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“You cannot stop this. No one can. Soon, I shall become Wretched, and you will have to kill me. I do not wish to live as they do.”
“Abaddon…” I breathed against the bars. “What are you saying?”
“You are not listening to me!” he said, frustration mounting. “Do not let me out of this cell, do you understand? In fact, find a weapon, and end me.”
“You want… me to kill you…”
“Put an end to my reign. Ariuk said I would become the King of the Ashes, and that you would be my undoing. Fulfil your destiny, Sarakiel. Do it while you have the chance… but forgive me first.”
Tears.
I felt them well up in my eyes, and when I blinked, they fell. “You’re asking me to forgive you, and then kill you.”
Abaddon dropped to his knees and reached for my hand through the bars. “I am not asking you, Sarakiel. I am begging you. You cannot stop what has begun. No one can.”
I could see it, now. The light behind his eyes wasn’t always there, and it wasn’t just blue. It flickered and sparked, appearing then disappearing—like lightning. Like the lightning in the clouds that signals the presence of the Wretched; those dragon-like creatures that lived in the sky.
Former angels who had sinned past the point of return.
Angels who were once like Abaddon.
“I’m… not going to do that,” I said, though my voice faltered.
“You must,” he said.
“I won’t kill you, Abaddon.”
“Please. You don’t have a choice. I will hurt you, Sarakiel. I will hurt everyone here, and I will want to. Please.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “You’re going to get up, and we’re going to fight together. One more time.”
“You still are not listening to me.”
“No, you listen!” I hissed. “The man I love is stuck behind bars, begging me to end his life. I am done making choices because there appear to be no alternatives. I’m making an alternative, and you are going to have to deal with that.”
“What alternative, Sarakiel? I am becoming Wretched. I have killed?—”
“—and if you want forgiveness for the things you have done, you shall have it. But I won’t end your life. That’s not what you want, and it’s selfish of you to ask.”
“How do you know what I want?”
“Because I know who you are. You asked for my forgiveness, and you have it. I forgive you, Abaddon. I absolve you of your sins, as much as I can at any rate. But only if you get back up on your feet and you promise that you’ll resist Lucifer with me until your dying breath, if you must.”
Abaddon’s inner turmoil only deepened. Grew. If what he was saying was true, then he was in fact a danger to us all. The Wretched were incredibly powerful beings capable of almost unmatched destructive power; power I had witnessed first-hand.
That Abaddon was becoming one of these creatures… I didn’t know what the process was, or how quickly an angel transitioned to become one of the Wretched. He was looking a little rough, but he hadn’t grown a prehensile tail yet, nor had he grown to become the size of a house. There had to be time, and there had to be a way to reverse this.
Somehow.
Abaddon stood, though it took him a moment to get on his feet. “I will fight,” he said. “I will fight for you, and I will not let Lucifer touch you.”
“You’re the only one of us who has fought him and survived. I need you. We need you.”
He nodded. “Tell me what I have to do,” he said, a look of steely determination on his face.
“I want you to pull yourself together and be the Abaddon I knew, not the King of the Ashes. That is not who you really are, and you know that.”
“And if I don’t? What if I have lost sight of who I was?”
