Chapter Thirty-Seven - Evie #3
The sky began to pale behind the red rocks, the first suggestion of morning bleeding into the horizon. The exchange should have started then, and it almost did.
Lilith stepped forward. Luc did too. Morathis shifted her weight. Thyronis narrowed his eyes.
And then the light changed, but it wasn’t the sunrise. It was something else.
Something warmed honey-gold spread across the stone, too soft at first, too beautiful. It poured down the walls of the amphitheater and made my skin crawl before my mind caught up. It hit my body before it hit my thoughts. It was clean and golden and sickening.
I stumbled back a step, hand flying to my stomach. “No,” I whispered.
Luc turned instantly. His face changed the second he saw mine. Then the sky opened. The First Light descended like the answer to a prayer no one sane would ever pray.
He came clothed in radiance, and the entire amphitheater recoiled around Him. The wind stopped as if holding its breath, and every shadow was chased thin.
I hated Him on sight all over again, but it wasn’t just hate. It was revulsion. My body remembered too much. The silk-soft violence of Him. The false tenderness. The way He filled a room and expected gratitude for the suffocation.
His three archangels came around Him in a sweep of wings and steel. Everything happened at once after that. One seized Lilith by the arm and dragged her backward so fast she actually looked startled.
Another struck for Morathis. Vespera moved, snarling. Thyronis drew something old and black and impossible from the air itself.
Topher shouted as Luc turned toward me. And one of the archangels came for him with a flaming sword I knew, somehow, before anyone said its name—Justice. The blade burned white-gold.
I saw it lift. I saw Luc move, and I saw the moment he understood he would not be fast enough. And then—
It cut his head clean off.
There should have been sound. And there was—probably. But all I knew was the sight of it. The impossible severing. The arc of black blood. The way his body remained standing for one stunned, inhuman second before it began to fall.
His head hit the sandstone first and bounced. I think I screamed. I don’t know. The world tipped sideways. My knees hit the ground hard enough to crack, and I clutched my belly with both arms like I could physically hold the girls inside me and keep this from becoming real.
This can’t be real. This can’t be real. This can’t be—
I cried so hard there was no sound. I couldn’t breathe. There was… nothing. My mouth opened, and all that came out was absence.
The First Light smiled. That was the worst part, that fucking smile. Like, He had finally won. Like this was justice. Like the universe had at last arranged itself properly beneath His hand.
I stared at Luc’s body and couldn’t make my mind understand it. No. No. No. The word stopped being a word. It became the only thing left in me.
I looked at The First Light’s smile, and something in me went silent. My sobs stopped. My hands loosened around my stomach. And for a single terrible second, I felt nothing at all. Then rage rose.
It didn’t come from my chest. It came from deeper. From beneath my bones. Beneath whatever part of me had learned to be afraid of men who smiled while they hurt you.
It came from my father. From every hand that had arranged me. From every holy voice that had told me suffering meant I had been chosen. And it came from Luc’s blood on the sandstone. Black and impossible and real.
The First Light’s eyes slid toward me, still wearing that golden, satisfied smile. Like, He expected me to stay on my knees. And that was His mistake.
I rose.
My body hurt. My knees screamed where they had struck the stone. My stomach pulled tight. Somewhere behind me, someone shouted my name. Maybe Topher. Maybe Vespera. Maybe the universe finally realizing I was about to do something catastrophically stupid.
I didn’t care. I didn’t care about the map. I didn’t care about Heaven. I didn’t care about prophecy or names or whatever I was supposed to be. I didn’t even care if I survived it.
The only thing in me that still existed was the need to kill Him. The air around my hands cracked. Gold light spilled down my arms. It wasn’t His gold. It was mine.
It came jagged and furious, bright enough to hurt, branching beneath my skin like lightning trapped in veins. It poured from my shoulders to my wrists, alive and violent, laced with something darker underneath. It hit the stone, turned green-black, and went root-deep.
The same strange force that had healed Topher, only this time, there was no mercy in it. No healing. No gentleness. I was going to kill that goddamn Motherfucker.
The First Light’s smile faltered, just a little.
I raised both hands.
“Evie!” someone screamed.
Maybe it was Luc saying my name in his head.
Then, I saw His face through my tears. The radiance. The beauty. The syrupy horror of Him. That false softness. That endless, greedy certainty. And I hated Him so purely it felt like prayer.
“Fuck You,” I whispered. Then I let the lightning go.