I took his hand and instead of shaking it he drew it to his lips and kissed my knuckles. "It is a pleasure to meet you," he said.
His skin was cold, smooth, his hand strong and large, swallowing my own. When he let go my hand fell to my side, like a cut kite. I was at a loss for words for a moment, lost in his unfathomable gaze.
But then his words registered in my mind. Our attackers. Last night. Was it really just last night that my whole world fell apart? "What happened last night?"
"What do you remember?"
"I…" I closed my eyes and thought back. "I remember falling, crashing into the crystal case, shot, bleeding, the pain exploding inside me. I had shot at the case. At you," I said, realizing that he'd been in the crystal, preserved there like a mummy. "I shot at you, thinking you were a weapon, thinking you could help me. But they… then they shot me and everything went dark."
"You died, your life's blood pooled into the crystal and fed me, awakening me. I brought you back from the land of the dead. I gave you the power of the Nephilim."
I knew that already, of course I did, but still, hearing him say it sent chills up my spine. "Why? Why did you save me?"
"Perhaps because you reminded me of someone I once knew," he said, his eyes far away and sad.
I choked on unshed tears. "Why didn't you save my parents?"
He reached for my hand, stroking it. "They were already gone. They had no spark of life left to reborn them. I'm sorry, Scarlett. I tried."
I wanted to hate him for saving me and not them, but I couldn't. I knew the truth of his words. Had felt that truth last night. "What about the other… Nephilim? The thing that killed them?"
He tilted his head, a dark strand of hair falling into his eyes. "That was no Nephilim, but an Old One. Your people call them Angels. They are our ancestors, and we their children along with humans. They are far more ancient and deadly than us. I killed the pawns of the Angel and then fought him in the sky. We injured each other gravely and I fell from the sky onto a mountain, hurt and dying. It was your blood inside me that saved me. I came to find you as soon as I awoke, healed enough to fly. What happened to me? Do you know? Why was I in that coffin?"
"You don't remember? About the war? Your capture?"
"I remember who I am," he said, "But not how I was captured and put to sleep."
"I don't know how you were captured. I only know that I tried to free you because my parents told me you were a weapon they had to protect."
Moonlight glinted off his pale skin and behind him a dark light spread around his shoulders. I gasped as I watched obsidian wings unfurl around him, seemingly made of the night and moonbeams. "Thank you, Scarlett. For saving me as I saved you. We should leave at once and report all of this to the Twilight Queen."
I pulled my gaze away from his wings, a longing growing inside of me at the sight, and realized what he had just said. "You don't know?"
He cocked his head. "Know what?
"Zorin, you are the last of your kind… though I guess, that's not technically true since I'm now Nephilim," I said, the words still so strange to speak out loud. "There is no Twilight Queen, no court, no Nephilim. They are all dead."
He stepped back, his face frozen in shock. "I don't understand. What do you mean, dead? What happened to her? To them?"
"You must have already been captured when it happened. The Twilight Queen was overthrown by a Nephilim called Nyx and his apprentice, Erebus… Nyx waged a war against mankind, but he lost, and all the Nephilim were wiped out. Except you."
We stood staring at each other a moment and I felt compelled to finish this awful tale. "The Orders wiped out the Nephilim, but they kept you alive. In case they ever wished to make an army of Nephilim… that's why you were considered a weapon."
"So… they are all gone?"
This time I reached for his hand, conscious of how heartbroken I would be if I'd woken from imprisonment to find that all of my kind had been destroyed. It was genocide, or nearly.
He squeezed my hand gently. "We must find safety. We must hide before the Church seeks us out to recapture or kill us."
I eased my hand out of his and straightened my back. "I can't go with you, Zorin." I was surprised part of me wanted to, and surprised equally that part of me wanted to return to Castle V.
"You're in danger, Scarlett. Not only because of what you are, but because of me. Because of what I know and what those in power will assume you know. They will use you to get to me."
"What do you know?"
The forest around lacked the normal sounds of the night, and the quiet was… disquieting. I could only hear our breaths on the cool air as I waited for him to tell me his secrets.
I could see the struggle on his face, whether or not to tell me.
"Zorin, you said yourself they will assume I know whether you tell me or not. You aren't protecting me by keeping me in the dark." A logical flaw that nearly every stupid movie and superhero trope seemed to rely on in situations such as these, which bugged me to no end. How is someone ever safer not knowing what is coming for them or why? Who has that ever saved? Not my parents. Not me last night. And not me now, that's who.
He nodded in consent and pulled me toward a large boulder under the silver tree. We both sat, our bodies pressed against each other, his wings of light and softness brushing against my back as they moved to the wind around us.