Lucille #2
“Life and death feel inconsequential when you think you can control them.” Deep-seated knowing weighted his soft words. “Such hubris is destructive. Unimaginable.”
“You tried to change the past? To save them?” I guessed.
He eased open the front cover and pointed at a name jotted in the bottom corner.
Ariella.
It was the name I’d found in Cato’s dream-walking exercises.
“To save my cordistella.”
“You—”
“Death is a jealous sovereign. Attempt to claim what he deems his, and his answer is not a price, but an unthinkable retribution. My penance for my attempt was the extinction of an angelic race, with the exception of myself.”
No wonder he was so adamant about the creed.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, feeling the urge to hug him.
He placed the book back in my hands, any emotion that might’ve graced his face already gone.
“I didn’t express my failures for an apology, but for education. Now, she enjoyed a book called The Celestial Plight, Earl Grey tea, black licorice, alphabetizing her books, and…” He straightened his spine and clasped his hands within his robed sleeves. “Rubbing my bald head.”
In that moment, I was entirely grateful none of the other males were here, especially Oliver. I could only imagine we would’ve been kicked out and banned until the end of time.
“Inviso.”
He gave a sharp nod. “Yes. And if those details aren’t enough, hold this in the process.”
He unclasped something from his wrist and placed a bracelet of tiny white-and-black beads into my hand.
Then he turned and shut the door in my face.
Conversation over.
“What’d you find out?” MJ asked when I returned.
“A way to figure out what the hidden writing says.”
“And that is?” Zera pressed.
“Dream-walking.”
Zera looked between MJ and Ichi. “I don’t know what that is.”
No, she wouldn’t, and neither would Ichi. I’d assumed MJ had heard the term from Ronen by now, but she appeared just as puzzled.
“Think of it as a Magic 8 Ball for answers about the past, but with the temperament of Cato.”
That didn’t seem to clear up their confusion.
“I’ve never heard of a Magic 8 Ball,” Ichi admitted.
I forgot sometimes that the angels around me didn’t grow up on Earth. Technically, they didn’t grow up at all. They just… were.
“Never mind that. Just… give me a few minutes.”
Sitting back down, I shut my eyes and fisted Cato’s bracelet.
I focused on the details of his cordistella, and—
“Is something supposed to be happening?” Zera asked, interrupting my focus.
“No,” I snapped. “Be quiet.”
I burrowed deeper into my thoughts, squeezing the smooth beads tighter as I smelled Earl Grey tea, tasted bitter black licorice, saw a library with thick tombs alphabetized, and regrettably felt Cato’s bald head.
What did you write about the Spinewalkers, Ariella?
Her name plucked me from the present and placed me in the past, right inside her body.
She sat in a stiff wooden chair, hunched and entirely focused on her work. A cramp formed in her hand as she furiously scrawled words across parchment, her quill scratching relentlessly. An unyielding need drove her faster and faster.
Beneath the surface of that urgency lay fear. And the certainty that time wasn’t on her side.
I followed her words, reading as she wrote, picking up right where I’d left off in the library.
Or so they’d have you believe, hiding the darker truth beneath their lies of balance.
Angels of light, justice, and forgiveness? No. Their facade buckles under scrutiny. If their intentions are pure, they wouldn’t demand I bury every record of Spinewalkers.
A creature that never graced the celestial planes until Etan—an angel demanding a place among the Seraphim council.
He claimed they were his creation and insisted he deserved a seat at the holy table for designing the perfect prison for sinners.
He even had proof they worked. Said he tested them himself in Hell before it had a ruler.
But the old council rejected his solution. Their doctrine rested on judgment and the possibility of restoration, not annihilation through containment.
Etan abandoned the proposal and returned with one he knew they’d embrace: the Seven Circles of Hell, headed by a leader who’d measure sin and dispense penance. The vision was merciful enough to appease them. It earned him his seat.
And then, weeks later, one by one, the old council—
Boots pounded on the other side of the wall, and Ariella jerked her head up. Her heart pounded frantically.
“May the dream-walkers find this,” she whispered, grabbing ink and blacking out as much as she could before the doors to her study slammed open.
She stood.
“What do you think you’re doing here? Warriors are not permitted on Mercy Mountain.”
Her voice commanded respect and authority. But I could tell it didn’t matter what she said or how she sounded—not when it came to the three armored warriors in front of her.
Michael grinned. “We’re permitted anywhere the council tells us to go. Grab her.”
Ariella kept her feet planted even though I could feel how badly she wanted to run.
General Tavean and Colonel Milda—the two who had almost taken me from Aspen in Elora—grabbed her and placed her in shackles.
“Ariella, High Scholar of the Thrones, you are hereby sentenced to death for conspiring against the Council of Righteousness.”
I yanked myself from the dream-walk, a horrifying realization sinking in.
“Her eyes opened. That’s a good sign, right?” Zera asked.
MJ gazed at me expectantly. Ichi patiently.
“They’re not just living voids. They were prisons.”
MJ leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
“Etan created Spinewalkers as prisons for sinful souls. He placed them here and experimented with them before Hell became what it is today. Before Lucifer. He hoped it’d be his ticket onto the council.”
“Is that why we could never figure out how they were getting in?” Zera asked. “The infected Damned were already here?”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“No. Because the Damned are coming from the Immolation Circle,” MJ added.
“And Spinewalkers only live in Veil Forest,” I finished.
Ichi picked up her book and gently placed it at the center of the table.
Transdimensional Creatures labeled the top of the page.
Listed beneath it were Soulhounds, Hellhounds, and creatures I didn’t even know. At the bottom, marked with a tiny asterisk denoting rarity, were Spinewalkers.
“They can move within the circles and dimensions.”
“If it’s rare, then Melanie must be controlling them as much as they can be controlled,” I murmured.
MJ nodded. “If she’s found a way not only to unlock the prisons, I don’t see why she wouldn’t have figured out how to pick up souls from the other circles too.”
Zera sat back, horror and disbelief parting her lips. “If these Spinewalkers have been here that long, and she’s infected every soul within them, plus gained more from the other circles, this won’t be a battle. It’ll be a massacre.”
MJ played with her bone knife and grinned. “Not unless we figure out how to eliminate them.”
“Or Sam cures the infection,” I added, slumping back. “In a few days.”
“Don’t like a good challenge, Lucille?” MJ taunted.
I slowly turned and met the wicked amusement in her eyes.
“I love a challenge.”
“Good.”