My free hand dug into Luc’s arm, still around my waist, and I shook my head to clear the images burned there.
Angel.
Me.
No. Witchy. Way.
Those had to be someone else’s memories. Someone else’s thoughts. Someone else’s broken wing.
Not mine. I shook my head again. Damn, I needed a Dove in a bad way. Hell, I needed a freakin truckload of Dove chocolates at this point.
This was a mistake. A terrible joke.
A definite psychotic break.
But then I felt that warm rush of knowledge and I couldn’t fight it. My knees buckled. My body fell hard and fast. So fast, Luc almost didn’t catch me before my butt hit the ground.
He did, though. Like always, the Devil saved me.
“I’ve got you.” He eased us both down to the ragged ground under the tree. Aging roots buckled the earth. He situated us between two large protruding roots, cradled me in his lap and enclosed me inside his strong arms. “I’ll never let you fall.”
My voice shook. “Too late.”
One of his hands caressed my hair. He tucked my head under his chin. “'The truth will set you free.’”
Truth. Highly overrated. “Seems like you have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Too much, I’m afraid. We’ve been together an eternity already. You just don’t remember it. Yet. Everything will come back to you in time, now that you’ve been reunited with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.”
My body shook. Cold or fear? I glanced up at the towering tree. “Thought it was supposed to be an apple tree.”
“The apple was symbolic. The real thing never bared fruit. Only the truth.”
My teeth chattered. I clamped my jaws together until I could regain my composure. “So the punch line is I’m a…fallen angel? Like you?”
“Your name in Heaven was Amo. It means ‘I love’. You embodied love in all its forms.”
My stomach threatened to revolt. Mostly because it was all starting to make sense. Why the other angels kept calling me Amo. Why God, Gabriel and Cephiel wouldn’t leave me alone. Why Adam had subconsciously chosen me to be his modern-day Eve before the real thing showed up. Why Samson and Delilah had come to me for a weird version of couples counseling.
Oh, jeez. “I’m a cupid?”
Luc chuckled. “More like a goddess of love. The Greek’s and Roman’s deities were based on you.”
Uh-huh. “Keisha’s the matchmaker, not me.”
I shifted to look him in the eye. Was he real? Was anything I’d seen in those visions real? Or was this all part of purgatory? Suddenly, everything seemed suspect. “If I’m all lovey dovey, why was I swinging a sword in those visions?”
“You’re a fierce warrior, Amo. Your two sides are equally balanced.”
Universal balance. Each angel embodied it until the Great War in Heaven.
I shook him off, stood and paced to the place where the stream had been. “We lost the war, but I didn’t fall with the others. Neither did you. We jumped.”
“You jumped. I followed.”
At my exasperated look, he shrugged. “The war wasn’t about me. I wasn’t the one who wanted to be like the Most High or planned to exalt my altar above His. That’s the modern-day fairy tale version of the real story.”
“You’re saying I’m the one who wanted to be above God?”
“You didn’t like the way He ran things.”
Big surprise there.
The weight of all this knowledge hit. This was no joke. A sick coldness stole up my spine even as my insides felt like they were on fire. “Maybe you better start at the beginning.”
Luc patted the ground next to him. “You might want to sit down again.”
O-kay. Pretty sure I didn’t wanted to hear what he had to say.
I plopped down anyway, and he started talking. “In the beginning…”
Realizing this could take a while, I interrupted. “Cliff Notes version, okay?”
He nodded. “Let’s see. How to condense this…God, Heaven, lots of angels. You and I fell in love, and when you fall in love, you don’t mess around. We were overly…passionate. Obsessed might be a better word. We started to exalt each other over God.”
“And He got jealous.”
“God wasn’t the only one. Our love was all-consuming. It caused other angels to feel desire and lust. Greed and jealousy.”
“But those are sins. Sin doesn’t exist in Heaven.”
“It didn’t…” He leaned close, stroked a hair off my cheek. “Until you and I created it.”
Well, well. That explained a lot. “We”—I waved a finger between his chest and mine—”created sin?”