He huffed. “And that creep, Gabriel? What happened to him?”
I sighed. “Nothing. He wasn’t punished. He pretended to be testing me, and I failed. Automatically stripped of my title, my wings, and given the new status of fallen angel. It was a big fall, Max. I’m not going to lie. I am still coming to grips with being a demoness. It helps that Aunt Lucy runs the place.”
“You didn’t deserve that, Ivy,” he said softly.
And the monitor pulsedTRUE.
I cleared my throat. “Third question. What do you miss most about being alive?”
He didn’t answer at once. The silence stretched, the kind that changes shape and expands on you. “The sounds,” he said finally. “Not the kind in my head. The nothing kind: street music, dishes clattering, pounding rain that makes conversation stupid. A bar where you have to lean in to hear someone, and you pretend you didn’t hear them so they’ll say it again.”
I smiled, helpless. “That’s oddly specific.”
“I’m oddly specific.” He shifted again, a whisper of movement that tugged at something inside of me. “What about you? What do you miss most about heaven?”
“I’m the one asking,” I said lightly.
“Right,” he murmured. “Rules.”
Something in his tone—resignation, maybe—cut cleaner than I liked. The compromise leapt out before I could lasso it. “Wind,” I said, and felt my pulse in my tongue for telling him even that much. “A big, messy wind that pushes your wings back and then billows under you until you're spiraling across the sky like a bullet from a gun.”
He didn’t say anything for a breath, then another. When he spoke, his voice was careful. “That’s beautiful. I’m sorry, Ivy.”
I jotted nonsense on my pad to quell the sudden rise of tears. I didn't cry, and I certainly didn’t feel exposed. The room hummed like a lullaby sung by a patient furnace. Time bent its own rules, drew its legs up, and tucked in beside us.
“Fourth question,” I said, and even I heard how my voice had softened. “What truth have you never spoken aloud?”
The breath he took scuffed the mic. “That I was lonely,” he said, so simply I had to press my hand flat on the table for the jolt. “I kept telling myself I loved my life: the schedule, the women, the money. But you can be alone in a room full of peopleand feel poor with a wallet full of cash. Pride is a hell of a muzzle.”
TRUTH
My heart did something dangerous. “That’s… yes.”
“And you?” he asked, as if we were on a seesaw and balance mattered. “What truth’s still in your heart?”
No. Absolutely not. I could say the wrong word and end up with a target on my back and a lecture from Lucy about “sexy abs and a nice pair of eyes” while she dried my tears.Tell him you grind your teeth. Tell him you hate pears. Tell him?—
“I’m not as strong as I act,” I said, and didn’t recognize my own voice. “I’m… working on it.”
“I think you’re stronger than you think,” he said, and there went my traitorous ribcage.
“Fifth question,” I blurted, too fast. “What do you want most now?”
There was no pause this time. “Companionship,” he said. “I’m terrified of being left all alone. I want to have someone to talk to, to laugh with.”
To love. He didn’t say it, yet we both heard the words as if they were spoken aloud.
TRUTH
“No follow-up questions,” I whispered.
His voice had gone drowsy at the edges. “How long has it been?”
I glanced at the rune dial and watched numbers that had been marching before. “You’re doing well,” I said, which was the truth and not an answer.
He sighed, pleased. “Keep talking, then. It makes the dark behave.”
So I did. Not everything was on Lucy’s list. Some of it was nothing at all—weather-that-doesn’t-exist talk, food we pretended we could taste, a story about Shana shoving me outof bed with a skull mug and calling it mentorship. He snorted; I tucked the sound away. Some of it was small truths carefully wrapped.
