Samael noticed—and I tugged it up. “Just friends?”
“I wasn’t exactly her type.”
I nodded. “Arrogant and bloodthirsty?”
“She didn’t like males in that way. Stop interrupting. We stayed friends, but mortals did not view her as kindly as I did. They thought she was a witch.” For a moment, I thought I saw the faintest hint of burning chains writhing around him. “Your kind has an amazing propensity for cruelty.”
I was about to point out the bodies he hung from the castle walls, but I kept my mouth shut.
“For reasons I don’t remember, angels were not allowed to teach mortals our celestial secrets,” he said. “I suppose you weren’t to be trusted. But I wanted her to learn to protect herself in case the witch finders came for her, so I taught her the secrets of warfare, celestial combat. That was when I fell. But I don’t remember much before the fall. It was taken from me.”
He went silent, looking down at his tea. When he met my gaze, his gray eyes had a deeply forlorn expression that made my throat tighten. “That’s the thing about being Fallen. We want to tell things to mortals, and to …” His sentence faded out. “Well, others do.”
“What does it mean to fall?” I asked.
Something in his face looked lost. And that was insane, because he was the Angel of Death. He didn’t need to be protected.
He frowned, staring at me over his mug of tea. “Once you fall, you forget most things. You forget meaning. Mostly it’s a sense of having once been whole, but now being broken. But I vaguely remember that the things I used to do had meaning, and that once I didn’t worry about right and wrong. I remember that lacerating sense of loss when I fell, like my soul was ripped out. I was empty. Nothing meant anything, and no one meant anything. After I fell, often rage overtook me, and I wanted to destroy, to crush people into dust. I was trying to heal myself through death, to restore my glory as the Venom of God.”
His eyes had taken on a haunted look, then a muscle flexed in his jaw. “After I fell, I remember watching Yvonne die, but I couldn’t remember her name, or how I knew her. I’d forgotten language. It seemed she was too gentle to use the celestial art of fighting that I’d taught her, so the witch finders captured her. They tied her to a stake, and lit the bottom, but her feet were burning for so long, and her legs. It took a long time. I remember that. Something about her screams got through the haze and made my heart race. I couldn’t stop staring as she burned, and part of me hated it but I couldn’t think of what to do … So I just watched. She must have wondered why I wasn’t helping her, because she could see me there. I think she was screaming my name.” His voice sounded ragged. “It’s just that it went on so long.”
He met my gaze again, and the firelight danced over the perfect planes of his face. “I remember who I am now. I am the Venom of God. I cut down those who perpetuate the evil of man. That is my purpose. And when I unite the Fallen, we will bring order to the chaos of mortals.”
A chill rippled over my body, and my breaths had gone shallow. I stared at my beautiful enemy.
I sipped my tea, and the earthy flavor rolled over my tongue. “But don’t you ever worry that you’ve got it wrong? That you’re slaughtering the wrong person?”
A flicker of confusion in his eyes, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he spoke a single word in Angelic, and the lights went out again.
In the dark, I drank the rest of my tea. When it was finished, I curled up naked with the blanket over me. I’d never felt anything so soft against my skin, like the softest rabbit’s paw covering my body. And the sofa beneath me—velvety pillows, the fabric exquisite. Completely exhausted, it wasn’t long until sleep crept over me.
But when I slept, I dreamt I was plummeting into the churning Dark River. I was slipping deeper under the surface. I thrashed in the water, forcing my way to the top again, and when I breached the surface, I was staring up at the scaffold outside the castle walls.
Instead of the Free Man, it was Alice kneeling, her head