a way Luc has never been and never will be. Could Ryan represent some kind of warning? I was never good at reading signs and portents, having fallen to earth before I could work out, for myself, who I was and what my purpose could even be.
‘Who is he?’ Ryan’s voice is raw. ‘He’s no archangel,’ I murmur. ‘Not any more. I’ve always called him Luc,’ I add reluctantly, ‘but you would know him as Lucifer, Ryan.’
I see Ryan blanch as understanding finally dawns: that he is a dead ringer for the Devil Incarnate.
As if to underscore my words, a soul-rending scream pierces the storm-tossed night. It reverberates in the silence that has fallen over Ryan, over me, deep inside our stone citadel.
Both of us flinch as another scream sounds, closer this time, and louder. For a moment, a bright, constant light pierces the narrow window set deep into the walls above our landing, and we stare up at it, frozen with fear, before it suddenly extinguishes.
Ryan lets go of me abruptly, leans back against the wall.
I pull my knees up under my chin, tightening my arms around myself defensively. ‘So you see how this is hopeless, you and me?’
In answer, Ryan just closes his eyes and tilts his head back, as if he can’t bear the sight of me.
I never babble, I’m no good at small talk, but I rush to fill the silence with the oldest story there is. About a girl seeing a guy through a crowd for the first time, and falling in love.
‘It was like a sickness,’ I mutter. ‘We were young, capable of things your people would deem impossible. We were … obsessed with each other, with what we could do. We thought we were outside the order of things. That rules were only there to be broken. We sneered at the others — believing they didn’t possess our depth of understanding about the way things could be. The whole universe was our playground, and Luc loved to walk in your world. He’d return with stories of some strange, rare place he knew as “Eden”. The greatest irony is that he should be trapped here for an age, growing in vengefulness and spite and pure evil because of me …’
Can Ryan hear my unspoken plea?
I did nothing but fall for the wrong person, Ryan. I picked Luc, when I should have picked Raphael, even K’el. But then I never would have met you …
Even then, Luc had been trouble. He’d been wild. We’d been created to govern. We were responsibility and duty and faith and principle made flesh, made real. But Luc had taken all the power bound inside him, all the unspoken covenants laid down between us and our creator — the covenants hard coded into the very matter of which we were made, thou shalt, thou shalt not — and he’d used them for his own … sport.
It had been exhilarating, and frightening, being with him. Almost from the first, Luc had behaved like a god himself: creating, destroying, twisting the animate and inanimate world around him into anything he desired simply because he could. He was different from us all and somehow … free. And more beautiful than the sun.
And I fell for that. Who wouldn’t have?
Maybe I hadn’t transgressed the way Luc did, but I never tried to rein him in. I was implicated, a witness; at the very least, I turned a blind eye, when I must have known he’d never be satisfied with things the way they stood.
I tell Ryan all of this and he doesn’t say anything, or open his eyes.
‘I had it wrong for the longest time,’ I finish softly. ‘It was never the Eight who cast me out of home, cut me off from everything I’d ever loved, everyone I’d ever known. It was Luc all along. The Eight did the best they could to keep me alive down here, but they couldn’t stop Luc filling my sleeping mind with longing and lies. Some fatal bargain was struck between Luc and Michael, all those years ago. But Luc gave it a special twist, all of his own making, like he’s always done. He was the one who exiled me and it almost killed me. But he didn’t count on me surviving. And he didn’t count on being cast down himself, by Michael. And because of a rash vow that Luc once made me, he’s been trapped here on earth.’
I close my eyes in horror, whispering, ‘Luc craves a monstrous empire. And I am the key, the touchstone. What he wants won’t be possible until he has me back under his control. He will never stop pursuing me.’
Ryan still hasn’t moved. ‘And are you still … obsessed with him?’ he says finally, without opening his eyes.
His voice is emotionless, steeled against more hurt. ‘Yes,’ I whisper over the hurricane inside. ‘More than ever.’
Ryan swallows and opens his eyes and I see them shimmer with an unspoken devastation before he abruptly looks down at his clenched hands.
I watch the skin of his face tighten in rejection as I say, ‘I am consumed — with thoughts of destroying Luc the way he destroyed K’el, the way he’s been responsible for destroying and defiling more of your kind than you could begin to number, the way he tried to destroy me. He robbed me of time, Ryan, of choice, the two things I consider as precious as life itself. He raised his hand against me when all I ever did was love him beyond reason.’
Ryan raises his head as my words sink in. I hold up my aching left hand, which I’ve been concealing from his gaze, and the living flames rise off my skin as if they reach for him. He gasps, recoiling.
‘I’m sick of being objectified by those who are supposed to “love” me,’ I say fiercely. ‘I’ve been a game piece for far too long. I want vengeance, Ryan. I want to rain down upon my enemies like a ruinous plague. But most of all? I’m ready to be loved, just for myself, no other reason. And I don’t think you’re strong enough to be with someone like me. No one is, not now.’
Ryan’s continuing silence tells me everything I need to know. I feel such a sudden weight of sadness that, for a moment, the screaming, spinning world beneath my skin grows still. Abruptly, my burning scar extinguishes all together, ceases to ache.
Who could love me the way I am? Nameless, stateless, flawed.
‘I have no name,’ I say, my voice bleak. ‘And there is a legion after me who would reduce you to blood. For what it’s worth,’ I whisper, ‘I feel it, too. Felt it, almost from the moment I met you. When we’re together, I feel so much less … alone. And I would like nothing better than to lose myself in the human world with you, but that’s a dream, Ryan. And I’m done dreaming. I’m awake now. Now and forever. And where I’m going, you cannot follow.’
A demonic shriek shatters the night, so close beside us that I surge upright in fear, only to have the entire world tilt through its axis as I struggle to retain my balance.
Ryan is on his feet immediately, steadying me.
He’s so tall, taller than me, built like a line-backing angel.
I’m still Irina’s height, still mortal-sized. I can’t seem to find the energy, or the will, to dominate the space I occupy, to reclaim my true nature. There doesn’t seem any point. I’m no “better” than he is. Not any more.
I struggle in Ryan’s arms, but he won’t let me push him away. Maybe I imagine it but, for a second, it seems as if my outline ripples, like Ryan’s clasping a creature made of fog, I can see the ground below my bare feet, through them.
‘Don’t you dare!’ Ryan cries, his grip momentarily tightening on emptiness as I struggle to draw myself together. ‘Don’t you dare disappear on me again. I know what we have is impossible to rationalise, but once I met you, my old life was over anyway. I was dead inside. All that stuff, that Ryan, they were already gone, already past. Only this matters. Don’t leave me.’
I want to lean into him and draw upon his solidity, his indescribable, peculiar energy that I could pick out in a crowd, anywhere, but I’m falling again, falling.
I’m caving in, I’m vertigo.
‘All that exists,’ I gasp, as if