Asael squints at him thoughtfully, oblivious. “Well now, that does change things. Perhaps I want you, after all. Even though you’ll have to be punished, I suppose, for killing Olivia.”
“No,” I say firmly, shaking my head. “I’ll go with you. Tucker is my responsibility, no one else’s. I’ll go.”
Clara, Christian growls in my mind. Stop talking and let me do this.
You are not the boss of me, I send back fiercely. Think about it. What you did just now, telling him that, was unbelievably brave and selfless, and I know you did it for me, but it was … stupid. I don’t care what the vision told you. We need to be smart about this. Out of all of us, I’m the most likely to be able to get out of hell on my own. I can get out.
Not without me, he says. You’ll go crazy in there without someone to ground you.
He has a point, but I try to ignore it. Find my dad, I say. Maybe he can come for me.
I remember Dad’s exact words last time we talked. I can’t interfere, he said. He can’t save me. Still, it’s what I have to do. And I’m actually starting to form the beginnings of a plan.
I’m going. No more arguing, I tell Christian. Besides, you’re the one holding the glory, I say, and then before he can answer, I step out of it.
Tucker groans when I walk toward them.
“Let him go,” I say, my voice traitorously thick. “A life for a life, like you said.”
Asael nods at Lucy, whose dagger disappears, but she still has hold of Tucker’s coat.
“Let him walk to the glory,” I say.
“First, you come to me,” Asael insists.
“How about we do it at the same time?”
He smiles. “All right. Come.”
I step toward Asael, and Lucy steps toward the circle of glory with Tucker.
Don’t let him touch you, Angela whispers fervently in my mind. He’ll poison you.
That’s a problem I don’t know how I am going to avoid. Asael holds out his arms like he’s welcoming me home. I can’t help but let him touch me, and within seconds his hands are on my shoulders, then his arms are around me like he’s embracing me, and Angela’s right—my mind fills with regret. All the failures, every wrong move I’ve ever made, every doubt I’ve ever had about myself, they all rise up inside me at once.
I was a selfish girl, selfish at the core, spoiled, flippant with the people around me. I was an ungrateful, disobedient daughter. A bad sister. A terrible friend.
Weak. Coward. Failure.
Asael murmurs something under his breath, and his wings appear, an ebony cloak that he draws around me. The world is fading into blackness and cold, and I know that in one more moment we’ll be in hell again, and this time there will be no way to fight the sorrow. It will swallow me whole.
I turn my head to get a final glimpse of Tucker through Asael’s oily black feathers.
I lied to him. I broke his heart. I treated him like a child. I wasn’t faithful. I hurt him.
“Yes,” Asael says, a snake’s hiss in my ear. He strokes my hair. “Yes.”
But that’s not all, a small, bright voice in my head chimes in. My own voice.
You sought to protect him. You’ve sacrificed yourself, your very soul, so that he may live. You’ve put his welfare ahead of your own.
You love him.
I love him. I will pack that thought away inside of me where nothing can touch it. I will preserve it, somehow. I will shape it into something I can use, to protect me when I’m taken to hell.
Asael makes a choking noise. I push back against him, the weight of his wings heavy around me, and struggle to see anything but black. His mouth is open, gasping like he’s out of air, and still he makes the thick, wet noise in the back of his throat.
“Father?” Lucy asks uncertainly.
He staggers, taking me with him. His wings drop from around me, and that’s when we all see my glory sword buried in his chest.