Genesis squeezed my hand just as Ethan shouted. “He’s coding!”
Suddenly Stephanie was at my side, shoving everyone out of the way. Was she glowing?
Why the hell was I seeing a light?
She slid her wrists along Ethan’s teeth so quickly Ethan didn’t have time to protest, and then knelt next to my head pressing her wrist against my mouth.
“It won’t be enough.” Ethan said sadly.
“It has to be.” Stephanie said through soft sobs. “It has to be. I love him. It has to work!”
I smiled. “Love—” Exhaustion took over. “You.” I reached up to caress her face one last time and failed as my hand slumped to the floor, right along with my body.
I stood near the edge of the building where darkness met light. It was the perfect spot for me to be standing, all things considered.
That was my life.
The perfect rapture of darkness—light flirted on the outskirts, trying to seep through, but I knew better than anyone its chances of succeeding were slim. I held out my hand, and my fingertips kissed the sunlight peeking through the clouds. I twirled my hand around and let out a defeated sigh.
“Cassius.” Sariel, my father and one of the head Archangels—the same angels that hadn’t appeared to the immortals for over three hundred years—spoke my name with such authority and finality that it was impossible not to feel the effects of the words as he released them into the universe. They slammed against my chest, stealing every ounce of oxygen I’d just greedily sucked in. “You have failed.”
“Yes.” I swallowed the lie, felt it burn all the way down my throat into my lungs. My cold, rotten heart picked up speed, maybe I really was dead inside like she said, maybe it was hopeless, all of it.
“I taste the lie on your lips, half breed.”
“So taste,” I fired back, as my eyes strained to focus on the light. The yearning to be light, to fully allow it to consume me, was like a fire burning in my soul. “I have nothing more to say to you.”
“You realize what this means?” The once purple feathers surrounding his bulky body illuminated red. My heartbeat slowed to a gentle rhythm as droplets of blood cascaded from his feathers in perfect cadence with my breathing.
“I do.”
“Yet you do not fight?”
Finally, I lifted my gaze to his. His strong jaw ticked as his black hair blew in the wind. I knew I was the only one who could see him, compliments of my ancestors… my angelic blood.
“When one has lost everything worth fighting for…” I swallowed. “Tell me, what is the point?”
“You’ve never given up before,” he said quietly, his voice filled with disbelief.
“I’ve never been in love before!” I yelled, slamming my hand against the brick wall. If anyone passed by they’d simply think I’d gone insane, and maybe, maybe I had.
Because of her.
Everything was because of her.
“It’s best that I die. Best that I leave her.”
Sariel’s face broke out into a bright smile. The blood from his feathers pooled at his feet forming the shape of a heart. “Very well.”
I prepared myself for the pain, for the sheer agony of ceasing to exist. I knew from stories that when a Dark One died, it was horrific, terrifying, for we never knew if we would rejoin the light or the darkness.
I assumed I would go dark.
I assumed I would be consumed with evil.
I assumed wrong.
Because the minute Sariel touched my skin.
I felt nothing but empty.
“A gift,” Sariel whispered into the air. “For my only remaining son.”
His fingertips pressed against my skin, they burned, they seared everywhere they pressed.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer.
When he stepped away, light flashed in front of my eyes, and I was back in Russia, back where it had all begun.
Tears filled my line of vision as I imagined the pain and suffering of the mountain.
So it was over then.
Sariel’s lips twitched into what looked like a smile though I couldn’t tell, maybe I was hallucinating? Maybe this was death.
A lonely existence of living in the past, while still being able to remember the touch of the present.
“Watch,” Sariel instructed, crossing his arms in front of the golden armor placed around his body. His helmet had been restored along with his shield and spear.