Her elbows leaned against the top of the bar. The hand holding the glass absently swirled its contents. This was survival. The dim, flickering lights hid the dirt-stained glasses. The next seat over squealed, struggling to hold up its occupant’s weight. She watched out of the corner of her eyes. Despite her hunched back and dazed expression, the hard weeks had fine-tuned her observational skills. “You…” she breathed.

“I’d offer to buy you a drink, but it looks like you have one already. Whiskey sour, please,” the golden-eyed newcomer’s attention turned to the bartender. It was a familiar androgynous profile with tan skin, thin lips, and sharp golden eyes. The dark hair was different, cropped short and left disheveled, but her heart raced with recognition. It was so familiar but so distant, as though it was something from another world just beyond reach.

“Zeph—“

The newcomer put up a hand and spoke in a husky whisper. “Don’t use that name here,” was the urgent message. And then louder, “I never thought I’d see you over here.” The glass clinked against the table and the bartender watched expectantly as money exchanged hands. Her chest tightened at the newcomer’s smile, so familiar but also so different. There was something there, an unnamed monster born from bitter months alone in this dreary world.

She nearly laughed. She hadn’t expected to find herself here either, to be one of them, one of the fallen. She had once been so ‘good’, they had said before they threw her away and watched her fall: the high and mighty, looking down and judging those beneath them. Now, she was one of the wingless creatures crawling across the lower world. “I wasn’t planning on it,” she mumbled bitterly before taking a swig from the cup in her hand. She set it down on the bar with a loud thud and watched the bubbling fizz.

Bitterness matched with a bitter laugh, she looked up in surprise. “None of us ever does,” was the response. A flicked wrist, “Who would wish this upon themselves? How was the state of our illustrious home when you left?”

Left? How could that describe the pain of tearing muscle and flesh or the uneasy lightness despite gravity’s heavy limitations? “Still being repaired. You were thorough,” she said coolly. It was as though they were discussing the news of some distant country, some place that didn’t affect them and not the city that had flung them from its borders. “Last I heard – “

She was cut off. “Are you in contact with…” the voice was harsh, golden eyes glinted dangerously as the words drifted off and dissolved with the fog and smoke hanging low in the dim light. Nothing needed to be said. She was pulled from her seat and dragged through the bustling room, straight out the door and into the muggy night air. The humidity pressed against her. “You’re in contact with him?” the question hissed in the air.

“Zephyrel…”

She was met with a sharp hiss. “Don’t call me that,” was the response. “Here, it’s Chloe.” She raised an eyebrow and was met with a laugh, warm and comforting just as she had remembered. “If we use our real names, we’ll be recognized for what we are….” Chloe’s voice trailed off. “What should I call you?” golden eyes gleamed as she waited in expectation.

She tucked a strand of dusty blonde hair behind her ear. “Adelaide?” she suggested tentatively. She didn’t know what was considered a normal name here, what would draw the least amount of attention. Attention was something she certainly wanted to avoid.

A smile tugged at Chloe’s chafed lips. “Adelaide,” she said slowly, trying the word out on her tongue. “I like it, it sounds mysterious and interesting. I wish I had thought of that,” she laughed. For a moment, they were back in time, in a different place where they had been able to laugh without worry and where they had made games of imagining themselves as different people. It was ironic, how their lives were coming to a circle and once again they were playing pretend. Suddenly, Chloe stopped laughing, her eyes hardening as she grabbed Adelaide’s thin shoulders. “Tell me, are you in contact with him?”

She didn’t need to say who. The blonde knew perfectly well. There was only one person who could cause such urgency, such anger, and such confusion. “I am.” Chloe stepped away, her hands dropping in disgust and she turned. The sudden cold on her shoulders, where Chloe’s warm hands had been, made the blonde shiver. Her heart sank at her companion’s complete revulsion of her. She reached out, fingers yearning for the familiar touch, but another step away took Chloe out of her reach. Adelaide almost laughed at the thought. Chloe had always been out of her reach. “Chloe….”

“You know what he did, and you still—“

“Please, Chloe…” she pleaded, violet eyes large and desperate. She couldn’t bear to lose her only friend in this forsaken world. She couldn’t bear to watch Chloe disappear again. “It’s not—“

Chloe’s bitter laugh cut through the air, stopping the sentence short. “It’s alright,” her tone said otherwise, “It was a long time ago, it doesn’t matter anymore.” A strong, calloused hand ran absently through short-cropped hair. Adelaide’s violet eyes flickered to the other woman’s back. It did matter. She looked away in embarrassment, her own body remembering the searing pain. “By the way, where did you get those clothes?” The blonde’s focus snapped up to her old friend’s smiling face. Her heart lurched and once again she forced herself to turn away.

Adelaide had wished for nothing more than this reunion. These weeks of lonely travel, hiding in the safety of the night, but now she was ashamed. Her companion had always been glorious, shining even among angels with a tall and athletic frame. Even now, her magnificence and confidence radiated. Life had not been so kind to Chloe. Like their brethren, she was tall and long-limbed, but former life as a healer had not allowed her to spend as much time in the sun. Her skin was pale, her lips just a little too full, her hips were just a little too wide and her waist far too narrow. Baggy, dirty clothing hung unflatteringly over her frame, clinging to her figure in all the wrong places.

It had been just a few weeks ago, but her life in the upper world seemed so far away. Her violet eyes squinted and she gazed past Chloe, as though watching her distant memories of that time. “Someone gave them to me….” She remembered a thin, wretched creature, crawling across the ground and clinging to the shadows of the forests. It had stayed close to the roads, yearning for company but afraid of the nightmares of its kind. An eager voice, inaudible with the distance of the memory was followed by a kinder, gentler one. An argument and then a hand reached out. The creature cowered, naked and vulnerable but for the layers of dried blood and dirt. The voice had given a warning, but Adelaide couldn’t remember it now, and the rags were left by her feet.

The dark-haired woman chuckled in disbelief and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re lucky, then. Don’t rely on the kindness of strangers in this place,” she spat the words out as though they burned her tongue. This world, this god-forsaken place, this prison that they shared. The corners of Chloe’s lips turned up in a smile and the longing flutter found its way back to Adelaide’s chest. “But you have me, now. I’m glad you’re here,” the blonde’s heart reeled at the words and a warm glow spread across her freckled face, “We can figure out how to survive together.”

Chloe reached out her hand, that painfully familiar smile lighting her dark features. The shorter woman froze, heart pounding in what seemed to be her stomach rather than her chest. This hand had reached out to her before, so many months ago. It had begged for help as the former angel fell. Back then, Adelaide had done nothing and had watched as Chloe fell. Now, this same hand reached out again, but this time it offered help instead of asked for it.

The blonde pushed her long hair away from her eyes and reached out.

The bushes rustled and the familiar calloused hand drew away before they could touch. Chloe’s golden eyes narrowed and she took a step to the side, blocking her companion’s view of the intruder, a small figure emerging from the leaves and shadows. Adelaide placed a hand on Chloe’s arm and immediately drew back, surprised by the tension. All that stood before them, between them and the forest, was a small child: a young girl with auburn hair, light eyes, sultry lips, and an upturned nose. Despite her size, she seemed to look down at them. The black collar around her neck seemed eerie in the dark night, as though her head and body weren’t attached.

The blonde glanced up at her protector. How had she not noticed the matching black ring around her old friend’s neck? “Chloe?” she whispered. The other girl hadn’t seemed to have heard. “Chloe?” she asked again, more loudly this time. What was the threat in such a small, frail child?

“What are you doing here, Brooke?” Chloe growled. Adelaide looked up at her friend in surprise: golden eyes narrowed and lips drawn tight, fists clenched. The tiny brunette giggled behind her hands. “Adelaide? This is Brooke. She’s like us, but she’s Property.” Again, the tiny girl giggled. Was there some sort of joke that she was missing? “She sometimes warns me before her Master shows up. Go back into the bar and wait for me. I’ll meet you there,” Chloe’s tone left no room for argument.

The blonde nodded dizzily. Her numb limbs brought her back to the sanctuary of the busy bar. She was grateful that her former place was still vacant and relieved her legs of the effort to hold herself up. Master? Property? These were rumors that floated through the city of angels, the world of their childhoods. Loss of wings, banishment to the dreaded lower world, these were only part of the punishment reserved only for the worst of crimes. Magicians walked across the ground, using the powers of imprisoned angels to fuel their own. Adelaide shivered in the face of a childhood nightmare come to life before her in the form of so small a child.

It was no wonder Chloe had reacted so harshly. None could discern the true loyalties of such creatures, forced to do the magicians’ biddings despite their own feelings and desires. That was the true horror of their damnation.

Something crashed against her, launching her forward, away from her thoughts, and against the bar. The burn of fire against her skin; a candle had been thrown in a heated argument. The wound healed itself, the mark disappearing beneath torn clothing. “It’s an angel!” she heard someone exclaim. Chloe whipped around, sliding off the stool and staring into the hungry eyes of the crowd. Anyone, the rumor said, who could capture an angel would become a magician. Too many rumors had already been proven true for Chloe’s comfort.