“Seth!” I gasped, stalking over to the rectangular oak table my dad had hand made one summer in an effort to be more…. human. Although, I had not personally met another human that whittled their own furniture, I couldn’t fault her dad for trying. Besides he was really proud with how much money he was convinced we saved. “I didn’t know you were going to eat all of them! Those pancakes are like gold around here! What am I supposed to eat for lunch now? And for dinner?” I demanded, forgetting all about the way his abdominal muscles folded over each other while he leaned over his plate, shoveling heaping forkfuls of my favorite meal into his greedy, perfectly formed mouth.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, with a mouth full of food. “You should be more specific next time.”

I was normally a very good-humored girl, I rarely let things bother me and most of the time could laugh about any situation. Most of the time. Stolen pancakes and no lunch was not one of those times.

“I think you should put at least half of those back! Do you really need….” I counted what was left of them in my head quickly, “seventeen pancakes just for breakfast?”

Seth nodded enthusiastically, “Yes, I really do.” He reached for Jupiter’s coffee next, taking down what was left in the cup in one, quick swig. Jupiter didn’t even look up. Grumpy, ill-mannered, temperamental Jupiter didn’t care that Seth had stolen the last few drinks of coffee, because apparently Jupiter was used to Seth’s thoughtlessness. That bothered me even more. The last drop of someone’s cold, bitter coffee was one thing. Annabelle’s chocolate chip pancakes were an entirely different matter.

“Stella, he did fight a battle last night,” Jupiter reminded me in a voice that very much sounded to me like a reprimand.

“A tiny battle!” I squeaked. “Really, I’m not sure we can even call it a battle at all! It was more like a skirmish. Or a…. a…. warm up exercise! I don’t think his one act of bravery last night accounts for eating every single pancake left in this house,” I finished in a grumble. Jupiter and Seth both raised their eyes to meet mine as if they could hardly believe my ungratefulness. I decided to push my luck just a little bit further, “Besides…. What if he gets fat? I mean, he is my Counterpart! I should be worried about stuff like that, right?” A blush crept up my neck and flowered across my cheeks. I knew I had gone too far, but what had fallen out of my mouth felt more like uncontrollable vomit than an actual, rational argument.

“You’re worried about me getting fat?” Seth moved from his seat with lightening quick speed. I hardly had time to comprehend he wasn’t sitting anymore before he was standing directly in front of me, with both of his arms pressing against the counter on either side of me, pinning me in. “Let me assure you, my weight gain is nothing for you to be concerned about.” Seth’s amber colored eyes glowed with frightening intensity and the way his dark hair fell across his forehead made me wonder if he was more Fallen than Angel. He reached for my hand, with one dangerously strong one of his own and pressed my palm against his flat, muscular stomach. “These are genetic; I wouldn’t worry about a few pancakes distorting your eye candy.”

The flush that burned itself into my face, now deepened across my collar bone. I didn’t dare move my hand until Seth took his off mine, and then I retracted my fingers with the speed of my own angelic heritage, causing a smug smirk to break out across Seth’s face.

“I get your point,” I mumbled, not willing to back down from this fight. “But I still don’t appreciate the way you have come in here and just snatched all of the pancakes up.”

“Point taken,” Seth didn’t immediately move from the bicep-cage he built around me. He enjoyed watching me squirm because of him. But then his eyes turned soft and he held my gaze, igniting the connection that tied us together, the one that I couldn’t even fully understand yet. Maybe it was the independent nature that tied us to all of God’s creation or because I was impossibly tiny standing next to him but I felt impossibly fragile and delicate. I instinctively knew that without him by my side I didn’t stand a chance against even a small army of Shadows, let alone the entire forces of Darkness mobilized against me and this planet.

“Seth,” Jupiter chastised from across the room. The tone of his voice reminded Seth that he was a Counterpart. A Warrior. And his behavior at the moment resonated in the completely inappropriate department.

Seth gave me a good natured, casual smile and then stood up straight. He held my gaze for a few moments longer, unable to tear his gaze away from mine that I could feel had just started to glow under the strain of my emotions. But which emotions were making them glow? That was a question I was afraid to get to the bottom of.

“I’m going to see if Annabelle needs any help,” I choked out, in a tightly strained voice. I broke the hold of Seth’s gaze first, hating that we already fought, that I already made things awkward for my Warrior. I sighed, frustrated with myself and flew up the servant stairs before anyone could object, or remind me what a terrible hostess I was playing. Or even worse, what a terrible Star was being.

“Please tell me that won’t be a problem with her training,” I heard Jupiter ask once I was around the corner. He almost sounded amused and I so I paused on the stairwell, recognizing that Jupiter rarely felt amused.

“That won’t be a problem with her training,” Seth spouted back word for word. The huge smile probably lighting up his face completely evident in his voice. I was sure Jupiter would be convinced that whatever he was talking about would definitely be a problem with my training. I got nervous just thinking about it.

----

After spending the majority of my day locked in my room, pretending that getting mad about pancakes was completely normal, and skipping lunch, I decided it was time to face the music…. or Seth, in this case. And I decided I should probably acknowledge that he actually did fight a battle last night. Jupiter and he had been gone most of the day getting what they could fly back with and packing the rest of it to have shipped here, but I could hear them down in the kitchen now and knew I needed to face them.

I texted Tristan on the way down the stairs, explaining that I would be a few minutes late, something he was used to and probably expecting. I hoped my Jeep would make it into town, knowing I couldn’t risk having Tristan come to my house and meet Jupiter. He texted more questions, but I ignored them. Just like I ignored the feeling in my gut warning me not to do what I was about to.

Seth sat at the kitchen table with Jupiter, going over something out of an extremely old looking, leather bound book. They peered over it with a kind of quiet reverence, and I could see a haze of dust floating around the cracked pages. Or were the pages glowing….

Seth looked up at me when I entered the kitchen and smiled. His smile was easy going and happy, but the look in his eyes seemed to be always calculating, always waiting for something to happen. He was a trained Warrior, a lesser Angel; I couldn’t expect anything else from him.

“Hey, what are you guys doing?” I peered over the table and recognized the pages of the book written in the old language. I couldn’t read it yet, but Seth seemed to have no trouble. “What is that?”

Jupiter barely spared me a glance, staring intently at the pages in front of him. His finger moved under the symbols and foreign language with seemingly exact comprehension. I wondered how Jupiter had come to learn the old language, he wasn’t a Warrior, not even a lesser Angel, and I highly doubted my kind went around to other planets teaching the sacred dialect to every species.

“It is the Alpha Hieros,” Jupiter answered blandly.

“The Sacred Beginning….” I whispered, realizing I stood in a room with one of the oldest, most sacred documents in the history of the universe. I stilled, hovering over the table and came to the realization that the pages actually were glowing. They shined with a golden hue, as if they themselves were made of light. “You can both read it?” I whispered, afraid my very breath would distort the pages.

“Seth has been…. taught to read in this language, so that after I am gone, he may interpret the text,” Jupiter explained.

“And you?” I pressed, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that this book, the history of my people, the account of the war waged between light and dark was shared only between Stars and Angels. Jupiter, no matter what his charge, shouldn’t be in possession of this book. And if it was given to him, for whatever divine purpose, then that was highly out of the ordinary.

“I was given….” Jupiter paused, looking up at me with eyes that flashed the deepest burgundy, like the color of old wine, before settling back into a muddled burnt maroon, “I was gifted with the ability to read your language, so that it would not become forgotten on this planet.”

I thought for a moment about his response, and decided that he must be telling the truth because there was no other way to learn the language than miraculous intervention. At one time, the Earth’s language mimicked that of the Angel’s that walked amongst humanity, as did every other planet created. But over time, and with the destruction of all other life throughout the entirety of space, save for Earth, the language had been forgotten by mankind, removed for the protection of its consecrated words.

The different races of Earth now held their own dialects and the written text passed down from God Himself, retreated to the heavens. Except for this book. This book was all that remained in the possession of the army that fought against the Darkness.

I stared for a moment longer as the two men leaned over the text, but when Seth’s eyes drifted back to me, I decided I needed to be polite. He was part of my world now, and it felt wrong to leave him at home while I went off to workout.

“Seth, I’m going running with one of my good friends, do you want to come?” I asked casually, leaving out the fact that my good friend was actually my best friend and he was a boy. I had no reason to, and the logical part of my brain told me Seth wouldn’t care either way, not to mention he would find out soon enough anyway. Still, a warning flared in my belly telling me this was a bad idea. “I know you are probably sore or whatever from last night, but I thought you might like to get out of the house and…. stretch your legs.”

“Are you running outside?” Seth asked, leaning forward in his chair. At least he had thrown a t-shirt on.

“No, we, uh…. we go run at the high school. There is a track above the basketball court,” I explained, smiling casually. I felt another surge of guilt, knowing I was leaving out the part where we had to break into the gym first. I hoped Seth wouldn’t have too much of a moral dilemma with the whole breaking and entering thing. I was positive it went against his angelic nature, but I reasoned that there was much worse trouble we could get into.

“That does sound nice,” Seth thought it over for a second. “You won’t mind if I tag along?”

“No, not at all!” I assured him. “It will give you a chance to meet someone else that goes to school with us.”