In the End by Alexandra Rowland Page A

to.”
    The tense distrust still did not leave the angel's eyes. “How do I know?” Lalael asked quietly.
    Lucien sighed. “You'll just have to trust me, won't you.”
    “ Trusting a demon. What would the higher-ups think.” His voice was tense again.
    Lucien got them away from the subject of anything related to Ríel. “So... wings? I saw them earlier, and the one looked pretty bad. Don't you think I should look at it? I know I'd...” Lucien paused. “Well, I think if I lost my wings, I'd probably die for not flying.”
    Lalael look startled. “You still have your wings?”
    “ Of course.” Lucien chuckled.
    “ Oh.” The angel blushed. “I – I thought –” he stammered.
    “ You thought I was one that got... You know.”
    “ Well, yes. Sorry.”
    Lucien shrugged. “No need to apologize.” He smiled wryly. “I can tuck them away as easily as you can. It's rather easy to do here, you might have noticed, and more convenient to keep them that way around the humans.”
    “ I'm sorry, really, I didn't mean to presume –”
    “ Never mind it, really. Want me to fix your wings now?”
    “ Get away from me!”
    “ That'll be a no.” Lucien heaved a dramatic sigh. “If I show you mine, will you show me yours?”
    Lalael hesitated, which Lucien took for a yes. He crossed his arms and pulled his shirt over his head, ruffling his dark curls, and shifted his shoulders as if rolling a crick out of his back. His wings appeared gradually, fuzzing into existence, fanning out from the soft, pale flesh of his shoulder blades as he stretched them out: Ashy gray, almost black at the wrist of the wing, fading to nearly white at the tips of his primary feathers. He contorted them so he could pick out a bit of tangled down from the underside of one. “There you go. They're not bat wings or anything. They're not even jet black.”
    “ C-can I...?” Lalael asked tentatively. Lucien extended the other wing around the fire in a wordless motion of trust. The light caught and shone off the soft lining of the underwing with an eerie, pearly gleam. For an endless moment, the two did not move. The fire itself seemed to have frozen in time. Then Lalael ran his fingertips over the fore edge of Lucien's wing and the moment broke.
    “ Going to let me fix you up now?” Lucien asked politely, tucking his wings back efficiently and vanishing them. Lalael hesitated again, clearly warring with himself, but after a moment, he nodded and quietly turned away from the fire as Lucien tugged his shirt back over his head.
    “ It won't help,” he whispered, hands clenched in his lap. “It won't matter soon.”
    “ Wings out, please,” Lucien said, settling on the ground behind him. Lalael manifested his wings – the tunic of the uniform had been sewn with two slits up either side of his spine; the angel's wings now emerged through these. “Why won't it matter? You've only been saying that all day.”
    Lalael didn't answer for several moments. The fire crackled and danced light over the rock of the overhang. “The Most Honored Commander Michael had a plan. We all knew about it. Might have been the Zhani's idea in the first place.”
    Zhani. Lucien puzzled over this during the lull in Lalael's narrative. It was one of the three aspects of the Sko Meala, the Trebled Power, but it had been so long since any of that had mattered that he'd quite forgotten which one.
    But Lalael was continuing. “Commander Michael told us that the time had come, and all Creation was to be destroyed. Wiped off the celestial map.”
    Lucien studied the joints of Lalael's injured wing more closely. “Did he?”
    The angel wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. “He even told us how it was to be done.” A moment passed, tense with apprehension. Before Lucien could ask how, Lalael said, “It was to be some kind of an explosion, he said. The Battle was a diversion. We challenged the dishonored scum of the Forsaken Lands – we challenged Lucifer the