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Oh, yeah, the angels in charge absolutely had to figure this out. They’d put all their effort into making him spill the secret of how he’d gotten into Heaven and managed to bypass all security measures.
Which meant…they would torture the fuck out of him.
My chest drew tight, fear and worry pooling nauseatingly in my gut.
Angels or no, they’d have no qualms about using whatever means necessary to make him talk, and what I’d witnessed in that cave when they’d arrested him would be nothing compared to what they’d do to get him to confess.
I had to get him out. I had to help him escape if it was the last thing I did.
But how?
I was just one person, and I wasn’t at all powerful. I didn’t even know where they’d taken him! And even if I did, how in Heaven was I supposed to go about getting him out? I had no connections, no?—
On that thought, realization hit me like lightning.
Naamah.
My lips parted, hope blooming in my chest. She’d know what to do, wouldn’t she? She was his mother, she’d helped him with this, and she wouldn’t just stand by when her son got arrested, tortured, and threatened with execution. She’d definitely want to get him out of prison and out of Heaven, and with all her connections, she might just have the means to do it!
I’d go and seek her out immediately.
Underneath my fear and worry and the urgency driving me on, threads of confusion and uncertainty wove through me at the prospect of seeing Naamah again.
All this time, I’d thought she’d simply befriended me because she liked me, and I hadn’t questioned it further because she was known for her eccentric choice of acquaintances. But now, I couldn’t help wondering how much of her kindness and friendship had been an act, whether she’d meant anything she’d said, or if it had all been part of her plan to get close to me so she could monitor and prepare me for Azazel’s arrival.
Had she truly had fun with me? When we’d joked and laughed together, had her joy been real? Or had she played to my loneliness and need to have at least one good friend up here? Had she simply told me what I’d wanted or needed to hear in order to trust her?
Thinking about that caused a weird spike of betrayal within me.
Never mind if her intentions had been benevolent, she’d still deceived me. She’d been dishonest about why she’d sought me out.
Truthfully, it felt a special kind of shitty to be wondering if I’d only been a project to her. I was a socially awkward introvert, always had been, which meant I could count the number of real friends in my life on one hand. I cherished each and every one of those connections precisely because they were so rare, and they usually went deep. I wasn’t one to have casual friends—when I opened up to someone, I was all in.
And with Naamah, it had been like that, at least from my point of view. So to now be unsure if this friendship had actually been real poked at a tender part of me.
With a sigh, I turned to put the tunic back into the drawer. I could just ask her about it, I guessed. Though that was a conversation I wasn’t sure I was ready for. And besides, figuring out how to free Azazel took absolute precedence, which meant there likely wouldn’t be an opportunity to bring up any questions about the nature of our friendship.
I’d just deposited the tunic in its box when a knock sounded at my door.
With a jerk, I closed the drawer, then pivoted and called out, “Come in.”
The door opened—and Azrael stepped inside.
My breath froze in my lungs. I gaped at him with what must have been no doubt an expression that spelled out every single thing I was feeling, because the shock and raw emotion that rolled through me robbed me of any skill to regulate my facial features.
For years, I’d only known him as the angel who’d made me ascend—but now that my memory was back, my entire perception of him had changed. I stared at the one other person beside Naamah who’d been a regular contact for me up here and who’d hidden how they were related to me at the same time.
This was Azazel’s father. The one who’d left him, who’d abandoned Naamah and his children, who’d dealt the man I loved the biggest wound of his life, the one who’d single-handedly driven Lucifer to raging madness over the treatment of his beloved daughter, which had resulted in Azazel being bullied and abused in his youth.
Azrael was all that—and also the angel who’d saved his son’s love against the rules of Heaven, who’d kept checking in on me, who’d been, for all intents and purposes, something of a mentor for me, who’d made me feel less alone in a world that was a constant challenge for me.
“Why?” I bit out through gritted teeth, my voice hoarse from strangled emotions.
Azrael stilled, doing that inhuman, eerie thing where he’d become so motionless that it was unnatural. It took him a moment to speak. “You remember.”
“Everything,” I rasped.
He exhaled heavily, closed his eyes, and then rubbed both hands over his face, the most human, most vulnerable gesture I’d ever seen him make.
