And then a strange light filled my mind.
I blinked, trying to make sense of it. Something felt...oddly, achingly familiar. Another time. Another place. Memories flashed through my mind all at once. They filled my head with laughter, music, and tears.
Horror and awe twisted around me like twin ribbons. I suddenly knew everything. I understood it all. I wasn’t actually a fallen angel. At least, not in this life.
I was the reincarnation of one.
21
When I came to, Az was waiting for me. He’d lifted me from the floor and carried me over to the sofa, where he cradled me in his arms. The scent of him consumed me, bringing back those fresh, aching memories Lucifer had wiped from my mind when I’d only been a baby.
“Mia,” he murmured against the top of my head.
A tear slipped down my cheeks. “Az.”
My heart was full of a million different emotions. The knowledge of everything I’d seen had shaken me, just as I’d expected, but this was way, way,waymore than I’d bargained for. If Az hadn’t been holding me, I would have probably run through the penthouse screaming.
“So,” he said softly. “Turns out, my memories were wiped, too.”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Lucifer’s an asshole.”
We sat in stunned silence for a while, clinging on to each other as though we’d just spent the last three hundred years apart. Because we had. Kind of. I was her, and she was me, but I was also my own distinct self. It was a weird thing to experience, that was for sure.
“We were in love,” Az said, voice soft. “Your name was Mia, even then. A fallen angel, walking the earth, lost and lonely. We even methere.”
In New York.
It was hard to make sense of it. In my past life, Az and I had been lovers. We’d met on a wet summer night, both drenched from the rain. He’d invited me into the warmth of his ground floor home, and we’d formed an instant connection. It hadn’t mattered that I was a fallen angel, and he was a demon.
For one very happy year, we’d been inseparable.
Until Lucifer found us.
“So, I don’t understand something,” I finally said, breaking through our troubled thoughts. I knew we were both caught up in the past, trying to relive the memories of those long-forgotten years. For me, it was overwhelming to the extreme. I had two different lives now, colliding into each other. Kind of. I didn’t remember everything. Only that year I’d shared with Az. Everything else from that life was still a meaningless blur.
“You want to know why Lucifer intervened,” Az murmured, tightening his grip around me. “That was the beginning of the end for me. He saw me soften, how my interest in Hell began to wane. You’re the entire reason I am the way I am, Mia. Before you came into my life, I had little interest in humanity. You changed me. For the better.”
My heart filled with a strange kind of hope, but there was still a shadow around it. “It wasn’t really me, you know. I don’t think we’re exactly the same person.”
Az shifted me on his lap so that he could gaze into my eyes. Heat curled through me at the adoration in them. “Yes, you are, Mia. That’s how reincarnation works. You are her, and she is you. The soul is the same. Your bodies are different, but that hardly matters.”
“So, angels have souls?” I asked.
“Of course they do. Every living thing has a soul.” He sighed against the top of my head. “This is why Lucifer wanted to steal you away to Hell. If he marries you, I can never lay claim to you again.”
“Seems a bit drastic, don’t you think?” With my mind still desperately trying to make sense of our shared past, I couldn’t help but focus on Lucifer’s actions. Obviously, he hadn’t been thrilled that his main Prince had fallen for an angel who had softened his soul. But he’d made some absolutely insane moves to deal with it. He’d found a way to destroy me as permanently as possible, and then he’d wiped Az’s mind of me.
“He managed to kill me,” I said, glancing up at him. “We’re supposed to be immortal. And by we, I mean, the old me. And you.”
“That’s the thing, Mia,” he said, fingering a lock of my hair. “He didn’t kill you. You’re here.”
“But my body...”
“Found a way to come back,” he said with a dimpled smile. “You fought your way back to life, just unlike any other angel or demon has done when destroyed. You pieced yourself back together, the only way you could. Into a mortal body.”
But that meant...my old heart was still out there, beating in the dirt.
I let out a heavy sigh and leaned into him. This was still incredibly difficult to wrap my mind around, even though the memories were fully inside my head now. It was me, butnot me. Separate and yet together. It was going to take a long time for me to fully come to grips with it.
