Page 37

Something’s watching, one hissed, its voice like dry leaves skittering across the pavement.

Be careful, the other said.

Outside the station, the cold clung to the ancient stones like an afterthought—a damp, pervasive chill that seeped into the bones.

“Where to first?” Remiel asked from behind me, his voice carefully unreadable.

I didn’t respond. I just walked straight to the curb, the city sounds a dull roar around us, and raised my hand. A battered taxi, its paint faded and its engine grumbling in protest, pulled up with a screech of worn brakes.

I opened the back door, paused for a heartbeat, and then spoke flatly. “Home.” I got into the car and deliberately left the door open for him, a resentful acknowledgment of our forced proximity.

The cab ride was mercifully short. Mercifully silent. Remiel sat beside me, a silent, brooding presence with his hands neatly folded in his lap as if he hadn’t spent the night watching me fall apart. I stared out the window the entire time, watching the city blur past—cobbled streets slick with fine mist, shuttered cafes, and trolley wires sagging overhead.

When we pulled up to the building, I was out of the cab before it had fully stopped, leaving the angel to figure out how to pay for the ride. The building was three stories of soot-streaked bricks, and the wrought-iron balcony on the second floor was crooked like a cynical smirk. I punched in the familiar code, and the front gate screeched open with a metallic groan.

The climb to the third-floor flat was steep and narrow, each worn wooden step creaking in protest beneath us. The hallway smelled of boiled potatoes, stale cigarette ash, and the lingering, melancholic ghosts of tenants long past, their lives forgotten like the faded, peeling wallpaper.

At the door to my flat, I paused only long enough to wrestle with the stubborn lock and then stepped inside without ceremony. The apartment was compact, a space that valiantly attempted to masquerade as three separate rooms but failed to do so. A queen-sized bed, its dark wood headboard marred by scuffs and scratches from restless nights, was nestled against the far wall. Beneath the tall grime-streaked window, a thin angular couch sat, its once-functional design now stressed by the heavy velvet drapes that framed it. The kitchenette was scarcely more than a slender countertop paired with a temperamental two-burner stove. A tarnished copper kettle rested on it with a fine layer of dust from months of neglect. Above the clanking radiator, a narrow shelf was crammed with books, their spines worn and their titles inscribed in languages that had long since faded from everyday speech. In one corner, the wallpaper had peeled, curling away from the damp wall as if it had grown tired of its duties. I had never bothered to mend it, allowing the imperfection to remain.

I tossed my coat over the back of a rickety chair, crossed to the window, and pulled the heavy curtains halfway closed, plunging the room into a more forgiving gloom.

Behind me, the door clicked shut, the soft sound final.

I turned.

Remiel stood there, filling the small space with his unwelcomed celestial presence. He was not bulky but tall with shoulders broad enough to take up most of the narrow kitchen. The top of my head would have met the middle of his chest. Angels are tall, archangels are even taller, and Remiel brushed the line between them.

“Have you ever met him, Keeper?” I ask, the cold air of the archive curling close around me.

The keeper’s shadowed form does not shift, yet I feel its gaze pierce through. “Only once. From the moment I was made, I was bound to this archive and the Celestial Tribunal Hall. I do not walk among the famous names you brush shoulders with. I only read of them in records that never end.” Its tone has the cadence of fact, but the pause after holds something back, something it chooses not to give me.

“Then how do you know where everything stands?” I ask, my words sharp and defensive.

“Because the archive does not lie. The measurements of wings and the weight of presence, these are written in detail. But what is written is never complete. A shadow remains untold.”

The silence afterward is heavier than its words. I picture Remiel again—his height, the way rooms shrink around him—and realize the keeper is correct. No record captures the living weight of him.

“Would you like to pause?” the keeper asks. “The archive allows for breaks, though the truth does not grow easier with time.”

“No.” My answer is sharp and immediate. “We go on.”

The archive dims around me, and the kitchen walls close back in. And Remiel stands there, waiting.

“You’ll sleep on the couch,” I said, my voice flat.

Remiel huffed—almost a laugh, almost a sigh of resignation—and nodded once. “Fine.”

He moved past me, his steps slow and his coat brushing my arm. A fleeting unwelcome contact that sent a shiver down my spine. He set his meager things down at the edge of the worn couch and stretched his arms, his spine cracking in protest.

I turned away before I could watch the way his muscles moved beneath his shirt, before I could allow myself to remember the feeling of that strength against me.

I busied myself by making tea because it gave my hands something to do, a mundane ritual to anchor me. The old kettle took forever to boil on the sputtering burner.

He leaned against the counter behind me, too close and saying nothing. Just existing. Just being. He didn’t realize, or perhaps he didn’t care, how much space his oppressive silence took up in such a confining room.

I reached for the familiar tin of valerian, its scent a small comfort. And with a steadiness I did not feel, I let two drops fall into his tea—an old solution from a forgotten grimoire, once my cure for sleepless nights. Bitterroot. Quiet, fast, and deep. Not enough to truly harm a being like him. Just enough to silence the man who stared as if watching me breathe was a matter of profound, divine consequence. And just enough to grant myself a few hours of peace as well.

I poured two mugs, the cheap ceramic warm in my hands. I handed him one without meeting his eyes. He took it, his fingers brushing mine for a fleeting, electric moment, and drank it down without flinching, without question. The tea was a bit too bitter, even for my jaded palate. But I drank it anyway. The warmth was a slight comfort.