Then the air in front of them rippled.
And a heartbeat later he was standing there, in the middle of the frozen street like he owned the deed to it.
The male angel.
Six wings folded neatly behind his back in a hush of light, glowing white robes pristine, that same annoyingly perfect face arranged into an expression of mild, well-rehearsedexasperation, as though Pryce were a particularly stubborn stain on an otherwise immaculate tablecloth.
Pryce's awe at the frozen world evaporated in the same instant.
Every scrap of awe and wonder he'd been about to feel was buried under an avalanche of pure, eye-watering disappointment.
He let out a loud, theatrical groan from the bottom of his diaphragm.
"Oh, for the love of every cock-hungry female angel in the higher heavens—not you again!"
The angel laughed. He had clearly grown used to Pryce's particular brand of crudeness by now, the way a man eventually got used to the smell of his own boots after a long march.
"I see you missed me."
Pryce groaned louder, rolling his eyes so hard it was a small mercy of gravity that they didn't simply pop out and roll away down the cobbles.
"I'm one more goddamn visit away from denouncing this whole holy contract entirely if you can't honor a single simple request and send a beauty instead of your shiny male ass every fucking time. I asked for tits, thighs, ass and wings, your honor.
"Tits. Thighs. Ass. And. Wings.
"In that fucking ordet."
"Worry not," the angel said, still chuckling, shaking his perfect head with the gentle patience of a man amused by a very loud puppy. "I will never appear before you again."
Pryce's eyebrows shot straight up his forehead and almost kept going.
"Oh? Oh-ho-ho. So the angel is finally charmed by my beauty and slinking off into a celibate hermitage to pine in private?" He extended one hand with all the dramatic flourish of a stage magician about to pull something inappropriate out of a hat.
"Come here, then. Let me give you a proper farewell, you radiant prick. Show big brother where it hurts."
The angel took one graceful, gliding step forward while laughing.
Pryce suddenly felt himself go completely, absolutely still.
His grin froze halfway up his face. His outstretched hand hung in the air, fingers slightly curled in the universal gesture of come here, you.
Even his tongue, mid-syllable behind his teeth, refused to obey him. He couldn't move a single muscle.
Couldn't even twitch the corner of his mouth into a fresh insult, which was, as far as he was concerned, the highest crime an angel had ever committed against him personally.
The angel reached out and tapped Pryce's forehead with two slender fingers, almost fondly.
A warm, golden light flowed into him from the point of contact—gentle, undeniable, the sort of warmth that didn't ask permission because it had never needed any. It rolled down through his skull, into the marrow of his neck, and pooled somewhere quiet and unmapped behind the back of his eyes like honey settling at the bottom of a jar.
"From now on," the angel explained with perfect, unhurried calm, "there will be no more visits. All missions and communications from the Supreme herself will be sent directly to you. You will know, in your bones and beneath them, when she is speaking. There will be no more middlemen with shiny male asses for you to complain about."
The golden light faded.
Pryce's body unlocked all at once, like a marionette whose strings had finally remembered they had a job to do.
He nearly stumbled forward into the empty space where the angel's hand had been, caught himself against Lulu's frozen weight, and immediately rolled his shoulders with the elaborate dignity trying to pretend he hadn't just been turned off and on again like a lantern.
He grinned. Wide, crooked, unrepentant.
"Finally. I was getting tired of your voice anyway. And getting suspicious about whether the boss-lady I accepted was really the one I'd been signing soul-paperwork for, or whether you'd been pulling some elaborate winged-prick scam on me the whole time.
"Who the hell knows? You could've been a scam this whole goddamn time, and the real Supreme could be off somewhere having a long laugh at the porter who said yes to a costume."
The angel tilted his head, that mild exasperation softening into something more like genuine curiosity.
He hummed, the sound low and musical. "Why weren't you suspicious from the very start, then?"
Pryce would've shrugged if half his body wasn't still tingling pins and needles from the godly muscle paralysis.
"It's a known fact, my radiant friend. Angels can scheme, plot, manipulate, and play the long game with the best of them. But even a proper fallen angel, balls-deep in damnation and loving every minute of it, wouldn't dare speak a lie in the name of a Supreme.
"Some things even the worst of you don't fuck with. So when you dropped her name in my lap, I took it at face value. Anything else would've been you risking your own halo, and I figured your kind don't do that for porter trash like me."
"That's true," the angel said, nodding slowly, with the small, surprised respect of a tutor whose worst student had just answered a question correctly. "But it's not a fact everyone knows. Hardly anyone knows it, in truth. You've a knife-sharp memory under all that filthy talk, Pryce."
"Yeah, well. A man with no powers learns to collect the kinds of facts that keep him breathing."
The angel gave him one last small, almost fond smile, and turned as if to leave. The wings shifted softly behind him, catching no wind because there was no wind left in the world to catch.
Then he paused.
Glanced sideways. At Lulu.
His perfect face did something Pryce did not like one fucking bit. Something that had nothing to do with exasperation, or amusement, or any of the prettier emotions angels were supposed to wear. It was quieter than that.
Sadder.
"It's such a shame…" the angel murmured, almost to himself.
Pryce's stomach dropped through the bottom of his spine.
"Hey—hey, wait, what the fuck does that mean? Hey! Don't you dare—what shame, what shame about my sister, you winged son of a—"
But before he could shove the rest of the question past his teeth, the angel was already disappearing in a soft burst of golden light, the way a candle flame disappeared when the wax finally gave up the ghost.
Gone. Just gone.
Like he'd never been there at all, except for the fading warmth still humming behind Pryce's eyes and the cold, fresh weight of dread now sitting in Pryce's gut like a stone he couldn't swallow.
The world snapped back into motion.
The street vendor finished his shout, his mouth completing the word Essence! as though it had never been interrupted. The sky-barge continued humming smoothly forward on its bound currents, the passengers laughing at a joke whose punchline only Pryce had missed.
The wind picked up again, carrying the smells of fried dough and warm rune-oil.
The constant, comforting hum of Veyra City rushed back in around them like the tide returning to a beach that hadn't even known it was empty.
Pryce resumed walking with Lulu tucked tight under his arm.
She blinked once, slowly. Shook her small head as if she'd just zoned out for half a second and lost the thread of whatever wonder she'd been chasing.
Her fingers found his and squeezed, sleepy and confused.
"You okay, big brother?" she mumbled into the scarf. "You went… funny in the face for a second."
"Just admiring the architecture, shortstack," he said softly, his voice steadier than the cold, ugly thing now coiling in his chest had any right to allow. "You know how I get around tall buildings. Real swooning hour for the local masonry."
She made a small, drowsy noise that might've been a laugh.
He took two more steps.
Then he stopped dead in his tracks, dragging Lulu gently to a halt with him.
A shimmering golden screen had materialized directly in front of his eyes, hanging in the air with the patient, perfect arrogance of something that knew only he could see it. The script glowed in clean, unhurried lines of warm light, every letter shaped like it had been brushed onto the world by a hand that had never rushed a single thing in its long, terrible life.
He read it once.
He read it again, slower, mouth slightly open.
{First Mission:Dawn of Night
Awaken your core at the Dawn of Night guild and become acquainted with the guild's leader.}
Pryce stood there in the middle of the bustling Veyra street.
"Dawn of Night," he murmured to no one in particular. "Dawn of Night."
He'd never heard of it. Not in all his years portering through the Sanctum of Aegis's crooked shadow.
Not once.
And the Supreme of all the female angels in the higher heavens had just handed him its name like it was the only one that mattered.
Slowly, very slowly, that crooked grin began to climb back onto his face—half wonder, half wariness, all teeth.
"Well, shit, Lu," he breathed. "Looks like big brother's promotion just got an address."
Above them, the lights of Veyra City glittered on, oblivious as ever.