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“Rébecca?” I tilt her chin up.
“Swimming.”
“You were swimming?” I drop my arms to my sides. “This time of the morning? Hell, it’s barely morning.”
“Grandmother says my muscles are wasting away. I need exercise.”
I grit my jaw, my hands balling into fists. “If you want to swim, I’ll swim with you. You can’t be alone in the pool.”
She snorts, turns stubbornly away, and folds her arms across her chest. Well, she does act like a teenager even if she doesn’t look like one. I’m glad for it.
“I’m almost sixteen years old, Azrael. I think I can be alone in a pool.”
“It’s not that. You know that. If something happened—”
Rébecca shrugs, jaw setting even as her eyes grow shiny with tears she won’t allow to fall. “Grandmother would be happy then.”
“No, she wouldn’t. And don’t ever say that again,” I tell her, pulling her in hard to hug her. “You have your appointments with the therapist. You’re getting the exercise your body can handle. She’s not a fucking doctor.”
She pulls back, looks up at me. She studies me with eyes much keener than anyone gives her credit for. Although I’ve been shielding her from what is coming for so many reasons, I know she knows at least a part of it.
“Are you going to do it?”
It’s me who looks away this time.
“Az. Tell me. Are you going to do it?”
“Let’s go back. I’ll make you French toast.” I take a step toward the door.
She tugs my sleeve. “I’ll eat it if you answer me first.”
I sigh.
Rébecca remains silent, watching me with an intensity in her gaze similar to that of the marble statue of Shemhazai.
“I don’t have a choice.” I open the door.
“Maybe it’ll be different than you think. Maybe she’ll—”
“Let’s go. I answered your question. Let’s go in and eat.”
“It’s tonight.”
I don’t quite look at her. I can’t. Instead, I nod once.
“Maybe that’s why your head hurts,” she says, reaching up with both hands to brush the hair at my temples back, her fingers coming to rest on exactly the spots where my head is going to fucking explode.
I close my hands over her tiny ones and draw them away. “Maybe.”
Rébecca is gentle and kind. She is innocent. All things opposite of me. She should hate me for what I will do, but when she wraps her arms around my waist and presses her cheek to me, I find myself taken aback. I rub her back, feeling again how small she is.
“You’re good, Az. You can’t do anything bad. It’s not in you.”
I stiffen at her words as the memory of the dream replays, visions of Elizabeth Wildblood. Of what the sight of her at the very end did to me, that her fear and her terror didn’t sicken me. That’s not exactly a sign of someone who is good.
Ashamed, I push the thoughts aside, afraid she’ll see even those.
“I know you won’t hurt her.” She hugs me again. “Think I can have bacon too?” she asks, drawing back.
I smile down at her, grateful for this change in subject. “You can have all the bacon in the world if that’s what you want. Let’s go, little sis. And no more swimming on your own at the ass crack of dawn, okay?”
“Fine.” She chuckles and takes my hand as we walk out of the chapel.
3
AZRAEL
I was right about it being a long day. It has been. And it will be a longer night.
I stand in the vast library that takes up two floors. It is the space that divides the west wing from the dark wing. My way to the dark wing is through a hidden door, probably something that was created when the house was originally built for servants to come and go unseen. The shelves that line three of the four walls are stacked with leather-bound tomes, some centuries old. Ladders slide along to grant the reader access to the books on the upper shelves.
One wall is a stained-glass masterpiece. Apart from fairly minor repairs my parents made to the window, it is original to the house. As I sip my whiskey and gaze upon the image now, I wonder at the implausibility of such a thing. Even as walls crumbled, this glass somehow survived the ravages of time.
I take in the image as the full moon casts its light through the array of colors. The spotlight is on the beast. Well, beast or angel, depending on who you ask. The beast’s black wings are stretched wide but curve in around the edges almost protectively as he gazes upon what? His prey? Victim? Sacrifice?
If you ask Rébecca, she is his fallen beloved. Only Bec can tell the story in a way that romanticizes an image such as this.
It is that fallen woman I study now, taking in the vibrance of the red hair that spills in a mass of waves through the beast’s fingers. At least her eyes are closed. I don’t think I could stand it if they weren’t. The shades of color in the rest of the glass are dark grays and blues so deep they could be black. Shards of lightning break up the monotony, and although each color is represented, it all fades in the brilliance of the red hair of the woman.
