“So it’s like…” Realization burned a hole in my stomach, my insides gurgling. “Facing a mirror image of yourself, but the absolute worst version? A doppelgänger?”
“See? You don’t need me.”
“Maybe I don’t.” Tension grated the air. He didn’t like that response. “But Gaia did,” I quickly added. “Why?”
“She wanted to know more about the Angel of Water.”
“She had direct access to her.”
His voice drawled through the drill holes. “The new Angel of Water.”
My heart rammed against my ribs, like a caged bird trying to escape.
“So, so fast it beats,” he murmured. “Noisy. Distracting. So much sweeter when they’re quiet.”
Gunnar’s words rang through my mind. Kistuleitarinn is a known pathological liar—among other things. No wonder he didn’t elaborate on those “other things.” A shiver made its way over my shoulders. I wasn’t an elf, but after so much time in that wretched hole, I doubted the demon was picky about his next victim. “Wh-what did you tell her?”
“To be worried.”
An invisible weight sank into my chest, my breaths stabbing and labored. “Why?”
“Because you have something the others don’t.”
“What’s that?”
“Free will.”
It felt like a skeletal hand gripped my windpipe.
“Angels cannot give in to their desires. If they do, there is only one fate.”
The Fall.
A draft blew through the dungeon, angry and biting, just like it had when I stood atop that precipice and watched them all drop.
If I listened hard enough, I swore I’d hear their hopeless screams. I saw the flailing bodies, the battered wings, the endless gray sky in my nightmares regularly—but unlike the memory in Madame Myrian’s crystal ball, my mom’s tortured, wind-whipped face was at the center of it all.
Because that’s where fate ultimately brought her—the Angel of Water—and the others had warned her of it. Earth, Air, and… Fire.
“I know of one angel who went against duty.” The name pulsed through me in a fierce wave of apprehension. Akosua. “The Angel of Fire is still walking free, and she sided with the enemy. Where’s the wrath of fate for that? Did it let her off easy?”
“Desire and desperation are different things.”
I blinked. Such careful, careful words he chose.
“Yes, but Finis said she willingly?—”
“You, though…” Darkness danced up through the grate, unspooling and threading around me. “You are born of the stars and flesh.”
I crossed my arms. “Annnd that makes me special or something?”
His shadows pulled back before billowing outward. “That makes you dangerous.”
“Says the person locked one hundred feet underground.”
“The Angel of Earth couldn’t grant me what I wished for.” The torchlight flickered as he spoke. “But maybe the Angel of Water can.”
My eyes narrowed. “Which is?”
