Chapter Twenty-Five - Evie #4
“His manna wouldn’t erase memory outright,” he said. “That would be too obvious and too ugly, even for Him. It blurs and softens. It dulls the parts of an angel that would fight. Questions. Purpose.” He laughed once, sharp and joyless. “Enough of it, and worship starts to feel like peace.”
My stomach turned, but Luc kept going.
“It feeds the body, yes. But it also makes surrender feel holy. Makes obedience feel natural. Comforting. Easier than remembering who you were before Him.”
I stared at him. I could still taste that strange sweetness if I tried hard enough. I could still feel the warmth of it in my throat. The way it had settled in me and stayed.
My mouth went dry. “Do you think it could have done something to me?”
He came over, took my hands in his with such gentleness. “I don’t know. Because it was supposed to be sustenance and strength.” His expression darkened further. “But His version does something worse. It nourishes and gentles at the same time, and enough of it, and an angel only hears Him.”
For a second, I couldn’t breathe. That whole time, He wasn’t just being kind. He had still been trying to make it easier to keep me. The room tilted.
And then I remembered His arms around me. Worse, I remembered letting them stay. My body had gone quiet against Him, less afraid, like some exhausted part of me had mistaken surrender for relief.
Horror opened cold in my belly. What if that had been the manna, too? What if it had already started taking shape inside me, smoothing down the parts that should have fought, making His hands feel less like a cage because my body had been too weak to know the difference?
I felt sick, not guilty, but contaminated.
Luc sat down on the bed immediately, slowly, and more cautiously this time. I lay my head on his shoulder, and I didn’t flinch this time when he touched my hair.
“Hey,” he said quietly.
I laughed once, and it came out wrong, too thin and too close to panic. “I thought He was helping me.” The words tasted rotten the second they left my mouth.
“No,” he said softly. “He was making sure your body survived long enough for the rest of you to become easier to shape.”
The tears came then, sudden and hot and furious, spilling down my face before I could stop them. He didn’t say anything. He just gathered me into his arms, and I let him, because I didn’t have the strength not to, and the tears kept coming anyway.
He eased us back onto the pillows, still so carefully, until I was curled against him again. His scent moved over me in dark, comforting waves, smoke and warmth and something achingly, unmistakably Luc. For one trembling minute, I let myself sink into it.
But one thought kept burning brighter than all the rest—Mara. She was still there, still trapped in that place.
I swallowed hard. “She’s still up there,” I said.
Luc’s head turned instantly. “Who?”
I wiped at my face again, angry at the tears, angry at all of it. “She’s trapped up there.”
His expression changed so fast I almost missed the first version of it, the horrible one. The one where, for one awful second, he thought I meant Destiny.
“Evie,” he said carefully. “Love, Destiny—”
“Not Destiny.” I pushed myself up too fast, the room swimming for a second before it steadied. “I know… Destiny. Mara.”
He stared at me.
“She was my friend. And not just Mara,” I said, wiping my face again because the tears had gone from grief to fury now and I preferred fury.
“There were others, and not just women,” I said.
“Girls, boys. Men, too. I don’t even know how many because I didn’t get to see much of it, but I know they were there. I know it.”
His face changed again, something colder this time, something that looked like it wanted blood and names and a list.
“They were all part of it,” I said. “All trapped in that place. All made into…” I swallowed again. “Into whatever He wanted them to be.”
Luc sat up. “Evie—”
“No.” I stood too, because suddenly sitting there felt impossible. “No, don’t do that thing where you tell me to breathe and rest and… just don’t.”
His jaw tightened. “You’re in shock.”
“Of course I’m in shock.” I laughed once, raw and furious. “Destiny is dead. I did something to that realm that made the light seep out. And Mara is still trapped there and other people. They’re all still in that place, and you want me to what, lie down for a while?”
“I want you alive.”
“So do I,” I snapped. “But I’m not the only one He took.”
Luc stared at me. I could see the fight in him, the part that wanted to hold me down with safety and blankets and soft voices until I stopped shaking, and the other part, the one that knew me well enough to understand that was never going to work.
Destiny was dead. I hated it, and I wanted her back desperately. I couldn’t fix that. But Mara— She was still breathing, waiting, with others, for someone to save them.
A purpose took shape in me then, hot and clear and mean enough to stand on. I looked him dead in the face.
“I got out,” I said. “Fine. Now I need to get them out, and I need your help.”