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“Your Highness,” I said in greeting and bowed forward from my sitting position until my forehead touched the floor.
Regardless of the already precarious place I was in, it was always a good idea to adhere to formalities. No use in antagonizing him further by not performing the appropriate greeting.
“I have a hard time believing you were able to free the demon on your own,” Raphael said.
I swallowed hard. “But I did, Your Highness. I worked alone. The only one who inadvertently helped me was Naamah, though she didn’t know what I was planning. When I told Ithuriel earlier that I was with Naamah while the demon escaped, it wasn’t entirely true. After we flew off together, I left Naamah and traveled to your estate to free the demon. Naamah had no idea. She thought I left to clandestinely meet with a supervisor for an illicit tryst. Being a good friend, she agreed to cover for me. She thought it was just a small lie and that it wouldn’t be a big deal. At no point did I tell her what I truly planned to do, and she didn’t suspect.”
This was the story we’d agreed I’d tell once I surrendered myself to the authorities, in order to explain why Naamah had pretended to have been with me while I had, in fact, been somewhere else.
Relationships between angels were forbidden if there was a direct chain of command between them so that any nepotism and favoritism when it came to promotions could be ruled out. It would make sense that I would have wanted to avoid detection if I had an affair going with a direct supervisor, and it would be just as logical that Naamah, who flaunted rules of propriety, would gladly help me conduct such an illicit meeting.
As long as Naamah stuck to the same story, they’d have no cause to suspect that she’d helped me with the demon escape. She likely wouldn’t even face any repercussions for trying to aid another angel in circumventing a small rule like that—it would just be shrugged off and swept under the rug.
“I know,” Raphael said.
I twitched in surprise. “You do?”
“Naamah told us as much.”
I sucked in a breath. So they had already interrogated her? Oh, God.
“Is she okay?” I strained against my chains. “Where is she?”
“On her way home, I presume.” His blue eyes glinted coldly. “She was very upset when she came to see me.”
Wait, what? She’d gone to Raphael?
He tilted his head, regarding me with a look that half quizzical and half satisfied. “You really thought she’d keep your secret, didn’t you?”
I opened my mouth, only to close it again with an audible click. Confusion churned in my stomach. “I…yeah. That’s what we agreed on.”
He studied me with cold fury for a moment. “Naamah is many things, but a traitor is not one of them. Lucky for us, you put your trust in the wrong person, and lucky for her, her sense of duty is far better than your own.”
“What?” I breathed. There was something here he wasn’t saying, something important I hadn’t yet grasped.
He bared his teeth. “Did you really expect her to stay silent in the face of treason? It is one thing to ask her to cover for an illegal tryst, but an entirely different thing to want to bind her to secrecy after you confessed to her that you freed the demon!”
I rocked back as if he’d slapped me. What? Naamah had said I’d confessed to her? That hadn’t been part of our plan.
A nauseating suspicion slunk through me. Raising my gaze to the archangel again, I asked in a whisper, “She came to see you? Unprompted?”
“Just so.” His power vibrated in the air. “After she’d returned with you from your flight together, she sought me out immediately. Told me all about how you’d come back from your supposed meeting with your supervisor distraught and covered in blood. When Naamah pressed you on what happened, you confessed to her that you’d just freed the demon prisoner.”
I made a small sound of distress, something in my chest twisting painfully.
“Apparently,” Raphael went on, “you entered a relationship with the demon while he was somehow masquerading as an angel, and by the time you found out his true nature, you had fallen in love with him, to the point where you discarded your duty for the treasonous act of helping him escape. You trusted Naamah to keep your secret, thinking her your friend. Unfortunately for you, Naamah’s loyalty is to Heaven first and foremost, and she couldn’t reconcile covering up a crime of this magnitude with her conscience.”
Numb from shock, I shook my head. Betrayal raked bitter claws down my chest.
I’d thought we’d had an agreement. Hadn’t it been Naamah’s own suggestion that there should be some form of delay between the successful rescue and me turning myself in? Why would she now go ahead and sabotage that plan by throwing me under the bus?
She knew I wanted to find my mom first, I’d told her so myself, and she’d seemed so sympathetic and understanding. So why did she now deny me the time I needed to locate my mom’s soul, robbing me of the one chance I had at getting a peaceful, positive goodbye?
The hot burn of anger and disappointment crawled through me, and I clenched my hands into fists.
“What do you have to say to that?” Raphael asked, an edge to his voice.
I drew in a shuddering breath. “It’s all true.”
