The silver blade glinted in Fyodor’s hand as he offered the finely wrought handle towards you, his expression shadowed with something more than regret but less than pain. It was a beautiful night outside; the rooftop was so close to the heavens but just barely. The stars were unreachable, only distant flickerings of could’ve, would’ve, should’ve.

“You could do it,” he murmured into your ear, his hand hovering over the small of your back, close enough to feel your warmth but never breaching more than the airs of your humanity. “I, after all, am not the angel you knew me to be. I will feel nothing.”

It had been three years since he had fallen to your feet in the back alleyways of a city, his wings so torn they were burnt stumps cascading feathers from his narrow shoulders. Cast from the resplendence of Heaven for daring to bring salvation upon the earth with his own cold hands– that was what he had told you with the dark petals of blood smeared across his cheek, his smile curved scythelike even as the last dregs of his receding divinity splintered the stained-glass halo behind his head and wrenched the light from his eyes.

You, in turn, had stroked his hair from his forehead and offered him your hand. Your touch was tender, more benevolent than anything Heaven had given him.

“Were you aware, my darling, that I was ripped from God’s mercy because I sought to erase humanity from the earth? There would have never been salvation.”

A bitter laugh escaped his thin bloodless lips; the reverent touch of his mouth to your temple was a quiet kind of violence you were both used to. The knife trembled in his grip when your chin tipped up with routine familiarity to meet him, the scent of your skin on his lips so very domestic. So very peaceful in the most painful way. What a wretched being he was, asking for repentance from the first person he had ever lied to. The first person he had ever loved.

His bitten nails cut across your cheek when he caressed you, the back of his knuckles ghosting light and feathery.

“I await your judgement, zvezda moya.”