KITARA

Realm: Earth
Territory: Valëtyrian
Location: Classified

***

If I’d known one of the longest days of my life would end the same way it began—with bloodshed and the imperative need to avoid detection—I might have reconsidered stepping out of my quarters at all. But hindsight is fickle and, while I possessed abilities far beyond those of the average Valëtyrian, clairvoyance was not one of them.

So there I was, blissfully unaware my day would only get worse as I accidentally bled all over my crystalline desk at 8:00 am.

Cursing softly, I pulled away to avoid further marring the glass surface. Blood splattered the glowing documents displayed on the desk face, causing the projected images to skitter wildly at the conflicting touch inputs. I cupped one hand around my opposite wrist to staunch the trickle of blood dripping from beneath my black jacket. 

I had treated the wound nearly six hours ago, and still, it soaked through the gauze wrapped around my upper arm. Venom burned sullenly in my veins, reminding me I still had the better part of a day’s suffering ahead before my system purged the toxin. 

Sometimes called “death bites,” a dying vampire made one last desperate attempt to return the favor, so to speak, using every last drop of venom to incapacitate their killer. I’d accumulated my fair share of them—in my line of work, it was inevitable—and while immortals usually healed from death bites within twenty-four hours, they burned like the five realms’ combined hells first. 

Gritting my teeth, I glanced around to ensure no one watched me, then slipped off to the bathroom to bandage the bite.

Again.

I could have sought out a Healer—hell, it would probably be the smart thing to do. A fine line existed between stoicism and masochism, and I flirted with it. But no one could know about my late-night activities. My immunity for such things no longer applied, and hadn’t for nearly a week now. I tried not to think about whether it might ever have applied at all.

The jacket was beyond saving, but I had prepared for that. After applying fresh bandages to the angry bite marring my upper arm, I knelt in front of the utilitarian particleboard cabinets beneath the equally practical sink, pulling out the clean jacket I’d stowed there weeks ago. The design and fit differed somewhat from the bloody one but no one paid enough attention to notice anyway—not to my clothing, at any rate. I used to resent that, but now, I relied on it.

Rolling my shoulder with a grimace, I swept the room for any remaining trace of my presence—blood, sweat, platinum blonde hairs—before shoving the evidence of my indiscretions in a trash bag, tying it, and exiting the bathroom in the direction of the larger dumpster behind the building.

No one questioned me. No one stopped me. No one spared me a glance. To them, I was an assistant, a secretary, a janitor, a gopher. They didn’t bother asking my name, much less my reason for taking out a single bag of seemingly innocuous trash.

Never mind that my name was an alias—half of it, anyway—it still would have been nice if they asked.

But merely existing as a child of the Fallen made me invisible to them.

After disposing of the evidence, I wound my way back through the labyrinth of cubicles and conference rooms. My wings stirred within the hidden confines of my shoulders—a natural response to the adrenaline pumping as I watched for any unwanted scrutiny. Most immortals tucked their wings out of sight for convenience—after all, with an average wingspan of nearly eight feet, knocking over objects or bumping into doorframes was inevitable.

But in my case, I hid them to obscure the glaring reminder of my otherness. The darkness tainting my bloodline, made obvious by the black flight feathers fringing my otherwise tawny gold wings.

A reminder of something Fallen…and something darker.

That darkness stirred too, and I automatically smothered it.

Nothing to see here, everything’s fine.

I returned to my small desk tucked in a corner of someone else’s cubicle and dropped into the creaky rolling chair with a sigh. Even my workspace wasn’t my own. It was that way with the unprofessioned immortals—temporary spaces, constantly relocating to where we were most needed.

Unprofessioned.

The label tasted bitter on my tongue. Things should have been different. They’d broken me down to nothing, stripped me of meaning, of worth, of even basic personhood…then put me in the Sleeper program where they did it all again, just differently.

Then they did it a third time when they decided the weapon they turned me into wasn’t good enough.

You cannot exist—

A shadow loomed over me, and I looked up.

An angel flicked a hand over his palm, instantly transferring a new batch of documents onto the digital desk in front of me. I shifted a little to hide the blood spatter I still hadn’t cleaned. 

“Reports of Ostragarn’s most recent raids and blood sources,” he said without preamble. “I need them indexed and cross-referenced by the end of the week.”

“Sure,” I replied, forcing a pleasant smile. “Anything else?”

The angel had already turned to leave, his shoulders stiff with the indignity of speaking to a half-Fallen. “If you could get the ‘Georgias’ and ‘Naples’ and ‘Parises’ right this time, it would spare us the headache of spending nearly two days untangling it.”

“You got it,” I said through my teeth, refraining from pointing out someone else did the reports last week. I hadn’t been unprofessioned a week ago. “Have a good night.”

He didn’t deign to respond, sweeping from my borrowed cubicle with all the pompousness an intact angel could muster in the face of Fallen offspring. 

Once a criminal, always a criminal.

Even if the sins belonged to the parent, not the child. 

Prick.

Angels made up the bulk of Valëtyrian immortals, with feathered wings ranging from the purest white to the darkest of grays. Their bodies did not age, sicken, or die of natural causes, and most possessed rapid healing skills if wounded. 

But there was one way Valëtyrians could become almost mortal: commit a crime so heinous, the High Council had no choice but to condemn them and cast them out. 

The most egregious of criminals were violently, genetically stripped of their immortal durability and exiled from Valëtyrian society. These “Fallen” could continue to live long, even ageless lives…if they refrained from drawing upon the power that made them supernatural. If they didn’t, using those abilities without their former immortal constitution would kill them. 

As a result, the Fallen were looked down upon, considered “lesser,” as if the criminal implications didn’t do enough of that.

Some Valëtyrians had grown pretty open-minded about the Fallen after the Agency of Interrealm Defense Operations installed one onto their High Council some years ago. But down here, in the unprofessioned ranks at AIDO headquarters, opinions evolved more slowly.

With a swipe of my hand, I pushed the new batch of files to one side of my workspace display before cleaning up the traces of my blood still reflecting an almost iridescent sheen against the softly glowing background.

They didn’t care that my existence was borderline miraculous. Valëtyrians had a low birth rate—immortal evolution didn’t allow for prolific reproduction, not with infinite lives and finite resources. And stripped of that immortality? Forget it. No Fallen could conceive, let alone survive giving birth to a fully-immortal child. 

Not until me.

And that didn’t even factor in my father’s contribution…

The darkness stirred inside me again.

No. I would not think of him. Thinking of him would only bring memories of that day—

The inside of my wrist hummed, and I glanced down at the soft green dot lighting up the skin there. An incoming call. 

I spread my fingers to project the caller’s information in my palm, huffing with mingling exasperation and affection when I saw the name and accompanying photo.

Devika Lyven: a short girl with curly dark hair and eyes the color of the furthest reaches of Valëtyria’s alien cosmos. My adopted sister and the sole source of light in my life right now.

Normally, my AIDO-issued tech would let me project her figure as a hologram, almost like we were speaking in person. Not while I was at work, though.

Plastering a neutral expression on my face, I slipped in my earbuds, checked for anyone nearby, and swiped a finger up the middle of my palm to answer the audio call—not the hologram. “Hey, Dev.”

“Hey, Kitara!” Her voice held a false note of cheer, if only because her chipper personality was usually genuine. “How’s your day going?”

I sighed. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

Devika faltered, if only for a second. “Do what?”

“These ‘check-ins,’ like you’re worried I might implode. I’m fine, really.”

Devika’s tone softened, her concern too obvious to ignore. “I just…I feel bad, okay? You should be enjoying a new promotion, not—”

“I’m managing,” I interrupted, my voice a little too sharp. “Nothing I can do about it now.”

“But it’s not fair!” Devika’s voice dropped to a whisper, the frustration evident. “You were the best in the program, and everyone knew it.”

I closed my eyes for a brief moment. I didn’t need the reminder. “Apparently not everyone.”

“Kitara—”

“I failed, Dev,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, “which is quite literally not an option in the Sleeper program. It’s not unfair.”

“Of course it is—you were the best trainee they’d had in years, and I’d bet every ancient tome in the library your failing grade was falsified somehow.”

I leaned back in my creaky desk chair, scanning the hallway for eavesdroppers or footsteps as I lowered my voice further. “You don’t know that, and that accusation could get you in loads of trouble.”

Especially if it was true.

“I know enough to know you’re good at what you do, Kitara. What I don’t know is why you’re humoring them. You’ve worked too hard, been through too much—”

“Stop.” The venom in my bloodstream throbbed, silently emphasizing her words as my adrenaline spiked. “I don’t want you questioning the High Council, okay? I don’t want you in their crosshairs.”

“Tell me you’re not giving up,” Devika forged on stubbornly. “Tell me you’re not just…accepting this.”

Footsteps approached, and I grimaced. “I have to go.”

“But—”

“I’ll text you later.”

I pressed my palms together and twisted counter-clockwise, ending the call. 

Just in time. A group of angels hurried around the corner, beelining for my cubicle.

I sat back warily as one motioned to me. “All the unprofessioned are needed,” the angel said. “Preparations need to be made.”

I got to my feet without argument as the angel snagged a handful of other unprofessioned immortals from their desks. “Preparations?”

“A delegation of Valëtyrians—they’ll be here tonight escorting someone.”

“And we’re preparing…what, exactly?” I asked, hurrying along behind the others.

“Anything and everything,” the angel replied mildly. “Cleaning, meal prep…everything has to be in perfect order. At least…that’s what I’ve heard the High Councilor wants.”

My stomach dropped. “Which High Councilor?”

The angel spared me a look that screamed ‘are you stupid?’ as we exited the back of the unprofessioned building onto a tall silver platform. “The High Councilor.” 

Councilor Avensäel.

A chill ran down my spine: one having nothing to do with the admittedly cool air of the massive cavern we stood in now. I pulled my jacket closer around me. Within the space, gleaming white buildings stretched for miles. The tallest of those rose proudly in the distance, the words “THE AGENCY OF INTERREALM DEFENSIVE OPERATIONS” just barely discernible where they blazed over a golden griffin seal. The AIDO’s underground headquarters on Earth represented the crown jewel of Valëtyria’s alien outposts: an ironic homage to the realm of flying immortals where it originated. A bullet train zipped silently on elevated tracks, its silver body winking in and out of sight between the buildings. Bright stadium lights overhead lended the appearance of day, otherwise disguising the dim—some might say ominous—ambience of the subterranean space. 

“Must be someone important,” another unprofessioned immortal stated the obvious as we waited for the train. 

“Maybe a Council meeting?” another suggested.

No, the Council members didn’t make a big show of their arrivals or departures—they’d been in and out of headquarters repeatedly with no one the wiser. This…this was something else. 

Only one event—one person—had generated such a stir before, and a lead weight formed in the pit of my stomach.

I didn’t voice any of this aloud.

But another unprofessioned immortal didn’t have such qualms. “The Council doesn’t give two shits what the place looks like or what food we serve,” he scoffed as the train approached the platform. “There’s only a handful of people they’d go to this trouble for.”

The others looked at him expectantly.

Enjoying his moment, the angel—half-blooded, by the looks of it—drew out the information as he ticked off possibilities on his fingers. “The Myragnar, which is unlikely since no one even knows if they’re still alive in Myragos, much less visiting for the first time in centuries. Some ambassador the Commander wants to impress, which is just as unlikely, because everyone knows Commander Kasama might be the only one who cares less than the Council what anyone else thinks—”

“Get to the point, Darien,” one of the others grumbled as the bullet train slid to a near-silent stop before them. 

“Or,” Darien continued, casting a glower in the interrupter’s direction, “the most likely option: one of the silverbloods.”

A thrum of excitement spread through the small group of immortals as they boarded the unmanned train, chattering amongst themselves in low tones at the possibility. 

I followed silently. They didn’t bother trying to draw me into the conversation—I wasn’t one for gossip on a normal day. But silverbloods? Silverbloods were a topic I avoided even with my closest friends.

The doors slid closed as the train left the platform again. 

As I stared blankly out at the passing buildings of the hidden underground metropolis, the venom still charring my veins seemed inconsequential in the face of this sobering development. 

Because if Darien what’s-his-name was right…

AIDO headquarters was preparing to welcome either the son of an angel who wished me dead…or the angel who nearly succeeded in fulfilling that wish.