Chapter 35
Beaks peck at her skin. Wings tangle in her hair. Hooked feet claw at her eyes.
Mallory screams and screams, hands flailing.
The candles shudder and the walls groan.
She’s going to die. Flesh torn to ribbons by a flock of furious birds.
They’ll find her mangled body here on Sunday, just in time for morning service.
She almost laughs at the thought. But instead, she unleashes a cry into the shadows, thrashing her hands into plump bellies, snatching fistfuls of feathers.
She runs blindly down the altar steps, stumbling once, twice, prepared to sprint for—
Stars shatter behind her eyes as she collides with Ezra, who has silently emerged from the elevator.
There’s nothing she can do about the way they crash, spilling onto the stairs in a cluster of limbs, just as the frantic flapping of wings shudders to a halt.
A thick, ominous silence replaces the keening screech.
Gone. The ravens are gone.
But Ezra isn’t. He’s right there, caging her against the steps. Frantically, she presses her hands to her face, checking for cuts. But her skin is soft and clear.
“Where did—where did they go?” she demands, teeth chattering.
“I sent them away. They listen to me.” Ezra strokes her hair. “It’s just us now.”
“No—no.” Mallory tries to sit up, but a blazing pain shoots through her spine. She digs in her pocket for the silver knife, brandishing it with shaking hands. Ezra tips his head, amusement glittering in his green eyes.
A shade darker than they should be.
“You’re safe with me,” Ezra says. “I promise. Let me show you.”
Before she can respond, Ezra brings a bloodstained hand to her neck. His fingers drift along her throat, landing on her puncture wounds. Caressing them softly—just enough to return that traitorous warmth to her stomach.
“There’s darkness in you, too,” Ezra says, noticing. His voice has the tinge of a growl to it. Like it’s overlapping with the demon’s. “We’re the same.”
“We’re not,” she whispers. “We’re not, we’re not—”
“Think about it.” His nose brushes hers.
“You and me—we’re tied to one another. Tethered.
Forever changed in parallel ways by the angel’s influence.
We can take care of each other.” A dark smile plays on his lips as he ghosts his fingers over the bite marks, watching them swell beneath his touch.
“Look at your body, ready for me to drink from you again,” he says, entranced.
Eyes flickering somewhere between green and onyx. “So fucking beautiful.”
He curves his hand around her throat, mapping the slope of her chin. Tears of rage spill over her lashes, and Ezra tilts his head. The color continues to drain from his irises, like something is fighting for control inside him.
“I hate it when you cry.” He tightens his grip, and she gasps at the rush of dark heat that nearly blinds her. “Why can’t you understand? I can protect you. Forever. If you let me.”
Lightning flashes inside her, conjuring another vision.
But this time, Mallory only sees herself, standing alongside Ezra in a liminal space of black and gold.
She’s dressed in a flowing gown of black lace, red ribbons woven into her hair.
His jewel-toned eyes flicker against scarlet flames as they lace their hands together with matching rings on their fingers.
Swirls and slashes, symbols of angels. The images swim behind Mallory’s eyelids, beckoning, while Ezra’s fingers dance along her throat, coaxing her.
Claiming her. It could be like this, something inside her seems to whisper.
It would be so easy to say yes.
But when Mallory meets his eyes—fully black now, entirely inhuman—it’s clear the vision was only meant to distract her. Seduce her. The angel would never allow them to be together freely like that. Not when it needs her heart. The realization hits her, swift and hard. She has only seconds.
Which slips, rapidly, into an understanding that she’s already too late.
It happens all at once. Mallory lunges with the knife, but Ezra snatches it first. Fangs poking through his smile, he runs his tongue up the length of the bloodstained blade before hurling it to the floor.
With a growl, he rips open her Juliet nightgown and presses his mouth right above her left breast.
Over her heart.
Ezra sinks his fangs into her flesh and Mallory cries out at the white-hot pain, spine twisting.
Blood trickles the length of her torso, and he laps at it, returning his teeth to the fresh wounds.
Digging them in farther. Like he might gnaw straight through bone.
Her eyes widen and widen. A choking sound corkscrews from her lips.
It’ll be over soon. It’ll be over—
Her head lolls. The pain starts to blur with infuriating pleasure.
His hips flush against hers. A talon-tipped hand running the length of her body, greedily grasping at every curve.
The room spins. Distantly, she’s aware of the way she’s about to be torn apart, drained, devoured.
Maybe it’s time to let go. If she lets him consume her, Saskia will be safe.
And just before her world spills into darkness, she thinks of Lily.
Lily, eyes opal with rage.
Lily, choking out the scraps of a warning Mallory didn’t understand until now.
Burn.
It.
Not her heart. The angel.
Mallory’s eyes pop open. She twists her neck, gaze landing on the table of altar candles.
Lashing out with her boot as hard as she can, her heel connects with the table. The structure doesn’t tip but it wobbles, sending several candles to the floor, metallic holders clanging. Ezra rears back, mouth covered in blood, and Mallory staggers to her feet.
With strength she didn’t know she had, she leans into the heavy table and pushes it over. Dozens of lit candles spill off the side, and she leaps away before they crash to the ground.
In mere seconds, flames begin licking the pews, the steps, the altar. Blue gold soars in front of them, snaking along the floor.
“Jules—why did you—?” Ezra’s voice—his real voice—spills into a string of curse words as flames kiss the edge of his cloak. He rips it off, stomping the fabric with his boots.
Mallory flies toward the entrance. She coughs as thick smoke rises from a burning Bible at her feet. The fire is quick, orange-tipped fingers reaching up the walls, setting the entire chapel ablaze. She sprints faster, ash stinging her lungs.
And a searing pain erupts at the back of her head as Ezra grabs her by her hair.
“No. Let go—”
Ezra’s growl is rough in her ear as he hauls her to the side. “Move!”
A cluster of burning wood clatters to the ground, right where she had just been standing. Her breath freezes on her lips. A minute ago, he tried to kill her. And now—
“Get out,” he rasps, shoving her around the burning debris.
When she turns, Ezra is bent over, coughing as smoke closes in around him. Leaving just enough space for her to see his eyes, suddenly green again. Several more beams of wood fall with a violent clatter, flames sparking furiously. Panic takes hold of her as she realizes he’s going to be trapped.
“Come with me,” Mallory begs, reaching into the clotted gray cloud. “Grab my hand.”
“Get out!” Ezra yells again. “It wants me to kill you. Get out.”
But she can’t abandon him here, not like this. Tears blur her vision as she thinks of his hands returning life to her body that afternoon in the chapel, how he awoke something in her that wasn’t meant to last.
“Please, Ezra,” she sobs. The smoke stings her eyes; she can hardly make out anything more than a few inches in front of her.
But Ezra is unrelenting.
“Go. Don’t fucking die in here with me, Jules.” His voice is raw, and the ache in her chest splits and splits as she realizes he’s crying, too.
“No. I won’t leave you.” Everything hurts, pain bursting in her lungs as she reaches for a man whose mouth is drenched in her blood. A man who, despite everything, she cannot, will not, let suffocate alone.
She chokes on her sobs. On the smoke. She can’t breathe, she can’t see, she—
“Mal.”
Ezra exhales her name—her real name—like a prayer.
And it breaks whatever she has left.
“Leave,” he adds, quiet and resolute. “Please.”
Despair crashes and crashes inside her. She should say something meaningful, something profound, something she’d want to be her last words to him. But all she can come up with is—
“I’m sorry, too.”
Mallory stumbles to the door, practically throwing herself into the midnight air.
She screams for help, but her voice is raspy, choked.
Defeated, she sinks to the earth, surrendering to a wave of shattered sobs as blood trickles down her body.
Ezra nearly killed her. She tried to save him anyway. But she didn’t. She never could.
And as she watches the chapel go up in flames, all she can think of is Ezra in the dressing room, telling her how he’d linger between worlds to haunt the woman he loved. She scrambles to hold on to the way his voice sounded around those words, but it already feels distant. Like a dream.
Soon, she’ll have nothing left of him at all.