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When she dropped her palms, there were drops on her cheeks from her tears, rivers of black mascara smeared against her skin. “He’s not coming back. No one is coming for us. We’re stuck here…and we’ll die here.”
I turned back to her, seeing the raw defeat, seeing the way she’d given up before she’d even tried. “We aren’t going to die here, Beatrice. We’ll find a way out, alright? It might take a while, but we will. Don’t give up hope.”
“Come on…” She sniffled and looked at me. “The only way we’re getting out of here is if—”
“We try.” My hand moved to hers, and I gripped it. When everyone panicked, it somehow made me calmer. When everyone gave up, it made me try harder. I was never the leader in any scenario, but once that position was permanently vacant, I had to fill it…because no one else would. “We must try, Beatrice. Each of us is fighting the clock, because they’ll eventually figure out we aren’t really angels and they’ll replace us with another batch. So, we need to work together and find a solution. I understand you feel hopeless because I feel hopeless too, but think of Claire. She’s got two parents. Benton did his best…and now it’s your turn.”
I was guided through the dark by Rebecca, who led the way with a torch, taking me through the camp where the Malevolent watched me from their shadows. Wearing the wings regularly caused my shoulders to be sore. It was like wearing a backpack stuffed with textbooks all the time.
I made it to the building with no windows, the dark church where Forneus awaited my arrival. The Malevolent didn’t scare me as much as they had before because they were clearly bottom-feeders here, just henchmen with a mindless purpose. But Forneus did scare me…because he was clearly insane.
The door was locked behind me like last time, the room was lit with hundreds of candles, and the space smelled like decades of melted wax and dust. He sat on his iron throne, his hands gripping the jagged edges, his eyes down on the floor and his sinister smile gone.
I lowered myself into my white throne and clutched the edges, forcing my body to relax despite the anxiety in my chest. Laura warned me that their rules were easily broken, and just because they said you were safe didn’t mean you actually were. Now I was more timid, my guard as high as it could go.
I’d told Rebecca that I wasn’t an angel—and now I feared that might get me killed.
The best way to survive this place was to be whatever they wanted, even though it made me sick to my stomach to play out their twisted fantasy. It was submission—and I didn’t want to submit to these demons and monsters.
But I had to survive.
His gaze remained on the floor, deep in thought, as if he wasn’t aware that I had joined him at all.
I didn’t dare speak. We could sit here in silence all night—fine by me.
“Angel.” He lifted his gaze and directed his brown eyes on me, a plea in his gaze. “I repent, I ask for forgiveness, I vow to be different…but then I go back to my old ways. I want to walk with the angels, but I simply don’t know how.”
What the fuck was I supposed to say to that? What would Laura say? How had she done this for two years? I’d skimmed a lot of the books on my shelf, not to understand the material, but to understand what I was dealing with. I used it to my advantage. “To be alive is to sin. To be divine is to ask for forgiveness. Any man who walks this earth will live his life this way. But repentance will open the gates at the end of this journey.”
His eyes narrowed slightly on my face, as if those words caused an evocative reaction in his mind. His stare continued for seconds, and those seconds turned into minutes. The light from the flames cast slight shadows across his face, highlighting his high cheekbones. “Then I ask for forgiveness once more.”
“What was your sin, Forneus?” He seemed to be the man in charge of this place, and the more I learned about him, the more information I would have to get free.
“I bore false witness.”
I wondered if he was referring to Benton.
He took his time before he continued. “I told a man that his lover and daughter were dead—and that was a lie.” He bent one arm so he could rest his closed knuckles against his cheek, looking defeated, as if he actually felt guilty for what he’d done, even though he would do it again if given the chance.
“Why?” I dropped my angel persona because I needed to know this information, to understand exactly what had happened yesterday. “Why did you lie to him?”
