Knight's Curse by Karen Duvall

more.”
    I considered lying, but that would be futile. He’d catch it without even trying. My mother’s drawing looked like a doodle, some thoughtless strokes of ink as if she tested its potency on the paper. But the drawing was symmetrical and looked suspiciously like a divination of runes.
    “I think she drew rune stones,” I told Gavin, tracing the design with my finger. I knew the symbolism of runes from my studies in European art history. Some scholars believed they originated from the Turkish alphabet, others thought Greek or Roman. Regardless of how the system got started, its purpose was to foretell the future. “It’s a spread of the four elements.”
    “Earth, fire, water and air.” Gavin resumed his pacing, still with his eyes trained on me. “She must have been divining something for you. What symbols did she use?”
    I sucked in my lower lip and bit down, thinking. I realized that I could tell him the truth and lie at the same time. Would he know which was which? “Harvest, Wisdom, Dice Cup and Thorn,” I said, listing the signs out of order. I bit my lip harder and tasted blood.
    Gavin rushed to his desk and snatched up a notepad and pencil, thrusting both in my face. “Draw it for me.”
    I sketched the four runes my mother had drawn, only I reversed their order. This would affect the divination’s meaning and I had no idea how. I wasn’t a fortune teller. I’d have to find out the real meaning behind my mother’s message some other way.
    I held my breath when I handed Gavin the notepad.
    He grabbed it from me and, grinning, he said to the drawing, “You thought you were so clever, didn’t you, Felicia?”
    Damn. What had I done? “What does it mean?”
    “I thought you knew how to interpret the runes.” He raised his brows and gave me one of his superior looks. But he was wrong. I knew the correct order of my mother’s runes, I just didn’t know what it meant. “It’s a warning. This tableau tells me the silver veil is closed to the Fallen’s spawn.”
    Which would be me, if my father was a fallen angel. But there was no such thing. My mother’s message was symbolic, not literal. Any skeptic would recognize that, but because Gavin was a sorcerer, he couldn’t. He was all about spells and rituals; science be damned. My mind, on the other hand, was open to anything I could see, touch or smell, whether it be magic or science. I’d learned long ago how to adapt to the world I’d been thrown into. He’d said the silver veil, which was rumored to be the entrance to the first and lowest level of the seventh heaven. Except there was no documented proof the plane existed. Kind of like the Fallen. My, what a coincidence.
    “The Fallen don’t exist,” I said. “The concept is religious dogma.” If all I had to go on were predictions and visions, what other conclusion could there be? Still, the very idea gave me a chill. My father, a fallen angel? “Look, you know as well as I do that angels are supposed to be pure spirit. So if they’re not flesh and blood, there’s no way an angel could fornicate—”
    “Oh, they’re flesh and blood, all right,” Gavin said with a knowing smirk. “Out of the twelve orders of angelic beings, the lower orders can manifest as human if they want to. I’m guessing your father was a guardian of the twelfth order, the Arelim.”
    I had to laugh. That was ridiculous. “You mean like a guardian angel?”
    “Exactly.” He folded his arms and the black silk of his robe slid back to reveal flesh so pale I could see a thread of purple vein through the surface. “Even I used to have one.”
    “No way.”
    “Well, not now, no. I had it killed a number of years ago. I used it to bargain with a demon.”
    That didn’t surprise me, but it didn’t convince me, either.
    He cleared his throat. “But that’s neither here nor there. Point is, your father was more than likely a guardian angel, and I wager he had belonged to your mother.”
    Gavin returned