Page 59 of Feathers and Scales

“Humor me?”

A pause thickened the air, followed by rustling. She reentered his view, journal in grasp. Her hair sat evenly around her face as if she’d fixed her appearance.

His heart lurched, and he smiled.

She grinned back only to school her expression back to calm. “How is the hunting going? Keiran told me there are two Archfiends working together?”

Daxton nodded solemnly as frustration built within him. “They swam away, which masked their scent. We’ve been patrolling the coastline in either direction with no luck.”

He pulled out a chair for her.

“Thank you.” She sat without looking at him.

He took the seat next to her.

She said, “I’ve been trying to piece together who the Archfiend could be, and I’m drawing blanks. When Fotios was my Coheart, Archfiends didn’t exist and Fallen knew each other. But none were close enough to me to have quoted Fotios nor to have some intellectual grudge against me.”

“What do you mean, grudge?”

“He called himself my rival and commented on my intelligence.”

“Was there someone who craved Fotios’s favor?”

She shrugged. “Fotios was a philosopher with many students, so there were countless, but they were all human.”

“Can a human become an Archfiend?”

A spike of fear jumped across the link from her. “No. But a Remnant might.”

“A what?”

Izzy leaned forward. “Fotios had this theory that as the Fallen fell, our energy or essence splintered into multiple newborns. Some humans hold minutely weak pieces of Fallen. And each piece would be drawn to the other. Fotios never proved their existence, but if one killed a Fallen angel, they could potentially gain enough energy to become an Archfiend.”

“Fuck.”

“I’ve come across people who have stronger spirit energy. It’s one of the main reasons I found Fotios. Even among your kind, according to the Centurion journals, this seems prevalent.”

Daxton nodded. “I know what you mean. To my Insight, it’s like a warmth—a camaraderie that we sense within their spirit energy. Have you heard anything more from Simon?”

“No.” She paused. “What about my biological mother, Darcy?”

“Nothing unusual yet. Tomorrow I’d like for us to go to the fisherman’s cabin to see if you can give us ideas on where to look next.”

Izzy nodded stiffly. It was the last place he wanted her to be, but they needed to find the Archfiend if they planned to stop him.

Her gaze lowered to his chest and narrowed in anger. He glanced down and patted the feather peeking from his pocket. She snatched it from under his hand.

“Where did you get this?” she asked, as though he’d stolen it from her person.

He lifted his hands in surrender, sensing brittle fear under the fire in her voice. “I found it. How did it fall off?”

She brushed her finger up the fibers. It disintegrated into thin air.

He sucked in a breath. “Why did you do that?”

“Many sought them out in the past when we made ourselves known. One fearsome group still alive today used to call it the Feather of Everlasting.” Her focus glazed over. “Humans hunted us, thinking the feathers would give them immortality. But the feathers disintegrate the moment something strong disturbs the filaments, so it’s hard to do anything but look at them.”

She left off how she lost it…“When do you hunt?”