like there is a single barrier around the city like there was on the academy. We land on a flat roof branded with five circles made of burn marks, and the angels shove me into one.
“Stand still and don’t move,” the guard next to me demands and lets me go before stepping back. I do as they ask, mainly because I don’t see a way out of this, and suddenly white light blasts around me, making a circle surrounding my feet. As quickly as it appears, it’s gone, and I’m no longer on the roof but in a room full of floating black seats that look like goddamn thrones. Sitting in them are angels who look like fossils. Quite literally. I gulp as I look at each of them and how they all look about the same age as Gabriel, with grey hair cut in the same way as each other, short and tidy, and they each have cloaks covering them. The cloaks are a dark green colour, with collars made of white wings with black tips fanning out from their necks, making their heads look like they are resting on crowns.
“Is your name Kaitlyn Lightson, and do you swear to tell the whole truth to the Rights of Angels?” the angel in the middle asks me, his voice echoing around the room. I notice how none of them are dark angels, all of them are light, but their wings aren’t like mine. They are falling apart with barely any feathers on them. “Do answer us!”
“Y-yes,” I shudder out, and silence rings out around the room. A throat clears behind me, and I turn around to see I’m not alone. The room is full of guards, at least thirty of them, and I recognise one of them straight away: Riley. He stands in the middle of the guards at the front, and his uniform has two silver pins on the breast pocket, and the weapons on his belt look expensive, dipped in gold. The once pale, skinny guy he turned into under the vampires’ control is long gone now. His eyes meet mine, and for a moment, I think back to the two kids who used to sneak into my mum’s kitchen and steal the cookies she just got out of the oven before running across the garden to eat them. We were once so innocent of the world around us, and it never had a chance to corrupt us both. I see the reality of the world, the cruelty of the angels, and the mistakes of the vampires, but I know Riley will only ever love the angels. The vampires are his enemy, and they are my home.
Things have changed for us both, and there isn’t a way back from this anymore. I could never forgive him for the actions he took, and he could never forgive me for loving the vampires.
“We find you guilty of betraying the angels; how do you plead?” the angel asks me, and I turn back to him.
If I’m going to go down, I might as well go in flames. They will never, ever let me be free after what I did, and this might be the only chance I have to tell the angels what I really think.
“I find every single angel here guilty of killing their children,” I shout, clasping my hands together behind my back and lifting my head high. “Vampires were born from angel blood, they are your children, and you kill them like they are nothing to you. How could you kill an entire race who are related to you? What gives you the right to kill them all? How can you live with yourselves?”
Of course, no one answers me, but I do hear the guards whispering behind me. “Three goddesses came to earth. One of them bore an angel’s child, and that’s how the vampires were created. Why is this not in your history books? Why do you care so little for the child of an angel and a goddess?”
“You speak lies, and they will not save you from your sentence,” the middle angel plainly states, though I see a little wobble in his eyes. Seems my words have hit a nerve somewhere.
My hands shake as I meet the angel eyes who spoke. “I’m a light angel, and it’s hard for me to lie. It’s impossible for me to lie so easily, and you know that.”
“The vampire blood in your system means you do not follow the rules