Silence.
Angela covered her face with her hands and took a deep breath. Another. Time passed and Sariel began to move nearer to her, perhaps fearing she’d fainted from shock. But then, with all the suddenness of a sparking flame, her face reappeared between the screen of her fingers, and her expression was one of steely resolve. “If that’s what you want, I’ll do it. It’s only fair.”
Troy flicked her ears, unable to hide her interest in where the conversation had turned.
Sariel had wisely stepped back into the background for the time being, but now he glanced at Troy with an eyebrow raised, echoing her surprise, both of them putting aside their mutual hatred long enough to quietly concur that whatever Angela might be, she was more than either of them could have hoped for or suspected. It couldn’t make up for the indignity of a Binding, but it was at least enough to earn the tiniest measure of respect.
Tileaf’s expression was eagerly keen as she beckoned to Angela. “Then we are agreed. Now come here, as close as you can. We must be touching . . . for this to work.”
Her disgust, it seemed, would have to rest for now.
Angela reached out, stretching her hand toward the Fae, Troy’s barrier shimmering like water as her arm passed through it. They were inches apart. Less than a breath.
Then their fingertips met, and she dropped to the ground, senseless.
Twenty-one
I am a demon. I have willingly gone down into darkness. Yet there is an Abyss that even I have not dared peer into.
—THE DEMON PYTHON, TRANSCRIBED FROM The Lies of Babylon
First there was a void.
Then there were three thrones. And three Angels sat upon them.
The first and highest, seated above the others and above all the stars that spread into the sky, was Angela’s beautiful angel. He was more dazzling than in any dream she could remember, though right now she could remember none, and his hair and wings gleamed with a bronze that put the purest of metals to shame. His large sapphire eyes, like pools bluer than the richest seawater, considered everything below him with delicate pride, and his lips, pink and thin, filled her with want and endless desire. On top of his head, he wore a crown that resembled a vertical halo of crystal, its spindles likened to silvery rays, and below, near his winged ears, glass serpents dangled tongues of ruby.
He was dressed in crimson, the fabric hiding his body from ankles to neck to wrist, and yet all was revealed, because she wanted all.
For the briefest second, he opened his mouth and sang, and Angela sensed things around her connecting and reshaping themselves into other, more perfect things. He was the Creator Supernal, that was what Tileaf’s memories were saying, and he ruled because all who loved him wanted him to rule. And they were the majority.
This, she understood, was Israfel.
“In the ancient days of angelic history—”
Tileaf’s voice seemed to echo from an impossible distance, her words more like images that explained themselves through infusion.
“—God created three great children called the Supernals. Israfel, Raziel, and Lucifel. Creator, Preserver . . . and Destroyer. While all three shared equal power and influence, Israfel gradually rose to great favor . . . and was named Heaven’s first ruling Archangel. But although we refused to acknowledge a problem then, it soon became clear that a confrontation between him and Lucifel was inevitable. She had always been a solitary creature, but after Israfel’s coronation, an even greater and more impassable rift formed between them . . .”
But, like she had first seen, he was not alone.
Below him sat a shadow.
This shadow gazed up at him with open scorn and contempt, more disgusted than jealous, as if she could see flaws that no one else bothered to pick apart. This was Lucifel, the Devil herself before she threw down a third of the stars from Heaven, and she sat with a languid callousness that emptied the heart and the soul and spit it back into the void. Where Israfel was softness and sensual perfection, she was hard lines, her skin paler than fog, and her eyes redder than blood.
Gray.
Dust. She was ash, smoke, and vapor. The Destroyer Supernal’s wings and hair gathered about her like a mist, and her clothing was the opposite of Israfel’s, a careless swathe of fabric barely hiding her bloodless white limbs and shining feet. Around her neck, she wore the Grail, and the Eye seemed more alive than ever, blinking at the universe and sucking away its life.
Lucifel was living death.
There was a vacancy inside of her that was growing and no one knew when it would stop, and Angela could sense millions flocking to her because she had the power to take away life as if that were ecstasy, and they exulted in that darkness . . .