember Luc’s words: ‘Then, as an act of faith — of goodwill, shall we call it — take that which is most precious to me.’ His tone is final, without emotion, as he says, ‘I permit it.’

And I remember that searing pain in my left hand, feel it now. But this time the world does not go blank and white. This time, I do not block what happened from my mind.

This time, when I relive that moment, the moment when my left hand sustained the wound that begot all wounds thereafter, my memories do not twist and shatter like glass. I live them as if that time is now, not some long ago yesterday.

My left hand was grasped so tightly in Luc’s that when he pushed me with every ounce of his indomitable strength, I was unprepared. His act of betrayal seared me forever.

He sacrificed me.

And I’d fallen through the canopy of Heaven itself, fallen through the night sky, screaming just one word.

Mercy!

All the horror of those days is mirrored in my eyes.

Luc curses as he meets some final point of resistance in my unravelling. There’s something caught in me, like a locked box, a hard knot. My name; my name is bound in there. My name is the anchor point. Raphael called it the last defence, but he did it for my protection, unwittingly creating a weapon to be used against me. None would be able to draw my name from me willingly, but what if my name were already known?

Luc doesn’t bother to unravel that last portion of my soul. It’s something useful to him, a means of control. He simply rips me free, and I feel more than see Irina’s body fall away from mine. She slumps unconscious, face down upon the runway in her lovely dress, her pretty tiara, her damaged wings.

I look down at my gleaming limbs, the glowing, sleeveless raiment that I always wear when I am myself. Stare down at my burning left hand, the flames fully visible in the poor light. Disoriented, disbelieving, betrayed twice over by the one I’d loved more than anything. Itself a heresy, surely.

I’m still small, still mortal-sized. So dazed to find myself inhabiting my own skin after all these long years, these interminable centuries, that I do not know how to shape-shift, to make myself Luc’s equal again.