The Vows We Break - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,12

now.

I’m a man of God to the eyes of the world, but between me and my Maker?

We both know that’s a lie.

Three

Andrea

Seven years later

The second I told her I had wings, everything seemed to derail.

Linda lost faith in me, and for a time, I lost faith in myself.

I didn’t understand why she didn’t believe me.

After all, they were there.

I could feel them.

They were large.

Huge, golden feathers dragged down my shoulders, making me work hard at the gym to combat their weight. My shoulders were strong now, my upper back broad enough to take their weight, to hold them high with pride.

I’d shown them to her, and all of a sudden, she stared at me with distrust and fear.

She feared me.

Me—who was trying to help her.

Me—who was trying to get her away from her abusive husband.

The night I told her the truth was the night everything started to go wrong, because I knew she couldn’t see them.

Which meant either I was delusional, or she was.

And while her husband had beaten her, broken her body like she was a ragdoll, she was a smart woman.

A healthy woman.

I managed to get Linda out from under his roof, managed to get her to stay with me.

Just like with Diana and all the other people I helped over the years, I managed to get them into a safe haven—my home—and from then on out, they could use that place as a steppingstone as they considered their options and their next move.

Diana has two kids now and is living in Madrid with her husband—they moved three years ago.

She’s happy.

She’s strong.

Then there’s Charles, whose wife had manipulated his family into believing that he was gaslighting her so that, when she got a divorce, she’d get custody of the kids.

Marie, James, Tina, Li?

More people I helped along the years.

All of them had flourished.

But Linda?

Since ‘the boy I failed,’ she was the first I’d let down, and not unlike the last time, it resulted in death.

Her death.

She left my safe haven where I protected her and had gone out into the streets where her husband had been waiting for her.

He picked her up, took her home, and he killed her. Strangled her.

And it was all my fault.

At least, I thought it was.

My wings... were they real, or weren’t they?

It’s why I’m here today.

I told my doctor I was feeling unwell, and when I shared the truth with her? All of a sudden, I was going in for appointments with specialists, and being made to endure CAT scans and all kinds of horrible torture devices to find out what was wrong with me.

Because, yes, my wings were ‘something that was wrong with me.’

Just thinking that has me nibbling on my bottom lip.

I don’t think I’m sick, but something about what I told Linda caused her death, so I have to act, don’t I? I have to find out if I’m wrong.

I stare outside the window, my hand in my mom’s, my dad at my back.

They flew from California where Dad’s stationed now just for this meeting.

It’s an important one.

Words like ‘arachnoid cyst on the left temporal lobe’ flutter over my awareness.

I know what the neurologist is saying, even if it doesn’t make sense to me.

Just to everyone else.

I know I’m a Watcher, a type of angel born to view the misdeeds of humanity and to guide them along the right path.

I realized it a few years after I helped Diana.

There was a reason I saw her when no one else did. Why I saw others, why I had to act, why I needed to help them.

It’s a part of my nature. A part of my soul. It calls out to me to act, and I have no choice but to heed its call.

So I flutter through life, moving around like the nomad I’m born to be. As an army brat, it fits with my past. I’m used to being on the move, and my years in college are actually the longest time I’ve spent anywhere, but it means I come across a lot of people from all walks of life.

A few years ago, I’d written a book and had managed to find an agent to represent me. A year later, I was a bestseller, and my last two books had been bestsellers too. My publishers loved me.

But that enabled my nomadic lifestyle as well.

All that time, I was away from family who know me best. Who might have seen the signs before anyone else did.

Signs that I’m apparently sick.

My brow