The Cemetery

A Scene in Brax’s POV from

by
Piper Knight

Blood dripped down the Moon Queen’s nose.

Brax was getting nervous.
Well, he supposed he was past that point; now he was on-edge.
His nerves so brittle they could snap.
How long had the curse-breaking ritual been going on within this
forsaken cemetery of the Daughters of the Moon? Seconds, minutes?
All he could pay attention to was Bell’s floating form within the pen-
tagram of the stone slab, watching the rise and fall of her chest as
Selena chanted her spells.
Nausea pooled in his belly. He didn’t like any of this.
Didn’t like the way Selena’s eyes darkened from their pure white
light, didn’t like the way Bell’s breaths came slower and slower. The
way her lips parted with a gasp of breath every few seconds, as if she
were fighting for oxygen.
This is for the right reason, Brax told himself a couple dozen times.
This is for the greater good.
But was it? The circle radiated shadow magic along its edges, a
dark void of energy that shrank away from his heavenly presence. His
body outwardly rejected it—the heavenly fire in his veins lighting
him up in an aura of golden flame. Preparing him to fight. But he
stood in place. Allowing it to happen, even if it was out of his control.
A soft pull pulsed in his stomach. A tug. Almost as if he were
being summoned to Heaven once more.
He vehemently fought against it. Not now. Not when Bell needed
him most.
Out of the corner of his eye, one of the coven witches collapsed
onto her knees, overtaken by the strain of the magic. The others fal-
tered, breaking their trance and chants to tend to her.
“Do not lose focus!” Selena commanded, though her darkening
white eyes stayed on Bell.
A gust of wind blew through the cemetery as Brax broke his gaze
away from the collapsed witch. He couldn’t enter the circle and help
her without breaking it open, breaking the spell.
The Moon Queen bled from both her nostrils now—two red
trails of her blood running down her strained neck. Her body shook,
the golden bracelets around her wrists clinking together.
She was growing weak.
“Selena, stop!” Brax called out, the witch’s chants drowning out
his cry. He hadn’t realized he’d stepped toward the circle until an
invisible wall knocked him back. “You’re killing her!”
Now the Moon Queen’s ears dripped blood. She cried the chants,
shaking, fighting as if her body were being drained under the magic.
Brax glanced back to Bell—and nearly fell to his knees.
Her lips were purple, skin ashen, breaths so shallow her chest
barely moved. Her head had lolled to the side, toward Brax, and
though her eyes had opened, they showed no signs of awareness.
Only two glazed-over, ashy blue slits.
Then the memories started.
Flashes of images hit him with every thump of his heartbeat—of
Rebecca. On that gray day when she’d been wearing his favorite
dress. That gray day when he shouldn’t have been near her, not after
his punishment. That gray day when Rebecca had gone to the sor-
cerer in town and her ruby red lips had mouthed the words, “I want
immortality.”
He had been summoned to Heaven, then. Right at that moment.
Unable to stop her. And when he’d returned, Brax was too late. He’d
found her on the hill by her family’s house. Her red hair, the green
dress, all stark contrasts against her purple lips and ashen skin. Those
emerald eyes were cast up to the sky. Glassy and lifeless.
Like she’d been looking for him.
Brax shoved away the horrid images—ones he’d buried for so
long—and raised his sword toward the sacred circle and its invisible
wall, toward the Shadow magic seething along its edges.
Not again.
The witches cried out for him to stop, but all he could see was
Bell’s deathly face flickering to Rebecca’s.
He wouldn’t let it happen again.
Brax swung his sword, the fiery metal growing heavy as it sliced
through the invisible layer of the sacred circle, landing on the stone
slab with a deafening clang of finality. Severing the magic.
A rush of bottled-up energy broke away, releasing with a force
that would have thrown him back if not for his powerful wings that
pushed against it.
And he caught Bell before she had time to fall.
The world around him blurred as he knelt down on his knees
atop the hill—no, atop the stone slab in the center of the pentagram.
He reminded himself it was not the gray sky above him, but a
canopy of trees. That it was not the lifeless Rebecca in his arms, but
Bell.
Bell.
“Bell?” he murmured. He slid her lavender hair aside, cupping
her pale cheek, not even realizing he was pushing holy light into her
bones until he saw the golden energy sweep over her skin. Healing
her.
In the distance, someone called out to him, but the white noise
in his ears drowned it out. It didn’t matter. Not until he felt the pulse
beneath her neck.
It was only then when he was assured she was alive, when she
opened her eyes and he felt that glorious drum of her vein, when the
ringing dissipated and he heard Selena’s voice.
The Moon Queen stood over him, bloody and windblown, trem-
bling with rage. “You absolute fool! Do you understand what you’ve
done? You never stop a spell midway—much less a ritual.”
He rose to his feet, Bell’s frail body still tucked to his chest as he
glared down at her. “She was dying.”
With her fury came a force of wind that blew him back a step.
“Before you severed my ties, I felt the knot of the curse loosen until
it was nearly undone. Now the knot is tighter than ever. Now you’ve
ensured only a faerie king himself or an act of God can break it.”
He nearly flinched. “Better than her dead.”
“Elizabell knew the risk. She wanted to do whatever it took.”
His wings flared wide, lifting him off his feet. “You are not a god,
Selena Álvarez. You do not get to decide this girl’s life.”
“Neither are you, angel,” she spat, her eyes raking over him like
knives. Somehow, she still managed to look down on him, even
though he towered above. “All of you are the same. You cast your
swords of hellfire and brimstone long before a verdict. And yet you
run to us for help.” She gave an unkind grin. “Leave the girl and let
me heal her.”
A growl formed in the back of this throat. “Like hell I am.”
“Magic is the cause, therefore magic must be the cure.
Every muscle went rigid. “I am not leaving her with you.”
Selena’s eyes only softened slightly when they befell a Bell in his
arms, who was nearly unconscious. But they flared again as they met
his glare. “Then get the hell out of my cemetery and never come
back.”
Over her shoulder, hidden within the bushes and trees, were the
ruby red eyes of wolves. The Scarlet Sabers growled low in warning.
Ansiel and Yaz landed by his sides, swords drawn, but Brax sig-
naled for them to halt. Bell was more important than this wicked
witch.
Braxiel gave one last sneer to Selena before shooting into the sky.
With the band of angels close behind, he somehow still outflew
them—even the falcon-winged Ansiel, the fastest of the group. He
felt of Bell’s heartbeat beneath a shaky hand as he clutched her
closely, and used it as the fuel to fly faster, faster, faster. The city
rushed beneath him in a blur, shifting to dark forest.
He closed his eyes, praying to whoever that heard him: Take me
to where she needs to be.
Braxiel didn’t know where he’d portaled, only that he knelt on
the ground with Bell in his arms. His wings had covered them like a
cocoon, lit from the golden glow of his skin. With her breathing
peacefully against his chest, eyes closed, soaking in his light, it felt
like their own little private sanctuary away from the world.
Suddenly, everything else seized to exist. The panic moments be-
fore was wiped away in a flood of pure, intense emotion.
His light, his holiness. It was healing her, somehow. Selena had
been wrong. Her cheeks were warming with color, her lips were turn-
ing rosy. Her breathing was steadying.
Brax softened. He would’ve lived like this forever—the soft pink
of her lips parted in sleep, the coolness of her body against his warm
blaze. Only the two of them, the world forgotten.
He softly rubbed his thumb across her temple, down to the deli-
cate skin below her ear. She let out a little sigh, as if sensing his touch,
and the sound burned through him like an ember.
Somehow, after all the years of pain and loneliness and condi-
tioning, he was falling in love again. Despite desperately trying not
to.
Elizabell was nothing like Rebecca, with her soft features and
timid voice. Where she’d been the warmth and comfort of a candle,
Bell was a blazing wildfire. All hard edges and sharp tongue. She’d
learned just how to get under his immortal skin within a week.
A week. A week was all it took for him. But if he were honest, it
was more like only a second. The second he slew that faerie in the
alleyway, the second she met his gaze, it sparked something deep in-
side him he believed lay dead and buried. Only amplifying the
second she stomped on his foot, and it had actually hurt.
Bell was the kind of fire that raged back at him at every twist and
turn, and he’d be damned if he didn’t pour a little accelerant on it
just to see how dangerously beautiful it burned.
Fitting. She wasn’t his opposite, a rush of icy water as he origi-
nally had mistaken her for being. She was his equal. Fire to fire.
 Brax blinked back to reality as his light was slowly dimming. Her
breath was shallowing once more.
A muscle popped in his jaw, but no matter how much he pushed
his holy light within her body, no matter how much he rejected
Selena’s words, it was not enough.
Bell needed attention to deal with the spells put forth on her
body, one an angel couldn’t give.
She needed magic.
Opening his wings, he took in the place his portaling had taken
him. A stone walkway in front of a navy-blue Victorian house. One
with Rowan trees, azaleas. A tuxedo cat in the window, looking at
him.
The Bernadette residence.
Magic is the cause, therefore magic must be the cure.
And Jen Bernadette was a witch.
Bell stirred in his arms, eyes fluttering open. “What… are we…”
Brax’s heart skipped a beat, thankful to see her conscious. “You’re
awake,” he whispered, more to himself than to Bell. “Your mother,
she can help you. She’s a witch.” After reading the confusion on her
face, he added, “You need magic to heal you. My holy light isn’t
enough—”
He’d been so caught up in Bell that he noticed too late when his
neck prickled with awareness. A shift in the air. A slightly familiar
scent, but one he couldn’t place.
Someone was behind him.
As his boot hit the first step of the porch, a cold, sharp object
pressed against his throat as a smooth voice spoke feverishly at his
back, “Who the hell are you and why are you holding my naked
sister?