Could this have been what Arriane and Gabbe had been hinting at in the cemetery? Luce's head began to throb. A veil of red spots took over her vision and she heard a ringing in her ears. She blinked slowly, feeling even that tiny brush of her eyelids closing like a blast through her whole head. She was almost glad she was already lying down. Otherwise she might have fainted.
If this was really the end… well, it couldn't be.
Miss Sophia leaned close to Luce's face, sending spit flying with her words. "When you die tonight—you die. That's it. Kaput. In this lifetime you're nothing more than you appear to be: a stupid, selfish, ignorant, spoiled little girl who thinks the world lives or dies on whether she gets to go out with some good-looking boy at school. Even if your death wouldn't accomplish something so long-awaited, glorious, and grand, I'd still relish this moment, killing you."
Luce watched as Miss Sophia raised the knife and touched her finger to its blade.
Luce's mind reeled. All day, there had been so much she needed to process, so many people telling her so many different things. Now the dagger was poised over her heart and her eyes grew fuzzy once again. She felt the pressure of the blade's point against her chest, felt Miss Sophia probing along her breastbone for the space between her ribs, and she thought there was some truth in Miss Sophia's maddening speech. To place so much hope in the power of true love—which she felt she was only barely beginning to glimpse herself—was it naive? After all, true love couldn't win that battle outside. It might not even be able to save her from dying right here on this altar.
But it had to. Her heart still beat for Daniel—and until that changed, something deep inside Luce believed in that love, in its power to turn her into a better version of herself, to turn her and Daniel into something glorious and good—Luce cried out when the dagger pricked her skin—then in shock as the stained-glass window overhead seemed to shatter and the air around her filled with light and noise.
A hollow, gorgeous hum. A blinding brightness.
So she had died.
The dagger had gone deeper than it had felt. Luce was moving on to the next place. How else to explain the glowing, opalescent shapes hovering over her, descending from the sky, the cascade of twinkles, the heavenly glow? It was hard to see anything clearly in the warm silver light. Gliding over her skin, it felt like the softest velvet, like meringue frosting on a cake. The ropes binding her arms and legs were loosened, then released, and her body—or maybe this was her soul—was free to float up into the sky.
But then she heard Miss Sophia bleating, "Not yet! It's happening too soon!" The old woman had torn the dagger away from Luce's chest.
Luce blinked rapidly. Her wrists. Untied. Her ankles. Free. Tiny shards of blue and red and green and gold stained glass all over her skin, the altar, the floor beneath it. They stung as she brushed them away, leaving thin trails of blood on her arms. She squinted up toward the gaping hole in the ceiling.
Not dead, then, but saved. By angels.
Daniel had come for her.
Where was he? She could barely see. She wanted to wade through the light until her fingers found him, closed around the back of his neck, and never, never, never let him go.
There were just the living opalescent shapes drifting toward and around Luce's body, like a roomful of glowing feathers. They flocked to her, tending to her body in the places where the shattered glass had cut her. Swaths of gauzy light that seemed to somehow wash away the blood on her arms, and on the small gash at her chest, until she was fully restored.
Miss Sophia had run to the far wall and was pawing frantically at the bricks, trying to find the secret door. Luce wanted to stop her—to make her answer for what she'd done, and what she'd almost done—but then part of the silver twinkling light took on the faintest violet hue and began to form the outline of a figure.
A bright pulsing shook the room. A light so glorious it could have outshone the sun made the walls rumble and the candles rock and flicker in their tall bronze holders. The eerie tapestries flapped against the stone wall. Miss Sophia cowered, but the shuddering glow felt like a deep massage, down to Luce's very bones. And when the light condensed, spreading warmth across the room, it settled into the form Luce recognized and adored.
Daniel stood before her, in front of the altar. He was shirtless, barefoot, clad only in white linen pants. He smiled at her, then closed his eyes and spread his arms out at his sides. Then, gingerly and very slowly, as if not to shock her, he exhaled deeply and his wings began to unfurl.
They came gradually, starting at the base of his shoulders, two white shoots extending from his back, growing higher, wider, thicker as they spread back and up and out. Luce eyed the scalloped edges, yearning to trace them with her hands, her cheeks, her lips. The inside of his wings began to glow with velvet iridescence. Just like in her dream. Only now, when it was finally coming true, she could look at his wings for the first time without feeling woozy, without straining her eyes. She could take in all of Daniel's glory.