Petra's laugh was derisive as she eyed the girl curled amongst the cushions like an Arabian princess of the Old World, despite her wild, dirty face.
'You have no right to be here, Petra.' Jinn was fuming as he stormed into the room behind the gloriously golden angel. Petra sneered as she turned to him. The heavy afternoon light gleamed off of her hair that was coiled and piled high on top of her head, bound with a glittering string of pearl-sized rubies. She wore a thin silk tunic that swept low between her breasts and pooled at her feet in a pale pink puddle, a thick rope of gold was wrapped around her tiny waist and Eutopia couldn't help but stare at the obnoxiously large blood-red stones that dripped from her ears and her neck, carved into the shape of delicately-petalled roses.
'I only came to check on Athena,' Petra smiled with cold eyes that were locked on the girl at the foot of the bed. 'I didn't realise I was - interrupting something.'
'You weren't interrupting anything, but you've out stayed your welcome.'
'I see your taste in decorating hasn't changed much in five hundred years.' Petra placed her hands on her hips as she glanced around the large but elegantly furnished room with pursed lips. The heavily carved bed dominated the room, it was second in size only to the window that claimed most of one wall. The full-to-burst bookcase took up the other free wall and it was between the bookcase and the bed that Eutopia remained, curled on her cushion and clutching the book like a shield. The sight drew another laugh from Petra's perfect lips.
'Oh for the love of all that's good. She has a book. Are you going to teach her to read when you've finished with her?'
Jinn was in front of her at once. Although there was little difference in their size Petra visibly shrank back as Jinn approached her and his hand shot out to grab her hair and roughly pull her head back so that their eyes could meet.
'Get out.'
'I'm sure Uriel would be interested to know you've not been doing as you're told, Jinn. I thought you said she was dead.' That petulant pout remained as Petra looked up at him with her golden eyes. Jinn let go of her and shoved her roughly away, making her stumble as he swept down to where Eutopia was trembling on the pile of cushions. The delicate chain clinked as he released her only to pull her up by the arm and tilt her head back gently but firmly so that the collar that still graced her throat was exposed.
'She is mine now,' Jinn growled, almost territorially.
Petra laughed, a cold but beautiful sound.
'I distinctly remember you saying that about all the others, Jinn. We'll see how long it lasts.'
'This time it's different. You won't breathe a word of this to Uriel, to Michael. Keep your envious emotions to yourself.'
'Envious?!' Petra managed to splutter in surprise, 'of her? Of that common, inconsequential slave of a mortal? I think you're deluded, Jinn!' He laughed, shortly, crossing his arms across his chest as he leaned back slightly to let more of the light that crept through the silken curtain at the window bathe her beautiful upturned face.
'Please,' Petra stepped closer to Jinn ignoring the girl, who had sunk down slowly to her cushion again, raising her angelic hands palm upwards towards Jinn with fingers splayed to show she meant no harm as she moved with slow deliberation and rested them lightly on the taut muscle of his chest her golden eyes pleading as she peered up at him in the soft light. Petra's lips, parted and trembling, brushed over Jinn's as she whispered. 'Please don't leave me, Jinn, we've been together so long, roaming the width and breadth of this strange place since the beginning of the End. I wouldn't cope here on my own without you, I need you and I know you need me.'
Jinn's arms remained impassively folded across his chest and Petra pressed this to her advantage, her warm lips lightly trailing along his tense jaw and up to his ear as she continued to whisper. 'You need me too... remember, all those nights, those long, empty nights we spent together looking up at the glorious stars instead of down on them; that bewilderment we felt in those first few days here when the Angelic invasion finally settled? I couldn't have got through those dark moments without you to show me the light. I understand that now, that we are here to help each other so now I am here to show you that this is not right. These feelings you have, they will pass.' Petra slid her hands up to clasp either side of Jinn's face with long, elegant fingers as she pulled back enough to lift her wide eyes to search his. 'This girl is nothing but another human that it's become our duty to destroy so we can claim our rightful inheritance. Destroy her you must without falling into this inescapable vortex of emotion that we seem to be drawn into. We are nothing like them, we cannot love their kind the way we can love our own. Do what you must, take her back to the Sharding so that we may continue on our own journey. Together.'
'You are wrong.' Jinn's eyes were narrowed to harsh slits, his tone low but firm as he stared hard at Petra and each word was enunciated through clenched teeth. 'I will not let any harm come to her. I cannot lead her to that fate. This is not a passing phase, Petra, I have truly never felt this way before and I will do whatever it takes to protect her and it does not involve draining her of blood until she is dead to strengthen our cause. '
Petra took a resigned step back and let her fingers slip from his warm face. 'Do what must be done, or I will do it for you.' Her eyes followed his hand as it moved to his side and a subtle bluish glow lit up the room, emanating from the sword still sheathed at his hip.
'You will do no such thing!' he growled, dangerously. The still air seemed to shimmer and hum with an eerie vibration that settled just below the arc of one's hearing, thrumming on the threshold of the aural sense as a gentle blue light seemed to envelope them both. The effect on Petra was instant. She rushed at Jinn, her gracefully solid frame flung at him as she slid to her knees at his feet, her face full of angelic entreaty as she clutched at his shirt. The frightened and bewildered eyes of the girl were almost forgotten.
'No! We have a duty. It's our right,' she implored almost apologetically, her voice a fearful gasp.
'And I have told you now that I will protect Eutopia. She is mine now and I will do all that is in my power to do so. As will Alastor.' The sword seemed to glow brighter as Jinn mentioned it, causing it to pulse like a living thing at his side.
'You cannot meddle with these things, you should not!' Petra had a fistful of Jinn's plain black shirt in each of her hands now, the desperation in her voice twisting her beautiful features. 'If Uriel finds out about this... Michael,' she gasped, wide eyed. 'If Michael hears...' Her words petered out faintly as she appeared to lose the ability to speak at the thought.
Jinn crouched down so that he was level with the figure kneeling at his feet; his swift movement wrenching the fabric from Petra's fingers as the tip of his nose almost touched hers. Petra could see that his eyes were as black as his closely cropped hair, as fathomlessly deep as the blackest of nights.
'Then so be it,' he growled. The hum and blaze of light that had steadily grown around them with Jinn's fury, surrounding them in an azure cloud of vibration, began to die down. From having illuminated every spider-like fissure in the plaster of the walls in his room it seemed to settle to a dim glow that fluttered out like a flame that had been snuffed. He straightened up, brushing his hands over the front of his shirt as though wiping away Petra's touch, before he reached down to grasp her beneath each elbow and pulled her up to her feet. 'Let them know if you must but do not expect such threats to change my mind. I have found the whole purpose of my existence. Nothing can change that now, not even Michael's scorn.'
The fight seemed to have left Petra, her perfectly sculpted shoulders drooped, as did the pretty corners of her lips as she scoffed at him, incomprehension clear in eyes that were bright with tears.
'Scorn? If Michael hears of this I seriously doubt there will be any room for scorn amidst his anger at such a betrayal. You were tasked with a great thing. You'll be flung back to your guardianship at Heira before you can blink. If he doesn't kill you first.'
'Get out,' Jinn barked harshly as he reached once more for Alastor.
Petra didn't need telling twice. With a glimmer of her hair and flutter of shimmering silk she was gone, leaving Jinn silently seething.
'You knew what was going on at the Sharding and you sent me there deliberately. You told people I was dead. You knew I would be.' Eutopia stood up on shaky legs and reached out to lay a hand on his arm. Though she didn't have the strength to turn his muscular frame Jinn moved to face her and let his black eyes meet her stormy blue ones that swam with fear and disgust. He nodded.
'They want me out of the way,' she stated, referring to the Commander's hierarchy. Jinn nodded his head again. 'They told you to kill me and you were going to. You knew what was happening at that place.' Her stomach lurched, his silence indicating his guilt. 'They're killing them, herding them like animals in a slaughterhouse.'
'Your blood, the blood of your kind makes us truly invincible but it must be harvested in the right way. Slowly so that every drop of it contains every ounce of your un-weakened life-force. Your weakness would become our weakness, but your strength is our strength. They will be well looked after until the very moment of their death. It's a painless process.'
Eutopia gaped at him in disbelief.
'Why there though? Why didn't you kill me outright as you no doubt wanted to?'
'I couldn't,' was his simple, honest answer. 'I couldn't do it.'
'So you condemned me to death instead.'
'Yes. But I couldn't see that through either.'
'Just because I won't tell you what I don't know?'
Jinn took a deep breath and crossed the room to perch on the side of the large bed, the soft mattress dipped down under his weight.
'You're the key to everything, the Key. It was documented long before the stars were even formed that the Key, a blood-linked relative of an Angel, yet a fully-fledged human would be marked with a silver dagger and serve as the eyes and ears of the human resistance.' Jinn reached easily across the small space to grab Eutopia's right arm and extend it before her to trace the silvered scar that ran from her wrist to halfway to her inner elbow. Eutopia had always thought it formed a short-armed cross, with the longest faded and puckered line running the length of her willowy limb and the shorter scar going from left to right two inches below her wrist.
'That's not the mark of a silver dagger, it's an old scar I got from falling out of an apple tree when I was six!' She snatched her arm back, self-consciously tracing the healed-over skin. 'I haven't been the eyes and ears of any resistance. That's the point that I've been trying to get across to you.'
'Horace has been training you for something. There's no way you'd be able to have avoided the Nightwatch without intensive study of their habits and movements. And it certainly wasn't tips on running a marathon.'
'A what?'
'Never mind. You were to spearhead the front of Horace's uprising against the Angels, though you might not have realised it. But I seriously doubt that. You aren't that stupid.'
'My family had better sense than to fraternise with the enemy. There's no way I have any Angel blood in me,' Eutopia protested, desperate to find purchase on her argument. Her pretty face was twisted with horror at the mere thought.
'You don't have any Angelic blood. But you are related to someone who does.' Eutopia narrowed her eyes in disbelief.
'Who?' she asked a little warily.
'Your brother.' Jinn smiled bitterly.