“A soul cannot be destroyed,” Caim stated.
“His was,” Kobal replied, and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Bale edging closer to the ocean of fire and trying to come up along the side of Caim.
Caim glanced nonchalantly at Bale before focusing on Kobal again. “That’s a first. My brother must be pissed you took his toy away.”
“My father’s soul wasn’t a toy!” I retorted.
Caim shifted so that he stood half in and half out of the shadows. “Your father is Lucifer, my brother. His blood runs strong in you. It has forged you and your line. It will forge your children’s line too. If you live to have children.”
The sound Kobal made caused Caim to slip further into the dark and the skelleins to raise their swords. “Wait!” I gasped, knowing Caim was preparing to leave. “I deserve answers!”
Caim’s face reemerged. I blinked as the shadows surrounding him created the effect of a disembodied head. Then, he rippled his wings, and I realized it wasn’t the shadows creating the effect. His body had transformed into a raven, while his head remained a man’s.
“The fall started the break in the connection,” Caim said. “The shearing of our wings made it so only the slightest of threads remained between us and life. I can still recall my desperation to hold onto that thread with everything in me.”
A look of yearning spread across his face, and his head bowed for a minute. “Some of my fellow fallen made choices that severed the last of their thread while we were still on Earth. Others lost it when we followed Lucifer from the human realm into this one.”
He lifted his head and those multi-hued ebony eyes met mine. “I felt the snapping of the connection when the gate closed behind us. It was a loss so profound that only madness could follow, and follow it did, for all of us.”
“And are you no longer mad?” I asked.
“Sometimes even the lost soul of a monster can rise from the madness to see the truth.”
“What is the truth?” Kobal inquired.
“That to continue this path and do nothing to stop it would make me something far worse than a monster. If Lucifer succeeds, he will annihilate all the realms and all those who reside in them. I may be one of the fallen, but I will not be a part of that. I love my brothers and sisters, but I cannot allow them to continue this destruction.”
Everything in me screamed that none of the fallen angels could be trusted, that he was most likely here for Lucifer and to manipulate us, but the desperation in Caim’s gaze pulled at me. I found myself believing him.
“So you want to know if the severing of the bond can happen to you. It can,” Caim continued. “One wrong step can weaken it, and with each weakening, it becomes easier and easier to take those wrong steps until one day it’s gone, and all you’re left with is…”
“Emptiness,” I said at the same time he did.
A small smile curved the edges of Caim’s full mouth. He didn’t possess the ethereal beauty of Lucifer, but his near perfect features and raven wings were striking.
“Why are your wings different than the others?” I asked.
“I sliced the wings from my body to try to survive on the human realm. However, I could never sever my bond to the raven within me. All angels were created with small differences to give us something unique when not much is unique in Heaven. I am one of the few who possessed a significant difference from my siblings. That difference is my ability to embrace the raven’s spirit and form. It’s a bond that survived all the things I’ve done. The raven has made it so I can see past the insanity the loss of my connection to life created. Perhaps it is that bond which also allows me to retain a piece of the benevolence that once ruled me. There are always endless questions, but there are never answers for all of them.”
My fingers dug into Kobal’s skin as Caim slid further into the shadows again. “If I choose to join Kobal, if I died and became a demon, would it sever my bond to life?” I blurted before he could leave.
This time Caim didn’t remerge from the dark as he uttered his reply. “Yes.”
My heart sank. I wanted to scream denials at him, but I knew he was right. Kobal had known it for a while now. A crushing sensation squeezed my heart as my last bit of hope for an eternity with Kobal burst like a bubble.
“You cannot embrace your demon side without experiencing the madness,” Caim continued. I heard a flutter of wings, and then a shadow rose to swoop across the ceiling of the cavern. “Know that you have someone working with you from the inside now.”
The raven dipped to the side before vanishing out of the cavern over the heads of the skelleins. Stunned silence followed his disappearance.
“He could be lying about the experiencing madness thing,” Corson finally said, and I knew he was only trying to give Kobal and me some hope.
“He’s not.” I tore my attention away from where Caim had been and to Kobal. His eyes eased from their amber color to their pure, obsidian depths. “He may be lying about turning against Lucifer, and he probably is, but he’s not lying about the severing of the bond.” I placed my hand against my chest, over my heart. “Ifeelthe truth of his words.”
Kobal wrapped his hand around my neck and pulled me against his chest. Tears burned my eyes, but I refused to shed them. I clung to him, my fingers digging into the solid flesh of his back.
He bent his head and rested his lips against my ear. “We have to get out of here. He could be bringing Lucifer back.”
I reluctantly released him and leaned against his side as he led me away from the oracle.
