The Missing Piece

The man had finally lost his mind.

Sakura looked around at the books that crowded the table and overflowed onto the floor, only slightly concerned. After all, it wasn’t that surprising that he had lost it, only that it took so long to do so. The area was a mess, and the angel matched it perfectly with his disheveled curls and unintelligible mutterings as he sat in the middle of it all. It had been a couple of days since she had ventured to the fifth floor to assist in the research after finally tiring of Ren’s complaining that she was a distraction all while very actively participating in making her a said distraction. If she didn’t cut him off, he certainly wasn’t going to do it himself and his griping and procrastination would never end.

Looking at him now though, maybe she should have checked on him more?

He never was good at being left on his own.

“Is all of this really necessary?” the woman asked, her foot sliding out to nudge an open book on the floor. “How can you find anything in this disaster?”

“Don’t touch any of it,” Ren demanded while pointing a finger at her in warning, his eyes focused on the book before him. “I have it just the way I want. Don’t fuck it up.”

She pursed her lips together, brows raising. “Hm. If you say so. How about we call it a night? Ivy and Zero have already headed back.”

“Not now, woman. I’m busy.” He grabbed another book and flipped through the pages. “I’ll take care of you real good later but not now.”

To think she had been concerned. “Are you serious right now?”

“It’s not so fun when it’s the other way around, is it? Now hush! I need silence. Let me figure this out.”

It crossed the demon’s mind to make the man pay for his insolence, but she was much too tired to even bother, and he looked like he had enough problems. They had long overstayed their reluctant welcome in The Kingdom, and she was more than ready to return to the land. It didn’t matter that most of the angels were gone, it was still their domain, and everything from the roads to the roof lines were a reminder of how they didn’t belong in this holiest of places.

The woman went and sunk her exhausted body into a seat at the table, glancing over the scattered array of reading materials while trying to work the kinks out of her neck and shoulders. An infinite amount of names and dates and comprehensive descriptions plagued the pages. There were records on births, deaths, bonding ceremonies, inheritances of titles. Intricate family trees, the lineage of a single person branching out and spanning over multiple pages. Each book basically the same, just with different names that meant nothing to the demon. “Are all these books just on ancestry?”

Ren grunted as he pointed towards one, its pages yellowing and brittle. “All except that one.”

Sakura reached for the book, using due diligence to bring it closer to herself. It was ancient, the oldest book she’d ever been in possession of, and she hesitated on whether or not to venture a turn of its flimsy pages least they turn to dust and blow away at her touch. Then the man would really be upset. Her eyes ran over the fading text and illustration of a beautiful woman with wings like a butterfly, as her fingers pinched at the paper, deciding she was willing to take the risk.

“Don’t bother,” the angel muttered. “That’s all there is about the fae in this whole place.”

“Just these two pages?”

“Just those two pages.”

“Huh.” The woman wasn’t necessarily surprised. Even this limited information was probably more than what could be found on the land. “There’s barely anything here. Why do you need it open?”

“Sixth paragraph, fourth sentence on the second page.”

She scanned the sentence several times, trying to understand what was so special about it, before reading it aloud as though that would help her gain clarification. “With hair like the silkiness of flower petals, shades include pinks, purples, blues, yellows, oranges, and white. What’s so amazing about that? It’s pretty obvious that Ivy has purple hair. We don’t need a book to tell us that.”

“No, we don’t,” Ren agreed, “but do you know what color hair angels have?”

What a stupid question. “No. No idea.”

He turned the page. “Blonde. Angels have blonde hair. Each and every one of them. Different shades, sure, but blonde, nonetheless. Well, except yours truly, but I’m special.”

“Yeah, you are,” Sakura snorted. “Good thing you spent a fortnight hiding away up here just to figure that out. Can we go home now that that mystery has been solved? The beds here are too soft. I can’t handle it anymore.”

The woman’s sarcasm couldn’t deter the man. “Do you know who didn’t have blonde hair?”

“You?”

“Zero’s mother. And her mother. And her mother. Woman after woman born with white hair. And it was only girls born. Not a single one of them birthed a boy. The men who bonded with them would have to pass their title onto their younger brother or nephew or cousin because they never had a son to pass it on to. That never deterred them from marrying these women despite knowing having a son wasn’t probable. Isn’t that interesting?”

“I guess. But some families just tend to have more boys or girls. I’ve seen families with a dozen daughters and no boys and vice versa. It’s not common, but it happens.”

“It does.” Ren finally looked up at the woman as he handed her the book he had been studying. “But it doesn’t last for nearly a hundred generations.”

She took it and glanced over the opened pages, finding only another birth record for a child that was long gone from this world. “What exactly am I looking at here? Birth records for a baby born two thousand years ago? What does it matter? And why the fuck do they still have this? Who cares?”

“Angels are meticulous in their notes and record keeping. Shit that doesn’t even matter is written down. Everything is kept neat and tidy, tucked safely away in the off chance that it’s ever needed.” The man reached out and tapped the woman’s nose twice. “You should know this.”

It was true, and she did know it very well. Sakura had watched Raz sit at the kitchen table every night and jot down whatever he found important in a blank page book, filling one after another every few months. He kept the completed writings in chronological order on the bookshelf in his room. Ren did the same, keeping track of Zero’s growth from the time he found him, and later doing the same for Ivy, the books having a special place next to the ones Raz had done.

The man pointed out a section on the page. “One thing they always write for a birth is the child’s height, weight, and their wingspan. What’s missing there?”

There were measurements for the first two, but not the third. “They forgot the wingspan.”

He shook his head, his lips beginning to curl up. “They didn’t forget the most important thing for an angel. Just like they didn’t forget to put the mother down. They intentionally left it out.”

“Why would they do that?” The demon checked and found he was correct. There was a father listed, but no mother.

“Because the father didn’t want them to know. Or maybe because The Kingdom didn't care to know. He was a duke, so I’m sure that’s why he was able to get away with bringing that baby back, though I couldn’t tell you how he got the baby from its mother…” he drifted off, lost in other thoughts before circling back again. “Anyways, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that even those with half angel blood have almost identical comprehensive birth records, they just switch out wingspan with whatever race they’re mixed with since only pure blood angels have wings. And only pure blood angels are allowed into The Kingdom, no exception. Except for that one.” Ren grabbed another book and set it atop the first. “This one also didn’t have angel wings, but she did have white hair. As did her daughter.” A third and then fourth book stacked on. “And hers, and hers, and so on. Not until the twelfth generation of daughters did they start having angel wings recorded. But they never lost the white hair, and each one was renowned for their beauty despite there not being much else about them. It’s like they were kept as an open secret.”

“All this speculation because a few girls didn’t have wings?”

“I didn’t say they didn’t have wings,” he corrected. “I said they didn’t have angel wings.”

Sakura plopped her chin in her hand and peered at the upbeat angel. “So, I assume you’re insinuating that first baby’s mother was a fae then.”

“That’s exactly what I’m insinuating.” Ren gave her one last book. “But the real exciting part is that she was related to Lailah. Years ago, when Charlotte told me about Gostog, she said that Lailah had white hair because she was the purest of the pure. The most beautiful of all angels. I thought the hair color was odd, but it made no difference to me, so I didn’t think too much of it. It would explain why she was kept around for so long and not killed though. A devil has no use for an angel, but they might if they’re mixed with a being whose blood they crave. It would also explain why that first child was allowed into the heavens when all other half bloods aren’t. Because she was special with her white hair and fae wings. The purest of the pure. The most beautiful of all creatures. Just like Ivy. Just like Zero.”

Pulling the books closer, the demon scanned each record of birth of each and every girl born. “But fae only ever give birth to girls.”

“That may be true, but they also never have children with devils, the only beings that are unaffected by their magic. And after so many generations of breeding with angels, it would make sense for the fae blood to become diluted. Possibly enough for a boy to be born.”

The woman gawked at the proof laid out before her, taking her time to let it set in.

It made no sense.

And it made all the sense in the world.

Zero wasn’t emulating Ivy.

He was like her.

“That would mean…” Sakura’s voice trailed off along with her thoughts.

Ren nodded with a toothy grin, satisfied in finding the missing piece he’d been searching for. “Zero’s fae.”