Azrael's Nemesis

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Nemesis POV

I look up from the book when a current of something not-quite-human snaps through the room. He is back.

He is striking, yes — dark hair, an expression like a storm about to break — but I swallow the urge to gawk. Staring won’t help. He stands in the middle of my room like he owns the air, hands tucked in his pockets, simple T-shirt and jeans, everything oddly ordinary for someone who isn’t.

“Great,” I mutter. “Now I’m having a staring contest with a ghost.”

He crosses to my desk, where the notebook lies, and crouches to read the verse. For a slow second he looks…concerned. He lifts his head as if about to speak, and the bedroom door crashes open.

Austin stumbles in, kissing a blonde girl with more energy than sense. He’s breathing loud, clearly drunk.

“Wrong room, Austin,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose.

He blinks, squints at the doorway, and ignores me — only halfway aware. “Get the hell out,” I snap, and he staggers away with the girl in tow.

When the door clicks shut, he turns back to me. “Did you write that poem?”

Of course he knows. Of course the dead read my notebook.

“Yeah,” I answer.

“Are you okay?” he asks, soft, watching me like I might break.

“No,” I say, flat. Lying to someone who can already see through walls feels pointless.

He sits on the edge of my bed as if the space is normal to him. “What’s your name?” he asks.

“Nemesis. You?”

“Azrael.”

I try a laugh. “Like the archangel of death?”

He meets my eyes and for a moment it’s like someone pulled the colors out of the room. Feathers — not sound, but a hush — unfurl along his back, shadows taking the shape of wings that fold and settle as if they’ve always belonged to him.

“Yes,” he says quietly. “Like him.”

My chest tightens. “You’re— you’re an angel?”

“The sort you don’t expect,” Azrael says. He doesn’t say “of death” like it’s a joke. He says it like fact. Something colder crawls under my skin.

“Why are you here?” My voice comes out thinner than I want. “Why in the actual— why are you in my house?”

He straightens, steadier than any ghost I’ve sensed. “Because you are a resonance I felt. Because you belong to a kind of fate I can’t ignore. Because — if I’m blunt — you are my mate.”

I want to scoff. I want to roll my eyes and file his statement as myth and theatrics. But he looks at me with such frankness that the world narrows.

“No way,” I say, forcing humor because everything else makes me tremble. “Not happening. I’m not your — whatever. I have a life.”

Azrael’s mouth tightens; something like pity passes through him. “I don’t want to scare you. I don’t want to take you anywhere you don’t choose to go. I only came because I needed to see you, to know you’re safe.”

That sounds almost reasonable. My legs wobble in a way I can’t quite explain — part shock, part adrenaline — and my vision frays at the edges. The room tilts. I swallow, but my throat feels empty.

“Don’t—” I try to move away, but the world narrows to a bright spot behind my eyes. My knees give out and I slump back against the bed. For once it is not Azrael who moves me; it is my own body refusing to hold the sudden weight of everything I’ve just learned.

Darkness takes me with the soft, ridiculous patience of a tide.