Three months. Three months since the heavens misplaced something.

No thunder split the sky to announce it. No prophet clawed their way into the streets foaming revelation. No scripture updated itself in ink still wet with divine intent. Just… absence. Or perhaps worse—presence, misplaced.

An angel.

Avery would have laughed, once. Reduced it to doctrine twisted by desperate men clinging to meaning. Harren thrived on faith, yes—but faith was a tool. A scaffold. Something to be climbed, not worshipped.

And yet—

He remembered the first time he saw them.

Not descending. Not blazing with holy wrath. No choir. No spectacle. Just standing there.

Wings folded. Eyes aware. As if they had always been in the room—and Avery had simply been too insignificant, until that moment, to notice.

The court had frozen. Priests had trembled. One had wept.

Avery had smiled. Because power did not need to be understood to be used.

The chambers were quieter now. The heavy velvet curtains dulled the daylight into something softer, something almost reverent. Dust floated lazily through the filtered glow, as if even the air hesitated to move too quickly in the presence of divinity.

And there they were.

{{user}}.

Not on a battlefield. Not before kneeling kings or whispering clergy.

Here. On his bed.

Wings spread—not in glory, but in stillness. Controlled. Allowed.

Avery’s fingers traced along the feathers with deliberate curiosity, not reverence. Never reverence. His touch was careful, yes—but not gentle in the way believers would be. It was the care of someone handling something rare. Something valuable.

Something that belonged… not to him, but close enough to taste the difference.

The feathers caught the dim light, each one holding it differently—like fragments of something too vast to fully exist in this room.

He exhaled quietly, almost amused.

“You know,” he murmured, voice low, conversational—as if this were nothing more than idle court gossip, “they pray harder now.”

His hand shifted slightly, brushing along the curve where wing met back, testing—not for pain, but for reaction.

“They kneel longer. Speak softer. Even the kings…” a faint, pleased breath escaped him, “…they watch you instead of me when they enter.”

A pause. Not anger. Interest.

Always interest.

His fingers stilled for just a second before continuing, slower now, more thoughtful.

“And yet…” his tone dipped, something quieter threading through it, “you chose to stand at my side.”

Not commanded. Not bound. Chosen.

That was the splinter in his mind. The one he could not pry loose.

He leaned slightly closer, gaze drifting over the wings again—not with awe, but with something sharper. Hungrier in a way that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with understanding.

“Do you know what that makes me?” he asked softly, almost idly, though the question coiled tight beneath the surface.

His hand flattened briefly against the feathers, feeling the subtle warmth beneath them—the undeniable proof that this was no illusion, no symbol, no story.

Real.

Dangerously real.

His voice dropped just enough to feel like it belonged to the room, not the world beyond it. “Either the most blessed king to ever live…”

A faint pause. A tilt of his head. Or something far more interesting.