The Sinful Angel (1)

Swirling my chair a couple of times, I rolled my head back to see the ceiling. It had been three days since I stayed in the mansion. My routine was getting up, go to the lab, and spent the whole day there. I made Xavier sent my meals to the lab, so I never had to join the boys in the dining room ever again. Not that I would anyway.

Other than Tony, I had not seen any of the princes. I was told that Renald had a three-days of film shooting in another city. Michael was busy as always and that Xander was busy, apparently. I was Xander’s sugar baby once, I knew what his schedules look like. And I declared to myself, that he was obviously avoiding me.

I sighed again.

It also didn’t help that for the last two days, I had been having dreams. One dream was about me riding a hot-air balloon in the sky. I remembered the adrenaline coursing through my body in that dream. It felt so real.

Another was about me singing on the stage of a theatre. I remembered that I looked to Michael… or someone looked like Michael in the audience before the chandelier fell and crushed me. Then it was just darkness. The last thing I saw was the bright blue eyes of the angel.

Just like the ones I envisioned then. My sight of the LED lamps on the ceiling was obstructed by Michael hovering above me and staring down at me with his blue eyes. I knew it was my imagination…

…until Michael spoke, “What are you daydreaming about?”

I blinked. My imagination Michael wasn’t supposed to do that.

*Oh, shit!*

I sat up immediately, realizing that I was not imagining his presence. My stomach hit the edge of my desk hard and I doubled over in pain. “Michael? Hi,” I tried not to sound weird.

“Hello, Arianna,” he greeted. The angle descended across me. He sat down on the chair and I noticed he was shirtless–again–and was wearing a comfortable pair of pants. Once he settled down, his wings folded behind his back, it shrunk until it disappeared behind him.

“Aren’t you… busy with your company?” I asked, “You know, with you being the CEO and all.”

“Yes, I’m busy,” he said coldly, “But this is the weekend. I do take weekends as days off.”

“Oh.” That was all I could say. Then I couldn’t hold my curiosity any longer. “How do you do that? How do you expand and shrink the wings?”

“Uh… I just will it to be.”

“So like your brain orders the cells on your wings to just grow and disappear, just like that?” It was fascinating to me. “Can I see it again?” I stood up and walked to behind him. My note was ready in my hand. And in another hand, I pressed record on my phone.

His face was reluctant. But eventually, he spread his wings again. I cursed under my breath as I saw the transformation. His spine shifted under his skin, his blades caved inward and protruded from the skin. It was small buds at first. Bones, feathers, and muscles then grew in just a matter of seconds to their full size. His wings became almost as tall as my body.

My eyes were wide. “Fascinating.”

Michael’s wings then retracted. It folded and shrunk into the usual human spine and blades again. There were no scars or marks evident of the change. I touched the skin on his back to make sure there were no bumps too. Still recording, I asked, “Does it hurt?”

Instead of answering, Michael asked back, “Do you question the others like this too?”

“Uh… yeah,” she said, “I did it with Renald and with Tony.”

“Xander?”

“We’re still not on talking terms,” I admitted.

Michael turned his chair to face me. I pulled my hand back from his skin.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he said, “Just an itch whenever I haven’t opened my wings for a long time.”

“So, it’s like a necessity for you to fly? Like birds usually do?”

“Yes. Now and then. Birds stuck in a cage get depressed, Ari,” he said.

The question just came to me right then. “Do you feel like this mansion is a cage?”

Michael’s face hardened. He flicked my phone gently. “Turn it off.” I obeyed.

“Xander doesn’t cage any of us if that’s what you’re implying,” he continued, “It’s the curse that’s caging us with each other.”

“Including Xander?”

Michael nodded.

He then asked, “You know that the next date is supposed to be with me. Why haven’t you asked for me?”

*What?* I raised my eyebrows, confused and surprised with his question. *Why haven’t I asked for him?* The cold Michael asked me that? *But why should I?*

I rubbed my nape, feeling uncomfortable. Biting my lips, I said, “I’ve been having nightmares. So, I’m not feeling the rotational date. It’s not like my leukaemia aka the cycle deadline will kill me immediately, right?”

Michael shrugged. “The past ladies have all died unexpectedly, Ari. No one knows when they will die but everyone knows they don’t have a lot of time.” Definitely not the answer I was expecting.

“Hmm. Depressing.” I grabbed a chair and sat in front of him. “Okay, let’s do this date then. Let’s do…” I rolled my eyes, trying to think of dating ideas. Suddenly, my mind just went… “Let’s do twenty questions. We get to ask each other twenty questions, taking turns.”

Michael shrugged again. “Alright.”

“I’ll go first,” I said, “How does an angel get to be one of the four princes? I just assumed that the Dark Lord will lead the Underworld. Renald, Alexander, and Tony make sense to me. You, on the other hand, don’t.”

For quite some time, Michael only looked at me with those light blue eyes. It was unsettling. “How about this?” he proposed, “You get to ask me questions. And I will answer only after you have followed my demands. If you don’t think my demands are worth it, you don’t get the answers too. Sounds fair?”