บท 207: • The Autumn Angel

'Beautiful creatures.'

Rafel remembered it was Mistress Lilith of the long night who had first coined that. Those were words his aunt had uttered in passing when a [Silver Saint] had been dragged on his knees to her black throne. Rafel had been nine and a budding Hel prince at the time.

He couldn't exactly remember what the Power had done to warrant him being tied up in curling brass chains and pulled into the grim courts of Hel's Matriarch, like a stubborn gelding, whipped by giant Maulers. He couldn't remember what exactly his auntie had said before those two words, or maybe he didn't want to; Lilith wasn't his favorite person these days. But what he could clearly spell out was when she'd whispered,

'Beautiful creatures,' in the sprawling spooky throne room of the Holocaust Tower of Hel.

What she'd said before or after he cared not for.