Beni took a step forward, as if to physically defy her, and she stepped back again, instinctively this time. The backs of her knees hit the bed, and there was something familiar about the way he stood in the doorway. She froze, waiting for him to advance further. Waiting to be thrown onto her back. Her heart beat rapidly in her throat. But Beni stopped right there. He held her in his gaze, evaluating.
Could he see it in her face—how small she’d had to make herself to avoid being crushed?
At once, he turned and left, and the door slammed in his wake. Afterward—for a long, silent moment—Lila stared at the space where his body had been. Where Castor’s body had been. Where hers had been. Knees on the floor. Braid twisted till her scalp ached. The fabric of Castor’s robes brushing her cheek.
She walked up to the door, pressed her hand to its oiled finish. Then she dropped to her knees and screamed.
It felt good, so she screamed again, and again and again, clutching her head in her hands. Bent over, bowed to the marble, her forehead pressed to its cool surface. She screamed until she’d emptied herself, until the ocean of shame and grief threatening to swallow her felt less consuming. Until she could breathe in relief instead of choking on anger.
Gradually, she became aware of her surroundings and sat up. The door was before her, the room behind her. It had felt good to hear her own voice, even if all she could manage was a mindless cry of exhaustion. It had felt good tofeelsomething, todosomething. Anything.
All around her, angels had been doing things. Bad things, or foolish things, butthings.While Lila had been stuck in the fate allotted to her, as though she’d been set there in stone.
When had she become so convinced of her own powerlessness? Was it when she’d been told she couldn’t be an architect? Or later, when she’d fallen for Luc and had realized she couldn’t have him either? Or later, when she’d realized even her body didn’t belong to her? Or had it been more gradual than that, bitterness seeping into her bones until indifference was all she could feel?
Did it matter? The door was before her; the room was behind her; she only needed to move.
Digging into her pocket, Lila pulled out Luc’s pin. She smoothed her finger over it, remembering the awful things she’d said to him in her pain.
She should have said,I’ve always regretted the way I ended things between us.
She should have said,You gave me the only happiness I have ever known. You couldn’t save me from my fate, but I’ve survived on memories of you all this time.
Now she whispered, “I will no longer be second to anyone. Not even you. But I will find you. I will bring you back. You. And Adrianna. I know you’re out there because…you’re Luc. You’re larger than everything. Even the Council. Even the Void. Even Death. You always were.”
With trembling fingers, Lila removed her carpentry pin from her collar and stuck the architect pin in its place. Then she got up, and walked out, and shut the door behind her.
Lila madeher way to the southeast edge of the Void, where the rebel angels had been cast out. If she saw the exact spot where they’d disappeared, maybe she would find some hint of what had happened to them.
The obelisk stood intact, and as she approached, she nearly saw Luc there, gesturing to the Void like it was his playground. Only she couldn’t see the Void itself. The shimmering gold barrier had thickened to opaqueness; it swirled like liquid gold, flowing yet solid enough.
There were guards in the stone watchtowers now, but their sharp gazes glanced off her. She was no one of consequence. Nonetheless, she slowed as she reached the obelisk, trying to glimpse the Void behind the barrier. Even at such a close distance, she couldn’t see the Void at all. How was that possible?
Lila approached the rippling wall, holding out her palm as she’d done before. A guard shouted at her, but she didn’t stop. She didn’t want to go through the barrier, but she needed to touch it, to find out what it was made of. Why it looked different.
A distressed wail from further along the wall sent her stumbling backward, and she spun, searching for the source of the cry.
She turned just in time to see an angel hurtling through the aether, blasted back by the wall. His body slammed into the marble platform, and he lay there groaning until two warrior angels heaved him to his feet.
“Wait, no!” He struggled against them. “Let me out! I have to get out!” he protested as the warriors gripped his arms and wrenched him backward. They were words she might have spoken once. A chill ran down her spine when she heard them come from someone else’s mouth.
Another pair of warriors approached Lila; they commanded her to step away from the barrier, and suddenly, she understood.
Luc could not return. No threat could enter Heaven. But most of all, no one could leave.
Stupidly, the brutal truth reminded her of Luc’s offer the last time they’d spoken:If you don’t like this world, I’ll build a new one. I’ll build it so far away that no one will ever find it. I’ll build it so that no one can cross over from here to there, even if they want to.
Four Hundred and Fifty Thousand Aeons Post-Great War
In a rare shaft of light descending from the dark clouds, Adrianna streaked the crumbling rock wall with an imperfect line of black paint; it clumped in spots and refused to stick in others. The paint dried quickly on her fingers in the parched air, and where paint flicked into her matted hair, there it stayed, matting her hair further. Her brush rasped against the rough wall, the only sound in the dark alleyway, though far off she could hear the wind howling and the inhabitants of Hell terrorizing each other in the darkness of their decrepit dwellings.
Tomorrow, graffiti would cover the painting. The next day, the entire building would give way, collapsing beneath the weight of its rot. But there was no end to Adrianna’s grief. Her guilt. Like the Void, it ever encroached. The only thing that had lasted aeons in this pit of accelerated decay was the debt she owed Eva.
Pulling her brush away with a jerk, she wiped it on her filthy, threadbare black jeans, then stuck the brush in her back pocket. She’d been trying to recreate the Great Hall’s stage, but she couldn’t remember it properly anymore. Not that she would have had the colors to paint it if she did. Her paintings were nothing but dark stains on dirty stones, and that shaft of light couldn’t make them anything more.
Kicking over her cracked pot of paint, Adrianna shoved her hands into the pockets of her black leather jacket. She stepped out of the alleyway andglanced up at Lucifer’s distant tower. A light shone there too, dim through the smog. A sign that he was up there, pacing about and clawing his hair while he surveyed his wretched kingdom.
The humans had different names for him, the angel who’d brought death and destruction to their world. Prince of Darkness. Father of Lies. Leviathan. Dragon. Devil.
