Tears ran down her cheeks as she raised her own hand, her power glittering bronze around her fingertips. She couldn’t form angelfire, but the bronze lightning she could create felt stronger than it had the last time he’d been close enough to witness it.
The Cascade in effect.
Her lack of angelfire mattered little. She had other ways to kill a fellow archangel. That was one of the markers of ascension: the ability to kill your peers. “I loved him,” she whispered, the sick energy held frozen between his power and hers. “He truly saw me. The darkness, the light, the glory, the rot.”
It was the most honest appraisal he’d ever heard Michaela make about herself. “Is he who he was?” Raphael asked, because they had to be sure. “You felt him just now. Can he come back?”
“He is . . . a ghost. A fragment. Of the worst part of him.” The tears continued to fall. “We must end him, Raphael. He is worth so much more than this mad existence driven by blood.”
Raphael thought one last time of the friend who’d raced with him through the canyons of the Refuge, of the man who’d laughed as they sat around a bonfire, his wings spread out on the grass. That Uram had been lost to time and to his own arrogance well before the insanity, but he had existed. And their long relationship demanded this act, for a sane Uram would’ve never wanted to exist as this mad phantom.
“Good-bye, old friend,” he whispered. “This time, it will be forever.”
Sobbing openly, Michaela released a crackling bolt of her power. It encircled the energy, began to crush it to death. Raphael added his angelfire. The echo stood no chance. It wasn’t Uram. It wasn’t even a part of Uram. It was only a faint shadow left behind by a powerful man lost to blood.
And then it ceased to be, burned out of existence.
Michaela collapsed to her knees, her wings spread out behind her in a splendor of delicate bronze. “I wanted more, more power, more everything. And I lost him to that greed.”
Turning, Raphael focused on his own people without discounting Michaela. As she’d just admitted, even her love had a price—and she might yet blame him for Uram’s death. “Venom.”
This member of his Seven who had always been so self-contained and coolly sophisticated, his humor often so dry it was cutting, raised eyes wet with tears. “She’s dying, sire.” It was a broken statement, Holly clutched tight to his chest.
The girl’s face was a smear of blood and broken skin, her pulse near impossible to detect. Blood trickled out of her nose and pasted her black top to her body. Wiping away the blood from her nose with a gentle touch, Venom pressed a kiss to her wrecked face. “She refused to let evil win. She fought.”
Raphael held out his arms. “Entrust her to me, Venom.” He didn’t want to be here, in this place with an archangel he’d never fully trusted.
Venom’s responding glance was shattered, but he nodded; he was one of the Seven and even nearly broken, he understood the reason behind Raphael’s request. “I will meet you there.”
As soon as he had Holly in his arms, Raphael rose into the sky without saying good-bye to Michaela. Lost in her guilt and horror, she wouldn’t have noticed if he had. He’d wrapped glamour around himself and Holly while still inside the turret, ensuring no one could follow him to the cabin of Jason’s informant.
He wasn’t worried about Venom. The youngest of the Seven was resourceful; he’d make it out of Michaela’s stronghold and if he needed assistance, he’d call out to Raphael.
As it was, Venom outdid himself, arriving at the cabin only minutes after Raphael.
Sweat drenched his body.
Going to his knees beside the sofa where Raphael had placed Holly, Venom stroked back her hair, then looked at Raphael. “Can you do anything?”
Raphael already had his hand on the girl’s bloody chest, his palm glowing blue as he called on his Cascade-born ability to heal. He could feel the energy penetrating her skin, but it had no discernible effect. She was unique, this girl who had found the will power to defy the ghost of an archangel. “She has courage, your Holly.”
“Yes. Too much.” He hissed at Holly, the sound dangerous. “You made me fall in love with you. You don’t get to go now!”
Raphael had never seen Venom like this. He poured more power into Holly’s motionless