Rapture

This was why Daniel wouldn’t look at her. Her throat felt like it was stuffed with cotton. When she opened her mouth, her voice sounded like she was speaking underwater. “You need”—she swallowed in pain—“my blood.” Dee choked on her laugh and pressed a cold hand to Luce’s hot cheek. “Good heavens, no, child! You keep yours. I’m going to give you mine.”

“What?”

“That’s right. As I am passing out of this world, you will fill the Silver Pennon with my blood. You will pour it into this depression just east of the golden arrow marker”—she indicated a dent at the left of the goblet, then fanned her hands out dramatically toward the map—“and watch it follow the grooves here and there and here and there until you find the star. Then you will know where to meet Lucifer and thwart his plan.” Luce cracked her knuckles. How could Dee speak about her own death so casually? “Why would you do this?”

“Why, it’s what I was created for. Angels were made to adore and I have a purpose, too.” Then, from the deep pocket of her brown cloak, Dee withdrew a long silver dagger.

“But that’s—”

The dagger Miss Sophia had used to kill Penn. The one she’d had in Jerusalem when she bound up the fallen angels.

“Yes. I picked this up in Golgotha,” Dee said, admiring the craftsmanship of the blade. It shone as if freshly sharpened. “Dark history, this knife. It’s time it was put to some good use, dear.” She held out the knife, its blade flat on her open palm, its hilt pointing toward Luce. “It would mean a lot to me if you would be the one to spill my blood, dear. Not only because you are dear to me, but also because it must be you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You must kill me, Lucinda.”

FIFTEEN

THE GIFT

“I can’t!”

“You can,” Dee said. “And you will. No one else can do it.”

“Why?”

Dee looked over her shoulder in Daniel’s direction.

He was still seated, looking at Luce, but he didn’t seem to see her. None of the angels rose to help her.

Dee spoke in a whisper. “If you are, as you say you are, fully resolved to break your curse—”

“You know I am.”

“Then you must use my blood to break it.” No. How could her curse be bound up in someone else’s blood? Dee had brought them up here to the Qayom Malak to reveal the site of the angels’ Fall. That was her role as the desideratum. It didn’t have anything to do with Luce’s curse.

Did it?

Break the curse. Of course Luce wanted to; it was all she wanted.

Could she break it, right here, right now? How would she live with herself if she killed Dee? Luce looked to the old woman, who took her by the hands.

“Don’t you want to know the truth of your original life?”

“Of course I do. But why would killing you reveal my past?”

“It will reveal all kinds of things.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Oh dear.” Dee sighed, looking past Luce at the others. “These angels have done well to keep you safe—

but they have also protected you into complacency. The time has come for you to awaken, Lucinda, and to awaken, you must act. ”

Luce turned away. The look in Dee’s golden eyes was too pleading, too intense. “I’ve seen enough death.” A single angel rose in the darkness from the circle they’d formed around the Qayom Malak. “If she can’t do it, she can’t do it.”

“Shut up, Cam,” Arriane said. “Sit down.” Cam stepped forward, approaching Luce. His narrow frame cast its shadow across the Slab. “We’ve taken it this far. You can’t say we haven’t given it every kind of shot.” He turned to face the others. “But maybe she just can’t. There is only so much you can ask a person to do.

She wouldn’t be the first filly anybody lost a fortune on.

So what if she happens to be the last?” His tone did not match his words, and neither did his eyes, which said with desperate sincerity, You can do this.

You have to.

Luce weighed the dagger in her hand. She’d seen its blade slice the life out of Penn. She had felt it sting her flesh when Sophia tried to murder her in the chapel at Sword & Cross. The only reason Luce wasn’t dead now was that Daniel had crashed through the roseate window to save her. The only reason she bore no scar was Gabbe’s healing touch. They’d saved her life for this moment. So that she could take another.

Dee perceived how far away fear had carried Luce.

She motioned for Cam to sit down. “Perhaps it would be better, dear, if you didn’t think of this as taking my life.

You would be giving me the greatest gift, Lucinda. Can’t you see that I’m ready to move on?” She pressed her lips together in a smile. “I know it’s hard to understand, but there comes a time in a mortal body’s journey when it seeks to die in the most advantageous way it can. They used to call it a ‘good death.’ It is time for me to go, and if you give me the gift of this very good death, I promise you won’t regret it.”

With tears stinging her eyes, Luce looked past Dee.

“Dan—”

“I can’t help you, Luce.” Daniel spoke before she’d even finished saying his name. “You must do this alone.” Roland rose from his seat and examined the map. He looked east at the moon. “If it were done when it is done, then it would be well it were done quickly.”

“There isn’t much time,” Dee interpreted, resting a frail hand on Luce’s shoulder.

Luce’s hands were shaking, sweating on the heavy silver hilt of the dagger, making it difficult to hold. Behind Dee she could see the Slab with its half-drawn map, and beyond the map, the Qayom Malak, in which the glass halo was secured. The Silver Pennon sat at Dee’s feet.

Luce had been through a sacrifice before: in Chichén Itzá, when she’d cleaved to her past self Ix Cuat. The ritual made no sense to Luce. Why did something dear have to die so other dear things could live? Didn’t who-ever made these rules think they deserved an explanation? It was like Abraham’s being asked to sacrifice Isaac.

Had God created love to make pain feel even worse?

“Will you do this for me?” Dee asked.

Break the curse.

“Will you do it for yourself?”

Luce held the knife between her open palms. “What do I do?”

“I’ll guide you through it.” Dee’s left hand closed around Luce’s right, which closed around the dagger.

The hilt was slick from the sweat on her palms.

With her right hand free, Dee unbound her cloak and slipped it off, standing before Luce in a long white tunic.

Her upper chest was bare, revealing her arrowhead tattoo.

Luce whimpered at the sight of it.

“Please don’t worry, dear. I’m a special breed, and this moment has always been my destiny. One quick thrust of the blade into my heart should release me.” It was what Luce needed to hear. The dagger trembled as Dee guided it toward the tattoo on her chest. The old woman could steady Luce only so much, though; Luce knew that soon she would have to hold the blade alone.

“You’re doing fine.”

“Wait!” Luce cried as the blade pricked Dee’s flesh. A red dot of blood bloomed on her skin, just above the hem of the tunic. “What will happen to you when you die?”

Dee smiled so peacefully that Luce had no doubt it was for her benefit. “Why, dear, I shall slip into the mas-terpiece.”

“You’ll go to Heaven, won’t you?”

“Lucinda, let’s not talk of—”

“Please. I can’t send you out of this life unless I know what your next one will look like. Will I see you again?

Do you just go away like an angel?”

“Oh no, my death will be a secret life, like sleep,” Dee said. “Better than sleep, actually, because for once I shall be able to dream. In life, transeternals never dream.

I shall dream of Dr. Otto. It’s been so long since I have seen my love, Lucinda. Surely you can understand?” Luce wanted to weep. She understood. Of course she understood that much.

Trembling ever harder, she drew the knife back over the tattoo on Dee’s breast. The old woman gave her hands the softest squeeze. “Bless you, child. Bless you abundantly. Hurry up, now.” Dee looked anxiously at the sky, blinking at the moon. “In you go.” Luce grunted as she plunged the knife into the old woman’s chest. The blade ground through flesh and bone and muscle—and then it was inside her beautiful heart, up to the hilt. Luce’s and Dee’s faces were almost touching. The clouds their breath made mingled in the air.

Dee gritted her teeth and gripped Luce’s hand as she gave the blade a sharp twist to the left. Her gold eyes widened, then froze in pain or shock. Luce wanted to look away but couldn’t. She searched for the scream inside her.

“Expel the blade,” Dee whispered. “Pour my blood into the Silver Pennon.”

Wincing, Luce yanked the dagger out. She felt something deep inside Dee rip apart. The wound was a yawn-ing black cavern. Blood streamed to its surface. It was terrifying to see Dee’s gold eyes go cloudy. The lady fell in a heap on the moonlit plateau.

In the distance, the shriek of a Scale rang out. All the angels looked above.

“Luce, we need you to move quickly,” Daniel said, his forced calmness sparking more alarm in her than open panic would.

Luce still held the dagger in her hands. It was slick and red and dripping with transeternal blood. She tossed it to the ground. It landed with a tinny clank that made her furious because it sounded like a toy instead of the mighty weapon that had killed two souls Luce loved.

She wiped her bloody hands on her cloak. She gasped for air. She would have fallen to her knees if Daniel hadn’t caught her.

“I’m sorry, Luce.” He kissed her, his eyes beaming their old tenderness.

“For what?”

“That I couldn’t help you do it.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“You did what none of us could do. You did it on your own.” Taking her by the shoulders, Daniel turned Luce toward the sight she did not want to see.

“No. Please, don’t make me—”

“Look,” Daniel said.

Dee was sitting up, cradling the Silver Pennon in her arms so that its rim pressed against her breast. Blood poured from her heart freely, surging with each powerful beat, as if it were not blood but something magical and strange from another world. Luce supposed it was. Dee’s eyes were closed but she was beaming, her face lifted, lit up by the moon. She didn’t look like she had ever been in any pain.

When the goblet was filled, Luce stepped forward, bending down to take it and place it back on the yellow arrow on the Slab. When she wrested the Silver Pennon from Dee, the old woman tried to stand. Her bloody hands pressed into the ground to prop her up. Her knees trembled as she struggled to one foot, then the other.

She slouched forward, her body convulsing slightly, as she took the black cloak in her hands. She was trying to drape it back over her shoulders, Luce realized, so that her wound would be covered. Arriane stepped forward to help her, but it didn’t matter. Fresh blood flooded through the cloak.