“Oh, cheap shot, Roland!” Arriane said. “You don’t even mean that. You can’t believe—” She wrung her hands. “You’re only saying that to provoke me.”
Behind Arriane, Gabbe rested a hand on her shoulder. Their wing tips touched, flashing a bright burst of silver between them. “What Arriane means is that Hell is never a better alternative. No matter how terrible Daniel’s pain may be. There is only one place for Daniel. There is only one place for all of us. You see how penitent the Outcasts are.”
“Spare us the preaching, will ya?” Molly said. “There’s a choir up there that might be interested in your brainwashing, but I’m not, and I don’t think Daniel is, either.”
The angels and demons all turned to stare at him together, as if they were still part of the host. Seven pairs of wings casting a glowing aura of silver-gold light. Seven souls he knew as well as his own.
Even behind his boulder, Daniel felt suffocated. He remembered this moment: They demanded so much of him. When he was so weakened by his broken heart. He felt the assault of Gabbe’s plea for him to join with Heaven all over again. Roland’s, too, to join with Hell. Daniel felt again the shape of the one word he had spoken at the meeting, like a strange ghost in his mouth: No.
Slowly, with a sick feeling creeping over him, Daniel remembered one more thing: That no? He hadn’t meant it. In that moment, Daniel had been on the verge of saying yes.
This was the night he’d almost given up.
Now his shoulders burned. The sudden urge to let his wings out almost brought him to his knees. His insides roiled with shame-filled horror. It was rising in him, the temptation he’d fought so long to repress.
In the circle around the fire, Daniel’s past self looked at Cam. “You’re unusually quiet tonight.”
Cam didn’t answer right away. “What would you have me say?”
“You faced this problem once. You know—”
“And what would you have me say?”
Daniel sucked in his breath. “Something charming and persuasive.”
Annabelle snorted. “Or something underhanded and absolutely evil.”
Everyone waited. Daniel wanted to burst forth from behind the rock, to rip his past self away from here. But he couldn’t. His Announcer had brought him here for a reason. He had to go through the whole thing again.
“You’re trapped,” Cam said at last. “You think because there was once a beginning, and because you’re somewhere in the middle now, that there is going to be an end. But our world isn’t rooted in teleology. It’s chaos.”
“Our world is not the same as yours—” Gabbe started to say.
“There’s no way out of this cycle, Daniel,” Cam went on. “She can’t break it, and neither can you. Pick Heaven, pick Hell, I don’t really care and you don’t, either. It won’t make any difference—”
“Enough.” Gabbe’s voice was breaking. “It will make a difference. If Daniel comes home to the place he belongs, then Lucinda … then Lucinda—”
But she couldn’t go on. The words were blasphemy to speak, and Gabbe wouldn’t do it. She fell to her knees in the snow.
Behind the rock, Daniel watched his earlier self extend a hand to Gabbe and raise her from the ground. He watched it play out before his eyes now, just as he remembered:
He gazed into her soul and saw how brightly it burned. He glanced back and saw the others—Cam and Roland, Arriane and Annabelle, even Molly—and he thought about how long he’d dragged the whole lot of them through his epic tragedy.
And for what?
Lucinda. And the choice the two of them had made long ago—and over and over again: to put their love above everything else.
That night on the fjords, her soul was between incarnations, newly purged from her last body. What if he stopped seeking her out? Daniel was tired to his core. He didn’t know if he had it in him anymore.
Watching his earlier struggle, sensing the imminent arrival of absolute breakdown, Daniel recalled what he had to do. It was dangerous. Forbidden. But it was absolutely necessary. Now, at least, he understood why his future self had taken him that long-ago night—to lend him strength, to keep him pure. He had weakened at this key moment in his past. And future Daniel could not let that weakness be magnified across the span of history, could not let it corrupt his and Lucinda’s chances.
So he repeated what had happened to him nine hundred years before. He would make amends tonight by joining with—no, overriding his past.
Cleaving.
It was the only way.
He rolled back his shoulders, unleashed his trembling wings into the darkness. He could feel them catch the wind at his back. An aurora of light painted the sky a hundred feet above him. It was bright enough to blind a mortal, bright enough to catch the attention of seven squabbling angels.
Commotion from the other side of the boulder. Shouting and gasps and the beat of wings coming closer.
Daniel propelled himself off the ground, flying fast and hard so that he soared over the boulder just as Cam came around behind it. They missed each other by a wingspan, but Daniel kept moving, swooped down upon his past self as fast as his love for Luce could take him.
His past self drew back and held out his hands, warding Daniel off.
All the angels knew the risks of cleaving. Once joined, it was nearly impossible to free oneself from one’s past self, to separate two lives that had been cloven together. But Daniel knew he’d been cloven in the past and had survived. So he had to do it.
He was doing it to help Luce.
He pressed his wings together and dove down at his past self, striking so hard he should have been crushed—if he hadn’t been absorbed. He shuddered, and his past self shuddered, and Daniel clamped his eyes shut and gritted his teeth to withstand the strange, sharp sickness that flooded his body. He felt as if he were tumbling down a hilclass="underline" reckless and unstoppable. No way back up until he hit the bottom.
Then all at once, everything came to a stop.
Daniel opened his eyes and could hear only his breathing. He felt tired but alert. The others were staring at him. He couldn’t be sure whether they had any idea what had just happened. They all looked afraid to come near him, even to speak to him.
He spread his wings and spun in a full circle, tilting his head toward the sky. “I choose my love for Lucinda,” he called to Heaven and Earth, to the angels all around him and the ones who weren’t there. To the soul of the one true thing he loved the most, wherever she was. “I now reaffirm my choice: I choose Lucinda over everything. And I will until the end.”
FIFTEEN
THE SACRIFICE
Ŧhe Announcer spat Luce into the swelter of a summer day. Beneath her feet, the ground was parched, all cracked earth and tawny, dried-up blades of grass. The sky was barren blue, not a single cloud to promise rain. Even the wind seemed thirsty.
She stood in the center of a flat field bordered on three sides by a strange, high wall. From this distance, it looked a little like a mosaic made of giant beads. They were irregularly shaped, not spherical exactly, ranging in color from ivory to light brown. Here and there were tiny cracks between the beads, letting in light from the other side.
Besides a half dozen vultures cawing as they swooped in listless circles, no one else was around. The wind blew hotly through her hair and smelled like … she couldn’t place the smell, but it tasted metallic, almost rusty.
The heavy gown she had been wearing since the ball at Versailles was soaked with sweat. It stank of smoke and ash and perspiration every time she breathed in. It had to go. She struggled to reach the laces and buttons. She could use a hand—even a tiny stone one.