A jumble of wicked thoughts wracked Lux’s mind, barely hidden beneath her fa?ade of stoicism. She was angry—seething even; but when was she not?
She had spent two centuries eyeing the highest layers of heaven, swearing she’d ascend to them faster than any angel before her. That she’d attain the highest of statures. Even one failure would have catastrophic effect on her repertoire; and now her future had been placed in the hands of a monster trying to make a fool out of her.
And in this state, the Headmistress wanted her to feel love? A soppy connection to the very Mortal-Plane she’d severed all ties with on the day she was reborn?
She trodded up the stairwell towards her suite, tossing her Yosef-Salem textbook onto the barren table. A certain word kept pinging in her thoughts; taker.
A relationship between two takers is doomed from the start; one always curbs their pride to give more than the other, then resents them as a result.
She understood that in this exchange, she’d be forced into the role of the resentful taker. It would be no different from her purpose on the Upper-Plane; to give and give while awaiting a reward that never seemed to arrive. Still, she silently cursed the Headmistress for not sending an angel with a little more generosity to bring solace to Azazel.
~
By the time Lux looked up from her textbook, the sun had set, then risen; and the indistinct chatter of maids that echoed through the rooms beneath her suite told her the day’s work had begun. She flicked through the pages one last time, breathing out a long, heavy sigh. The spells that swirled in her mind were a disordered bunch of protection, healing, and banishment. Natural additives to the sigil a Yosef-Salem savior would place; most potently felt by mortal kind. The one consistent theme the textbook stressed, was that for all saviors; no matter their stature, must establish a baseline level of trust with their clients.
Each and every one of those is useless if I can’t even get consent to cast them.
If she wanted her diploma; she’d have to find out why Azazel is so resistant, somehow convince her salvation was worth the sacrifice.
As she trailed down to the first floor of the Avaritia house, the thick scent of syrup mingled with the sound of crackling oil. Before she knew it, she was weaving around carts of hot food being pulled from the kitchen to wherever it was that the dining room sat. She’d yet to find it herself, and she didn’t care to look, instead dipping into a quaint mudroom that faced the courtyard outside.
Two shoe racks were pressed along the paneled wall, stacked with identical slip-ons. Brooms and dusters hung from the wall opposite of her, only one modern vacuum among the collection. Had she snuck into the maid’s quarters? The hall ahead of her was barren, even more so than the rest of the manor.
When she turned to leave, a hushed voice she was certain she recognized came from a distant, dreary light.
“There ain’t no way we can clean that. . ..”
“If our guests see that Lady Rae will riot—,” another voice sunk, “no, forget that—the Upper-Plane will shun us surely—.”
Riot? Lux would be shocked if a woman as timid as Lady Rae was capable of rioting. She decided against leaving just yet, inching closer.
There was light clacking against the floor, which she eventually found was the little girl who’d sheepishly hid behind her mother when she arrived. She was bouncing on her heel, trying to peer over the windowsill. A mathematics workbook clenched in her arms, “Mama, what’s that there mean?”
“Nothing to you, hun, now you better get back to that homewor—,” voice hitching, the maid yelped; gaze caught on Lux’s gleaming reflection. It was the girl’s mother Edith; startled just as easily as she’d been the day prior.
“Lady Lux—,” Edith turned her back to the window, gulping.
“Lux is fine. Scholar Lux if you must use a title.”
“Right—I’m so sorry about the mess, we. . ..”
While her voice faltered, a faint sunlight broke through the grey clouds, scattering warm patches of light across the ground; lifting the fog from the courtyard. The windowpane shone, framing the sunroom’s white arches, and the woodland beyond it, with the same romanticism as a painting.
Just then, Lux saw what Edith, and the maid beside her had been trying to hide. Scrawled across sunroom windows in black blood, there was a message.
SUN SLAVE, BURN OUT AND DIE.
Lux sighed, “don’t wrack yourselves over something as childish as that, I’m not easily offended,” she said, left to wonder; did I truly make Azazel that mad? Or, is this part of that act she’s putting on? She turned to Edith, pretending not to notice the maid beside her sneak away, “how long have you worked here, exactly?”
“Uhm. . .,” Edith pondered for a long moment, fixing her daughter’s hair around her horns, “just over six years—I actually started while pregnant with this one. . . at the time, I was young; my mama and papa were real mad—I didn’t have no where else to go.”
“You might not think it from the way things look ‘round here, but the Avarice family takes good care of us maids, I’ll always be grateful for this house.”
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“So, I assume you’ve never met Lady Azazel yourself?” Lux recoiled at her own words, being forced to revere a woman as distasteful as Azazel with a title like ‘Lady.’
“She’s not taking kindly to me, if you haven’t guessed that already.”
Edith shook her head, low and slow, “really, Lady Rae is sensitive when it comes to Lady Azazel, I’ve only heard tidbits about her, here and there. . .,” suddenly, she lit up, snapping her finger, “well, there’s one thing! Flowers! Lady Rae orders them to keep her satiated, perhaps bringing them to her personally would do you some good.”
~
A storm had begun to stir overtop of the Avaritia house, crushing Lux’s wish for clear skies—for just a little light, to ignite her holy flame—ease the toll this altitude took on her spirit. She held a wooden crate in her hands, in it, freshly cut flowers wrapped in colorful, patterned paper. Like a child’s gift. She shifted the crate in her hand to push past the East Wing’s entrance; an assortment of tea boxes sliding at the bottom of it as she moved towards the next door.
She pulled the key from her neck, lifting it to the lock.
A hushed, distorted voice came from across the door; griping with quick, exasperated breaths.
Lady Rae? Rioting? She twisted the doorknob incredibly slowly, looking to snuff any sign of her presence. Just where is her voice coming from? The door opened without a so much as a creak, the distorted sound becoming clear as she met Azazel’s silhouette front of her. The flowers in her hands wilted as their eyes locked.
Azazel lifted her finger to her lips; shushing Lux before she even began to speak. A telephone at her side, hanging from the cord attached to it’s rotary dial.
“Just what do you think you’re doing? Throwing a hissy fit like you’re still a little girl! Fixin’ to defame us more than you already have!”
In that moment, Lady Rae’s typically buried dialect bubbled up, and Lux didn’t hear a hint of timidity in her voice.
Slowly, Azazel pulled the telephone up by its cord. Silently, her hand shimmied up the cord towards the telephone’s handset, gripping it tightly. She hovered her hand over the rotary dial.
“You’ve still got nothing to say? Fine, go on—throw away your life if you so wish—.”
Azazel slammed the telephone onto it’s handle. The bang that sounded seeming to radiate throughout the entire East Wing.
“I told you not to come back,” Azazel said, glaring at the bouquet in her hands, “you truly think you’ll win me over with a bundle of dead flowers?”
“It’s not as if I can keep them from dying next to you. . .,” Lux’s voice trailed off, calculating her words carefully—desperate to drag out Azazel’s true character. “Would you prefer if they were still living?”
Azazel scoffed, “what is it you’re trying to do here? Beat me over the head with the rot I’ve created; my drab garden, pitiful life—until I agree to leave it behind and die for you?”
“It’s your mother’s care package, I’m merely delivering it—,” Lux held back a sigh, “what is it you’d prefer, besides the flowers?”
Lux caught the pause in Azazel’s eyes as they fell to her torso, lingering on the crate in her arms, “that black tea there—hot, and don’t skimp on the sugar.”
~
Porcelain clattered against silver as Lux pulled filthy dishes from the overstuffed kitchen sink. She pushed past her urge to grimace, the need for any form of cleanliness far outweighing any disgust she felt. She swiped at the sink faucet until water poured over the plate in her hand. A rising warmth emanated from the nearby stovetop, on it a copper kettle.
“I assume that telephone is the only contact you still have with your family?” Lux doused a hand towel in water and soap, scrubbing each dish vigorously.
“What does it matter to you?” Azazel rested at the small table in the corner; glare fixed on Lux’s back.
“Do you answer every question with another question?” Lux placed the freshly clean dishes into a neat stack on the counter, wringing out her hand towel over the empty sink. Secretly, she watched Azazel’s reflection in the window; studying every slight motion she made, every expression she tried to hide.
Now, that expression appeared particularly sour, and she’d yet to discern how much she could push Azazel before she lost her temper.
“Mama’s the only one who keeps calling,” Azazel brought her arms to her chest, a certain tightness to her posture, “asks what I need, fixes it up, delivers it, that’s that.”
“While scolding you from time to time?”
“Now, you look here, I—,” the kettle screeched, stopping Azazel mid-sentence, forcing her to lean back and think before speaking again.
Lux turned to face Azazel, kettle and teacup in hand, passing the latter towards her. She walked around the rim of the table, leaning over the surface of it to rest the kettle on a trivet made of stained glass. She took the seat across from Azazel once again, pushing harder; more directly.
“To be honest, I keep getting the odd impression. . ., that you hate your curse more than you’re willing to admit. Is that right?”
“I told you already—I relish in it—.”
“I don’t believe you,” Lux insisted, watching Azazel pause over her teacup. The huff she let out, incredibly peeved.
Lux pointed downwards, tapping her finger against the table, “you live alone, surrounded by filth; years worth of the corpses of the things you once cultivated. Don’t think I can’t see it from the remnants scattered around—this place used to be akin to paradise. An impossible feat for the Mortal-Plane in the first place, but it felt true, didn’t it?”
For the first time, Azazel simply stared. Entirely dumbfounded. A breath escaped her, the beginnings of a retort—but she choked on it; and the silence continued.
“And for a spoiled noblewoman like yourself, waited on your entire childhood by dozens of servants—I’m sure being demoted to nothing more than a memory is more than a little more than demoralizing. Hell—you won’t even give up your snobbish, self-importance for long enough to give the East Wing a good cleaning. Because that’s a maid's job, isn’t it? Not a noble lady’s?”
A spoonful of sugar fell from Azazel’s hand into her teacup, an unmistakable hiss sounding when she found her words again; “I swear. . ., you angels are all the same—,” Azazel reached out to take the kettle from the trivet, her voice raising with every word, “you sit up in the clouds, watch the world spin and think that you know it all! When all you know is tips of the trees mountain peaks!"
Azazel stood, quick enough to make Lux flinch at the memory of their first meeting. But before Lux could push back her chair to stand, a cascade of hot tea was already being poured over her head. The burning sensation, all too familiar.
Azazel’s grip tightened around the kettle’s handle, “You haven’t done a thing but drag baseless accusations out of your ass, you don’t know a damn thing about me!” Then, she rammed the kettle against Lux’s head.
Just how undignified can one noblewoman be?
