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Not that I gave a fuck.
“Why?” I repeated, balling my hands into fists. “All these years, all this time, all those moments you came to see me. Why? It’s not something you do for all the angels you make ascend because you feel responsible for them, is it?”
A deep breath, then: “No.”
“Then why me?” My nostrils flared. “You clearly couldn’t care less about your son, so I don’t think it was out of any concern for me with regard to what I mean to him.”
He clenched his jaw. “I did feel responsible for you. Not because I’d made you ascend—but for the memories I’d tried to preserve in you.”
I almost stumbled back a step, his words shocking me like a bucket of ice water to the face. “What?”
“I had to see if it would work,” Azrael said, his brows drawn together, his expression somewhat torn. “Had to make sure it wouldn’t have ill effects on you. And I needed to find out if maybe you’d remember…”
“But you said I’d never remember.” My voice was hollow. “Every time I asked you, you said it was impossible, that the memories get automatically deleted during the ascension.”
“I didn’t say you would never remember.” He tilted his head, his eyes darting to the side. “I only said that no human-turned-angel has ever regained their memories, which is true, that the mind wipe happens automatically during the transformation, which is also true for all other human ascensions, and that you should not pin your hopes on something that goes against the laws of nature. That, too, is the truth. I never lied.” His eyes met mine again, unfathomably deep and filled with a myriad of things I couldn’t begin to parse. “I didn’t dare tell you what I’d done before I knew that it had, in fact, worked. Just imagine your pain if I’d told you, but then we’d find out it didn’t take, and you’d been hoping forever for something that would never come to pass.”
I had a million things to say to that, but all I managed was a grunt and a twitch of my fingers as if to wrap around his throat.
“What I did,” Azrael said quietly, “had never been done before. There was no telling if I’d succeed. When I initiate the transformation from human to angel, I just provide the spark and then channel the power that performs the ascension. I have never before tried to interfere. I did not even know how to do it properly—there is no manual for this. I just…” He swallowed. “I just went into your mind and gathered it all up, pushed it far down, and then erected a shield so strong it might just survive the transformation.”
My hands now hung loosely at my sides as I stared at him, several emotions warring for dominance within me.
“I had no idea,” Azrael continued, “whether it had been enough. After your ascension, there was no way to easily verify if my efforts had been successful. I couldn’t very well enter your mind again to check, not now that you were an angel. So I had to keep seeing you, keep asking you—carefully—if you experienced any signs of your memory having survived…and returning.” Silver lightning flashed in his eyes, a mirror image of his son’s. “And now it has.”
“Why?” I whispered.
“I’d hoped you could tell me.” His look was inquisitive. “What has brought this on after all these years?”
I shook my head, my chest feeling punched through. “No. I mean, why did you preserve my memory?”
He shifted his weight, his eyes flicking from me to the floor, his throat muscles working as he swallowed several times. “Because he loves you.”
Slowly, my lips parted as I stared at him, processing what he’d said—and the things he didn’t, but which were clear in the silence beyond his words. “You do care for him.”
After all this time, after all the hurt and the strife and thousands of years of broken trust and shattered bonds, there was a part of him that gave a damn?
I gaped at him in utter bewilderment that swiftly turned to simmering indignation. Not for myself, but on behalf of the son he’d scorned for so long. “He won’t forgive you just because of this.”
“I know.” A sharp shake of his head. “That is not why—” He broke off and began again, “He already gave his forgiveness to me. For making you ascend. I don’t expect to be redeemed, Zoe.”
I winced a little at the fact that he now addressed me by this name, my true name, when I’d been used to him calling me Chaya for years.
“Some sins are too great.” Azrael looked to the side, his fingers fidgeting. “Some hurts too deep to be mended. I didn’t do it for me, to find redemption in any kind of forgiveness beyond the lip service he gave me when I forced him to. Which wasn’t right. I am looking back at a long life of not doing what was right while I was full of righteousness. I have never done anything for him, but I thought…if I could do this… If I could hold your memory here, for him, for you both, he might just have a chance. A second chance with you. And I don’t expect it to change anything for me and him, but it will be enough for me to know it changes everything for him and you. That he would find you one day, and you’d remember him.”
I swallowed hard, emotion choking me. He just had to go and do it, didn’t he? Had to be all layered and complex and too complicated a person to shove into a box of black-and-white when it would be all too easy to simply despise him for what he’d done to his family. And now I stood here, forced to grudgingly admit that I was still alive, with my memories intact, only because he’d at some point developed a conscience and had finally done right by his son.
I’d hated him on Azazel’s behalf ever since I’d heard the story, but now that hatred soured in my chest, softened by unbidden sympathy and a pensive kind of gratitude.
God, he couldn’t even do us the favor of remaining a loathsome asshole!
I wanted to strangle him.
“He did find me,” I said instead, my voice thick with the threat of tears. “He’s here.”
His complete lack of a reaction made me suck in a breath.
“You knew,” I muttered. “How?”
