NARA:
The gallery's main floor felt different as we descended the stairs—colder, despite the Lagos heat already pressing against the windows. The air tasted metallic, like the moment before lightning strikes. Wrong. Everything about this moment felt profoundly wrong.
Ezrael leaned heavily against me, his weight more substantial than his lean frame suggested. I could feel him trembling with effort, trying to hide his weakness. Pride, maybe. Or the ingrained habit of a warrior who couldn't afford to show vulnerability.
Through the windows, I could see morning traffic building on Kingsway Road. Danfos honking. Street vendors setting up their stalls. The normal chaos of Ikoyi waking up. But inside the gallery, the world had narrowed to footsteps on marble and the sound of my heart hammering against my ribs.
The young receptionist—Chiamaka, I remembered belatedly—hovered near the bottom of the stairs, wringing her hands. Her eyes kept darting toward the main entrance, where I could just make out a silhouette through the frosted glass.
Tall. Perfectly still. Waiting.
"Madam, abeg, make we call police," Chiamaka whispered urgently. (Madam, please, let's call the police.) "This thing no be normal. I swear, the woman no blink once since she enter."
I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it—what would the police do against celestial beings? Arrest them for trespassing? But Chiamaka's fear was real, and I was still her employer, still responsible for her safety in some mundane way that felt irrelevant now but mattered nonetheless.
"It's okay," I said, trying for calm I didn't feel. "This is... a personal matter. Take the rest of the day off. Paid. Don't argue."
"But madam—"
"Please." I put every ounce of authority I possessed into the word. "Abeg, just go. Lock up the staff entrance on your way out. Tell anyone who calls that we're closed for maintenance."
She looked between me and Ezrael—who had straightened now, his face a mask of calm that didn't reach his too-bright eyes—then nodded quickly. "Okay, madam. God go watch over you." (Okay, madam. God will watch over you.)
If only she knew how complicated that statement was.
Chiamaka grabbed her bag and fled through the back hallway. I heard the staff door slam, the lock engage, and then we were alone with whatever waited beyond the glass.
"You should have gone with her," Ezrael said quietly.
"We've already had this argument. I won." I kept my voice light, though my hands were shaking. I tightened my grip on his arm, as much to steady myself as to support him. "So who is it? Heaven or Hell?"
"Neither." His jaw clenched. "Worse."
"How comforting."
"I try." He managed a ghost of a smile, though it didn't reach his eyes. They'd gone distant, focused on the door with the intensity of a predator assessing threats. "Stay behind me. Don't speak unless she addresses you directly. And for God's sake, Nara, don't make any promises. Not even casual ones."
"You're starting to sound like a fairy tale."
"Fairy tales have truth at their core." His eyes met mine, and I saw ancient fear there. "Please. Trust me on this."
I nodded, though everything in me wanted to argue. Wanted to stand beside him as an equal, not hide behind him like a child. But I was barely twenty-four hours into knowing the supernatural world existed. He'd been navigating it for millennia.
Pick your battles, Nara. This isn't the one.
Ezrael walked toward the entrance with slow, measured steps. Each one looked painful, though he hid it well. When he reached the door, he paused, one hand on the handle.
"Last chance to run," he said without looking back.
"Open the door, Ezrael."
He did.
The woman who entered moved like water flowing uphill—smooth, impossible, beautiful in a way that made my eyes want to slide away. She was tall, maybe six feet in heels that looked like they'd been carved from obsidian. Her skin was the deep brown of aged mahogany, flawless as carved stone. Silver threads wound through her braids, creating patterns that shifted when I wasn't looking directly at them. And her eyes—
Her eyes were too bright. Too aware. Like looking into a mirror that reflected not your face but your soul's deepest flaws.
She wore a tailored suit in charcoal grey that probably cost more than my monthly rent, and she carried herself with the easy confidence of someone who'd never been told no. Or if she had, the person who'd said it hadn't lived long enough to repeat the mistake.
"Good morning," she said, her voice honey and smoke, accented with something that didn't quite fit any region I could name. "I apologize for the early intrusion. I'm told this is a gallery?" She gestured elegantly at the paintings lining the walls. "I have an interest in West African contemporary art. Particularly pieces with... historical significance."
Her gaze slid past the paintings to Ezrael, and something in her expression shifted. Recognition. And beneath it, something that looked almost like hunger.
"Ezrael." His name in her mouth sounded like a secret. Like a claim. "Or should I call you by one of your other names? You've accumulated so many over the centuries."
The temperature dropped. Suddenly, sharply, like someone had opened a freezer door directly into the gallery. My breath misted in the air. The windows began to fog.
"Adanne." Ezrael's voice was ice. Sharper than the cold pressing against my skin. "This is private property. You're not welcome here."
"How rude." She pressed a hand to her chest in mock offense, but her smile was sharp. Predatory. "And here I thought we were old friends. Or at least old acquaintances. It's been what—a century? More? You look well for someone who should still be entombed in cursed sleep."
She circled the space like a predator taking measure of territory, her heels clicking against the marble floor. Each step was precise. Deliberate. And where she walked, the paintings seemed to dull, their colors leaching away as if her very presence drained the life from them.
Her gaze found me, and I felt it like a physical touch—cold fingers tracing my spine, assessing, weighing, pricing.
"And this must be the little mortal who woke you." Adanne's smile widened. "How fascinating. She has the face. Adaorah's eyes, staring at me across centuries. Tell me, child—do you remember me? From your first life?"
I opened my mouth to respond, but Ezrael moved faster than I'd thought possible in his weakened state. He placed himself directly between us, and the air around him shimmered with barely restrained power.
"She's under my protection," he said quietly. "Whatever business you think you have here, it doesn't involve her."
"Doesn't it?" Adanne tilted her head, studying him with those too-bright eyes. "You awaken after a century of imprisonment. The seal breaks at precisely the moment this woman touches the mural that bound you. Your bond—" She gestured vaguely at the space between Ezrael and me, and I saw it then, threads of light and shadow connecting us, visible for just a heartbeat before fading. "Your bond is already reforming. And you expect me to believe she's not involved?"
"What do you want, Adanne?" Ezrael's voice was flat. Final.
"Want?" She laughed, and the sound echoed wrong, like it was coming from multiple throats at once. "I want many things, Watcher-Who-Fell. But for now, I'm simply here to deliver a message. From interested parties."
"I'm not interested in anyone's messages."
"Perhaps." She produced a card from inside her jacket—thick, cream-colored paper that looked far too old to be real. When she held it out, I saw symbols etched into it that hurt to look at directly. "But they're very interested in you. In your... situation. Debts unpaid. Contracts unfulfilled. The small matter of your continued defiance of cosmic law."
"Tell them what I've told every collector, every emissary, every self-appointed authority for the past three centuries." Ezrael didn't take the card. "I owe nothing to Heaven, nothing to Hell, nothing to anyone who thinks my fall makes me property to be claimed."
"Such pride." Adanne tucked the card away with a smile that showed too many teeth. "It's what got you cast down in the first place, wasn't it? That and your unfortunate tendency to fall in love with mortals who should have remained beneath your notice."
The air crackled. I felt power building around Ezrael like a storm gathering strength, and for a moment, I saw him as he must have been before the fall—terrible and beautiful, divine wrath given form.
"Careful," Adanne said, but she took a step back. Just one. Just enough to acknowledge the threat despite his weakened state. "I'm merely a messenger. Killing me won't erase the message."
"Then deliver it and leave."
"Very well." She spread her hands in a gesture of mock surrender. "The interested parties wish to remind you that your time is borrowed. That every moment you exist outside Heaven's judgment or Hell's dominion is an affront to cosmic order. They're willing to be... patient. For now. But patience has limits."
"How poetic." Ezrael's voice dripped with contempt. "Tell your employers—whoever they are this time—that I've heard these threats before. They bore me."
"Do they?" Adanne's gaze slid to me again, and I felt that cold assessment return. "Even when the stakes have changed so dramatically? Before, you were alone. Mourning. Nothing left to lose. But now—" She inhaled deeply, as if tasting the air. "Now you have her. Again. The soul you fell for. And we both know how that story ends, don't we, Ezrael?"
Something shifted in the room's energy. The temperature dropped further, my breath coming in sharp white clouds. But beneath the cold, I felt heat—rage radiating from Ezrael like a furnace.
"Get. Out." Each word was carefully spaced. Controlled. But I heard the violence lurking beneath them.
"So you've chosen her again." Adanne's smile was knowing. Sad. "How wonderfully predictable. The same dance, the same tragic ending. She'll die, Ezrael. Just like all the others. Just like Adaorah died screaming your name while Heaven's judgment burned through her. And you'll survive, cursed to remember. Again."
"I said—"
But she was already moving. Not toward the door—toward me. Fast. Faster than should have been possible. One moment she was across the room, the next she was close enough to touch, her hand reaching for my face.
Ezrael's roar shook the building.
He moved between us, and this time his wings manifested—massive, fractured things of shadow and broken light that filled the gallery with their span. Feathers that looked like shards of obsidian glass. Light bleeding from cracks in their structure like wounds that would never heal.
They were beautiful. Terrifying. Wrong in a way that made my artist's eye want to look away and capture them forever simultaneously.
Adanne froze, her hand inches from my face. She stared at Ezrael's wings with something that might have been respect.
"Still dramatic, I see," she said lightly. But she withdrew her hand. Stepped back. "Very well. I've delivered my message. Consider yourself warned, both of you."
She turned toward the door, movements fluid and unhurried despite the naked threat Ezrael represented.
"One more thing," she called over her shoulder. "The girl—she carries more than just your bond, Watcher. More than just Adaorah's reincarnated soul. There's something else inside her. Something that shouldn't exist in a mortal bloodline. The interested parties have noticed. They're very curious about what it might be."
And then she was gone. Not walking through the door—simply ceasing to be there. One moment present, the next absent, as if she'd never existed at all.
The cold vanished with her. Color returned to the paintings. The windows cleared.
Ezrael's wings dissolved back into nothing, and he swayed. I caught him before he could fall, his weight sudden and complete as whatever had been holding him upright finally gave out.
"I've got you," I managed, struggling under his weight. "Come on. Let's get you—"
"Mirror." His voice was urgent despite his exhaustion. "Nara. Look in the mirror. Now."
I didn't understand, but something in his tone made me obey. I half-dragged him to the wall where a large gilded mirror hung—one of my mother's pieces, reflecting the gallery's main floor.
I looked at my reflection. Saw myself—paint-stained jeans, oversized shirt, locs falling across my face. Saw Ezrael leaning against me, his face pale with effort.
And behind us—
Behind us, I saw them. Shadows. Massive ones, darker than the morning light should have allowed. Shapes that suggested wings, claws, forms too terrible to fully comprehend.
They weren't in the room. I spun, and the gallery was empty except for us.
But in the mirror, they were there. Watching. Waiting.
"What—" I started to ask.
And that's when I saw my eyes.
In the reflection, they were glowing. Gold. Bright as sunrise, bright as the symbols on the mural I'd touched. Light bleeding from my irises like I was burning from the inside out.
I blinked, and the glow vanished. The shadows disappeared. The mirror showed only what should be there—two exhausted people in an empty gallery, morning light streaming through windows.
Normal. Ordinary. Human.
Except I'd seen it. We'd both seen it.
"Ezrael," I whispered, still staring at my reflection. At eyes that were brown again, amber again, normal again. "What's happening to me?"
"What I should have told you from the beginning." His voice was fading, consciousness slipping. "You're not human, Nara. Not entirely. You carry divine blood. Power that Heaven will want to control and Hell will want to corrupt. And those shadows—" He gestured weakly at the now-empty mirror. "They're here for both of us. They've been waiting. And now that you're awakening, now that the seal is broken—"
He collapsed completely, his eyes rolling back.
"Ezrael!" I shook him, but he was unconscious. Truly, deeply out.
I looked back at the mirror. At my reflection. At eyes that had glowed with impossible light and now looked terrifyingly normal.
Not entirely human, he'd said.
I raised my hands, staring at them. Paint-stained. Ordinary. Mine.
And for just a moment—just one heartbeat—I saw light flickering beneath my skin. Gold like sunrise. Warm like the symbols on the mural.
Then it was gone.
But I'd felt it. Power. Ancient and terrible and absolutely mine.
And somewhere in this city, things with wings and hunger were watching. Waiting for me to fully awaken.
Waiting to see what I'd become.
I looked down at Ezrael, unconscious and vulnerable. At the bond connecting us—invisible but real, growing stronger with every shared breath.
Together, I thought, echoing the promise I'd made. Whatever comes, we face it together.
Even if I didn't understand what I was.
Even if I was terrified of what was waking inside me.
Even if loving him meant becoming something more—and less—than human.
I touched my reflection one more time, and thought I saw gold flicker in my eyes.
Then I turned away from the mirror and tried to figure out how to survive what came next.