Bloodline Contingency: An Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 12), page 57
“You don’t have to do this,” Raphael tried to reason with Astaroth. A force like broken glass scraped against my mind. Everyone on the field groaned as Raphael did. He doubled over, his skin becoming ashen. Kai leaped to him, trying to fill him with angelfire. It was no use. Raphael’s muscular body withered. As we watched, his vigour was sucked out of him until he resembled a very thin prune.
“You were saying?” Astaroth asked.
Lucifer choked on his own spit while trying to speak. He coughed blood onto my shoulder from where I was still attempting to hold him up. In the bond, his fury was as bright as Astaroth was darkness. Underneath it all, Lucifer cared about his brothers too.
Astaroth came over to us and craned his ear towards Lucifer. “What’s that?” Astaroth said. “This is not as amusing as I had anticipated. I grow weary of words. Far better to just get it over with.”
My heart jackhammered inside of me. The Ley dimension skipped backwards with a great effort. It played the sequence over again, giving me a nanosecond to prepare. Astaroth clicked his fingers.
All my magic went into a magic circle that basically did nothing. He’d been humouring me earlier with Charles. Giving me false hope.
Astaroth’s will barrelled into me, crushing my circle. I didn’t feel any pain. Didn’t feel anything as the world suddenly just ceased to exist. My vision turned blurry. The last thing I saw was Kai’s distraught face as he came flying towards me. Everything cut out.
One second.
Two.
My soul slid towards darkness. He’d done it. Astaroth had killed me.
Three seconds.
Four.
Five.
Angelfire lashed around me. That was when the pain arrived. I couldn’t even scream because my throat didn’t exist. The pain was from the reawakening of my nerves as they patched back together.
It wasn’t Kai who was healing me, though. Leia’s sobbing was the first thing I heard when my hearing returned. “Lex,” she cried. “Lex, wake up!”
In the Ley dimension, I finally realised why she was so obsessed with me. She was that part of me that had been full of uncertainty. The part of me that feared. She was all instinct and emotion. She loved me because she was me. And I was her. No wonder she was compelled to need my approval.
My eyes opened. Leia and Kai were both crowded around me. Lucifer’s body had collapsed when I disintegrated. He lay there with his arms outstretched towards me. And in the Ley dimension, I felt Astaroth’s mirth.
“Now this is fun,” Astaroth said. I dreaded the click of his fingers more than death itself. I felt the metaphysical knives coming for me. In the Ley dimension, they were fingers of pure, toxic black. They burrowed through the canvas of stars. They would have hit me right in the chest and destroyed me if something didn’t barrel into me and push me aside.
Leia screamed in such unholy terror that my world seized. She was so deathly afraid and yet she had jumped in front of me.
“Leia!” I yelled, but she didn’t move. I shook her. “Leia!”
There was no pulse. Kai roared. He teleported, and Astaroth caught him by the throat. It felt like he clutched mine too.
“What did you think you were going to do, insect?” Astaroth asked Kai. A horrid choking sound whined from Kai’s mouth. It came from a throat and chest that was caving in on itself. Bones cracked and blood vessels burst. I screamed where Kai couldn’t. My mind blanked, and I regretted hating Leia with every fibre of my being. I was wrong. It wasn’t better if Kai just died. Especially not when Leia wasn’t here to heal him.
I had always managed to come up with something stupid when my back was against the wall, but when I looked inside of me, my darker half was unconscious. She morphed, and when I panned in to inspect her, my whole essence stilled. Leia.
My darker half, the part of me that was all instinct, had died when Leia did. I’d created her to make up for the loss of a part of me. Leia wasn’t weak. She just survived a different way. She was my reason. The thing that kept me from going completely uncivilised.
Now they were both gone.
I launched myself at Astaroth without thinking. The heavenly blade appeared in my right hand. Astaroth’s right arm came out to snatch me by the hair. My weight dragged me down and my scalp tore. It came apart in a big chunk.
“Blue!” Kai gasped. No more Leia. No more Nephilim bond.
I fell into a useless pile next to Lucifer with my head bleeding. His fingers clawed against my neck. He’d lost his ability to speak. The only thing we had left was the bond. In it, I felt his unending sadness.
It’s time to rest, scion of mine.
Except he didn’t mean for me.
A series of images flashed through my mind. It blocked out the cries of the supernaturals as Astaroth started clicking his fingers again. Michael groaned. The earth tore apart beneath him.
My mind filled with the light of the Morning Star. Lucifer engulfed us and pushed us though into another dimension he had been secretly setting up for protection. So that was what he’d been doing while he was in the conservatory. A last-ditch contingency plan.
Lucifer wanted me to stab him and use his exploding essence to escape. He would protect me with his last breath.
I should have grabbed at the chance while I still had it. But one thing stopped me. One stupid, inconvenient thing. I did love him. Crazy as it was, I didn’t want to contemplate an existence without him in it.
And the only logical part of me that was left didn’t know how long we would survive in any dimension with Astaroth coming after us. The only way to beat Astaroth was with an archangel who could match Astaroth’s strength. A respite was all this would buy us.
Lucifer wanted to give me some time back.
I decided I would do him a bigger favour.
I was so sick of death. That was why I gave Lucifer his wish and stabbed him right through the stomach.
Lucifer broke apart, and the world lit up in the light of the Morning Star.
70
Lucifer tried to funnel his essence into grabbing every supernatural on the field and shoving us through a hole in the Ley dimension. Astaroth bellowed. The weight of his rage pressed down on us. I heard screaming, but then blistering white light rose and created a barrier between us.
Live well, scion of mine.
To hell with that.
I snatched at his exploding essence and used it to fuel my power. In the real world, I scrambled and caught hold of Leia’s body. Sachiel had called Leia a heavenly key.
Inside, I grabbed the bond. Only a celestial source of power could create a vessel that could hold Lucifer. I was a part of him, and I had created our bond.
Lucifer was terrified that Leia would make me weak. I was desperately hopeful that she would make him strong.
“Avahrah!” I screamed. Create.
The dimension rocked. Earth shattered, and the skies spewed forth fiery light. The Ley dimension split open, and I saw nothing besides darkness and shooting stars. The pools of my magic waxed and waned. When they almost went dry, the Ley dimension filled them up again.
Creation was slow. I didn’t know how long I stayed in that state, but it didn’t matter. The pain was gone, and I felt only peace.
And then a voice. “What happened to never doing that again?” Azrael asked me.
I heard the slosh of water and didn’t even realise I had been swimming in the Sea of Souls.
Chaos could be comforting if other people were just as confused and scared as you were. There was so much yelling and cursing outside of Sanctuary that I suggested to Raphael that they change the name. He gave me a deadpan look.
“Do not mention this to Michael,” he said. “Everyone is on tenterhooks, and we don’t need–”
Something crashed outside. I jumped up in bed, but Raphael only blinked slowly and sighed. I took it that meant there wasn’t permanent damage. I’d only woken up about an hour ago. I scratched at my cheek. “How long was I in the Sea of Souls for?” I asked.
As usual, Azrael had dumped me here and disappeared. I still felt the echoes of his emotions as a tingle on my skin. It was just weird that it wasn’t all disappointment. My insides felt like they were filled with bubbles because I swore Azrael had felt awe when he fished me out.
Raphael shook his head. “Time works differently in Azrael’s domain. So about three weeks give or take.”
“Three weeks here?”
He nodded.
“Which is what in terms of the Sea of Souls?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Azrael enjoys being cryptic.”
“Tell me about it.”
Raphael touched my foot. “You are not injured, little one.”
I clasped my elbows. “I know.”
“Malachi has been pounding at the ward for about fifty-nine minutes and thirty seconds now.” He smiled softly at me. “At least he gave you thirty seconds of grace.”
I bowed my head. “Exactly how pissed off is he?”
Raphael raised his brows at me. “Hard to say. He’s always annoyed at something on some level.” It was the first time Raphael had admitted to anything negative about Kai. It made me smile.
“Goodness,” Raphael sighed. “He’s being admonished by Matthew, and now they’re having an argument. I must go.”
Steeling myself, I sat straight up in bed as Raphael released the wards that kept me from being swarmed by people. “…not some madhouse!” I heard the end of Matthew’s sentence.
“I don’t care–” Kai’s voice cut off abruptly.
He teleported into the room a second after Raphael released the ward. Angelfire blasted against the door, sealing it back up. His thunderous expression eased some of the worry in me. A pissed-off Kai was still an alive Kai. Though I could probably do with less of the liveliness at the moment.
“Oh,” Kai spat. “Are my emotions a little too much for you, Blue?”
I pressed my hands to my ears, pretending that I was still raw from my return. “Come off it!” Kai snarled. “I can bloody feel you’re okay!”
The bond shimmered with both his rage and his relief. And underneath that, it roared with something else.
Kai’s green eyes turned into hard emerald rocks. “I…” He scraped at the back of his neck. “I don’t even know where to start with you!”
I peeked out from underneath my lashes. “Maybe you don’t need to start then?”
His whole face spasmed. Not bothering to take his boots off, Kai leaped onto the bed. He caught hold of my left ankle and dragged me closer. His aura shook with contained violence. My hackles rose in response.
“You would never in a million years act like this with Leia!”
Ooh, her name was a very unsafe word with him. “Don’t even go there, Blue. I’m this close to–”
I shoved my face right up to his. “To what, exactly?” I hissed. “Do we want to talk about how much of a creep you are?” The bond had shown me that the vision I’d seen of Kai and Leia together was real. The entire time they’d been together, they hadn’t been intimate. Those dreams of us together had been the part of Kai that still loved me. That was desperately trying to get to me, even though he was bonded to Leia.
He loved her—that part of me that was her—but that wasn’t the part that got him going. She was pure, unadulterated love that he didn’t want to soil. I was—heat flared up my neck at what Kai thought and felt when he looked at me with such intensity.
Kai made a ferocious growling sound just before he grabbed me. I screamed in shock and then in anticipation because in his mind, I’d lost the privilege of his gentleness. Which was just as well because I was spitting and clawing at him when he mounted me from behind. It was nice being sweet, but it was a lot nicer being exactly who I was and being loved by him all the same.
Twice.
He didn’t bother asking me if he’d hurt me this time. That was as much punishment as he could bring himself to mete out. Of course, the angelfire that wrapped around me weakened his point quite a bit.
I burrowed into his side and let him be quiet. Only for a few minutes. “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.
“No.”
“Uh-huh.” I pushed myself up on my elbows. “So, we’re just going to ignore the big, golden bond in the room.”
“I said no, Blue.”
“Right. Well, you can just stay here then because I need to go and see if Lucifer is dead or—”
“He’s not dead,” Kai grunted, hating that he knew that. The reason for it glowed green and gold in the bond. The three-way bond that now bound Kai to Lucifer as well. It had happened inadvertently. I’d used Leia’s essence to create Lucifer’s vessel, and she was bound to Kai. How did I not know there would be these kinds of side-effects?
Kai grabbed the sheets and ripped them to shreds. “You could have at least given me a heads up!”
“You’re the moron who bonded with Leia!”
“Stop speaking about her as though you’re two different people!”
“It still feels that way to me!”
That was the concerning part. Kai had woken up with a complete acceptance that Leia and I were one. He couldn’t tell the difference between us. Especially with the bond in place. There was no difference. I was still grappling with the concept.
To me, it didn’t feel like anything had changed. The speck of nothingness that marked my inability to have children still existed.
I had given that part of myself to save Lucifer. It seemed like too much to ask for that small compensation in return.
My darker half was where things got weird. I supposed I couldn’t call her my darker half anymore. Not since she’d gone all reasonable with Leia’s return. She was now the part of me that preached caution. She also urged me to hold my tongue and give Kai the time he needed to come to terms with what had happened.
This would take some getting used to.
Somebody banged loudly on the door with high magic. I supposed we should have been grateful for the time we got.
The snark on my tongue as I got dressed and opened the door died instantly when I saw the scene on the other side. Raphael and Michael held a body each in their arms. I didn’t know the man Michael held, but the dark-skinned Caribbean woman Raphael propped up made me inhale sharply.
“Gabriel?”
She didn’t have enough strength to even lift her head. “Astaroth,” she wheezed. “His legion has infiltrated the heavenly realm.”
For goodness’ sakes! Why couldn’t I even have five minutes?
71
Both Gabriel and her companion Suriel blacked out. Raphael didn’t think it was smart to wake them without giving them time to rest.
“Can you get a sense of what’s happening up there?” Angus asked the seraphim when we congregated in the throne room.
Michael shook his head. “We cannot trespass into the heavenly realm anymore.”
“What about Azrael?” I asked.
Michael leaned over on the throne. “I would not risk it. Azrael must guard the Sea of Souls. The heavenly realm is not broken yet. Therefore, Astaroth’s legion hasn’t taken over completely. We still have time.”
“What happens if the heavenly realm falls?” Ivan asked.
Storm clouds gathered around Michael. “There will be chaos greater than you could ever understand.”
The distant grief in his eyes gave me the impression that if that happened, we would all be too dead to care anyway.
“What about Lucifer?” Matthew asked.
Kai’s jaw locked. Since I wasn’t ready to speak, Kai very reluctantly said, “I think he’s part of the reason why Astaroth hasn’t been able to massacre us all, or the heavenly realm.”
At least when Lucifer blasted Astaroth away, the barriers had broken, and souls were now going where they belonged. That didn’t help much when Haniel was gone. I leaned over in my seat and clutched at my stomach.
I felt Kai trying to send me soothing down the bond, but I didn’t want to be soothed. I wanted Haniel back. Crying about it wasn’t going to get me anywhere, though. I would give myself the grace to mourn when things had settled down. A part of me wanted to stew in guilt that it was all my fault.
My darker half was more forgiving now. She reminded me that I had done what I could. That Haniel had gone out doing what he was made for. He had guarded me until he couldn’t. That was all he had ever wanted.
In the here and now, Lucifer’s absence was very duly noted. “Can you find him?” Angus asked me. We hadn’t told them about Kai’s connection to Lucifer. I’d let Kai do that when he wasn’t teetering on the edge of a temper tantrum.
“I know exactly where he is.”
Thinking that I would find the conservatory empty, I wasn’t prepared to come face to face with a room full of people.
“What the hell?” I cried because I had zero impulse control right now.
A shriek went up into the air from across the crowd. My whole body locked. Kai’s aura fluctuated with trepidation laced with hope.
Cassie pushed past a group of people I could see now were angels. She sprinted at us and jumped into Kai’s arms. He crushed her in his embrace, to the point where she gasped but still didn’t let go of him.
Cassie was a crier too. She sniffed softly. “You’re home, baby,” Kai murmured to her.
She laughed. “I’m not a kid anymore!”
He scoffed. She would always be a baby in his eyes. Her eyes went soft and round when she disengaged from him and turned to me. Her hug was no less crushing than Kai’s. She spun me around, laughing. “I knew you would come for me!” She swiped tears from her eyes. “Are you actually smaller?”
Kai snickered at my scowl. Previously, I had been too heartsick to use the Ley dimension. Now I let it wash over me. Cassie’s aura was almost as blinding as mine. It was so golden and pure I wanted to weep. A niggling part of me kept tugging at my tear ducts. I couldn’t help thinking of Leia. Seriously, was this how it was going to be now?
Peering inside, I faced my darker half and shook my fist at her. We were not going to start sobbing at everything. Instead of baring her teeth at me, she blew me a kiss and winked. Good lord. How was I going to survive this?
“You were saying?” Astaroth asked.
Lucifer choked on his own spit while trying to speak. He coughed blood onto my shoulder from where I was still attempting to hold him up. In the bond, his fury was as bright as Astaroth was darkness. Underneath it all, Lucifer cared about his brothers too.
Astaroth came over to us and craned his ear towards Lucifer. “What’s that?” Astaroth said. “This is not as amusing as I had anticipated. I grow weary of words. Far better to just get it over with.”
My heart jackhammered inside of me. The Ley dimension skipped backwards with a great effort. It played the sequence over again, giving me a nanosecond to prepare. Astaroth clicked his fingers.
All my magic went into a magic circle that basically did nothing. He’d been humouring me earlier with Charles. Giving me false hope.
Astaroth’s will barrelled into me, crushing my circle. I didn’t feel any pain. Didn’t feel anything as the world suddenly just ceased to exist. My vision turned blurry. The last thing I saw was Kai’s distraught face as he came flying towards me. Everything cut out.
One second.
Two.
My soul slid towards darkness. He’d done it. Astaroth had killed me.
Three seconds.
Four.
Five.
Angelfire lashed around me. That was when the pain arrived. I couldn’t even scream because my throat didn’t exist. The pain was from the reawakening of my nerves as they patched back together.
It wasn’t Kai who was healing me, though. Leia’s sobbing was the first thing I heard when my hearing returned. “Lex,” she cried. “Lex, wake up!”
In the Ley dimension, I finally realised why she was so obsessed with me. She was that part of me that had been full of uncertainty. The part of me that feared. She was all instinct and emotion. She loved me because she was me. And I was her. No wonder she was compelled to need my approval.
My eyes opened. Leia and Kai were both crowded around me. Lucifer’s body had collapsed when I disintegrated. He lay there with his arms outstretched towards me. And in the Ley dimension, I felt Astaroth’s mirth.
“Now this is fun,” Astaroth said. I dreaded the click of his fingers more than death itself. I felt the metaphysical knives coming for me. In the Ley dimension, they were fingers of pure, toxic black. They burrowed through the canvas of stars. They would have hit me right in the chest and destroyed me if something didn’t barrel into me and push me aside.
Leia screamed in such unholy terror that my world seized. She was so deathly afraid and yet she had jumped in front of me.
“Leia!” I yelled, but she didn’t move. I shook her. “Leia!”
There was no pulse. Kai roared. He teleported, and Astaroth caught him by the throat. It felt like he clutched mine too.
“What did you think you were going to do, insect?” Astaroth asked Kai. A horrid choking sound whined from Kai’s mouth. It came from a throat and chest that was caving in on itself. Bones cracked and blood vessels burst. I screamed where Kai couldn’t. My mind blanked, and I regretted hating Leia with every fibre of my being. I was wrong. It wasn’t better if Kai just died. Especially not when Leia wasn’t here to heal him.
I had always managed to come up with something stupid when my back was against the wall, but when I looked inside of me, my darker half was unconscious. She morphed, and when I panned in to inspect her, my whole essence stilled. Leia.
My darker half, the part of me that was all instinct, had died when Leia did. I’d created her to make up for the loss of a part of me. Leia wasn’t weak. She just survived a different way. She was my reason. The thing that kept me from going completely uncivilised.
Now they were both gone.
I launched myself at Astaroth without thinking. The heavenly blade appeared in my right hand. Astaroth’s right arm came out to snatch me by the hair. My weight dragged me down and my scalp tore. It came apart in a big chunk.
“Blue!” Kai gasped. No more Leia. No more Nephilim bond.
I fell into a useless pile next to Lucifer with my head bleeding. His fingers clawed against my neck. He’d lost his ability to speak. The only thing we had left was the bond. In it, I felt his unending sadness.
It’s time to rest, scion of mine.
Except he didn’t mean for me.
A series of images flashed through my mind. It blocked out the cries of the supernaturals as Astaroth started clicking his fingers again. Michael groaned. The earth tore apart beneath him.
My mind filled with the light of the Morning Star. Lucifer engulfed us and pushed us though into another dimension he had been secretly setting up for protection. So that was what he’d been doing while he was in the conservatory. A last-ditch contingency plan.
Lucifer wanted me to stab him and use his exploding essence to escape. He would protect me with his last breath.
I should have grabbed at the chance while I still had it. But one thing stopped me. One stupid, inconvenient thing. I did love him. Crazy as it was, I didn’t want to contemplate an existence without him in it.
And the only logical part of me that was left didn’t know how long we would survive in any dimension with Astaroth coming after us. The only way to beat Astaroth was with an archangel who could match Astaroth’s strength. A respite was all this would buy us.
Lucifer wanted to give me some time back.
I decided I would do him a bigger favour.
I was so sick of death. That was why I gave Lucifer his wish and stabbed him right through the stomach.
Lucifer broke apart, and the world lit up in the light of the Morning Star.
70
Lucifer tried to funnel his essence into grabbing every supernatural on the field and shoving us through a hole in the Ley dimension. Astaroth bellowed. The weight of his rage pressed down on us. I heard screaming, but then blistering white light rose and created a barrier between us.
Live well, scion of mine.
To hell with that.
I snatched at his exploding essence and used it to fuel my power. In the real world, I scrambled and caught hold of Leia’s body. Sachiel had called Leia a heavenly key.
Inside, I grabbed the bond. Only a celestial source of power could create a vessel that could hold Lucifer. I was a part of him, and I had created our bond.
Lucifer was terrified that Leia would make me weak. I was desperately hopeful that she would make him strong.
“Avahrah!” I screamed. Create.
The dimension rocked. Earth shattered, and the skies spewed forth fiery light. The Ley dimension split open, and I saw nothing besides darkness and shooting stars. The pools of my magic waxed and waned. When they almost went dry, the Ley dimension filled them up again.
Creation was slow. I didn’t know how long I stayed in that state, but it didn’t matter. The pain was gone, and I felt only peace.
And then a voice. “What happened to never doing that again?” Azrael asked me.
I heard the slosh of water and didn’t even realise I had been swimming in the Sea of Souls.
Chaos could be comforting if other people were just as confused and scared as you were. There was so much yelling and cursing outside of Sanctuary that I suggested to Raphael that they change the name. He gave me a deadpan look.
“Do not mention this to Michael,” he said. “Everyone is on tenterhooks, and we don’t need–”
Something crashed outside. I jumped up in bed, but Raphael only blinked slowly and sighed. I took it that meant there wasn’t permanent damage. I’d only woken up about an hour ago. I scratched at my cheek. “How long was I in the Sea of Souls for?” I asked.
As usual, Azrael had dumped me here and disappeared. I still felt the echoes of his emotions as a tingle on my skin. It was just weird that it wasn’t all disappointment. My insides felt like they were filled with bubbles because I swore Azrael had felt awe when he fished me out.
Raphael shook his head. “Time works differently in Azrael’s domain. So about three weeks give or take.”
“Three weeks here?”
He nodded.
“Which is what in terms of the Sea of Souls?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Azrael enjoys being cryptic.”
“Tell me about it.”
Raphael touched my foot. “You are not injured, little one.”
I clasped my elbows. “I know.”
“Malachi has been pounding at the ward for about fifty-nine minutes and thirty seconds now.” He smiled softly at me. “At least he gave you thirty seconds of grace.”
I bowed my head. “Exactly how pissed off is he?”
Raphael raised his brows at me. “Hard to say. He’s always annoyed at something on some level.” It was the first time Raphael had admitted to anything negative about Kai. It made me smile.
“Goodness,” Raphael sighed. “He’s being admonished by Matthew, and now they’re having an argument. I must go.”
Steeling myself, I sat straight up in bed as Raphael released the wards that kept me from being swarmed by people. “…not some madhouse!” I heard the end of Matthew’s sentence.
“I don’t care–” Kai’s voice cut off abruptly.
He teleported into the room a second after Raphael released the ward. Angelfire blasted against the door, sealing it back up. His thunderous expression eased some of the worry in me. A pissed-off Kai was still an alive Kai. Though I could probably do with less of the liveliness at the moment.
“Oh,” Kai spat. “Are my emotions a little too much for you, Blue?”
I pressed my hands to my ears, pretending that I was still raw from my return. “Come off it!” Kai snarled. “I can bloody feel you’re okay!”
The bond shimmered with both his rage and his relief. And underneath that, it roared with something else.
Kai’s green eyes turned into hard emerald rocks. “I…” He scraped at the back of his neck. “I don’t even know where to start with you!”
I peeked out from underneath my lashes. “Maybe you don’t need to start then?”
His whole face spasmed. Not bothering to take his boots off, Kai leaped onto the bed. He caught hold of my left ankle and dragged me closer. His aura shook with contained violence. My hackles rose in response.
“You would never in a million years act like this with Leia!”
Ooh, her name was a very unsafe word with him. “Don’t even go there, Blue. I’m this close to–”
I shoved my face right up to his. “To what, exactly?” I hissed. “Do we want to talk about how much of a creep you are?” The bond had shown me that the vision I’d seen of Kai and Leia together was real. The entire time they’d been together, they hadn’t been intimate. Those dreams of us together had been the part of Kai that still loved me. That was desperately trying to get to me, even though he was bonded to Leia.
He loved her—that part of me that was her—but that wasn’t the part that got him going. She was pure, unadulterated love that he didn’t want to soil. I was—heat flared up my neck at what Kai thought and felt when he looked at me with such intensity.
Kai made a ferocious growling sound just before he grabbed me. I screamed in shock and then in anticipation because in his mind, I’d lost the privilege of his gentleness. Which was just as well because I was spitting and clawing at him when he mounted me from behind. It was nice being sweet, but it was a lot nicer being exactly who I was and being loved by him all the same.
Twice.
He didn’t bother asking me if he’d hurt me this time. That was as much punishment as he could bring himself to mete out. Of course, the angelfire that wrapped around me weakened his point quite a bit.
I burrowed into his side and let him be quiet. Only for a few minutes. “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.
“No.”
“Uh-huh.” I pushed myself up on my elbows. “So, we’re just going to ignore the big, golden bond in the room.”
“I said no, Blue.”
“Right. Well, you can just stay here then because I need to go and see if Lucifer is dead or—”
“He’s not dead,” Kai grunted, hating that he knew that. The reason for it glowed green and gold in the bond. The three-way bond that now bound Kai to Lucifer as well. It had happened inadvertently. I’d used Leia’s essence to create Lucifer’s vessel, and she was bound to Kai. How did I not know there would be these kinds of side-effects?
Kai grabbed the sheets and ripped them to shreds. “You could have at least given me a heads up!”
“You’re the moron who bonded with Leia!”
“Stop speaking about her as though you’re two different people!”
“It still feels that way to me!”
That was the concerning part. Kai had woken up with a complete acceptance that Leia and I were one. He couldn’t tell the difference between us. Especially with the bond in place. There was no difference. I was still grappling with the concept.
To me, it didn’t feel like anything had changed. The speck of nothingness that marked my inability to have children still existed.
I had given that part of myself to save Lucifer. It seemed like too much to ask for that small compensation in return.
My darker half was where things got weird. I supposed I couldn’t call her my darker half anymore. Not since she’d gone all reasonable with Leia’s return. She was now the part of me that preached caution. She also urged me to hold my tongue and give Kai the time he needed to come to terms with what had happened.
This would take some getting used to.
Somebody banged loudly on the door with high magic. I supposed we should have been grateful for the time we got.
The snark on my tongue as I got dressed and opened the door died instantly when I saw the scene on the other side. Raphael and Michael held a body each in their arms. I didn’t know the man Michael held, but the dark-skinned Caribbean woman Raphael propped up made me inhale sharply.
“Gabriel?”
She didn’t have enough strength to even lift her head. “Astaroth,” she wheezed. “His legion has infiltrated the heavenly realm.”
For goodness’ sakes! Why couldn’t I even have five minutes?
71
Both Gabriel and her companion Suriel blacked out. Raphael didn’t think it was smart to wake them without giving them time to rest.
“Can you get a sense of what’s happening up there?” Angus asked the seraphim when we congregated in the throne room.
Michael shook his head. “We cannot trespass into the heavenly realm anymore.”
“What about Azrael?” I asked.
Michael leaned over on the throne. “I would not risk it. Azrael must guard the Sea of Souls. The heavenly realm is not broken yet. Therefore, Astaroth’s legion hasn’t taken over completely. We still have time.”
“What happens if the heavenly realm falls?” Ivan asked.
Storm clouds gathered around Michael. “There will be chaos greater than you could ever understand.”
The distant grief in his eyes gave me the impression that if that happened, we would all be too dead to care anyway.
“What about Lucifer?” Matthew asked.
Kai’s jaw locked. Since I wasn’t ready to speak, Kai very reluctantly said, “I think he’s part of the reason why Astaroth hasn’t been able to massacre us all, or the heavenly realm.”
At least when Lucifer blasted Astaroth away, the barriers had broken, and souls were now going where they belonged. That didn’t help much when Haniel was gone. I leaned over in my seat and clutched at my stomach.
I felt Kai trying to send me soothing down the bond, but I didn’t want to be soothed. I wanted Haniel back. Crying about it wasn’t going to get me anywhere, though. I would give myself the grace to mourn when things had settled down. A part of me wanted to stew in guilt that it was all my fault.
My darker half was more forgiving now. She reminded me that I had done what I could. That Haniel had gone out doing what he was made for. He had guarded me until he couldn’t. That was all he had ever wanted.
In the here and now, Lucifer’s absence was very duly noted. “Can you find him?” Angus asked me. We hadn’t told them about Kai’s connection to Lucifer. I’d let Kai do that when he wasn’t teetering on the edge of a temper tantrum.
“I know exactly where he is.”
Thinking that I would find the conservatory empty, I wasn’t prepared to come face to face with a room full of people.
“What the hell?” I cried because I had zero impulse control right now.
A shriek went up into the air from across the crowd. My whole body locked. Kai’s aura fluctuated with trepidation laced with hope.
Cassie pushed past a group of people I could see now were angels. She sprinted at us and jumped into Kai’s arms. He crushed her in his embrace, to the point where she gasped but still didn’t let go of him.
Cassie was a crier too. She sniffed softly. “You’re home, baby,” Kai murmured to her.
She laughed. “I’m not a kid anymore!”
He scoffed. She would always be a baby in his eyes. Her eyes went soft and round when she disengaged from him and turned to me. Her hug was no less crushing than Kai’s. She spun me around, laughing. “I knew you would come for me!” She swiped tears from her eyes. “Are you actually smaller?”
Kai snickered at my scowl. Previously, I had been too heartsick to use the Ley dimension. Now I let it wash over me. Cassie’s aura was almost as blinding as mine. It was so golden and pure I wanted to weep. A niggling part of me kept tugging at my tear ducts. I couldn’t help thinking of Leia. Seriously, was this how it was going to be now?
Peering inside, I faced my darker half and shook my fist at her. We were not going to start sobbing at everything. Instead of baring her teeth at me, she blew me a kiss and winked. Good lord. How was I going to survive this?
