Chapter 41
The only way I can tell time is by the three meals they give me.
After the first night, dinner started coming with a change of clothes and a book.
The clothes I take with reluctant appreciation, though nothing can convince me to remove my cloak.
And I can’t tell if the book is meant to be a small mercy or the devil’s twisted sense of humor.
Because, apparently, the best time for someone to read Crime and Punishment is when they’re locked away in a prison cell during the apocalypse.
Other than reading, I spend a lot of time sleeping, meditating, or planning my escape.
I haven’t made much progress on that last one, thanks to all the levels of fuckery I’m in.
First, I have to get out of this cell, then out of Adonai, then I have to get Jackie out, and then we have to hide from all the angels, including my ex, who may or may not have… well, he… he…
I can’t.
I just can’t.
I’m losing track of how many days have passed, and I’m starting to regret that I didn’t try marking them down somewhere.
No amount of meditation will reveal a single soul around me. Whatever veil they’ve slipped over me, its chokehold is absolute. All I have are phantom limbs, cut off from people across realms.
Some of that is a blessing. The frayed lines I have to Abaddon are healing, no longer subject to his control. But it is also lonely.
So very lonely.
I almost wish that my soul’s shadow had never left.
I’d rather talk to an ageless semi-sentient parasite than myself.
I often wonder if I killed it, and if I did, will it ever come back?
It said we would suffer the consequences together, but I still haven’t figured out if that means I’ll suffer immortality while it suffers mortality, or something I’ve yet to discover.
In my desperation, I even tried to summon Kesbeel, chanting his name in my prison cell like a fucking lunatic. Absolutely nothing happened, of course. If the Power of Oaths heard me, he probably watched and laughed at my pathetic attempt.
I must be at least a week in by now. I wonder what happened to Israel.
Is World War III raging on out there? Is my father okay?
I haven’t written to him in months. God, I hope Jackie’s family isn’t worried sick about her, too.
I don’t know why Malak went looking for her, but I know I had something to do with it.
It’s my fault. She wouldn’t be a slave to a bunch of diabolical angels right now if I had just left her the hell alone.
I’ve decided I’m glad Michael’s dead. He’s evil and deserving of much worse.
I think I might wish Abaddon were dead, too.
Even if I can’t remember what all happened the night before we left the Abyss, my body does. It knows. It can’t forget. Not when something terrible has happened to it.
From the very moment I agreed to our wedding, Abaddon made me feel what he wanted me to feel.
All it took him was the slightest weakness in my armor to gain a foothold, and once he had it, his emotions overrode my own.
My world revolved around him; there was no room for my own thoughts, my freedom of choice.
I would have done anything he wanted me to do. .. and I did.
Except that wasn’t enough, because he didn’t stop there.
He couldn’t be satisfied with everything I had to give, so he took the rest for himself. He said so himself—we had sex many times.
There are only so many reasons I’d have no memory of it.
As much as I wish it weren’t true, as much as I desperately wish I’m mistaken, I really don’t think I was conscious for a lot of it.
At a minimum, I was not coherent enough to consent, and either way, he took advantage of me.
The difference is only in the clarity of the line being crossed. It’s still… he…
Fuck, I can’t even say the word to myself.
I just hate him. I fucking hate him.
“I trusted you,” I whisper into the dark cell, my voice breaking, tears streaming down my face. I’ve cried many times here by now, but this one feels like it wrenches my soul out of my body. My chest aches with the pain of the worst kind of betrayal. “How could you do that to me? How?”
I want to scream at him. I want him to hurt as much as I do.
“I trusted you.” I pull my knees into my chest, sobbing, shaking, rocking myself back and forth. “I trusted you, I trusted you, I TRUSTED YOU.”
How will I get over this? How am I ever supposed to trust someone again?
I can’t.
I’m irrevocably broken.
I cry until there’s nothing left inside me, until I find myself staring at the blank wall.
The strangest thing happens, then.
A song starts growing in my head, one that I’ve never heard before, as if my despair manifested it.
It’s a choir, harmonizing, vivid in my mind as if they were standing in front of me.
It might be the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.
It’s more precious than the first light of dawn, more hypnotic than the steady rhythm of the ocean’s tide.
The choir builds and builds to a crescendo, then suddenly silences, just for a deathly low bass to set a haunting, vibrating melody.
A soprano rises in a bone-chilling challenge, “Absinthium.”
The bass soon answers, his voice like a funeral song, “Amaritudo venit.”
They harmonize in a hum, a tangle of pain and joy. And then she rises, rises. Swelling with the call of a siren, the bass her echoing sailor. She reaches the impossible pitch of an angel, calling to the heavens, sending chills across my entire body.
Suddenly, they stop.
An unseen gate shatters.
And the Aether collapses into me.
It’s all I can see, feel. I’m flooded with more raw power than I know what to do with. Light shoots from pinpricks in my skin, quickly becoming ravenous, until my body can’t contain it anymore. A wave of power, the force of a star, explodes from within me.
The cell walls crack, splintering, rumbling in warning of collapse.
Entranced, I pull myself to my feet. Light clings to me, twirling around in slivers and whisps, lashing out at the walls like enraged snakes. All I do is look at one corner, wishing it were gone—and a beam of light bursts through it, exploding a large chunk of the walls.
I realize, then, that I have very little control over this violent force. It doesn’t even take a full thought to cause destruction, and I’m far too emotionally volatile to be handling something like that.
So I close my eyes, looking inward once again.
The veil covering my soul has shattered.
Not only am I inundated with tethers again, but the endless force of the Aether is pressing down on me with merciless intensity.
I can’t believe I’ve never been able to find it before.
It’s not a bridge. It is the sky, the sea, the earth—even the vacuum in which all things exist. It is everything, all-consuming, and I have no idea how to shut it off.
Shadow, I plead. Are you there? Have you returned?
No response.
Please, I don’t know what to do with all of this. It’s too much power. How do I close the gate?
Still nothing.
Close the gate, close the gate, close the gate…
When I open my eyes again, by some small miracle, I’m no longer surrounded by magical, destructive light.
It worked.
I walk to the collapsed side of the room, however hazardous that idea may be, and peer outside my confines.
Surprisingly, there’s an atrium of some sort.
The ceiling is painted in a magnificent mural of angels and beasts, held up by porcelain arches and columns.
Below, there’s a cerulean pool surrounded by tropical plants and marble floors.
Tables and lounge chairs are scattered about, many of which have seats occupied by an interesting variety of people—all of whom seemed to have been enjoying a regular day until now.
Now, they’re all gawking at me.
I suppose I did make quite the commotion.
I don’t really know where to go from here. It’s not like I can jump down from what must be three stories high. And I’m fucking exhausted, too. It turns out that accidentally exploding walls is very taxing.
A crowd starts to gather below me, whispering amongst themselves. Angels, humans, and… monsters of some sort. Their features are morphed, for better or for worse. Some look like dreamy fairies, while others look like nightmarish ghouls.
A caped, ghastly figure floats forward from the masses. His face is somewhere between a corpse and a skeleton, and he points at me, screeching, “The Morning Star!”
I blink.
Before I even have time to process it, another person in the crowd repeats him, shouting, “Morningstar!”
These people are fucking delusional. I have nothing to do with their morning star. That’s Lucifer’s job. Or Azael’s. Speaking of which, where is the devil?
Yet, more join in with the ghoul, chanting like this is some kind of sports game. “Morningstar!”
Oh, Jesus Christ…
“Morningstar!”
Please, someone. Anyone. Make it stop.
“Morningstar! Morningstar! MORNINGSTAR!”