chin on them. Father sank down to the floor beside me, and my view of the stars fogged over. I imagined he didn’t have afternoon powwows on the floor for just anyone. No. He was doing this for me, to offer me some of the comfort I’d given him. I could feel the worry and concern rolling off him like waves. I felt guilty I made him worry. He was the leader of the dead, for God’s sake. He had enough on his plate.
His frosty fingers lifted my chin, and then I was met with his cold, honest eyes. Eyes that had seen millions meet their death. Eyes that saw right through me.
“Are you saddened by the loss of the humans you saw die today?” he asked. “I know you invested a lot of time in the boy.”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I’d never…I just…”
“You’ve never witnessed a death before,” he finished for me.
I sat up, wrapping my arms around my knees, and nodded. It had been awful. It had been unnecessary. If I hadn’t meddled, if I’d just been able to let go like Sky had told me a thousand times, Tyler would be alive. I tried to comfort myself with the fact that Scout had helped him find his way back to April by now. They were both here, where pain and loneliness didn’t exist. Tyler deserved that. He deserved peace.
“It was awful,” I said.
Father sighed and rested a hand on my back. “I’d hoped to spare you from that. It’s not something you were ever meant to witness.”
“Don’t you think it’s strange that I know nothing of death considering who you are?”
His brows pulled together. “I wasn’t aware you were interested.”
“I’m not…I mean, I am,” I said. “I just want to understand it. I don’t like only seeing the pretty parts. The parts you allow me to see. I want to help people who need me.”
People like Tyler. Like Easton.
He sat back on his heels, the familiar hard look I’d come to know settling into his eyes. “I allowed you to see the human boy. He wasn’t pretty. He was one of the most broken, gnarled excuses for a human I’d ever seen when you found him.”
I stood, unable to control the jittery feeling in my legs, urging me to not back down. Not from this. If I backed down now, he’d never let me help anyone like Tyler again.
“Yes, and look what I did for him!” I said. “He was happy. He was in love. I could do that again. Mend someone broken. Make them new. Why do you hold me back from that?”
“Because you don’t know limits, Gwendolyn!” His voice was so loud it rattled the stars beneath us. When Father was angry, the world knew. It quaked and thundered with his presence. I flinched from his tone, and his jaw hardened as he attempted to calm himself. “You believe everyone can be fixed. They can’t. Some are meant to be forever broken. And if I let you attempt to save every miserable creature you come in contact with, you will ruin yourself. You will lose everything that makes you my Gwen.”
His Gwen. The day the Almighty gave me to Balthazar my fate had been sealed. I would never be my own. How could I be when I was his only link to peace? He would never risk losing me. Losing me meant losing a piece of himself, the only piece keeping him human. Because of this, I would never bring comfort to a land torn apart by war. I would never be responsible for bringing someone back from the brink. Not again. I’d been lucky he’d let me help Tyler. The look on his face said he’d never let it happen again. Which meant he’d never allow me to get close to someone like Easton. I belonged to him, and for the first time in my short existence, I resented that.
A humming sound saved me from having to say anything in return. It was for the best. I just would have angered him more. He sighed, the weight of the world in the sound. He pushed to his feet and crossed over to his desk. Behind it, a cloudlike chair materialized, and Father took his seat before pulling a gold tablet out of thin air. My breath caught in my throat. It was the tablet. The tablet that listed the death of every living being on the planet. Had Tyler been on there? Or had he