Village after village. A child of the Devil.
Kim was conjuring a world of superstition and witchcraft that had only recently returned. How old was he? Hundreds of years
. . . and yet he hadn’t grown tired of living yet. That fact was almost as incomprehensible as his paternity.
“—and then there is the matter of your parents. You were so appalled that I killed my father, yet you’ve done exactly the same—”
“It wasn’t the same.” Angela let go of his hand. Tileaf’s oak loomed ahead, its massive trunk seeming to grow the closer they came until it was thicker than seven people could hug with their arms touching finger to finger. Branches grew from it in a gnarled mess that spread almost as far as the roots, their thick bark coiling and curling through the strong-smelling earth like sea serpents. The tree was dying, but sparse tufts of brown and green leaves still clung to it, rustling in the slightest breeze. There was a silence here that hinted of death and sickness. Every spoken word felt like a sin. “It wasn’t the same at all.”
“You mean they didn’t deserve to die for how they treated you? I
know
they abused you.”
His cool face questioned her, wondering.
Angela stopped to let Mikel walk ahead of them, the angel’s red eyes gathering in the tree with awe. “But that’s where you and I differ, Kim. They didn’t deserve to die.” Angela slipped the Eye beneath her blouse, letting its chill touch her heart. For once, her bitterness felt like it belonged. “They deserved worse.”
Her lips said it like a prayer.
“They deserved to suffer.”
From the highest of heights they fell;
Stars longing to clothe themselves in Nature’s garb.
Fairest of creatures who dance on mortal Earth,
Are those Untamable Ones who sing of the trees.
—
V
ARIOUS AUTHORS,
Songs of the Fair Folk
“W
hen Tileaf appears don’t act frightened . . . or show that you’re upset . . .”
“. . . is she in pain, dying like this . . .”
“Torture . . . would be the better word . . .”
Troy etched the Blood Circle into the dirt, directly in front of the Fae Queen’s tree, trying her damnedest not to run over and rip Sariel’s mouth out of his head. His every word annoyed her, her palm twitched from the cut Angela had dared to inflict on her, and her pride wasn’t doing so well either. She traced lines through the soil, finger shaking, drawing the sigils that would protect the bitch from the harm she deserved.
Angela might have been possessed by an angel. But she wasn’t an angel herself.
Sariel didn’t understand, partly because he didn’t have the nose of a full-blooded Jinn. Angela was all wrong, twisted and warped, and her soul’s scent resembled both the freshness of a spring-fed pool and the most oppressive darkness Troy could remember. Worst of all, she’d known how to consummate a Binding, which wouldn’t have been such a miracle if it were on any other Jinn. But Troy, as the Underworld’s most skilled hunter, its High Assassin, had more than enough power to ward off such a trick. Angela might as well have clipped her ears and caged her—which was absolutely unthinkable. Yet she’d been forced into a bond she’d never wanted, leaving her in a numb state that would turn into a rage hell-bent on killing for killing’s sake.
If she couldn’t snap Angela’s neck, someone else would have to die. That was for damned sure.
Troy tucked away her next angry hiss, feigning indifference.
Angela sat next to Kim on top of one of Tileaf’s roots, her possessed friend resting behind them in the leaf litter. Often, she would stare at Troy, intensely interested in what she was writing, and then Troy would merely spread her wings, turning them into a mantle that blocked her view.
This was more than spite.
The bitch had also taken Lucifel’s Grail.
It had been a miracle more heartstopping than surviving Troy’s attack. But it also left unsettling questions lingering in its wake. If Angela wasn’t the Archon, then why could she stare into the Eye without disaster? Troy wanted answers now as badly as Sariel and the angel who’d possessed that frazzled human, Nina Willis. Troy now remembered hunting her once, but turning away in disgust when she saw how broken her prey was inside. Depression was the worst seasoning for any meal.
“Done,” she snapped, lifting off from the ground to recline on a nearby tree limb. She settled her wings back into place, ruffling them slightly beneath the cool rain.
Sariel stood beneath her tree, gazing up at Troy and her hand dangling over the bark. Her left leg had bent beneath her a little—a cushion.
She couldn’t stand the sight of him. “
Now what do you want
?”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Whatever do you mean? I don’t quite follow,” she said. His danger would be obvious from her tone of voice.
“The sigils mean nothing without blood, Troy.”
The muscles in her ears and wings tensed. “Then tell Angela to use her own. She seems competent to me. Full of shit and water. So, likely full of blood.”
His teeth set. “You and your foul mouth.”
“Oh, I have plenty of reasons to curse.” She bounded from the branch, landing beside him, spraying leaves in every direction. How empty she felt without the Grail around her neck. For the Jinn it was a privilege even to look upon it, and yet despite their race’s legendary toughness, there were few who could tolerate its watchful presence. Troy had been one of those few. Her sister, the other. “If I had known you’d brought that meat sack to Bind me, I would have killed you both the moment you entered the room.”
“I didn’t bring her to Bind you. I brought her to look at the Grail, Troy.”
“Yes,” she spat back at him, “and now she’s stolen it.”
“Taken it.”
“
She’s not the Archon
.”
“We don’t know what in hell she is right now, and if you don’t awaken Tileaf before Naamah weeds this garden, we might never know. That Circle would bleed us dry. So why can’t you just cooperate and slit your damned wrist, and then, by all means crawl back beneath the rock you slid out of.” His smile was intended to infuriate her. “Back to your real Hell.”
“And yet,” she clicked her teeth at him, “mine is only temporary.”
Now Sariel’s smile wavered.
Troy shoved him out of the way, stomping over to the Circle and the carefully arranged patterns in the dirt. Once she was standing in their center, she reached for the obsidian dagger strapped to her thigh, slid it from its sheath of rags, and cut a long but clean wound up to her elbow. Her blood dribbled into the circle, outlining her furrows with a red that bordered on black.
She cleaned the injury, licking her teeth for Angela’s sake.
“. . . why the blood?” Angela whispered to Sariel, doing her best to avoid eye contact with Troy, probably hoping she couldn’t hear.
Oh, but she could hear.
“You have to think of the Fae as carnivorous plants . . .”
Nina closed her eyes, coughing like the smell of the blood stifled her. More likely it stifled the angel.
“Blood provides nutrients they must otherwise live without . . .”
It began.
Twigs snapped, scratching against rough bark. Wood creaked. The trees were coming to life under a strong, supernatural breeze, waving and dancing, and Troy raced up the nearest trunk for a safer view, clinging to a thick branch while it groaned beneath her. A dim green glow flashed throughout the great clearing around Tileaf’s tree, highlighting every crumpled leaf.
Shortly afterward, the Fae materialized. She was a ravaged mess with a leash of light wrapped around her slender neck, her spring green wings and voluminous hair disheveled from constant pain. Like all angels she had been imposing once, perfect as only they could be perfect. But now, blood streaked her spider-silk train, most of it her own, and her feathers either drifted into the dirt like her leaves or quivered pitifully, twisted from the priests’ ritualistic cruelty.
“
You
,” she said, her words thick with hatred.
She’d spotted Sariel almost immediately.
“You have your leaves,
priest
. What do you want from me now?” She swayed, dizzy from awakening, but energy snapped around her body nevertheless.
Miniature lightning bolts rocketed in his direction.
They crackled against the barrier Troy had set up, dissipating into harmless tendrils, the force behind them fanning Sariel’s longer hair behind his neck. Troy opened her eyes wider, no longer pained by the light, happily gloating at the sight of Angela, aghast. This was not the type of faerie she’d obviously expected. Not a bird with its wings broken by her cage, lashing out at them desperately. Tileaf groaned, as if the barrier had wounded her more than Sariel’s survival, and she slumped against the trunk of her tree, heaving for breath.
Nina stood up, more anguished than Angela. “Vevaliah,” she said sorrowfully.
Tileaf regarded her with agony, gasping. Then she noticed Nina’s red eyes and stiffened with dawning comprehension. “Who are you?”
“Mikel. One of Raziel and Lucifel’s chicks.”
There was a long and strange silence.
“That . . .” The Fae whitened in her face, seeming afraid. “. . . that cannot be.”
Mikel lowered her head, shaking it. “What have they done to you? Were you not Israfel’s favored one? Why did you defect?”
“That heaven was a hell,” Tileaf whispered shakily. “You of all angels should know that . . .”
“More than here?”
The Fae shut her eyes. Her mouth twisted with anger. “If you can’t kill me, then leave. I have so little time left. So little of everything. They’re gone. All of my children. I am the
last
.”
Mikel stepped forward, her hands uplifted in supplication. “Then, please, show them! Show them what you remember of the Supernals. There must be others to remember for you, Vevaliah, when you have passed on. The moment is a crucial one, you know this.”
Tileaf closed her eyes again, behaving like the merest mention of the past crushed her. When she reopened them, she gazed intently at Angela, almost hopeful. “Are you Her?”
Her tone left hardly any room for a no.
“The Ruin . . .” Angela turned aside, growing more and more upset by the sight of the shattered faerie standing in front of her. “I—I don’t know. But I have memories of these Supernals . . . Two of them. And”—she lifted the Grail into the open—“this—”
Troy cursed under her breath. The stone was not for the curiosity of others.
“—whatever it is.”
The Fae’s eyes widened, reflecting the green of the more watchful Eye in all its terrible beauty. It spun in front of her, glinting and almost intelligent. “Lucifel’s Grail.” Her words were heavy things, escaping her with a visible effort. “She gave it to Raziel as a gift, shortly before the Celestial Revolution in Heaven. It is a dreaded object . . . cursed from spilling the blood of countless angels. Put it away,
now
. It should never be out in the open for long.”
Angela tucked the Eye under her shirt, troubled. “Spilling blood?”
Tileaf nodded and leaned her head back against the tree trunk. “Using the Grail, Lucifel would conjure the Glaive. Her most terrible weapon, though she probably had no need of it. It was rumored to have the power of cutting through anything . . . anything in the universe, even substances that could not otherwise be cut.” The Fae’s expression became more distant and haunted. “Why she gave such an object to Raziel was beyond our understanding, though many said it was a lover’s gift. He then handed it to the Jinn shortly before his . . . death. It can only be used by those who carry the spirit of the Supernals—”
Making Angela’s strangeness all the more discouraging—as there were only three.
“Raziel,” Tileaf continued, “Israfel, and Lucifel.”
“What is it though? A stone?”
Tileaf shivered all over. “Perhaps. But I am glad it is no longer before me.”
Angela stood with Kim, her face bland, but her stance firm. “Show me. I need to see them for myself. The Supernals.” She edged nearer to Tileaf, fascinated by her beauty, but with all the foolishness of any other human, her fingers aching to touch or stroke. “I’m sorry about what happened to you here. I am—”
Tileaf swallowed, pained. She could barely disguise her disgust. Angela was human, a member of the race responsible for more than half of the Fae’s earthly torments, and she had less than little to offer for this kind of service. But the spirit inside of Nina was right. This was also Tileaf’s last chance to pass on memories that few angels had survived to record, and perhaps to the person who could help her most. So she eventually looked at Angela again, making it clear that Angela and Angela alone had a place in her consideration. “You will not understand all that you see.” Her words were like a dire warning. “You will be entering
my
memories and thoughts, and because I am not human . . . this experience will be very unlike what you’re probably expecting. It might affect you for quite a while.”
“That’s fine,” Angela said.
“Yet, before we continue,” Tileaf said as her fine brow creased, “you must promise me something in exchange.”
“All right.”
“If you are truly the Archon, as soon as you are granted the opportunity—you must kill me without any hesitation.”
Silence.
Angela covered her face with her hands and took a deep breath. Another. Time passed and Sariel began to move nearer to her, perhaps fearing she’d fainted from shock. But then, with all the suddenness of a sparking flame, her face reappeared between the screen of her fingers, and her expression was one of steely resolve. “If that’s what you want, I’ll do it. It’s only fair.”
Troy flicked her ears, unable to hide her interest in where the conversation had turned.
Sariel had wisely stepped back into the background for the time being, but now he glanced at Troy with an eyebrow raised, echoing her surprise, both of them putting aside their mutual hatred long enough to quietly concur that whatever Angela might be, she was more than either of them could have hoped for or suspected. It couldn’t make up for the indignity of a Binding, but it was at least enough to earn the tiniest measure of respect.