Chapter Twenty-Three - Evie #3
What if he’d made it in? What if he’d been seen? What if he was over there right now fighting half of Heaven, and I was about to stand here and watch him get dragged somewhere even worse?
I kept glancing over my shoulder as I moved, every few steps, every turn of the path, half expecting to see that syrup-gold light splitting the air behind me, half expecting The First Light to simply appear and ruin everything.
But the disturbance still snagged at me. I still couldn’t tell what it was yet, only that something was happening, something sharp enough to break the perfect rhythm of this place.
I kept praying to myself it wasn’t him. My pulse sped up, and I moved faster.
The first bridge arced ahead of me in white stone and gold filigree, suspended over a gulf of glowing cloud.
Wind caught the hem of my dress and shoved my hair back from my face as I crossed.
The next cloud bank opened into a broader court of flowering trees and gardens and gleaming pavilions.
Beyond that, there was more movement and flashes of wings.
Then Heaven stopped. All at once the air changed, pressure rolling through it so suddenly I froze mid-step. A low harmonic note opened overhead, too beautiful and too loud, like the sky itself had been plucked.
Light gathered above the cloud banks that wasn’t natural. It was honeyed, and then—
A vast image unfurled across the open air, gold and white and towering. The First Light appeared suspended above the realm like some holy nightmare version of the Wizard of Oz, projected in impossible scale so every soul in Heaven could see Him at once.
He was dressed in grandeur, shining golden ceremonial robes in perfect folds. His face was serene. His light spilled over everything in soft, commanding waves.
Around me, all of Heaven dropped. Everyone. Angels folding their wings and bowing their heads. Celestine sinking gracefully to their knees. Lustrine lowering trays and flowers and themselves in one smooth practiced motion.
Even the distant figures on the terraces and bridges disappeared downward like wheat in wind.
The whole kingdom bent. No one was still standing, not one person. And I was alone on the bridge.
Shit.
I dropped too, knees hitting the cold white stone hard enough to sting. I bowed my head because everyone else had bowed theirs, because survival was suddenly a matter of choreography.
Around me, the silence became reverent. Then came the voices. Thousands. A wave of worship rolled up from every cloud bank, every court, every gleaming stair and drifting terrace, all of Heaven speaking in one terrible unified breath.
“Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”
The words hit me like cold water. My stomach turned.
It was the same chant. The same one those horrible little mechanical kneeling things had said in His hidden chamber, their robotic bodies bowing around Him while He sat there soaking it in like a starving man at a feast. Only this was bigger and wider and worse.
All of Heaven was saying it at once, every voice polished into reverence, every syllable sharpened by devotion.
“Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”
It made my skin crawl.
I lowered my head more, trying to look exactly like everyone else, trying not to breathe too hard, and that was when the horror happened.
All of it felt wrong. My body knew it before my mind did. The minute my knees hit the bridge, and my head bowed into that shape of obedience, a shock ran through me, sharp and immediate, like I’d pressed my bare hands to a live wire. My lungs locked. My vision flashed white at the edges.
Some ancient, hidden part of me screamed I was not made for kneeling. My fingers dug into the stone and then… gold crackled beneath my skin.
Oh fuck.
No, no, no—
I clenched my hands into fists and forced them against my thighs, praying no one could see the faint lightning trying to lace through my knuckles. Around me, the prayer-song rose, sweet and sickening and immense.
“Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”
Then the giant face above shifted. The projection turned. Toward me. And I knew with a sinking feeling of dread that it was looking directly at the bridge where I knelt.
My blood turned to ice.
In my head, beneath the chorus of worship, beneath the wind and everything else, His voice arrived soft as breath against the inside of my skull.
There you are.
I stopped breathing and looked up immediately, glancing around. No one around me reacted. No one gasped or looked up or betrayed anything. They were all still bent in worship, still swallowed by the performance.
So either He had not spoken aloud—or this was only for me.
I looked up, and the giant projection smiled in what felt like slow motion. It was warm and tender and… possessive, like I should be grateful for being found.
But then my eyes snagged on that cloud bank two over, the disturbance flared again, sharper this time, and louder.
A crack split the air. It sounded like pressure giving way.
The prayer around me stuttered. I felt a disruption move through the kneeling bodies below me and nearby like an involuntary shiver.
The projection above held its smile, but there was strain in it now, a faint wrongness at the edges of that enormous holy calm.
Then a voice carried across the cloud banks. It was male and bright, and fucking furious, magnified by rage given purpose.
“TAKE YOUR EYES OFF HER.”
My entire body went rigid.
Luc.
I stood up before I could stop myself.
Beyond the next bridge and the pale drifting banners of mist, a cluster of angels had broken around a single violent point of resistance. White wings flared. Gold armor flashed. Bodies moved too quickly and with too little grace to be anything but a fight. And at the center of it all—
A flash of copper-dark hair in all that heavenly light.