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“I know,” I said, emotion choking me. Throwing my arms around him, I hugged him tight, trembling against him. “I know. But you need to go now. If you linger, the help he gave you, that chance he bought you with his life will have been for nothing. You need to leave.”
Drawing back a little, I nudged him toward the gate, or rather, I tried to, though I had no success in moving him until he jolted himself out of his shock-induced stupor. Inhaling a shuddering breath, he blinked rapidly, his jaw clenching tight, and then he briskly turned and strode for the gate.
Before stepping through, he hauled me close for a moment, crushing me to him in a hug that spoke of all the things he couldn’t voice right now. All those things we didn’t have time for.
He released me, and then, just like that, he was gone, vanished through the glowing gate.
I stood alone in the courtyard, the silence and the emptiness pressing down on me with the weight of a thousand tons. My heart felt bruised, beaten, and bloodied, and the waning adrenaline made me shake violently.
All I wanted was to sink down on the ground and collapse into a puddle of hurt.
But I had to leave. I couldn’t stay here. I was still on the clock.
My mind, overwhelmed and reeling from all that had happened, zeroed in on the task that remained, eager to latch on to a concrete thing I could do.
The mission wasn’t finished. I still had to go back to my meeting place with Naamah, and then we’d have to return to my suite in Derdekea’s territory.
There, an achievable task. Something to do. Something to keep my mind from processing what would likely haunt me in my quiet moments.
Without even a last glance at the mess of blood and rumpled clothing in the courtyard, I launched into the air. I pushed myself to fly as fast as I could, not just in order to get back quicker, but rather because at this speed, I was less likely to be seen at all in the sky.
About five minutes later, I landed on the outcropping where I’d left Naamah. I marched right for the copse of trees, calling out for her.
“Zoe.” Naamah came out from behind the cover of a bush and enveloped me in a hug.
I choked back the surge of emotion threatening to drive hot tears into my eyes, willing my muscles not to tremble.
I still shook like a leaf in her arms, so much weight of responsibility falling off my shoulders now that I knew he was safe, it was done, it was over.
She withdrew and held me by my shoulders, giving me a concerned look. “Did he make it?”
I nodded, my throat tight, my mind veering back to how he almost hadn’t made it, to how close we’d come to failure.
And to who had evened the odds, paying for it with his life.
“Azrael,” I croaked. “He’s dead.”
She winced as if zapped by a bolt of electricity. Her face blanched. “What?”
“He helped us.” My throat drew tighter with every word. “We were at the gate, and Azazel was about to go through, but a squad of angels discovered us. We fought. They overwhelmed us. One had me at sword-point and threatened my life, and Azazel surrendered to save me. I thought it was all over, but then—Azrael showed up. He killed all the angels and told Azazel to go through the gate. He said he knew apologies wouldn’t heal what he’d destroyed, but that you guys deserved them nonetheless, and he wanted to let you know he was sorry. H-he wanted to meet with Azazel and Azmodea later and talk to them, but then—there was this one angel left who I’d thought was incapacitated, but she recovered and…killed him.”
Naamah’s hands fell from my shoulders. Her lips parted, her eyes, unfocused, darting everywhere but at me. In all my time of knowing her, I’d never seen her so shaken. She drew in a raspy breath, her hands trembling as she pushed her hair behind her ears. After a moment, she gave a tight nod and cleared her throat.
“Okay,” she said, her voice hoarse. “It’s good that Azazel made it. And you, too. That’s good. You did well. I knew you could do it. Very good.” She nodded again, her lips pressed together tightly.
My heart squeezed to the point of pain. “Naamah…” I ventured softly.
No matter the hurt-filled history between her and Azrael, it had clearly affected her to learn of his death.
She sent me a brittle smile. “Yes, you’re right. We need to get going. We shouldn’t linger here. Come on.” Half turning, she paused and looked back at me, her brows drawing together. “You’ll need to wash up first. We can’t go back with you looking like you just bathed in the blood of your enemies. There’s a creek over here.”
And with that, she pivoted and walked ahead, farther into the copse of trees.
I decided not to press her on the matter of Azrael’s death. I still felt raw when I thought of it, and I’d only known him for a few years as my mentor. I could only imagine what it was like for her. It was one thing to feel resentment for someone you’d once been close to but could still see, knowing they were still around, and a whole other thing to find out they were gone in the most irrevocable way.
I’d been through this with my dad. I could vividly remember what it had felt like to learn of his death, to have this sudden realization that he was truly forever lost to me. At that point, we hadn’t spoken in years, hadn’t seen each other in so long, and I’d held such a deep grudge against him, but even so, that distance, that separation, it had been on my terms, something I’d controlled, and beneath it, there’d always been a subtle understanding of there being the chance to change that status. Because as long as my dad was alive, I could—theoretically—decide to talk to him, to reconcile.
With his death, that hypothetical chance had vanished, and it had left me reeling.
