Uriel: The Price (Airel Saga Book Six)

Chapter I

The Brotherhood was lost without a Seer, a leader to steer the horde into all unrighteousness and every dark strategy of the just rebellion. And the line of Kreios, most powerful of all the Fallen, lay fallow and broken, disused, until Qiel was born. And activated.

Qiel's virtues were self-evident—he was human, he was angelic . . . and he would be, as soon as he agreed and fulfilled the terms of the contract, demonic. He could be the most powerful being on earth. "Only let Uriel go free. Then you may have me."

Piankhy nodded. He chanted an incantation in a dark tongue, words Qiel imagined Anael might have used. A cloud of vapor formed in front of Qiel's eyes and became a shadow, and in this shadow, he could see his mother's face. She was seized with terror. As fast as it had appeared, it was taken away, her essence blown to the farthest reaches of the earth.

The general laughed. "She is free. She is broken, but she is free. Now fulfill your duty and say the words that will seal the transaction, boy, the words that even now are burning in your mind."

Qiel fell into a trance and found his lips forming these words: "I pledge life and soul to the Brotherhood. This life is not mine; there is only the Brotherhood, the clean nothingness. I swear in blood I shall soldier for my Brothers. Brothers in blood, brothers in death, brothers in the fires of Hell. And I their Seer." The stone was close now and Qiel touched it, sealing the deal.

His world became red.

Piankhy wound the iron chain around Qiel's neck and bowed low, his face touching the ground. "My brother. My Seer."

* * *

URIEL THOUGHT SHE HAD died when the Bloodstone released her. All at once she converged into one place again, within the heavy black fabric walls of the tent. She saw a glimpse of her son, a sight that broke her heart, for she could see what was in his eyes. But it was over too soon and she was in the wind again, taken leagues away from him. With what little strength remained to her, she reassembled and collapsed on the face of the mountainside, gasping for air.

She breathed her first breath and squinted her eyes, feeling the pain of both.

Water was soaking her cloak. She scrambled to her feet, a mad craving rooted deep within her heart, an addiction of blackest passion for the stone. All she wanted was more, to be rejoined to the Bloodstone, to feel cocooned within its terrible facets again, and safe inside the nothingness of it. Red and beautiful, it was evil, wonderful.

But then she looked to the horizon. Over a small rise, she saw it and cried out. This is all that is left of the beloved city. The valley that was once bedecked in hopeful tones of green, open and bright and full that led up to the city, was now a slough of mud and the putrid stench of the sea, the dying, and the dead. The mountain, once white, was now nothing but a black hole. Water poured into it. As she looked on in disbelief, the water began to calm and diminish. The mountain, now sheared clean of the evidence, stood over a dark lake. The troubled surface spread itself in the well of the hole, a vast silent witness covering the affronts just under its muddy flood.

The torrent had taken the city and killed most of the Brotherhood army and anyone else unable to fly to escape.

Uriel was a part of that. She had killed her own family, had betrayed her own. Now she was left with nothing. The Bloodstone had confiscated everything and spit her out when she ceased to be useful.

In the dread space of this waste, her thoughts turned reflexively to her only son, Qiel. He was the only, the last person she loved. The last person she thought she could ever love. What has happened to you, son?

"Qiel. Where are you?" She flew over the lake, searching for survivors. She hoped and prayed to El that her son yet lived. Nothing remained—the last of the Brotherhood horde had fled. A lone tent stood on a lump in the morass of what was left in the valley.

She flew there because there was nowhere else.

Empty. All gone. Only lying on a cot in the tent was the shriveled body of Anael, already in decay. Her longstanding adversary, the only one who knew where her son might be—if he was still alive—and he lay here dead.

Uriel cursed the heavens and fell to her knees and wept. Her heart broke under the weight of her guilt. Qiel was lost. Her father was gone. Her family and friends were buried under a murderous sea. And it is my fault. She was a traitor, she was the one who had abandoned all, she was the one who had raised her fist to El.

This was her reward.

Wiping her face, Uriel stood. She had to find her son. She had to know whether he was alive or dead. One man would know. Yshmial. The boy's father.