Reaver(103)

“None of this is in our histories,” Reaver said.

“No, it’s not. We erased it.”

“Wow. You guys are real fucking free with playing with people’s memories, aren’t you?” That earned him a lightning strike that put him on his ass with steam hissing off his skin. He wheezed, and when he finally found his voice, it was as smoky and cooked as his body. “I’m guessing I hit your limit?”

Metatron just smiled. “With all our efforts wasted and many lives lost, it was time for more extreme measures. We were to go to war with Sheoul. But on the eve of battle, Lucifer met with me. Your mother had given birth.” He pegged Reaver with a hard stare. “To fraternal twins.”

Reaver had been in the process of trying to stand, but at the news, his knees buckled and he went back down. Hard. On his ass.

“Twins?”

Metatron nodded. “They run in the family. These twins were males. But there was no way of knowing which boy was the potential Radiant. Lucifer brought a deal to the table. We would return four very powerful fallen angels we’d captured and agree to never create another sheoulghul.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Sheoulghuls are made from fallen angels. One per fallen. You can see why Satan would want that practice stopped.” Reaver could only nod dumbly. He hadn’t known how they were made. He’d had two dead fallen angels in his pocket for days. “In trade, they would give us one of the boys and they would keep the other.”

Reaver could hardly breathe. So many questions rattled in his skull, but he couldn’t speak. He could only listen, and even then, processing all of this was happening far too slowly.

Metatron continued. “Obviously, it was you we got back. Your mother, knowing you would be safe, chose to stay with your brother to protect him. To this day, we have no idea what became of her.”

“Who raised me?”

“My mate and I raised you.”

Okaaaay. Reaver hadn’t seen that coming. “Why you?”

“Because,” Metatron replied, “Sandalphon was my brother. As I said, twins run in the family.”

So Metatron was Reaver’s uncle? It was a good thing he was still seated. He should probably just stay that way. He had a feeling the shocks were going to keep knocking him on his ass.

“Did I know about my real parents?”

“You believed my mate and I were your birth parents.”

Reaver closed his eyes, trying to find even the smallest sliver of memory to help him sort this all out, but he might as well have been feeling around inside an empty box. “So I didn’t know about my brother, either?”

“No.” Metatron flared his wings just a little, a sign of his irritation with the matter. “We raised you as a battle angel, suspecting you were the potential Radiant. Your powers, even as a child, were stronger than most fully trained adult battle angels.” He smiled fondly. “You were a handful.”

Somehow, Reaver wasn’t surprised by that.

Metatron took a deep breath, and Reaver braced himself for whatever was coming next. “Your temper was legendary. Let me repeat the handful thing.” He shot Reaver an accusing look, as if Reaver could do anything about being a pain in the ass when he was young. “By the time you started battle angel training, we had to curb your powers. Then, when you were taken to Sheoul for your first lesson in fighting in the demon realm, we learned that you had the ability to draw power from evil sources. Again, a talent unique to Radiants. We had to seal it to prevent you from abusing the ability.”

Harvester had said she’d noticed something similar. “Sounds a little extreme,” Reaver muttered.

He got a full-fledged you’re a dumbass look from the archangel. “Have you even met yourself?” Metatron sighed. “Things went well until you slept with Lilith. When you learned what you’d done, you went on a bender, destroying every demon you came across, disobeying direct orders, and, in general, being an asshat. Verrine was the sole calming influence on you, but after you learned that she kept the existence of your sons and daughter from you, we lost even that.” He blew out a long breath. “Then you met your brother, and that was the beginning of the downward spiral no one could pull you out of.”





Thirty-Two





Reaver could really use a bottle of tequila right now. Maybe two. He stared at Metatron, the male who had raised him as his own, and then decided he didn’t need the alcohol, because his head was already spinning.

“So I met my brother. Did I know he was my brother at the time?”

“No, but he knew you,” Metatron said. “He, too, had been raised to think he was an only child. But somehow he learned about you, and he arranged a meeting. We don’t know what went down between the two of you, only that your anger was so formidable that you leveled entire cities at the height of your wrath. Your brother, too, was angry, and he barged into Heaven as if he’d lived there all his life.”