“Why?” I asked.
His hold on my instep slackened as he looked at me.
“Everything you said to Nia. Why?”
The program changed to commercials. Reds and yellows and oranges punctuated the whites as the sun beyond the river continued to set. He sucked in a breath.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” he asked.
My lips closed, brows lifting in the center. I tilted my head to the side.
“I know Fauna’s identity came as a shock, and I don’t want it to be the same when you learn my name. I don’t know how to break it to you.”
“Then don’t,” I said.
He frowned at me.
“If you’re about to tell me something that will lose me another friend and ally…maybe keep it to yourself. I can’t afford to lose you, too.”
His gaze softened. He touched me. “It’s nothing like that.”
My frown deepened. I began to withdraw my feet, but he squeezed them once more.
“I mean it as a good thing. I expect you’d understand better if I knew my backstory. But I’m only mentioned a few times in the book of Enoch, which most believers consider the Apocrypha. It’s a little too on-the-nose for churchgoers. Too much supernatural, not enough metaphor. All that stuff.”
“You’re about to do it, aren’t you. You’re about to tell me who you are.”
“I’m an…” His face fell. He slumped into the back of the couch. “Iwasan archangel.”
Despite the buzz vibrating every nerve in my body, theimportant parts of my brain sobered up. “No fucking way. You’re a foot soldier! You’re a—”
“Because Fauna and I riffed one another for being unimportant? No. She’s a goddess in her own right, but she keeps it close to the vest. And everyone in Hell knows who I am because I was appointed as an overseer of the dark angels—the spirits of vengeance. I was crafted for accountability, fairness, harmony, and justice.”
I sucked in a breath. This time, when I withdrew my feet, he allowed the motion. I pulled my knees to my chest.
“When the angels showed up at Nia’s house, they mentioned something about a prophecy.”
He gave a short, pained chuckle. “It’s how everyone knows me. My name has always been closely intertwined with my fall. But that’s not how time has passed in Heaven. I haven’t fallen. I haven’t planned to. I know it’s non-linear, and that can be confusing, but I could have had thousands more years of being a faithful angel. My fall could have been like Judas Iscariot’s role—only dastardly because it served a greater purpose in the Plan. I didn’t expect…”
“Maybe you are servingthe Plan,” I said, putting air quotes around the last two words. “Maybe I lose.”
Silas pulled his legs onto the couch in turn, facing me fully. “This is something I’ve always struggled with. Our king knows past, present, and future, right? But where’s my free will in that story? Where’s the fairness when free will is an illusion?”
“They’re coming for you tomorrow. Doesn’t that mean you still have a choice? You could betray me between now and the concert. Write your own narrative.”
Sober me would probably have been displeased that drunk me was making such assertions, but I couldn’t stop myself.
His voice dropped. He averted his gaze. “No, I couldn’t.”
I knew I should close my mouth. I couldn’t imagine how I looked, drunk and shocked as I struggled to focus on him. “There are only seven archangels. You’re a big deal.”
“Six, now,” he said quietly.
I shook my head, room spinning with gin and confusion and color as I did so. “Is that why no one in Heaven has questioned your whereabouts? They aren’t worried about you reporting because—”
“Because I only answered to the King.” He lifted his forearm, uncuffing his brace to reveal the inky message on his wrist once more. “They trust that I have an agenda. They couldn’t possibly fathom that I chose Hell and a human over my kingdom, my army, my title. It’s why I still have time to prove that I’m on their side.”
Gin pickled my thoughts. My only rebuttal was, “But Fauna said—”
