“Got all what out?”
She pushes him lightly. “Being an asshole.”
“I think I did.”
She takes his hand. She takes an angel’s hand. Knowing what he is, feeling power coursing through him—one that’s always been there, one she finally has a word for.
Angel.
“Is this a truce?” she says. “You and me? Are we cool now?”
Rafe grins. “If you decide to stay here,” he says as they walk back to the Vault, “things are going to change. Tomorrow, we’ll be on the same side.”
MO’S DEAD,DEZ REPEATS TOherself silently as she returns to the Vault in a daze. She and Rafe hang back in the shadows of the room. He slips her a glass of champagne, and she swallows the whole thing down.
Mo’s dead.The words ring in her ears, drowning out Moriah’s lecture to the first-years. Each of them looks as stunned as Dez feels. Simon’s crying. Esther’s holding him. Paul Rowan looks like he’s going to be sick.
Rafe leans in to explain. “Moriah just told them about the angels.”
The angels. Dez is grateful she heard that from Rafe and in private. At least she got to hit him.
Mo’s dead.She scans the last-years’ tables, their black gowns and tuxedos, the golden scarves they always wear.
“The scarves,” she says, reaching inside Rafe’s jacket to run her fingers over the one he’s wearing now.
He flinches but doesn’t draw away. He nods.
“What are these for?”
“To conceal our sinister and dextral vertebrae.”
Dez stares at him.
He smiles. “The places in our backs where our wings come out.”
Wings.
Holy fuck. Dez hadn’t even let her mind go there yet.
“You have wings,” she says.
“Bigones,” he says in a low voice.
She gestures to the others, to the dozens of scarves on this side of the room. Her mind swimming, overwhelmed. “So all of them …?”
He nods. “Angels. Every last-year at Acheron.”
“Yael?” she sputters. Then turns to stare at him. “Jet?Felipe?”
He nods. “Angel. Angel. Angel. We have various ranks, lineages, and allegiances, of course, but all the angels here fall under the dominion of the Angel of Death. Everyone at Acheron does. We’re called White Lights.”
White Lights.
Dez doesn’t know what to do with this information. She’s barely standing from grief and shock. She’s just lost the person she loves most in the world. She lost him because of her own actions. And now she’s expected to accept that her next boss might be the Angel of Death?
She thought Uncle Bob was bad.
She nods in the direction of the portrait over Moriah’s head. Samael Sophus Abbadon.
