Page 55 of Sorrow & Strangers

“And you?” she implores. Her voice is soft and smooth, but it still vibrates with power, despite her attempts to mask it. “What do you need, Rafe?”

What do I need? Hasn’t that always been the question I’ve never known the answer to? I need to not be here. I need to not watch my family struggle to find common ground with me, to tiptoe around me, worried that I’ll react badly. I need to not be different from them, the broken one, the angry one.

“It doesn’t matter,” I answer, finally turning to look at her. My grandmother’s dark brown skin glows faintly in the dim light. “Will it hurt?”

“Yes,” the Almighty answers.

“Good.”

The Fall is what I expected. I anticipated the soul-searing agony as my very being is torn apart. Falling from Eden isn’t like flying. Those hated wings, the mark of my species, no longer protect me. Now I am Falling, and my very being is ripped and torn like paper. My wings burn from my back until nothing remains but ash. The golden halo that binds my wrist withers and turns black.

I expected it all. I looked forward to it.

Pain is the only time I feel alive. The sharp burn across my nerves reminds me that I live, that I breathe, that I am. I no longer feel that aching disconnect from everything and everyone around me. For those moments that I hurt, I am not the angry brother, the problem, the different one. Pain is my great equalizer. Pain is fair, but it is temporary, and when it ends, shame always floods the vacant void it leaves behind. Shame that I loved the feeling of pain, the feeling of anger, the feeling of hatred even. At least, when it is self-directed. I am ashamed that I need pain to live, whether causing it or receiving it. I am ashamed that I am so fucking broken that I can’t be like everyone else.

My body forces a loud booming crack from the sky as I pass through the cloud portal, leaving Eden. My eardrums burn and then shatter from the sound, and I doubt there’s anything left of them now. I can no longer hear anything other than the frantic pounding of the blood in my veins. The Silver City glows as I leave it behind.

Spinning wildly through the air, I catch glimpses of the Silver City through the portal, and a fresh wave of pain washes over me, knowing it will be for the last time. I won’t see my family again. I won’t see Luke smile shyly at us while trying to figure out something. I won’t see Zach and Zane stumble over each other trying to come up with a reason for the rug in the living room being on fire. I won’t smell my mom’s baking, or feel her worried gaze, her encompassing softness and gentleness. I will never know my father’s pride.

As I accelerate toward Avalon, I finally feel clean. Every layer of skin being ripped from my bones takes with it a scar, a memory that sank deep, beneath muscle and bone to mark my soul. Traumatized kids become angry adults, poisoned by the children we never got to be. Enraged that the world kept moving on, that it kept going while we were slowly drowning.

Now, that anger, that injustice, is burning away, and for the first time in too long, I feel new.

My tears of relief burn away before they can fall from my face. Maybe I’ll die. No one would mourn me. They’d be free of my presence. I’d be free of my presence. I’d finally be free from the past that haunts my every breath, of a trauma . . . Of a trauma⁠—

My body slams into the ground, and I know no more.

Chapter Thirty-One

Summer

Isit bolt upright in the bed, the same way I do when my nightmares reach their gory end and then bleed into my reality, but last night wasn’t a nightmare. I was with Connor. My Connor. He was here. He held me, and the sensation of his touch still lingers on my skin. It was so much more than a dream. It was a moment to say goodbye. Goodbye.

Looking around, I try to figure out what woke me up. His room is bathed in silvery moonlight, but nothing looks out of place.

Touching my lips, I remember each kiss, each touch, each moment with Connor, but his words are becoming fuzzy as I enter the realm of consciousness. I concentrate, knowing that they are important, but I am even more confused when I remember.

Watch after Rafe.

Why? Rafe is in Eden. I’m in Avalon. Michael withdrew all celestial beings from the school after last year. He wasn’t transferring back, was he?

A loud, near-deafening boom rattles the house. The windows shake violently in their panes, on the verge of shattering. The floor reverberates, and I grab onto the bed for something to hold on to.

“Summer?” Alice’s panicked call comes from downstairs, and I hurry out of Connor’s bed to her. She must have left the lab early, worried about me.

“Alice?”

She cups my cheeks. “Are you okay? What happened?” she asks, her eyes darting over me, cataloging me for injuries.

“I’m fine. I was sleeping and then⁠—”

Watch out for Rafe.

“Fuck!” I curse and turn, running through the kitchen. I slide the back door open and gasp when I see that the perfectly manicured lawn, the beds of flowers, and the stone pathway are completely destroyed. There is nothing left but a deep crater filled with billowing smoke. Flames lick up the walls, turning the dirt a bright, glowing red. Ash and a smell that I instinctively know is wrong clog the air, pluming in the wind created by the fire.

Alice grips the back of my shirt and walks with me as I cautiously approach the edge of the hole and peer through the smoke into the crater. My heart drops and panic sets in when I see the charred body curled up in the center of the blackened depths.

Alice steps up beside me and wafts some smoke away before pulling something from her pocket. She pours it onto the ground at our feet, and an acrid stench that makes my eyes burn rises from it when it hits the steaming soil. Through my tears, I see the flames flicker and die. A wave of . . . something ripples over the crater, and all the heat dissipates.