Mikel broke away abruptly, sounding annoyed. “Wasn’t one death enough for you?”
“So you got here first.” Nina’s voice broke out of the darkness, sending a new rush of adrenaline through Angela’s body. “But somehow you’re not so frightening in the body of a sorority bitch.”
The Grail throbbed in Angela’s hand.
Instantly, the earth pitched, cracking and crumbling around them. Souls screamed. She turned her head, astonished as the Ladder of light, its brilliance like a bridge of glory in the distance, began to fade from the bottom up, the humans upon it leaving for Luz at a feverish speed. They were calling for her, for the Archon, their voices all blending together into a powerful roar that was shaking the Netherworld apart. In a rush, her energy began to return, a gift from the souls thanking her for their freedom.
Angela pushed up from the ground, swaying steadily and spreading her legs for balance.
The buzzing, flylike dots, the part of Stephanie glowing against the blackness, shrank in on her.
Nina appeared out of the void, grabbing Angela by the arm.
A deep gash cut her throat from chin to collarbone. Someone had killed her while she’d been standing guard by Tileaf’s tree, and Mikel very well might have used Nina’s own hand to accomplish the murder. “Angela, I’m going to take your place.”
“Take my place?” Angela screamed over more screams. “No! You have to go up the stairway—with the rest of them—”
The tears rolled down her face, surprising and pathetic.
I might as well have killed her myself.
“I can’t!” Nina shouted at her. “You have to go back to Luz! This is the only way—you can’t leave the Netherworld like the others!”
“Why?”
“Because you’re not dead!”
“But where are you going?”
Nina’s eyes widened, their whites no longer bloodshot now that she was deceased. In that instant, she looked calmer and more sane than at any time before, all her fear of Stephanie, and Lucifel, and of the absurd importance of Academy life lost in the definition of her fate. Then, the ground opened up. A sky thick with gray clouds appeared below them, a horrendous stench of sulfur and smoke steaming up through the gap.
Nina fell down into the hole, her hand ripping sharply from Angela’s arm.
In the same instant, Angela went up, breaking through the whorl of darkness above them and into a brilliant light.
She was crying when she landed in the grotto, its trees smothered in their heaps of ash, Tileaf’s oak split viciously down the middle. Black snow drifted to the ground, illuminated by lightning that cracked through the sky in javelins of white and green, and by the great Ladder that suddenly was so much closer and so much brighter. The ashy crystals fell in such thickness it was difficult to see, but Angela didn’t need to search for long.
Stephanie strode toward her, her figure emerging through the drifts. Her eyes were back to their normal green shade, overflowing with all the tears Mikel had stifled. Abruptly, she paused, swaying like she’d pitch into the ground. “It’s all your fault,” she said, her whisper cracked with grief.
Her mind must have returned again.
But Angela was just as ready for it to leave. She wiped away her tears, stumbling from a burned patch of earth. “Don’t try it,” she said. “I’ll fight you this time. Even if it kills me.”
“That’s fine,” Stephanie said, the tears rolling down her face. “It’s too late for me anyway.”
Angela paused, wary.
“I have to admit it. I’m jealous, Angela. Because it’s just not fair. You thought your life was so bad, but look at you. You’re the Archon. You have everything now. And I”—her voice trembled—“I have nothing. No father, no mother.” She choked back more tears. “Naamah won’t want me now. Not anymore.”
What was going on here? Stephanie’s expression was saturated with despair.
There was a gentle, crunching noise from behind.
Angela turned around, peering through the snow.
Sophia padded gently through the blackness, her beautiful face more frozen than the rain. Something was wrong. She’d been with Israfel—and now she’d walked out of nowhere just in time for Stephanie’s arrival?
“I am the Ruin,” Stephanie was saying, “just not in the way I’d hoped. Now, it’s time to prove it to you once and for all. I command you to show me the Book.”
Forty
Ruin is an essential element of the universe.
But in the very end, this balance shall tip precariously.
—CARDINAL DEMIAN YATES, Translations of the Prophecy