Chapter 50: [50] What it means to Fall

--Chapter 50--

Title>> What it means to Fall

The manor door closed behind them with a solid wooden thud, shutting out the cool night air.

Warm lamp light spilled across the entrance hall and caught on the edge of Lana’s face even as the faint smell of iron came in with them, thin but stubborn, mixed with street dust and old tavern smoke.

Nyxara’s expression changed the moment they entered.

Her nose wrinkled. Even as her eyes moved from Lana’s mouth to Takeshi’s hands, then to the dark flecks still clinging near his cuff.

"You smell like bad decision," she said crudely.

Lana adjusted her veil with perfect calm. The cloth whispered against her hair as she placed her hand on her hip, angling it upwards.

"And you smell like burned arrogance. We all have our habits."

Even while the Vanpire and Demoness bickered as usual, Solaria was already in front of Takeshi.

Her bare feet made almost no sound against the floorboards, but the worry on her face was plain and interestingly obvious.

Up close, he could smell herbs on her hands and the faint sweetness she always carried after spending time cooking some healing work.

"Master, you’re hurt again," she proclaimed.

"Ahh...," Takeshi looked around his own body quickly. But there was nothing really noticeable. "...not really."

"I highly doubt that," she said. Her fingers brushing his sleeve, light and searching, as if confirming the truth through touch instead of words.

Surely, he didn’t exactly know what she was looking for and why on earth she was barefooted but Takeshi let her pull him toward the side room.

On their way there, Takeshi noticed how the hallway felt warmer than the night outside, and the oil-lamp glow stretched their shadows along the wall.

Nyxara watched them go with open suspicion, her arms folded as the air near her remained faintly warm with residual heat.

She wanted to stay quiet but of course, that failed as she billowed. "Where are you taking him?"

Lana on the other hand, remained silent and only lowered her eyes when Takeshi glanced back, the new devotion still raw beneath her composure.

Almost like she understood an unspoken assignment. She turned to Nyxara.

"Would you let "My King" rest, little demoness."

"Your King?" Nyxara turned to Lana immediately. "Did you hit your head witch?"

Once they were inside the yellow painted room, Solaria shut the door behind them and quickly sat him on the brown low couch at the extreme left of the room.

Her hands moved over his shoulders, arms, and ribs with careful light. Whatever minor strain that might have remained before or he incurred from the night, softened beneath her touch.

Takeshi barely considered the injuries worth mentioning. After everything that had happened in the alley, he didn’t necessary feel any hurt but Solaria was searching for something else and he knew it.

Partially relaxed, his eyes combed across the second room in the manor. This was where the women were supposed to stay.

The air was still a little cloudy. The wooden floors were covered by brown carpets that complimented the very couch he was sitting on but all of that didn’t necessarily tame his wandering eyes that locked toward Solaria’s damaged black wings again.

It was only a few hours earlier that he asked her about them. And she had given him an answer that wasn’t really an answer.

He’d allowed it, after all there had been more important things demanding his attention. A certain hungry queen.

Now, watching her rush to heal injuries he could barely feel anymore while those damaged wings remained exactly as they were, awakened his curiosity completely.

Only this time, he wanted an actual answer.

"Why don’t you heal your wings?" He asked again. His tone shifting from calm to instructive.

Solaria’s hands paused on the biceps she was massaging. Her fingers tapping softly before she stopped.

The reaction was small and seemingly absent-minded, but Takeshi caught it immediately.

After what seemed like another lifetime, she finally broke the silence after noticing he wasn’t looking away from her.

"They broke when I refused the Church," she exclaimed calmly.

"They’d ordered me to kill non-human assailants," She paused. "B...But they were children."

"I said no and a battle broke out anyway. I lost to that bitch and after that, they named me fallen and sealed me away."

’Bitch?’ the word caught Takeshi off guard. Someone so annoying, Solaria called her a bitch was an interesting turn of events.

Before he could inquire more. He noticed Solaria’s eyes thicken and lowered

"The children still died..." Her voice thinned on the last line, a string of regret tracing through the air.

"Whenever I try to fix the wings, it fails," she had hit the nail on the head.

Takeshi’s eyes remained on her damaged wings.

Then his attention settled fully on her.

The weight she still carried was obvious enough and he didn’t have the full information to press too much.

But still,. What exactly did she mean by fail?

The question lingered in his mind, but the answer was already beginning to form from the way she had said it.

There was something she wasn’t telling him. Underneath that calm explanation was something much more personal.

And it was something he had lived and accused of, for most of his life.

That was Failure.

Intuitively, he could believe she still felt like she failed those kids. And the damage to her wings is what failure looks like on her body.

Instead of acting like he knew all the answers. Takeshi decided to be direct.

"Why don’t you try now," he said.

Solaria’s raised her eyes, startled. "Master?"

"Do it again," he pushed.

The order gave her somewhere to put the fear of failure. She nodded once and obeyed.

A minute elapsed with Solaria showing no visible sign of using healing magic on herself.

Until the calm around her shoulders changed.

A soft pressure gathered first, subtle enough that Takeshi almost questioned whether he had imagined it.

Pale white light slowly seeped from beneath her skin like flames and climbed along the broken lines of her wings in thin, living slithering veins.

The glow bath the room in warmth that seeped all the way out the door where two sets of heels clicked on the floor boards.

The sensation carried a faint scent of rain on stone and old chapel dust after sunlight passed through high windows.

The damaged feathers trembled as the light moved through them. Several split feathers lifted slightly, as though some forgotten memory was trying to become flesh again.

One deep tear along the left wing brightened at the edges.

For a heartbeat, Takeshi thought it might actually close. He could feel the hope in the room before either of them spoke.

Then the light stuttered like a clumsy stammer trying to win a spelling bee.

The warmth thinned. The clean scent faded into something strangely empty, like a prayer cut off before its final word.

The glow along the feathers flickered once, struggled against itself, and collapsed back into her body with a soft dying shimmer.

A final spark clung to one black feather fumbling before it disappeared. Sending the room back to its ordinary dimness.

The state of the wings were exactly as they were earlier.

The skin around their roots looked faintly flushed from the effort, and a small tremor passed through her shoulders before fading.

She swallowed once and lowered her eyes toward the unchanged ruin on her back.

"You see?" she said quietly. "That is the proof. If I were still what I used to be, they would heal."

She paused, covering her face with both of her hands.

"I fell. I don’t get to be whole ever again."

< End Of Chapter>