“Don’t you?” she practically spat.
Caliban slid his hand over the center of my back, sending a pulse of power through me that warmed me to my core. He said, “I like to think we serve each other.”
I tightened my hold on my arms, but this time it was solely to contain my hum of energy. “Can she still contact Heaven?” I asked, looking up at him while the blood from her nose dripped on her shirt, blotting strange patterns in a gruesome Rorschach test.
His brows met as he considered the question. “I can’t takeaway her true sight, if that’s what you’re asking. Her fae blood gives her the ability. You’d need a Norde to do that. Do you happen to know any Nordes?”
I looked at the corpses decorating the yard. My eyes shot to Azrames, still holding a stunned Silas, who did nothing to struggle.
It was the hardest ten seconds of my life.
“Az.” I choked out his name quietly. “I…”
He slackened his hold ever so slightly as he waited for my nod.
I looked up at Silas but saw only pale terror. “He’s in shock, Az. I…I need you to call Fauna.”
***
I looked away the moment I heard the decompression on the grass. The sound she made was somewhere between a strangled gasp and a restrained sigh, almost like a mouse caught in a trap. I turned my chin even further as she approached, doing my best to avoid looking her in the eye.
“Marlow.” She said my name quietly. It came out as a whimper.
Azrames cleared his throat. With an unsteady voice, he said, “We need you to deal with one of your citizens. Can you take away true sight?”
Fauna ignored Azrames as she reached for my arm. She bypassed Caliban, fingers sliding over the bare skin of my bicep as she tugged gently for my attention. “Mar…”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m not ready to talk to you.”
I’d never heard her sound pitiful before. My memories shot to thirty-seven missed calls from my ex, to a desperate string of voicemails, to the handwritten letters that had begged me to reconsider as she said, “Not ready? Does that mean you will be? Because I’ve waited, Mar. I’ve sat tight. I’ve watched and been desperate to intervene, to be by your side. I know you’re mad, but you have to know I love you. You have to understand that I did what I thought—”
“Please, Fauna. You really, really hurt me.”
She grabbed me firmly with both hands.
My eyes flew open. Caliban released a low warning growl as my mother snapped, “Show some wisdom, Marlow. Don’t be deceived.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Fauna and I retorted in unison.
Under any other circumstance, it might have been charming.
I hated how much I missed her. I missed her sea-spray scent. I missed her curls. I missed her button nose, her green eyes, even her stupid hippie outfits. I wanted to hug her. To be held by her. To let her in.
But it was the same urge people got to call their toxic, cheating exes after two bottles of wine and tell them that they missed them.
Fauna—Angrboda—had used me to facilitate her prophecy.
That’s what we all were. Chess pieces in one goddamn prophecy after another, manipulated and shuffled around as a means to our respective pantheons’ ends.
It had worked.
The first golden lights of dawn appeared, catching on Fauna’s copper locks before disappearing behind a cloud. She looked exactly as I remembered her. Voluminous hair in loose, ginger-and-white curls. A smattering of freckles decorating her face like a galaxy of stars. Free-spirited clothes looking like she grew her own Yerba Mate tea and led spiritual retreats. She was braless as always, but unlike me, appeared impervious to the cold. Incandescent beauty casting suburban mundanity to shame.
In the absence of Caliban’s touch, the morning chill overtook my near-naked state. I was dressed for a concert in the desert, not the early hint of autumn in the northernmost Midwest. Fauna was unaffected, save for the intensity she focused on me. In fact, I realized that she hadn’t even looked at the slain archangels. She hadn’t greeted the Prince of Hell. She hadn’t shot Silas a glance. She hadn’t even addressedAzrames, the love of her life.
“Marlow, I understand why you’re mad. I lied to you. From the bottom of my gods-damned heart, I know I did. But I thought I was doing the right thing. I loved you and chose you while still fighting for my cause. And if you can just—”
“Can you take away her true sight, or not?” I asked, looking her fully in the eye. “This is the one thing I need from you right now. Please tell me you’re not going to let me down again.”
