Page 9 of The City in Glass

“It was a gift.”

The angel stood in the doorway of the Celindo mansion, his arms crossed over his chest. The fading sunlight gave his skin a ruddy gold tone, and if Vitrine squinted, she could make out the great wings that fell from his shoulders like a conqueror’s cape. She shook the crane-girl’s wrist at him, making her cry out again.

“This is not a gift,” she snapped. “This is a travesty. It is a poorly done travesty.”

The angel flinched, his shoulders coming up as if to ward off a blow, and then he squared them again with irritated pride.

“I was not made for such tasks. I did the best I could.”

“Is that supposed to comfort me, angel?”

He was still, and she bared her teeth.

“It was, wasn’t it. You thought your little birdie was going to make me feel better, would soothe me after everything you did. Do you know what would soothe me, angel?”

He tensed, all the warning she got before he was between them. He turned to face her, herding the crane-girl back with a sweep of his arm, and Vitrine gave him a mocking look.

“Oh, I’m not you. I don’t need burning bodies and the screaming of children to put myself to sleep.”

“I don’t—”

He cut himself off when she stepped up to him, uninterested in the poor silly thing sheltering in his shadow. He was tall, slightly stooped over her, but she ignored the menace and unease that bled from him like juice from a ripe apple.

“I’m not you,” she repeated.

No angel would have reached up like she did to touch his chin, to run her finger in a straight line down to the hollow of his throat. No angel would have folded back the edges of the slit in his linen neckline, baring just a little more flesh. Certainly no angel would have stood up on his tiptoes as she did so she could press her lips to the skin revealed, and then lick it.

He bore her trespass with a kind of wary patience, and, Vitrine could tell, he would bear the rest of what she might do to him the same way. He would suffer her, as if whatever she did to his flesh could compare to what he had done to Azril, and she stepped back in disgust, turning her head to spit.

“I can circle the world ten times with a thought,” he said urgently. “I know the name of every sleeper under the sea. Uncounted armies have fallen under my sword, and I raised the mountains of Edah to the skies. Tell me what would soothe you.”

“You have nothing I want,” she told him, and he rubbed one hand hard over the center of his chest.

“The piece of you in me burns. I cannot remove it no matter what I cut, and my brothers will not allow me to return while I have it.”

“Good.”

She could feel his eyes on her, all of them, seeing her in every way he could. He could see the small body she inhabited, he could see her birthed form, a five-hundred- year storm that tore across the desert in a rage before it was bound in flesh by her crying parent. He could see the glass case inside her, and she guessed that he could see the book she kept inside it as well.

Perhaps he also saw the fury that ate at her ever-renewing flesh, and how if she allowed it to, it would consume her and even the memory of the city she loved. Perhaps that was why he nodded stiffly, defeated.

“Now you see. Let me take care of the stupid thing you have created, if you have not the strength to do it.”

She expected him to step aside ashamed, let her snap the poor crane-girl’s neck, but instead he straightened and shook his head.

“No. She is my mistake.”

Curious, she watched as he turned away from her, his wings coming up and spreading out to grant them some privacy. The crane-girl made a crooning hesitant sound that ended with a brisk wet snap, and then he turned with her in his arms. With her long hair covering her face, she looked more like Avaline, and the demon steeled her heart. One more dead thing, what was that? Her loved ones were gone, and she would waste no tears for an angel’s foolishness.

“Lay her down here.”

Deliberately, Vitrine turned away from him, going to gather the slats of dry wood that had once been elegant dulcimers and paintings bright with egg tempera. They had escaped his fire but not hers, and as the sun set down behind the hills, she built a tidy pyramid of wood and lit it with a tinderbox she found somehow intact in the rubble. Over it, she balanced some rocks and a window shutter of curlicue iron to serve as an impromptu grill.

The angel watched with hollow eyes as she stripped away the crane-girl’s muddied dress and bared white flesh to the emerging moon. She jointed her at the shoulders, the elbows, and the knees, laying her limbs on the iron so that the flesh crisped and the fat dripped richly onto the coals. The rest would require more careful butchering, which she did not care to do, and she left it to sit on the grass, still terribly recognizable for what it was: a mutilation and an angel’s error.

She tasted like crane, all fish and frog and snail rather than human, and to her, Vitrine added ramps and mustard that had grown in the angels’ despite.

She ate delicately, relishing the angel’s dark gaze, blotting the grease from her mouth with her fingertips.