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"I ask your forgiveness," he said. "For losing faith. It won't happen again."
"You will see her again, Jonah."
Jonah looked toward Lucifer. "When she'll have no memory of me but perhaps a lingering smile. Or sadness." He shook his head. "It doesn't matter, Luc. I will honor her memory by never straying from what she brought me back to. I never deserved her to begin with."
"No one deserved her more," Luc rejoined. But Jonah was already winging away into the darkness.
"He goes to mourn her," one of the captains said. A request for reassurance. "Can't we--"
Lucifer placed a hand on the captain's shoulder. "He'll be all right. He doesn't know it, but he flies into the Lady's arms, even now. Let Her take care of him."
THERE was a place in the universe Jonah preferred for his meditation after battle. It had a vantage point of the Milky Way, and he hovered there now, willing his mind to clear as he stretched out on a dense blanket of energy to hold him. He made his muscles ease, one by one, but the act allowed other things to sweep through him, over the shields against his emotions.
Anna, before his sword. Soft hair blowing around her, unafraid, even as he stood there like a Grim Reaper. Blood on her face from his fist, the power of his energy used against her. The rising cries of his captors egging him on. Kill her. Kill her.
He knew what he must have looked like, caring not who or what he killed. His eyes red fire, his heart no longer his own, a specter more terrifying than the army of Dark Ones behind him.
She'd opened her arms to him, her gaze seeing him, seeing past it all. Wisdom he'd known, but somewhere along the way the blackness of his soul had painted over it. The hope of the world was not in the complex theories of the philosophers or the politics of men, but simply in this. The power of love and creation, a touch of love and forgiveness waiting just a step away . . .
He'd felt it pervade him, her life essence, all her love for him. She'd given him another unbearably poignant gift. He understood that wisdom again; the blackness washed away. He knew why the Goddess had done what She'd done. A spark could grow into a flame, and when that light spread, all darkness would be warmed by it.
He remembered what Anna had said about Ix Chel and the underwater caves, how the Mayans had seen the openings to the caves as tunnels to the Underworld, to rebirth. Healing.
When Anna's blood had mixed with his, light had exploded through him, through his empty chest. He'd roared at it, at the feel of her mortally wounded body in his arms, even as her magic and the magic of the seawitch rushed through him. Dark Ones around him screaming in agony, scattering before that light. Anna's light became his as the coffin carrying his heart simply turned to dust in the hands of the one carrying it, and he felt its power and weight flood his chest again. The power to feel, to ache, yes. But also the power to love, which he now knew was greater than any agony, any loss.
Her smile . . . her touch . . . her faith in him. He couldn't lose faith. No, he wouldn't. For her. But his heart, the one she'd restored or given, felt so empty. To be able to hold her, press his face in her hair, smell it . . .
Her hair. He recalled the bracelet he wore for the first time, and it choked him to find it still there. The knot in his chest was so painful he pressed his wrist to his forehead, trying to feel past the loss. Burying his hands in her hair. Her laughter. She'd been a miracle.
A gift.
Her energy surrounded him, replacing his incorporeal bed with the substantial coils of Her presence, a warmth and comfort, but filled to brimming with all the grief and loss he'd experienced. Such that it was the easiest thing then to turn on his side, pull his wings over his head so he would not shame himself before Her, and let it take him.
He didn't think, didn't wonder why things couldn't be different, didn't imagine anyone to blame. He simply felt, loved and grieved.
The harsh sobs that wracked him went on for a long time. Perhaps a day, a week on Earth . . . one thousand years of pain unleashed. Her light built around him, charged with Her compassion, holding him, rocking him.
When at last he was done, She had him completely encapsulated, carrying him, cocooning him. Until Her gentle hand eased back a wing to see his face.
"My handsome, weary angel. You have suffered much for me, Jonah. Even angels who are warriors are beings of light, of life. To be immersed in death and destruction for so long, with such evil, it wears upon you, the soul, the mind."
He saw it in Her eyes, what Lucifer had tried to say about Her. "We all suffer, my Lady. For evil is something that will always be with us."
"But then why do you fight?"
"Because we must." He thought of the row of pictures in Anna's cottage. "She ended up dead, just as they did, but it wasn't that she feared. It was dying without hope, without light or purpose. Mina was right. The condition of the spirit will ever be the spark. The spark is You. And me. All of us."
He felt Her soft smile. "You said the witch's name rather than calling her Dark Spawn. There is hope for my stern and immovable angel yet."
In that one gentle moment of humor, his heart poured open to Her. He felt Her within him, himself in Her, and there was a stillness to him that made the sadness that much more acute and bearable at once. And She saw that as well.
"You've given me so much, Jonah. You've earned the honor of Full Submission long before now."
He considered that, straightening up to sit cross-legged on the bed created by Her energy alone, since all of his had gone into his grief. "Perhaps it is a male way of thinking, my Lady," he said slowly, "but I am charged to protect you, as I was to protect Anna. Because I was hers and she was mine. It's a part of what You are, but more than that, I don't wish to abdicate the ability to see right and wrong, to protect you when you need it."
"Even when I do not think I need it? I am at least over four billion years old, Jonah." At his uncomfortable shrug, her amusement surrounded him. "You are right, my Commander. It is very male thinking. No wonder you and my Lord get along so well."
"Lucifer."
"Yes." Myriad emotions curved around him. "He is my balance, as you know. And yet, that balance is strong because it shifts, grows, struggles . . ."
"Are You saying the two of You . . . argue?" He could not get his mind around such a thing, but then he remembered standing on a Sea of Glass, challenging Her, and a flush rose in his cheeks.
Her laughter was the winds, moving the stars and spinning them so they glittered like diamonds.
"I remember a bitter moment, after Ronin's death, when you mocked the text that said God made man in His own image. You thought there could be no greater insult to me. But what was in that one spark was the deepest essence of my image. An extraordinarily complex ab
ility to love, so complex it wars with the dark side of human nature constantly. It is the greatest gift I can give, and I hope that spark will never allow the darkness to gain dominance in the human heart, for their sakes as well as my own."
She grew serious then, the stars stilling, only flickering. "The Dark Ones have never understood, not since the beginning. I could tell them, but I don't think they would ever understand. It is their greatest weakness, as well as ours. It is also our greatest strength against them. You were more right than you know. Because even if they have an angel fighting at their head, if that angel is there because of a sacrifice of love, not because of a true surrender to evil, then love can call him back and turn the tide.
"You were so close at one point to proving that wrong . . ." She materialized enough for him to see the hint of a woman's face, so beautiful and timeless it made him miss Anna all that much more, even as he could not help but feel the peace She had to offer. It also made him remember how the poison had intertwined with his rage and grief and brought him to ugly places in himself . . . the red anger of Anna's back . . . his avoidance of the Joining Magic, of anything that would lead him back into the Lady's embrace . . .
Her gaze saw and knew it all. "But it was Anna's love that called you back to yourself, kept calling you back to yourself, until you were ready to step back onto the path yourself. It is always the way of it. We none of us do this alone.
"Anna's gift was that she was a complete balance. Through her shapeshifting, she was connected to all elements--fire as the phoenix, water as the mermaid, air as the fairy, and of course her flesh is of the earth. That is also why the magic was even stronger when you brought love forth in her."
Her tone softened. "Lucifer was also right, what he said about you deserving her. You did deserve her, Jonah, for all your many years of service. That's why she is my gift to you." She paused, and the universe turned around him, dark and light, all the planets and the stillness that existed out here, as well as within him.
That's why she is my gift to you.
Jonah's heart pounded up into his throat. "My Lady?"
"She waits for you in her ocean. Why do you make her wait, sitting up here talking to an old, old, old woman?"
