No. Fricking alphabetical order!

I stood, a wave of dizziness hitting me as the adrenaline coursed through me, and my heart rattled against my chest. I walked numbly to the stage, trying not to trip over my too-long black silk dress.

“You got this!” Shea yelled. I heard the slave minder shush her, but it made me smile the slightest bit, and I walked a little taller. No matter what happened today, I would still go home tonight and be with Shea, my mom, and my little brother. Nothing would change that. If I worked a shitty job for the rest of my life, then so be it. I still had my family.

Before I knew it, I had reached the stage, and stood before the fallen angel.

“Brielle.” He said my first name as if we were dear friends. It both made me nervous and comforted me at the same time.

“Yes, sir?” I didn’t know what protocol was. I’d grown up around demons, not these nice winged creatures.

Raphael looked sadly down at me. “I’m sorry for the circumstances in which you find yourself,” he whispered.

For some crazy reason, I wanted to burst into tears. What was he doing? Throw the freaking glowing dust on me and be done with it already! Saying heartfelt shit wasn’t going to get me through this; it was only going to make me look weak.

I simply nodded, holding back my emotions. Looking past him, I saw Lincoln appear over his shoulder and glare at me as if I was the scum of the Earth. That was more like it. More of what I was used to from those people—looking down on me for being slave bound.

I was tempted to give him the middle finger but thought better of it, instead deciding to focus my attention on the huge palms that had just spread out above me. I was standing in the presence of a fallen archangel, a being with more power than I could ever imagine.

Before I could think more on it, the dust began to fall. It lay on my skin, settling into the pores there, tickling as it worked its way into my body. I felt a zinging sensation as an unseen energy moved up and down my back. The tickling gave way to a burning, and I started to sweat. Would I be a Gristle? Or worse, some form of a demon like Tilly? What if I sprouted horns? I just wanted to be something middle of the road. Not too low but not too high. If you were too powerful, they were calling you to the front lines of the war after you graduated Tainted Academy. I just wanted my life to stay the same.

A red-hot pain shot from my navel to my chest and out through my shoulder blades as I fell forward with a shriek. The pain was unlike anything I’d ever felt before, and the edges of my vision went black as I fought to stay conscious. My back was on fire, and I’d bet my mother’s life that I had just endured a pain worse than childbirth. Bile came up my throat, but I swallowed it down. I tried to keep quiet, but at the sight of a bright blinding light shooting out from behind me, and a ripping sensation down my back, I screamed. I screamed bloody freaking murder.

Dresses? They gave us dresses to get through this? Where’s the Vicodin? Morphine? Anything!

The pain started to pulse, giving way from a sharp stabbing to a dull throb. The gasps from the crowd gave me the first indication that something crazy had just happened. I didn’t dare move. My skin felt like it was on fire all over. It hurt so bad that I wanted to scream again.

“Brielle!” Shea shouted, and I heard a commotion in the seats. I looked up and squinted. Everything was too bright, noises too loud, smells too strong.

“She’s angel blessed,” Raphael’s words were the tiniest whisper, I wasn’t sure I’d even heard it.

Angel blessed.

There were only four angel-blessed powers compared to the four demon-gifted things you could become. I looked down at my hands, but other than a shimmery glowing on my skin, they looked no different. I tried to stand but felt off balance. I must’ve grown horns or something. Or maybe I was a Centaur, with animal lower half and human upper half.

Murmurs started on the Fallen Army side and it made me nervous. They hardly broke protocol, but now they were gasping, pointing, stepping closer.

“Get up!” the Grimlock demon roared, and fear flushed through me. Once again I tried to stand, and that’s when I noticed what was wrong. Turning my head behind me, I glimpsed a shimmery set of Celestial wings. They were pitch-black.

Oh shit.

Raphael’s hand came out to steady me, and a warm soothing balm coursed through my body, taking away all the pain. I could breathe a little easier, without the throbbing pain between my shoulders.

I had wings. Black freaking wings. I’d never heard of a black-winged Celestial. They were all white. All of them. Always.

“Brielle Atwater. C-celestial.” Raphael’s voice cracked as he spoke.

I couldn’t bear to look at the crowd.

“Come forward and receive your slave mark,” the Grimlock demon said, standing at the very edge of the black line on the stage. I tried to release my arm from Raphael’s hand, and step over the line when his grip became viselike.

“She’s with us,” the fallen archangel hissed.

What. The. Frick did he just say?

Lincoln stepped closer to me, and pulled a glowing sword as I stared in shock at the Grimlock demon, whose horns had begun to spew black smoke.

“You will honor the accords, or we will war right now! Give. Her. To. Me!” the Grimlock roared. My mother’s master demon stood and walked closer.

Raphael looked pained, his features tightening. “You tricked her mother into the contract. She didn’t know it involved her firstborn.”

Whoa. How the hell did he know that?

Master Burdock clapped loudly, and in his once bare palms was suddenly a tan parchment. It had tiny golden writing, and at the bottom a red bloody thumbprint. My mother’s.

“It’s her fault for not reading the entire thing. Now hand me my slave or bring Hell upon the Earth once again,” Master Burdock crooned.

Raphael was holding me so tightly that my wrist began to hurt. At that thought, his grip lessened.

“No,” Raphael said, and the walls shook with his voice, as if it had been amplified a thousand times.

The Grimlock demon looked at one of the slave minders that stood beyond the stage. “Bring me her mother so I may kill her.”

“No!” I lurched forward, but Raphael yanked me back.

“Do not cross that line,” Raphael whispered.

I looked at him incredulously. “Let. Me. Go!” I demanded, and I saw the hurt cross his face. One rule I knew the fallen were big on was free will. They had to honor our free will.

He bit his lip. “You don’t understand. It’s not final yet. If you take that mark—” “Let go,” I said with more authority, cutting him off, and a rising of power crackled within me. At the same time I heard my mother scream in the stands.

He dropped my arm, eyes wide in shock, and stepped backward a foot.

“Stupid girl,” Lincoln spat.

“Screw you,” I shot back at him, then stepped out of the white area of the stage and over the line into the black. Where I belonged. The collective gasp from the Fallen Army made me sick. A literal nausea washed over me as I stepped closer to the Grimlock demon, who was practically salivating as he looked at my black wings.

“She knows not what she does,” Raphael whispered to Lincoln.

The Grimlock demon stared into my eyes, and I felt the nausea rise to epic proportions. “Kneel to me and honor your contract as a slave to the tainted.”

Suddenly I felt regret. The urge to run, to fly the hell away from there. Anything but take the mark. Then I heard my mother whimper in pain behind me, and I fell to my knees willingly. My mother was a slave, I was a slave, and there was nothing we could do about it. Mikey was a free soul, and I needed to look forward to that.

With lightning-quick moves, the Grimlock’s thumb snaked out and touched my forehead, igniting a searing pain. When he pulled away, I knew I bore the red mark. The mark of a slave to the baddies.

“It’s done,” the Grimlock confirmed, with a sigh of relief.

“We still get to train her. You don’t have anyone who can contain her powers, and you know it,” Raphael added from behind me.

What?

The Grimlock scowled. “For six hours a day. No more.”

Raphael must’ve nodded because the Grimlock told me to stand. When I did, he gave me one last smug look. “Go home,” he said, and the mark on my head flared to life with searing pain. It was an order, and orders had to be obeyed.

After the Awakening, there was always a fancy banquet where you could eat dessert to your heart’s content and dance until midnight. It was the one thing we had to look forward to, the one thing the fallen did for us. An apology of sorts for getting us into this mess. I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to stay and see what Shea’s power was, to dance and eat chocolate, but I knew better than to argue after that scene.

“Yes, Master,” I answered through clenched teeth, then turned to face the crowd.

Shea was halfway down the aisle with a cattle prod stuck to her back, and my mother was on her knees with Master Burdock’s hand in her hair, grabbing a fistful. As I made my way toward them, she pulled from his grasp and ran to me, wrapping her arms around me.

“What am I?” I whispered to her, because a black-winged Celestial wasn’t a thing.

“I don’t know baby, but I think it’s important,” she replied.

Yeah, no shit.

An archangel almost started another war over me. At this point I’d take being a Gristle.

When we exited the Awakening ceremony, there had been a sleek black SUV waiting for us. Courtesy of my new boss; he probably didn’t want these black wings riding the public bus and starting a panic. I tried to retract them, to think them back into hiding, but nothing worked, and when I sat on them, it hurt. I just wanted to cry as I laid in the back of the car.

Arriving home, I went straight to my room without dinner. My mom and Mikey tried to talk to me, but I wasn’t interested.

Alone in my room, with my thoughts, the tears came. I was lying in an awkward position on my bed with pillows under my shoulder so I didn’t hurt my wings. They were jet-black, and very… real. Like an arm or a foot, I could feel them. I’d never heard of a demon slave Celestial before. Celestials were so rare, and the ones that did pop up were whisked away into the Fallen Army, and given the highest officer ranking. That asshat Lincoln was like second in command next to the archangels, and he was only like twenty-two. Celestials were a big deal, I knew, but what could I do?

I replayed that moment on stage over and over again. Raphael had told me not to cross that line. Why? As if I had a choice. I had to fulfill my contract. I wasn’t going to sacrifice my mother for my own freedom if that’s what he’d expected.

What had me the most nervous was the unknown. What would the demon masters ask me to do for them, knowing I had this power? Would they put me on the front lines of the war? Would they make me kill for them? The thought made me physically sick. I’d always been firmly on the fallen side of things, as they were the do-gooders. No one went hungry in Angel City, no one got killed for making a mistake. Now I was worried I had ranked too high and would have to do awful things, things I wasn’t morally okay with, just to survive.