Page 84

“Change.” The word is flat, final. “My mother, the High Queen Morael, watched wars. The slow bleeding of the worlds. She decided she wanted no part of it. She wanted perfection. Stasis, if you may.” She turns to look at me, the cynicism in her violet eyes sharp enough to cut. “Do you know what happens to a world that forbids suffering, Remiel? It rots in sugar. They locked the doors to preserve their light, but all they did was suffocate it. They smile. Dance. Sing. For an eternity. Terrified that if they ever stop, the horror of the universe will finally catch up.” She sweeps a hand toward the desolate plain around us, ash stretching toward the horizon. “I could not breathe there, so I left right before they locked the portals. I chose the only place that is honest about its nature.”

“Hell,” Jareth says softly.

“Hell. At least in the pit, the suffering is real. The fire moves. I would rather burn in honest agony than freeze inside a perfect lie.”

“So, you ran to Lucifer,” I say.

“I ran to the one being who understood what it meant to reject a throne for the sake of freedom. He never asked for perfection but for loyalty. It was a fair trade.” Her gaze flickers to Jareth, and for a moment, raw emotion cracks through the porcelain mask she wears so well. Her voice drops to a whisper. “And then I met two brothers on a Venetian plaza. One wanted to burn the world down, and one just wanted to feel something real. And I thought…maybe that was the solution. Maybe I did not have to be perfect. Maybe I did not have to be damned. Maybe I could just be messy.”

Jareth tries to reach for her, his fingers brushing hers. “Vy.”

She pulls away, the mask sliding back into place with practiced ease. She leaves his hand suspended in the empty air between them. “It doesn’t matter now,” she says, her voice hardening. “We are all debris, aren’t we? Angels. Fae. Fallen. We are what the perfect realms threw away.” She lifts her right hand and points toward the tower, where a white light pulses with an erratic rhythm. “So, let us go break their toys.”

I study her then with a respect sharpened by understanding. She is not a princess of Hell. She is a refugee, a woman who has chosen pain over numbness.

“Agreed,” I say.

34. Vyxia

The silence of Limbo is even heavier, more suffocating. But the silence stretching between Jareth and me is so much louder. It vibrates with centuries of unsaid words, as sharp as the static in the air.

Remiel has fallen somewhat far behind, probably too lost in the return of his own memories. His bronze light keeps flickering against the gray gloom. But Jareth… He walks ahead of me like a loaded weapon. He keeps his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders loose. But I know him. I see the tension in his jaw. I know what he is thinking and how he blames me for all of it.

The ash crunching beneath our boots sounds too much like bones breaking.

I cannot take it anymore, so I stop. My boots slide in the gray dust. I reach out and close my hand around his arm. The leather of his jacket is cold, damp with the mist of this dead realm.

“We need to talk,” I say, my voice tight and quiet.

He doesn’t look at me, keeping his crystal-blue gaze fixed on the pulsing tower in the distance. He shakes my hand off with a shrug, though the movement is too sharp, too rigid. “No, we don’t,” he says, stepping away from me. “We have more important matters. Priorities. We have my friend to wake up.”

I surge forward, moving with the fluid speed I honed in the pits of Hell, and cut him off. I plant myself firmly in his path. “Stop running, Jareth,” I snap.

“I’m not running,” he says, a smirk that doesn’t reach his eyes ghosting his lips. “I’m advancing. It’s a military term. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I am sorry!” The words rip out of me, raw and echoing in the dead air.

He freezes, and the smirk falters, just for a second.

I take a breath and force myself to look at him, to really see the angel I helped break. “I am sorry, Jareth. I was a fool in Venice, Brussels, Prague… I was young and selfish. Is that what you want? For me to apologize? To beg for your forgiveness?” I reach for him again, my hand hovering in the space between us. “I apologize.”

He stands motionless for a heartbeat. The gray light of Limbo washes out the color of his jacket, making him look like a statue carved from ice. Then he slowly turns his head. The calm, fun composure—the mask he has worn for centuries—shatters, his face a snarl. He slaps my hand away, the sound cracking like a whip in the silence.

“No.” He looms over me, his blue eyes burning with an icy fire. “You don’t get to apologize to me,” he spits, his voice shaking. “You don’t get to clear your conscience here, in the dark, while he isn’t even here to hear it.”

“Jareth, I—”

“NO!” He steps into my space, forcing me back. “Tell my brother ‘I’m sorry’! Say sorry to the angel who fell because of you!”

I flinch.

“Tell it to the man who spent years screaming in Lilith’s dungeons while you were hiding and playing politics in her court!” He pulls back, disgust radiating off him in waves.

I stand there, feeling smaller than I have in centuries.

“Until then,” he says, his voice dropping to a cold whisper as he turns his back on me again, “keep your mouth shut and keep walking.”

The wind in Limbo does not blow, yet I feel a sudden biting chill. It seeps into the marrow.