“What’s the problem now?” Bill asked.
“I wasn’t ready. I know Lucinda had to die, but I—I was just—” She’d been on the brink of understanding something about the choice she’d made to love Daniel. And now everything about those last moments with Daniel had gone up in flames along with her past self.
“Well, there’s not much more to see,” Bill said. “Just the usual routine of a building catching fire—smoke, walls of flame, people screaming and stampeding toward the exits, trampling the less fortunate underfoot—you get the picture. The Globe burned to the ground.”
“What?” she said, feeling sick. “I started the fire at the Globe?” Surely burning down the most famous theater in English history would have repercussions across time.
“Oh, don’t get all self-important. It was going to happen anyway. If you hadn’t burst into flames, the cannon onstage would have misfired and taken the whole place out.”
“This is so much bigger than me and Daniel. All those people—”
“Look, Mother Teresa, no one died that night … besides you. No one else even got hurt. Remember that drunk leering at you from the third row? His pants catch on fire. That’s the worst of it. Feel better?”
“Not really. Not at all.”
“How about this: You’re not here to add to your mountain of guilt. Or to change the past. There’s a script, and you have your entrances and your exits.”
“I wasn’t ready for my exit.”
“Why not? Henry the Eighth sucks, anyway.”
“I wanted to give Daniel hope. I wanted him to know that I would always choose him, always love him. But Lucinda died before I could be sure he understood.” She closed her eyes. “His half of our curse is so much worse than mine.”
“That’s good, Luce!”
“What do you mean? That’s horrible!”
“I mean that little gem—that ‘Wah, Daniel’s agony is infinitely more horrible than mine’—that’s what you learned here. The more you understand, the closer you’ll get to knowing the root of the curse, and the more likely it is that you’ll eventually find your way out of it. Right?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“I do. Now come on, you’ve got bigger roles to play.”
Daniel’s side of the curse was worse. Luce could see that now very clearly. But what did it mean? She didn’t feel any closer to being able to break it. The answer eluded her. But she knew Bill was right about one thing: She could do nothing more in this lifetime. All she could do was keep going back.
FOURTEEN
THE STEEP SLOPE
Ŧhe sky was black when Daniel stepped through. Behind him, the portal billowed in the wind like a tattered curtain, snagging and tearing itself apart before falling to pieces on the night-blue snow.
A chill crept over his body. At first sight, there seemed to be nothing here at all. Nothing but arctic nights that seemed to go on forever, offering only the thinnest glimpse of day at the end.
He remembered now: These fjords were the place where he and his fellow fallen angels held their meetings: all bleak dimness and harsh cold, a two days’ trek north of the mortal settlement of Brattahlíõ. But he would not find her here. This land had never been a part of Lucinda’s past, so there would be nothing in her Announcers to bring her here now.
Just Daniel. And the others.
He shivered and marched across the snow-swept fjord toward a warm glow on the horizon. Seven of them were gathered around the bright-orange fire. From a distance, the circle of their wings looked like a giant halo on the snow. Daniel didn’t have to count their shining outlines to know they were all there.
None of them noticed him crossing the snow toward their assembly. They always kept a single starshot on hand just in case, but the idea of an uninvited visitor happening upon their council was so implausible it was not even a real threat. Besides, they were too busy bickering among themselves to detect the Anachronism crouching behind a frozen boulder, eavesdropping.
“This was a waste of time.” Gabbe’s voice was the first one Daniel could make out. “We’re not going to get anywhere.”
Gabbe’s patience could be a short-fused thing. At the start of the war, her rebellion had lasted a split second compared to Daniel’s. Ever since then, her commitment to her side had run deep. She was back in the Graces of Heaven, and Daniel’s hesitation went against everything she believed in. As she paced the perimeter of the fire, the tips of her huge feathered white wings dragged in the snow behind her.
“You’re the one who called this meeting,” a low voice reminded her. “Now you want to adjourn?” Roland was seated on a short black log a few feet in front of where Daniel crouched behind a boulder. Roland’s hair was long and unkempt. His dark profile and his marbled gold-black wings glittered like embers in the dusk of a fire.
It was all just as Daniel remembered.
“The meeting I called was for them.” Gabbe stopped pacing and tossed her wing to point at the two angels sitting next to each other across the fire from Roland.
Arriane’s slender iridescent wings were still for once, rising high above her shoulder blades. Their shimmer looked almost phosphorescent in the colorless night, but everything else about Arriane, from her short black bob to her pale, drawn lips, looked harrowingly somber and sedate.
The angel beside Arriane was quieter than usual, too. Annabelle stared blankly into the far reaches of the night. Her wings were dark silver, almost pewter-colored. They were broad and muscular, stretching around her and Arriane in a wide, protective arc. It had been a long time since Daniel had seen her.
Gabbe came to a stop behind Arriane and Annabelle and stood facing the other side: Roland, Molly, and Cam, who were sharing a coarse fur blanket. It was draped over their wings. Unlike the angels on the other side of the fire, the demons were shivering.
“We didn’t expect your side tonight,” Gabbe told them, “nor are we happy to see you.”
“We have a stake in this, too,” Molly said roughly.
“Not in the same way we do,” Arriane said. “Daniel will never join you.”
If Daniel hadn’t recalled where he’d sat at this meeting over a thousand years before, he might have overlooked his earlier self entirely. That earlier self was sitting alone, in the center of the group, directly on the other side of the boulder. Behind the rock, Daniel shifted to get a better view.
His earlier self’s wings bloomed out behind him, great white sails as still as the night. As the others talked about him as if he weren’t there, Daniel behaved as if he were alone in the world. He tossed fistfuls of snow into the fire, watching the frozen clumps hiss and dissolve into steam.
“Oh, really?” Molly said. “Care to explain why he’s inching closer to our side every lifetime? That little cursing-God bit he does whenever Luce explodes? I doubt it goes over so well upstairs.”
“He’s in agony!” Annabelle shouted at Molly. “You wouldn’t understand because you don’t know how to love.” She scooted nearer to Daniel, the tips of her wings dragging in the snow, and addressed him directly. “Those are just temporary blips. We all know your soul is pure. If you wanted to at last choose a side, to choose us, Daniel—if at any moment—”
“No.”
The clean finality of the word pushed Annabelle away as quickly as if Daniel had drawn a weapon. Daniel’s earlier self would not look at any of them. And behind the boulder, watching them, Daniel remembered what had happened during this council, and shuddered at the forbidden horror of the memory.
“If you won’t join them,” Roland said to Daniel, “why not join us? From what I can tell, there is no worse Hell than what you put yourself through every time you lose her.”