Read URIEL: The Price (The Airel Saga, Book 6) (Young Adult Paranormal Romance) for Free Online

began to gasp for air; I fell to my knees.
    The spinning mirrors now started to rotate independently, a jagged kaleidoscope showing millions of versions of me, of Airel, the invisible girl, now reflected and on display as she truly was, no masks, no lies, and no illusions. Just me. Just me and everything I had done and missed in life. I felt like an utter failure.
    Then the kaleidoscope sped up and became merged into one image: It was me—it wasn’t me. It was like me—it wasn’t like me. Perhaps I was like it—maybe that was more accurate. It was masculine, it was feminine, it was neither. It was a presence.
    I was very still. I was filled with more fear than I had ever felt before; I was filled with joy to bursting. She?
    “Stand.”
    I stood, slowly. “Who are you?”
    “You already know.”
    I was silent, my mind flitting like a bird from one branch of thought to another—school crushes, funerals. Weddings, family trips, my first loose tooth. Relationship drama. Grades. Seasons. I realized that I was only one of many created beings for whom everything had slipped out of control. This happened to everyone. It was normal. Intentional. Part of the design. How could that be part of the plan? Isn’t it imperfect? Flawed?
    “Life under the sun is found in places like this, Airel. The flaws serve the truth by bearing witness to just how true Truth is. Mountains are mountains not just because of themselves, but because of the valleys that show their size, scope, and grandeur.”
    I soaked in this. “But I feel so inadequate. Like such a failure. If I could have had more time . . . I could have done more. I could have been more.”
    “You keep trying to do things alone, in your own power, but you miss the real strength. True power only comes by trusting in what is beyond you.”
    I began to weep. But why?
    “Because I love you.”
    “Yes,” I argued again, “but why?”
    I felt She smile, and the sun shattered the clouds high above, spilling over me like water, cascading over every part of me, warming me. “I will never leave you. I love you just as you are, but I will not leave you that way.”

CHAPTER VIII
    Arabia, 788 B.C.
    THE BROTHERHOOD FORCES WERE SLAMMING against the gates, against the walls; they were everywhere at once. The captain of the watch issued the call for every able body to come to the aid of the warriors at the walls, whether man, angel, or halfbreed.
    Cries rang out across the gathering night as Yamanu and his cohort approached. He heard the captain on the wall below. “Brace the gate! They are bringing fire!”
    Yamanu, Zedkiel, and Veridon wheeled in the air high above the action, and the scene below them was not encouraging. Demon Brothers harnessed to heavy siege works by iron chains pulled, straining to wheel them to the base of the walls. Of these, Yamanu could see that the horde had fashioned at least four ballistae, crossbows so huge that they could fire bolts the size of small trees. The first one had already launched the opening salvo, a beam of wood the breadth of a man’s shoulders and five times his height, the tip of which had been honed to a point, slathered in bitumen, and set ablaze prior to release. It struck the wall beside the gate and held fast for a moment in the joint between several stones, burning and sending flames upward until it fell under its own weight. It rolled back and away, setting the scrub of the forest afire.
    The next engine of war released its deadly projectile, this one striking the main gates. It caused them to shudder violently under its impact, its sharp tip piercing one of the cubit-thick assemblies of planks of which the gates had been built. The blazing bitumen went to work, and the gate began to burn.
    More bolts flew as the angels descended from the air to the top of the wall. One more bolt struck the gate while two others flew wild and bounced off impotently.
    Yamanu lit on the wall’s fighting top, looking around. Already, the horde had