Discovered

As the elemental angel of earth, it did not take long to track down Levana's location for Uriel. Where Azazel had some talent with earth magic, it could not be compared to the level of mastery that Uriel had.

Arriving outside her room, he stopped there for a while as he sensed his adoptive daughter's stationary presence. He noted that she hadn't moved since he first located her, not even a little bit. 'Is she asleep?' he wondered.

His hesitation due to the wish to not disturb her failed the struggle against his concern as to her reason for not participating in her daily training. Decided, he rapped at the door with his knuckles and waited for a sound or some movement, but there was none. 'Well, that's how she avoided Azazel's detection,' he mused.

It was rude to barge into another's residence or office if they were not a familial or intimate relation, so propriety is what had spared Levana from discovery earlier in the day. However, it was Uriel at her door this time, so he had no qualms about inviting himself in to check on her.

Opening the door, he slipped into the room and quietly closed the door behind him before moving through the room towards the bed. He had sensed that she was on the other side of the bed, and after rounding it, he dropped to the floor hurriedly with worry.

Levana wasn't asleep. She was very much awake but seemed to be paralyzed with fear clearly on display on her face.

What he was seeing now was something he rarely saw amongst angels, but he had seen it with humans in the throes of death. It was deathly fear that penetrated deep, paralyzing the mind and body, and it was where the term "frightened to death" originated from amongst the humans.

It was an acute episode of what would be later called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but she was at the stage where she hadn't come out of the reliving the trauma. Whatever happened to set it off was playing like a broken record player in her mind.

Being more of a fatherly figure at this moment than he had been in years, Uriel gathered her in his arms and found that she had started trembling after being picked up.

'Should I call for help? Who? Raphael?' his mind began to race. He recalled she had been fine before and that other than freezing on the battlefield, she displayed no other issues afterwards. 'Should I call Azazel in case he missed something in his report?' He immediately discarded the idea of calling for Azazel, solely based on his attitude at Uriel's office earlier.

He started to get up to carry her from the room, when she stopped shaking and firmly grabbed at his robe. "No don't!" she shakily warned.

Uriel froze and looked down upon her in his arms to see that she had regained some lucid thought. Though she was uneasy, it seemed that his action of trying to move her had pulled her out of her frozen state of mind. "What happened?" he softly demanded as he tried to leash his anger as he didn't know where to direct it yet.

"They're dangerous, she meekly responded before her eyes grew cloudy as if they were sinking back into horrors, but they also grew misty with tears. How she ended up back in her room or in her adoptive father's arms was lost to her, but she clearly remembered that she had been hunted and that the pursuers were murderers that included her hero, Azazel.

Impatient and unable to suppress the growing rage, Uriel growled lowly, "Who?"

At this, Levana broke down. Pushing her face into his robes, she sobbed as she had thought of her mentor who had saved her on the battlefield. He seemed fair, righteous, a perfect role model, but then he had captured and delivered an angel not much different in age from herself to be killed.

She couldn't bring herself to understand why, nor could she tell Uriel until she cast off these feelings of admiration and gratefulness that she had. If she did so, then she would feel like she had been saved by Azazel only to betray him.

Uriel struggled against the mounting anger and did his best to bottle it and tuck it away so it wouldn't be in his voice when he tried asking again in a strained croon, "Who are you talking about? Who is dangerous?"

After a period of silence other than Levana's crying, Uriel calmed himself a little more and asked in a whisper, "Who are you afraid of?"

Still cradling her, he sat on the edge of her bed and continued to attempt to get an answer from her, however, all his efforts were for naught. She ended up falling asleep after nearly half an hour of crying.

He held her there as he furrowed his brows in thought. Obviously, she didn't feel safe, but safe from what, he did not know. Since he did not know where the source of the problem was, but he had claimed that she was sick, he had to move her until he got more information.

Readjusting her in his arms and glad that it didn't wake her, he carried he out from her room late at night and sped back towards his quarters, where Levana spent her first few years of life.

Sadly, his departure and the bundle in his arms was noticed by those who watched from the shadows, Azazel being one of them.