Aurum stood in front of me, his large blue eyes conveying as much sadness as a lion could. Dash walked up behind him, a limp Harley in his arms. He’d cut the black band around her throat, but angry purple marks still marred the skin there.
“Is she—?” I started to ask, but then saw the rise and fall of her chest.
Harley was still alive. Relief rushed through me, but it was short lived because Tate was dead in my arms. Her chest was still and her color ashen.
The curse had killed her? That asshole killed the love of my life!
I looked back down at Tate again, seeing no sign of life in her. No. I didn’t accept this. I couldn’t.
With Tate in my arms, I spread my wings as I surged to my feet. I crouched and then jumped into the air with a giant downstroke of my wings, gaining altitude quickly. The giant portal to the Netherworld was gone, probably having collapsed the moment Apollyon’s life ended.
The battlefield below was chaos. A good number of the returned souls had taken up the fight, and along with the Lumen hunters they were raining hell on the demons and the few Shades that had come through to Tartarus from the open portal at Lumen Academy.
With their leader vanquished and no way to return to the Netherworld—if the Netherworld even still existed—the demons were clearly panicking, which made them easy pickings for our side. But I didn’t care about any of that. I was looking for one angel in particular and scanned the mess below me until I spotted the gold gleam of Cael’s armor. I hurtled toward him, only spreading my wings to slow our descent at the very last moment.
I landed hard, my joints protesting when they took the brunt of the impact. I’d hardly straightened before a level eight demon with the upper body of a grizzly bear rushed me, probably thinking I was an easy target with Tate still in my arms. Engaging my strength angel marks, I waited until the beast was in range and then spun out of his way, kicking out as the demon passed and nailing him in the knee, shattering the bone. With a bellow of pain and rage, the monster fell to the ground.
“I’ll eat your entrails for that,” the demon snarled, and tried to struggle to his feet, but from a short distance away Cael spotted us. Before the demon could regroup, Cael swung his sword, cleaving the beast in half in a single stroke. The demon’s remains turned to embers and ash before his body even hit the ground.
“What happened?” Cael asked, looking from Tate’s body to me.
It killed me to do it, but I thrust Tate forward, forcing Cael to take her.
“Take her to Avalon,” I ordered. “Fix her. Bring her back.”
Cael’s armor was splattered with black demon blood, and it smeared on Tate’s face and hair as he held her. I growled, hardly being able to stand seeing her tainted by those monsters’ blood but clenched my fists to keep from reaching forward and ripping her away from Cael. I couldn’t do anything to help her now, but I believed he could. He’d saved me before, so he could save her too.
“Fix her,” I shouted when Cael just stood there, looking at Tate’s body in his arms with sadness on his face.
“She killed Apollyon and triggered the killing curse?” he asked when he finally lifted his gaze.
I started to say yes, but the word got caught in my throat, so I nodded instead. “But she threw me through the portal at Lumen Academy when I was dead,” I finally managed to get out. “If you saved me, you can save her too.”
Cael shook his head and looked back down at Tate, “You wereneardeath but not yet there. I can feel that her soul is no longer attached to her body. Her soul is already in Avalon.”
“No!” I screamed, feeling desperation consume me. “Get up there and put her soul back into her body.Please. I… I need her.”
We didn’t have time for this. The hope that she would come back to me was the only thing holding me together right now. He had to try.
“You need to bring her to Avalon. Now!” I growled.
Cael looked at me with compassion and it killed me. “Once a soul leaves its body, I don’t have the authority or the power to return it. There’s a natural order of things even I can’t disrupt.”
“Can’t or won’t?” I challenged, hearing in his statement that maybe there was someone who did have the authority or power to bring her back.
“Both. Neither,” he said, not making any sense.
Several angels of Avalon descended from the sky, dropping down all around us.
“Most of the demons have been vanquished, Commander.”
“And with the return of the souls, the land is beginning to heal,” a ginger-haired female reported. Her gaze skimmed over Tate in his arms before returning to Cael’s face.
“Cael, please,” I said, finally breaking and falling to my knees in front of him. Tears poured down my cheeks; my chest ached in the spot where my broken heart was somehow still beating. “Please,” I said again. “Whatever you can do, try. If you don’t have the power or authority to bring her back, take her to whoever does. If someone has to die, I’ll trade my life for hers.”
A gust of air blew across my face, kicking up dust and making me squint as Aurum landed next to Cael. All the angels of Avalon, with the exception of Cael, dropped to one knee and inclined their heads in respect to Aurum. They didn’t get back to their feet again until Aurum said, “Rise.”
I stayed on my knees in front of both of them. I didn’t care that I was begging. I would do that and so much more for Tate. She’d saved me, more than just once, and more than just my physical body. Before Tate came into my life, I wasn’t even really living. If it weren’t for her, my soul would still be tainted. I didn’t want to exist with a soul but missing a heart.
