Rapture

SEVENTEEN THE INVENTION OF LOVE

Flying was like swimming, and Luce was good at both.

Her feet lifted off the ground. It took no thought or preparation. Her wings beat with sudden intuition. Wind hummed against the fibers of her wings, carrying her in the gauzy pink sky. Aloft, she felt the weight of her body, especially in her feet, but overpowering that was a new, unimaginable buoyancy. She slid over low tiers of clouds, causing the slightest disruption, like a breeze passing through a chime.

She gazed from one wing tip to the other, examining their silver-pearl luster, in awe of all her changes. It was as if the rest of her body deferred to her wings now.

They responded at the first inkling of desire, elegant strokes that generated tremendous velocity. They flattened like an airfoil to glide solely on momentum, then pulled back into a heart shape behind her shoulders as she swizzled straight into the air.

Her first flight.

Except . . . it wasn’t. What Luce knew now, as keenly as her wings knew how to fly, was that there had been a monumental before. Before Lucinda Price, before her soul had ever seen the curving Earth. For all the lives on Earth she’d witnessed in the Announcers, all the bodies she had inhabited, Luce had barely scratched the surface of who she was, who she had been. There was a history older than history during which she’d beat these wings.

She could see the others watching her from the ground. Daniel’s face shone with tears. He had known this all along. He had waited for her. She wanted to reach him, wanted him to soar up and fly with her—but then, suddenly, she couldn’t see him anymore.

The light gave way to total darkness . . .

Of another memory crashing through.

She closed her eyes and surrendered to it, letting it carry her back. Somehow she knew that this was the earliest memory, the moment at the furthest reaches of her soul. Lucinda had been there from the beginning of the beginning.

The Bible had left this part out:

Before there was light, there were angels. One moment, darkness; the next, the warm feeling of being coaxed out of inexistence by a gentle, magnificent hand.

God created the Heavenly host of angels—all three hundred and eighteen million of them—a single, brilliant moment. Lucinda was there, and Daniel, and Roland and Annabelle and Cam—and millions more, all perfect, all glorious, all designed to adore their Creator.

Their bodies were made of the same substance that composed the firmament of heaven. They were not flesh and blood, but empyreal matter, the stuff of light itself—strong, indestructible, beautiful to behold. Their shoulders, arms, and legs shimmered into being, foreshadowing the shapes mortals would take upon their own creation.

The angels all discovered their wings simultaneously, each pair slightly different, reflecting the soul of its pos-sessor.

As early as the angels’ genesis, Lucinda’s wings were bright reflective silver, the color of starlight. They had shone in their singular glory since the dawn of the dawn of time.

Creation occurred at the speed of God’s will, but it unfolded in Luce’s memory like a story, another of God’s earliest creations, a by-product of time. One moment there was nothing; then Heaven was replete with angels.

In those days, Heaven was limitless, its ground covered by cloudsoil, a soft white substance like misty cloud that covered the angels’ feet and wing tips when they walked along the ground.

There were endless tiers in Heaven, each level teem-ing with alcoves and winding paths fanning out in all directions under a honey-colored sky. The air was perfumed with nectar welling in delicate white flowers springing up in delightful groves. Their round blooms dotted all of Heaven’s nooks and crannies, looking something like ancestors of white peonies.

Orchards of silver trees bore the most delicious fruits that had ever existed. The angels feasted and gave thanks for their first and only home. Their voices joined together in praise of their Creator, forming a blended sound that in humans’ throats would later be known as harmony.

A meadow rolled into existence, dividing the orchard in two. And when everything else in Heaven was complete, God placed a stunning Throne at the head of the meadow. It pulsed with divine light.

“Come before me,” God commanded, settling into the deep seat with deserved satisfaction. “Henceforth you will know me as the Throne.”

The angels gathered on the plain of Heaven and approached the Throne in gladness. They flowed naturally into a single line, ranking themselves instantly and forevermore. By the time they neared the edge of the meadow, Lucinda remembered that she could not clearly see the Throne. It shone too brightly for angels’ eyes to with-stand. She also remembered that she had once been the third angel in line—the third angel closest to God.

One, two, three.

Her wings stretched and thickened with the honor.

In the air over the Throne, eight ledges made of rippled silver hung in an arch, like a canopy sheltering the Throne. God called the first eight angels in the line to fill these seats and become the Throne’s Archangels. Lucinda took her place on the third seat from the left. It fit her body precisely, having been created just for her. This was where she belonged. Adoration poured from her soul, flowing onto God.

It was perfect.

It did not last.

God had more plans for the universe. Another memory filled Lucinda, causing her to shiver.

God left the angels.

All was joyful in the Meadow, and then the Throne became empty. God walked past the thresholds of Heaven, went away to create the stars and the Earth and the moon.

Man and woman hovered near the brink of existence.

Heaven dimmed when God left it. Lucinda felt cold and useless. It was then, she remembered, that the angels began to see one another differently, to notice the varia-tions in color among their wings. Some began to gossip that God had wearied of them and their harmonizing songs of praise. Some said that humans would soon take the angels’ place.

Lucinda remembered reclining in her silver seat next to the Throne. She remembered noticing how simple and dull it looked without God’s animating presence.

She tried to adore her Creator from afar, but she couldn’t replace her loneliness. Adoration in God’s presence was what she had been designed for and all she felt now was a hole. What could she do?

She looked down from her chair and saw an angel roaming the cloudsoil. He looked lethargic, melancholy.

He seemed to feel her gaze on him and looked up. When their eyes met, he smiled. She remembered how beautiful he’d been before God had gone away. . . .

They did not think. They reached for one another.

Their souls entwined.

Daniel, Luce thought. But she couldn’t be sure. The Meadow had been dim and her memory was foggy. . . .

Was this the moment of their first connection?

Flash.

The Meadow was bright white again. Time had passed; God had returned. The Throne blazed with sub-lime glory. Lucinda no longer sat upon her rippling silver chair beside the Throne. She was crammed into the Meadow with the full host of angels, being asked to choose something.

The Roll Call. Lucinda had been there, too. Of course she had. She felt hot and nervous without knowing why.

Her body flushed the way it used to when she was inside a past self and on the brink of dying. She could not still her trembling wings.

She had chosen—

Her stomach dropped. The air felt thin. She was . . . falling. Luce blinked and saw the sun clipping the mountains and she knew that she was back in the present, back in Troy. And falling from the sky, twenty feet . . . forty.

Her arms flailed, as if she were a mere girl again, as if she couldn’t fly.

She spread her wings, but it was too late.

She landed with a soft thump in Daniel’s arms. Her friends surrounded her on the grassy plain. Everything was just as it had been before: flat-topped cedar trees around a muddy, fallow farm; abandoned hut in the middle of barren expanse; purple hills; butterflies. Faces of fallen angels watching over her, filled with concern.

“Are you all right?” Daniel asked.

Her heart was still racing. Why couldn’t she remember what had happened at the Roll Call? Maybe it wouldn’t help them stop Lucifer, but Luce desperately wanted to know.

“I came so close,” she said. “I almost understood what happened.”

Daniel set her softly on the ground and kissed her.

“You will get there, Luce. I know you will.” It was dusk on the eighth day of their journey. As the sun slipped over the Dardanelles, casting gold light on the sloping fallow fields, Luce wished there was a way to draw it backward.

What if one day wasn’t enough time?

Luce hunched and unhunched her shoulders. She wasn’t used to the weight of her wings, light as rose petals in the sky, but heavy as lead curtains when her feet were on the ground.

When her wings first unfurled, they’d torn through her T-shirt and the khaki army jacket. The clothes lay on the grass in shreds, strange proof. Annabelle had quickly emerged from the hut with an extra T-shirt. It was electric blue with a silk-screened image of Marlene Dietrich on the chest, subtle wing slits tailored into the back.

“Instead of thinking of all that you don’t yet remember,” Francesca said, “recognize what you have come to know.”

“Well.” Luce paced the meadow, feeling the new sensation of her wings bobbing behind her. “I know that the curse prevented me from knowing my true nature as an angel, caused me to die whenever I began to approach a memory of my past. That’s why none of you could tell me who I was.”

“You had to walk that lonesome valley by yourself,” Cam said.

“And the reason it took you until this lifetime was also part of your curse,” Daniel said.

“This time I was raised without one specific religion, without a single set of rules determining my destiny, which allows me to”—Luce paused, thinking back to the Roll Call—“choose for myself.”

“Not everyone has that luxury.” Phil spoke up from the line of Outcasts.

“That’s why the Outcasts wanted me?” she asked, knowing suddenly it was true. “But haven’t I already chosen Daniel? I couldn’t remember before, but when Dee gave me her gift of knowledge, it seemed like”—she reached for Daniel—“the choice was always already there inside of me.”

“You know who you are now, Luce,” Daniel said.

“You know what matters to you. Nothing should be beyond your grasp.”

Daniel’s words seeped into her. This was what she was now—it was what she always had been.

Her gaze moved to where the Outcasts stood at a distance from the group. Luce didn’t know how much they could have seen of her transformation, whether their blind eyes could perceive a soul’s metamorphosis.

She watched for a sign in Olianna, the female Outcast who’d guarded Luce on the rooftop in Vienna. But as she stared at Olianna, she realized Olianna had also . . . changed.

“I remember you,” Luce said, walking closer to the thin blond girl with the cavernous white eyes. She knew her, from Heaven. “Olianna, you were one of the Twelve Angels of the Zodiac. You ruled over Leo.” Olianna took a deep shuddering breath and nodded.

“Yes.”

“And you, Phresia. You were a Luminary.” Luce closed her eyes, remembering. “Weren’t you one of the Four who emanated from Divine Will? I remember your wings. They were”—she halted, feeling her expression darken at the sight of the drab brown wings the girl bore now—“exceptional.”

Phresia straightened her slumped shoulders, raised her pale gaunt face. “No one has truly seen me in ages.” Vincent, the youngest-looking of the Outcasts, stepped forward. “And me, Lucinda Price? Do you remember me?”

Luce reached out and touched the boy’s shoulder, remembering how deathly sick he’d looked after the Scale had tortured him. Then she remembered something deeper than that. “You are Vincent, Angel of the North Wind.”

Vincent’s blind eyes clouded, as if his soul wanted to cry but his body refused.

“Phil,” Luce said, gazing finally at the Outcast she’d feared so much when he came for her in her parents’

backyard. His lips were taut and white, nervous. “One of Monday’s Angels, weren’t you? Instilled with the Powers of the Moon.”

“Thank you, Lucinda Price.” Phil bowed haltingly, but graciously. “The Outcasts confess, we were wrong to try to take you away from your soul mate and your obligations. But we knew, as you have just proven, that you alone could see us for who we used to be. And that you alone could restore us to our glory.”

“Yes,” she said. “I can see you.”

“The Outcasts can see you, too,” Phil said. “You are radiant.”

“Yes, she is.”

Daniel.

She turned to him. His blond hair and violet eyes, the strong cut of his shoulders, the full lips that had brought her back to life a thousand times. They had loved each other even longer than Luce had realized. Their love had been strong since the early days of Heaven. Their relationship spanned the entire story of existence. She knew where she’d first met Daniel on Earth—right here, on the singed fields of Troy while the angels were falling—

but there was an earlier story. A different beginning to their love.

When? How had it happened?

She searched for the answer in his eyes—but she knew she wouldn’t find it there. She had to look back in her own soul. She closed her eyes.

The memories came easier now, as if her spreading wings had sent a web of fissures breaking through the wall between the girl Lucinda and the angel she had been before. Whatever separated her from her past was fragile now, as thin and brittle as an eggshell.

Flash.

Back on the Meadow, astride her silver ledge, aching for God to return. Luce was looking down at the fair-haired angel, the one she’d already remembered reaching for. She remembered his slow, sad steps on the cloudsoil. The crown of his head before he looked up.

Heaven was quiet then. Luce and the angel were alone for a rare moment, away from the harmony of others.

He turned to look up at Lucinda. He had a square face, wavy amber hair, and blue eyes the color of ice.

They crinkled when he smiled at her. She did not recognize him.

No, that wasn’t it—she recognized him, knew him.

Long before, Lucinda had loved this angel.

But he wasn’t Daniel.

Without knowing why, Luce wanted to spin away from this memory, to pretend she hadn’t seen it, to blink back and be with Daniel on the rocky plains of Troy. But her soul was welded to the scene. She could not turn away from this angel who was not Daniel.

He reached for her. Their wings entwined. He whispered in her ear:

“Our love is endless. There can be nothing else.” No.

At last, she jolted from the memory. Back at Troy.

Out of breath. Her eyes must have betrayed her. She felt wild and panicked.

“What did you see?” Annabelle whispered.

Luce’s mouth opened but no words came.

I betrayed him. Whoever he was. There was someone before Daniel, and I—

“It’s not over yet.” Finally, she found her voice. “The curse. Even though I know who I am and I know that I choose Daniel, there’s something else, isn’t there? Someone else. He’s the one who cursed me.” Daniel ran his fingers very lightly over the shining border of her wings. She shivered, because every touch against her wings burned with the passion of a deep kiss and ignited something deep inside her. Finally she knew the pleasure she brought to him when she let her hands glide over his. “You have come so very far, Lucinda. But there is still a ways to go. Search your past. You already know what you are looking for. Find it.” She closed her eyes, searching again through millennia of fraught memories.

The Earth drew away beneath her feet. A maze of colors blurred around her, and her heart hammered in her chest, and everything went white.

Heaven again.

It was bright with God’s return to the Throne. The sky shone the color of an opal. The cloudsoil was thick that day, tufts of white reaching nearly to the angels’

waists. Those towering white spires to the right were trees in the Grove of Life; the silvery blossoms in full bloom to the left would soon bear the fruits of the Orchard of Knowledge. The trees were taller now. They’d had time to grow since Luce’s last recollection.

She was back in the Meadow, in the center of a great, flickering congregation of light. The angels in Heaven were gathered before the Throne, which was restored to the brightness so intense Lucinda cringed to look at it.

The silver ledge that had once been Lucifer’s had now been moved to the far end of the Meadow. It had been lowered to an insulting level by the Throne. Between Lucifer and the Throne the rest of the angels were united in a single mass—but soon, Lucinda realized, they would be partitioned off to one side or the other.

She was back at the Roll Call. This time she would force herself to remember how it went.

Every son and every daughter of Heaven would be asked to choose a side. God or Lucifer. Good or . . . no, he wasn’t evil.

Evil didn’t exist yet.

Crowded together like that, every angel was stunning, distinct but somehow indistinguishable from the next. There was Daniel, in the center, the purest glow she would ever know. In her memory, Lucinda was moving toward him.

Moving from where?

Daniel’s voice filled her ears: Search your past.

She hadn’t looked at Lucifer yet. She didn’t want to.

Look where you do not want to look.

When she turned to the far end of the Meadow, she saw the light around Lucifer. It was splendid and osten-tatious, as if he sought to compete with everything in the Meadow—the Orchard, the Heavenly hum, the Throne itself. Lucinda had to focus hard to see him clearly.

He was . . . lovely. Amber hair spilled down his shoulders in shiny waves. His body seemed grander, defined by muscle no mortal would ever achieve. His cold blue eyes were mesmerizing.

Lucinda couldn’t take her eyes off him. Then, between bars of the Heavenly hum, she heard it. Though she didn’t remember learning the song, she knew the words and would always know them, the way mortals carried nursery rhymes through their lives.

Of all the pairs the Throne endorsed None rose to burn as bright

As Lucifer, the Morning Star,

And Lucinda, his Evening Light

The lines echoed in her head, drawing memory to them, recollection raining down with every word.

Lucinda, his Evening Light?

Lucinda’s soul crawled, sickened, toward a realization. Lucifer had written this song. It was a part of his design.

She was . . . had she been Lucifer’s lover?

The moment she wondered whether that horror was possible, Luce knew it was the oldest, coldest truth. She had been wrong about everything. Her first love had been Lucifer, and Lucifer had been hers. Even their names were paired. Once, they had been soul mates. She felt twisted, foreign to herself, as if she’d awakened to realize she had killed someone in her sleep.

Across the Meadow, Lucinda and Lucifer locked eyes at the Roll Call. Hers widened in disbelief as his crinkled up in an inscrutable smile.

Flash.

A memory inside a memory. Luce tunneled even further through the darkness, to the place where she most loathed to go.

Lucifer held her, his wings caressing hers, creating unmentionable pleasure, openly, there on her silver seat around the empty Throne.

Our love is endless. There can be nothing else.

When he kissed her, Lucinda and Lucifer became the first beings to experiment with affection beyond God.

The kisses had been strange and wonderful and Lucinda had wanted more, but she feared what the other angels would think of Lucifer’s kisses on her. She worried that his kiss would look like a brand on her lips. Most of all, she feared God would know when God returned and resumed the title of the Throne.

“Say you adore me,” Lucifer begged.

“Adoration is for God,” Lucinda replied.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Lucifer whispered. “Imagine how strong we’d be if we could openly declare our love before the Throne, you adoring me, me adoring you.

The Throne is only one—united in love, we could be greater.”

“What’s the difference between love and adoration?” Lucinda asked.

“Love is taking the adoration you feel for God and giving it to somebody actually here. ”

“But I don’t want to be greater than God.” Lucifer’s face darkened at her words. He spun away from her, rage taking root in his soul. Lucinda sensed a strange change within him, but it was so foreign she didn’t recognize it. She began to fear him. He seemed to fear nothing, except her ever leaving him. He taught her the song about the greatness of their union. He made her sing it constantly, until Lucinda saw herself as Lucifer’s Evening Light. He told Lucinda this was love.

Luce writhed with the pain of the memory. It went on and on like that with Lucifer. With every interaction, every caress of Lucinda’s wings, he grew more possessive, more envious of her adoration of the Throne, telling Lucinda that if she truly loved him, Lucifer would be enough.

There was one day she remembered during that dark period: She’d been weeping in the Meadow, up to her neck in cloudsoil, wanting to sink away from everything.

An angel’s shadow hovered over her.

“Leave me alone!” she had cried.

But the wing that draped over hers did the opposite.

It cradled her. The angel seemed to know what she needed better than she knew herself. Slowly, Lucinda lifted her head. The angel’s eyes were violet.

“Daniel.” She knew him as the sixth Archangel, charged with watching over lost souls. “Why have you come to me?”

“Because I have been watching you.” Daniel stared and Luce knew that before then, no one had ever seen an angel cry. Lucinda’s tears were the first. “What is happening to you?”

For a long time she searched for the words. “I feel like I’m losing my light.”

The story poured out of her, and Daniel let it come.

No one had listened to Lucinda in a very long time.

When she finished, Daniel’s eyes were wet with tears.

“What you call love does not sound very beautiful,” he said slowly. “Think of the way we adore the Throne.

That adoration makes us the best versions of ourselves.

We feel encouraged to go further with our instincts, not to change ourselves for love. If I were yours and you were mine, I would want you to be exactly as you are. I would never eclipse you with my desires.” Lucinda took Daniel’s warm, strong hand. Maybe Lucifer had discovered love, but this angel seemed to understand how to build it into something wonderful.

Suddenly, Lucinda was kissing Daniel, showing him how it was done, needing for the first time to give her soul entirely to another. They held each other, Daniel’s and Lucinda’s souls glowing brighter, two halves made better as a whole.

Flash.

Of course, Lucifer came back to her. The rage within him had swelled so much that he was twice as tall as her.

They used to stand eye to eye. “I can stand the yoke no longer. Will you come before the Throne with me and declare your sole allegiance to our love?”

“Lucifer, wait—” Lucinda wanted to tell him about Daniel, but he wouldn’t have heard her anyway.

“It is a lie for me to play adoring angel when I have you and require nothing more. Let us make plans, Lucinda, you and I. Let us scheme for glory.”

“How is that love?” she had cried. “You adore your dreams, your ambition. You taught me how to love, but I cannot love a soul so dark it eats up others’ light.” He did not believe her, or he pretended not to hear her, because Lucifer soon challenged the Throne to gather all the souls in the Meadow for the Roll Call.

He’d held Lucinda in his grip when he made the challenge, but when he started to speak, he was distracted and she was able to slip away. She walked into the Meadow, wandered among bright souls. She saw the one she’d been seeking all along.

Lucifer bellowed at the angels:

“A line has been drawn in the cloudsoil of the Meadow. Now you are all free to choose. I offer you equality, an existence without an authority’s arbitrary rankings.”

Luce knew he meant that she was only free to follow him. Lucifer might have thought he loved her, but what he loved was controlling her with a dark, destructive fascination. It was as if Lucifer thought Lucinda was an aspect of him.

She huddled next to Daniel in the Meadow, basking in the warmth of a burgeoning love that was pure and sustaining, as Daniel’s name rang out across the Meadow.

He had been called. He rose above the riot of angelic light and said with calm self-possession, “With respect, I will not do this. I will not choose Lucifer’s side, nor will I choose the side of Heaven.”

A roar went up from the vast camps of angels, from those who stood beside the Throne, from Lucifer most of all. Lucinda had been stunned.

“Instead, I choose love, ” Daniel went on. “I choose love and leave you to your war. You’re wrong to bring this upon us,” Daniel said to Lucifer.

Then, to the Throne: “All that is good in Heaven and on Earth is made of love. Maybe that wasn’t your plan when you created the universe—maybe love was just one aspect of a complicated and brutal world.

But love was the best thing you made, and it has become the only thing worth saving. This war is not just.

This war is not good. Love is the only thing worth fighting for.”

The Meadow fell silent after Daniel’s words. Most of the angels looked dumbfounded, as if they did not understand what Daniel meant.

It had not been Lucinda’s turn. The angels’ names were called by the celestial secretaries according to their rank, and Lucinda was one of a handful of angels higher than Daniel. It didn’t matter. They were a team. She rose to his side in the Meadow.

“There should never have to be a choice between love and You,” Lucinda declared to the Throne. “Maybe one day You will find a way to reconcile adoration and the true love You have made us capable of. But if forced to choose, I must stand beside my love. I choose Daniel and will choose him forevermore.”

Then Luce remembered the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. She turned to Lucifer, her first love. Without being honest with him, none of this would count. “You showed me the power of love, and for that I will always be grateful. But love ranks a distant third for you, far behind your pride and rage. You have begun a fight you can never win.”

“I am doing all of this for you!” Lucifer shouted.

It was his first great lie, the universe’s first great lie.

Arm in arm with Daniel in the center of the Meadow, Lucinda had made the only possible choice. Her fear paled in comparison to her love.

But she never could have anticipated the curse. Luce remembered now that the punishment had come from both sides. That was what had made the curse so binding: Both the Throne and Lucifer—out of jealousy or spite or a loveless view of justice—had sealed Daniel and Lucinda’s fate for many thousands of years.

In the silence of the Meadow, a strange thing happened: Another Daniel soared up next to Lucinda and Daniel. He was an Anachronism—the Daniel she had met at Shoreline, the angel Luce Price knew and loved.

“I come here to beg clemency,” Daniel’s twinning spoke. “If we must be punished—and, my Master, I do not question your decision—please at least remember that one of the great features of Your power is Your mercy, which is mysterious and large and humbles us all.”

At the time Lucinda had not understood this—but in Luce’s memory, finally, everything made sense. He had given Luce the gift of a loophole in the curse, so that someday in the distant future, she could liberate their love.

The last thing she remembered was clutching Daniel tightly when the cloudsoil boiled black. The ground dropped out from under them and the angels began their fugue, their Fall. Daniel had slipped from her reach. Her body had fixed into immobility. She lost him. She lost all memory. She lost herself.

Until now.

When Luce opened her eyes, night had fallen. The air was so cool her arms were trembling. The others huddled around her, so quietly she could hear crickets whistling in the grass. She didn’t want to look at anyone.

“It was because of me,” she said. “All this time I thought they were punishing you, Daniel, but the punishment was for me.” She paused. “Am I the reason Lucifer revolted?”

“No, Luce.” Cam gave her a sad smile. “Maybe you were the inspiration, but inspiration is an excuse for doing something you already want to do. Lucifer was looking for an entrance into evil. He would have found another way.”

“But I betrayed him.”

“No,” Daniel said. “He betrayed you. He betrayed all of us.”

“Without his rebellion, would we have fallen in love?”

Daniel smiled. “I like to think we would have found a way. Now, finally, we have a chance to put all of this behind us. We have a chance to stop Lucifer, to break the curse and love each other the way we always wanted. We can make all these years of suffering worthwhile.”

“Look,” Steven said, pointing at the sky.

The stars were out in droves. One, far in the distance, was particularly bright. It flickered, then seemed to go out altogether before returning even brighter than before.

“That’s them, isn’t it?” she said. “The Fall?”

“Yes,” Francesca said. “That’s it. It looks just like the old texts say it would.”

“It was just”—Luce furrowed her brow, squinting—

“I can only see it when I—”

“Concentrate,” Cam ordered.

“What’s happening to it?” Luce asked.

“It is coming into being in this world,” Daniel said.

“It wasn’t the physical transit from Heaven to Earth that took nine days. It was the shift from a Heavenly realm to an Earthly one. When we landed here, our bodies were . . . different. We became different. That took time.”

“Now time is taking us,” Roland said, looking at the golden pocket watch that Dee must have given him before she died.

“Then it is time for us to go,” Daniel said to Luce.

“Up there?”

“Yes, we must soar up to meet them. We will fly right up to the limits of the Fall, and then you—”

“I have to stop him?”

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes, thought back to the way Lucifer had looked at her in the Meadow. He looked like he wanted to crush every speck of tenderness there was. “I think I know how.”

“I told you she would say that!” Arriane whooped.

Daniel pulled her close. “Are you sure?” She kissed him, never surer. “I just got my wings back, Daniel. I’m not going to let Lucifer take them away.”

So Luce and Daniel said goodbye to their friends, reached for each other’s hands, and took off into the night. They flew upward forever, through the thinnest outer skin of the atmosphere, through a film of light at the edge of space.

The moon became enormous, shone like a noontime sun. They passed through hazy clouded galaxies and by other moons with other crater-shadowed faces and strange planets glowing with red gas and striped rings of light.

No amount of flying tired Luce. She began to understand how Daniel could go for days without rest; she was not hungry or thirsty. She was not cold in the frozen night.

At last, at the edge of nothing, in the darkest pocket of the universe, they reached the perimeter. They saw the black web of Lucifer’s Announcer, wobbling between dimensions. Inside it was the Fall.

Daniel hovered at her side, his wings brushing hers, transmitting strength. “You will have to pass through the Announcer first. Don’t get hung up there. Move through until you find him in the Fall.”

“I have to go in alone, don’t I?”

“I would follow you to the ends of the Earth and beyond. But you’re the only one who can do this,” Daniel said. He took her hand and kissed her fingers, her palm. He was shaking. “I’ll be here.”

Their lips met one last time.

“I love you, Luce,” Daniel said. “I will love you always, whether or not Lucifer succeeds—”

“No, don’t say that,” Luce said. “He won’t—”

“But if he does,” Daniel continued, “I want you to know that I would do it all again. I will choose you every time.”

A calmness came over Luce. She would not fail him.

She would not fail herself.

“I won’t be long.”

She squeezed his hand and turned away and plunged through darkness, into Lucifer’s Announcer.