Lucille
Chapter
Four
Istumbled back, losing my footing. Before I could fall into the angels behind me, Ronen pulled me into his side. He shook, and it wasn’t from the cold blowing in from the hole in the sky.
A seed of rage, minute but powerful, seeped through the block he had on his emotions.
It washed through me like liquid ice—cold and vicious.
Distracting. It was the first time I felt him.
His soothing essence backed the taste, as if I couldn’t receive his emotion without a part of him.
Different from how I experienced Aspen’s emotions.
Ronen almost overpowered my grief and shock. I wanted to wrap his rage around me until it suffocated them entirely and ended the thoughts of my father’s right and how dare he.
“Tonight, we sacrifice a piece of ourselves and lay it at her feet,” Lucifer continued, as if he hadn’t just speared me with his words.
One by one, angels lined up. Some ripped feathers from their wings; others laid down weapons or personal items, and a select few crafted pieces of their power, displaying flowers and angel wings made from water and fire, laying them all at the base of the funerary dais.
When the angels started to thin near us, Ronen released me from his hold. “Do you want to go up there?”
By the sound of it, he didn’t.
“Everyone else is.”
“I don’t give a damn about anyone else. I asked you, Hellion.”
Did I want to see my mom’s body? No. I’d rather not solidify the notion she was dead. Living in a world where I could imagine she was still out there seemed better. But this was real. She was dead. I was at her funeral, and I needed to wake up and get that through my head.
I nodded, knowing I needed to move but couldn’t.
“I have nothing to give her.” No one told me I needed anything.
“Your presence alone is—”
“Yes, you do,” Aspen said.
I whipped around, finding him next to MJ. He was the only one here wearing a dark suit without the embroidery or beads.
“Did you get that from my closet?” Alexei asked as Ronen snapped, “MJ!”
She tilted her chin up, crossing her arms over her pantsuit. “Get your head out of your ass, Ronen. You checked his mind. He’s clean. He should be here to witness Lucille and Saraqael’s sacrifice. Without them, we wouldn’t be here.”
Her words and knowing expression tipped me off that she knew. She knew about the Wrath Rune that had ripped out my mother’s energy, gave it to me, and killed her.
Either she pieced together all the events and made assumptions, or someone told her.
At first, I thought Ronen might have. But by Aspen’s drawn understanding, I knew he had.
I wasn’t surprised he figured it out. He knew Michael had put my mom in a coma.
He’d saved me right after Michael carved the rune on my mom and me. Aspen probably had seen it.
I had a feeling that fact had a hand in his enormous guilt. Probably his self-hatred too. I wished that could have made me feel better. But my weak, little heart only ached for him.
Aspen reached into his pocket and withdrew the necklace my mother had given me.
“You still have it,” I breathed.
Ever so gently, he cupped my hand and placed the chain in my palm.
“Of course. It gave me peace when I couldn’t find it anywhere else.” The tingles his touch evoked intensified as he squeezed my hand and held me under the weight of his solemn gaze. “I hope tonight it can give you at least a whisper of the same.”
I clutched the necklace as if I could somehow feel a remnant of the power my mother used to put into it. But it was empty. No power. No feeling. Just a memory, like my mom. I pulled from Aspen’s grasp and turned. Ronen and Rune blocked my view of the dais, a silent question in his expression.
I dipped my head. My answer was a lie, but I’d never be ready to face her. This wasn’t something I could prepare for and be okay with. It just had to be done.
Ronen manifested his ebony wings and yanked out a feather. He knelt in front of the frosted stone, placing his offering next to the rest.
“Honorem, sacrificium, et redemptio, Saraqael.”
I waited for him to stand like all the rest, but he didn’t. He bowed his head and lowered his voice.
“Thank you for bringing her into this world. I will do as you did and protect her with everything I am. May the Weaver carry your soul to peace.”
Then he slowly stood and turned. “Ready?”
All I could do was dive headfirst into his steady golden gaze, hating myself for it but needing the strength he offered, if only for a moment. Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to look away and stepped around him.
The sight of her dead, glowing body weakened my legs. I sank, and a strong arm immediately wrapped around me, holding me close.
She lay on an icy funerary dais, naked. Blue light filled her body, and pulses shot from her into the dais and then the ground. That was why the forest burned brighter here. Why the ground hummed and shuddered.
The Eternal Forest was feeding on her soul.
A sob worked up my throat, and a whimper escaped. Aspen’s guilt and sorrow piled onto mine, and I was grateful Ronen had his emotional block up. I clenched my necklace, the metal piercing my skin as I tried to breathe, to move, to think of my parting words.
But I didn’t know what to say, especially in front of my father.
His glare drove into my cheek, cold and punishing. My mom deserved a poem, a story, something that expressed every wonderful detail about her. Yet beneath my father’s presence, all I could think about was how I blamed myself. How I wanted to scream and tell her that her death was destroying me.
But those weren’t the confessions you told your mom on her deathbed.
I called on the power that once matched hers. I didn’t think about the consequences. I didn’t care if anyone saw. I just wanted to feel connected to her.
White flames burst from my palm, and a swarm of shadows covered the display of light. I squeezed the amulet for a few seconds, just the way my mom used to, and then let go of my Glory. Ronen pulled back his shadows, and I opened my hand.
The luminous white center hurt to look at after always seeing it purple. I leaned down and placed the necklace over her heart. My finger brushed her warm, humming skin, and I flinched. She—she felt alive.
For a moment, I stared at her as my lungs pumped with panic, foolishly hoping she’d open her eyes. But her chest didn’t rise. Her skin, though glowing with light, appeared waxy and drained of color. Her face… I swiped away my tears. Her face was sunken, bony. Dead.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I whispered, my voice cracking.
“As you should be,” Lucifer remarked coldly.
My eyes shut as if in an attempt to cut off the emotional blow. But he’d gouged yet another slice into my already bleeding chest.
Aspen’s anger and guilt grew, and I wondered if this was what would kill me. My emotions and his, crushing me until I was an unrecognizable mess next to my mother.
“We have honored. We have sacrificed. Now, she must be judged,” Lucifer called out to the crowd. “Lucille, would you like to do the honors?” he asked.
What did he expect me to do?
“Lucifer,” Ronen snapped. His voice came from beside me.
Not behind me as I’d expected.
“General Ronen?” My father’s eyes lit with an icy white, the tension between them mounting.
“Is there a problem? I know you have a difficult time understanding when an honorable offer is presented. But Lucille has the privilege to send this renowned angel’s soul to Limbo to await her sentence of Heaven or Hell. ”
Every word from his mouth sounded sincere, but by his dark expression and Ronen’s fury, I knew something was wrong.
“She doesn’t have the power,” Ronen said pointedly.
Power for what?
My father stepped closer to Ronen. Malice thickened the air during their quiet staring contest. Ronen should have backed down, but he didn’t.
My father gave him one last glare before turning to me and raising his palm. A large icicle grew, the tip dangerously sharp. “Ice can separate the soul just as well as fire,” he stated. “Slam it into her chest.”
I stumbled back.
He wanted me to stab her?
No.
He had wanted me to burn her.
Did he want me to expose myself? To expose all of us? Or did he say it just to hurt me?
“Take it,” Lucifer demanded, shoving it toward me.
I staggered, and that same strong arm came around me. But the person behind it wasn’t Ronen.
“If it’s such an honor, then let me do it,” Aspen retorted, tightening his grip. “After all, I was part of the problem.”
He should’ve never spoken. I shouldn’t even want him to touch me. I was about to jerk out of his hold when I noticed my father’s lip curl and his hand rise.
The guardian bond flushed through me, strengthening my legs, pushing away my grief and horror, and demanding I protect him. I reached for my father’s icicle at the same time Ronen did, but Ronen beat me to it.
“Close your eyes,” he warned and drove the icicle toward my mother’s heart.
Aspen covered my eyes before I could stop him. A bright light burst behind his hand, and a powerful force sucked at my body, threatening to drag me toward the funerary dais if not for Aspen’s strong arm around my waist.
“What’s happening?” I gasped over the sound of pelting debris.
“It’s the soul-burst process,” Aspen explained softly, right as the pulling force suddenly stopped.
A small object grazed my head, falling to the ground as gravity righted itself.
“The dormant soul reawakens, untethers from the body, and the Eternal Forest keeps a part of their essence for us to honor, while the rest of their soul enters Limbo.”
The light glowing through the cracks of Aspen’s fingers grew stronger, forcing me to cover my eyes. A second passed. Then a powerful pulse knocked us off our feet.
Aspen’s hand ripped from my face as we flew back.
I tensed for a hard landing, but it never came.
A glowing, vanilla-scented energy captured me in an embrace, gently set me down, and then seeped into the ground.
Her white light rippled across the grass and shot into the tree trunks one final time.
They burned brighter with her energy, leaves shivering with the echoes of her laughter.
Whispers and gasps sounded around the clearing. But I closed my eyes, ignoring their noise to absorb my mother’s melody.
It was beautiful, crushing, and suddenly very cold.
“The Eternal Forest honors her, and in that honor, her bones will nourish its roots,” my father forced out, sounding almost angry.
The snow falling through the hole in the sky intensified, thickening until it pelted my skin.
Angels stood and brushed themselves off as I remained on the cool grass.
They moved closer to the funerary dais just as the ground vibrated.
A hole, the size of my mother, yawned open.
It signaled a finality I didn’t know how to process.
An end and a new beginning, but not a better one.
I lifted my gaze from the grave, needing to see her one last time, and a strangled gasp ripped from my throat.
Her flesh was stripped, leaving bones that glinted with specks of light like the beads on our clothing.
When a nearby Dominion used their telekinetic powers to lift her bones and set her in the perfectly sized opening, my eyes never strayed.
Not even when I heard Alexei and Aspen speak to me.
Or when a Power used their elemental magic to cover her grave with dirt.
It wasn’t until I looked upon my father, hoping to find hints of pain—some sign that he hurt as much as I did.
He bowed his head, along with all the angels.
I should’ve followed suit, but I was captured by the tension in the creases of his face.
He squeezed his eyes so tightly, I knew he was holding back tears.
In this one moment, without everyone looking, he didn’t hide how much he had cared.
It helped me to know I wasn’t alone, even if he blamed me.
A male with white hair moved quietly behind my father.
He paused inches away, staring at the back of my father’s head.
At first, I thought it was part of the ceremony.
I waited for him to perform whatever was next, hoping it’d be over fast. Then he glanced at me and grinned.
My father lifted his head, frowning as if sensing his presence.
He twisted toward the blond male right as he dove onto my father’s neck.
I lurched up as my father roared. Ice shards shot toward the male as he luscelered away, and then the screaming started.