Angels of Darkness

ungovernable weakness or need. I had seen this angel hurt and angry, I had spied on him in his despair, but I had not realized he could be so vulnerable as to weep in my presence.
    Without another word, I took him in my arms and drew his head against my breast, comforting him as best I could with the soothing words I had never before had cause to use.
    It was a moment before his own words came, halting and disjointed, muffled against my jacket. “—But I couldn’t find it—and then the wind came—and I was lost and I didn’t kno w—but I thought I could get back—but there was no sound, it was gone. And I was afraid—Moriah, so afraid—”
    â€œSshhh,” I said, patting his head, where the long curls were knotted from a rough wind and a night in the open. “Here. Have some water before you tell the rest.”
    He took a ragged breath. “I’m so thirsty. Thank you, thank you—”
    I didn’t speak again until he had practically emptied the flask with quick, greedy swallows. “You must try to compose yourself,” I said, my voice more brisk. “Tell me how badly you’re hurt. Alma and I came in a wagon and we can—”
    â€œAlma’s here?” he demanded, sitting up straighter and actually wiping his sleeve across his nose. I had never seen him make such an inelegant gesture. “Where?”
    â€œI left her with the horses. She’s the one who let me know you were missing, so you must be properly grateful to her. But the road is a little distance that way. Can you walk?”
    He took another shaky breath. I could see him trying to impose an iron calm. I wondered how much practice he’d had doing that during the darkest days after his blinding, how often he had let himself give in to grief before pulling himself back together. Not often, I guessed. “I don’t think anything is broken,” he said. “I came down hard, but I didn’t crash. But I didn’t have any idea where I was—or how to get back—” He pressed his lips together.
    â€œThe windmill has fallen over completely—that’s why you couldn’t hear it,” I said. “Even so, you’re not too far away. You did a good job navigating with absolutely no clues.”
    â€œI didn’t think you’d be able to find me.”
    â€œWell, I did,” I said. He was still holding on to me with one hand, so now I stood and drew him up beside me. He was unsteady for a moment, but didn’t cry out in pain and fold back to the ground, which I took as a good sign.
    â€œWhat about your wings?” I said, for they still hung behind him, limp as laundry. “Were they injured?”
    He shook his head and spread them out to their fullest extent. I saw a few bent quills, a couple of patches where the feathers might have been scratched off by an overeager branch, but from what I could tell, he was remarkably unscathed. If he’d been able to figure out which way to go, he could have made his way home.
    â€œWe brought the wagon in case you were hurt,” I said. “But if you want, we’ll just drive it back to the school, singing the whole way. You can take flight and follow us home.”
    He gathered his wings tightly behind him and shook his head. “I’ll ride,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’m never flying again.”
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    I t was, of course, a cause for goggling eyes and disbelieving cries when Alma and I returned to the Gabriel School with the angel hunched in the back of the wagon. He had accepted the food we’d brought and gratefully finished off a second flask of water, but once we had gotten under way, he had refused to speak in anything but monosyllables. It was a return to the depressed, despairing Corban I had met two weeks before, and I was not sure I would be able to jolt him out of his melancholy a second time.
    And obviously, this was not the day to try.
    I pulled over when the school was just around the next bend. “It’s broad daylight, and people will be watching for our return,” I said. “Would you like us to leave you somewhere safe until nightfall, when I’ll come back for you?”
    His arms rested on his updrawn knees, and his face tilted downward as if he were staring at the floorboards. He shrugged. “I don’t care.”
    I glanced at Alma. “You don’t care if everyone sees you being