held his hand to my cheek, breathing in the sharp musk that I had come to love.
“I can’t stay,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
I looked over my shoulder, knowing the consequences and knowing that I needed him anyway. “I’m afraid,” I said.
“Fear isn’t real.” Levi reached for my hand. He looked upon me with such love and understanding even though he knew I had ruined everything. “They’re not feelings. They’re only things that happen to us. It’s not time for fear. It’s time for courage. Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
The look in his eyes gave me no choice but to reach out to him. I lusted his mouth and his touch, but once I had finally felt his arms around me, I also realized we’d been discovered, as if a spotlight were shining on the two of us.
He tensed. “I love you,” he whispered into my ear. “Remember that.”
He was pulled through the doorway, and I screamed, reaching out into the darkness.
Michael stood behind me, his eyes full of regret. “Come with me.”
I nodded, knowing a struggle was pointless.
In Heaven, there was no trial, no sides. Only one sovereign meant only one ruling, and justice was carried out with love. I would be sent away for a time, alone, to center and focus on my true purpose.
My sentence was carried out as soon as it had been given. In one moment, I was basking in the love and light of the Creator, and as if I covered my eyes from the sun, it was gone.
I found myself on all fours in a dark room, alone. I called out for Levi, then the Archangels—Gabriel, Michael, Eli—and then even the Creator. I pushed myself off the ground, holding my hands out in front of me. After several minutes of walking, I realized there were no walls, only floors that went on forever. My eyes widened, trying to pull in any light available to see, but the place I had been sent to was devoid of everything.
“Levi?” I called out. My voice didn’t carry or bounce back to me. It was simply swallowed whole by the darkness, as I had been.
I had no knowledge of this place. Without any idea where I was or how long I would be there, I knelt and held my own hands, praying with my eyes tightly closed until I could no longer speak. Then I prayed in my mind until I could no longer think. When it seemed the whole universe had gone dark, I lay on my side, curled up in a ball on the cold hard floor and fell out of consciousness once again.
“Eden,” a familiar voice called.
I climbed to my feet, shielding my sensitive eyes from the red glow coming from the open doorway a hundred yards away. A dark form stood before it, shoulders lifting and falling in quick succession, as if it had been a long battle to reach me.
“Levi?”
My eyes opened, my cheeks wet from crying in my sleep. The darkness transformed into a small room with white walls and aging portraits. The clean air and abundance of flowery aroma had been replaced by the smell of rain, sea spray, and Levi’s familiar sharp scent of a campfire.
Levi was watching me with obvious concern. His eyes were full of cautious hope as he waited for a sign of my recollection. “Say you remember.”
Touching my fingers to my lips as I watched large drops dive-bombing the ground, I mulled over the fractured memories—including when we had been exiled—coming and going like quickly changing channels on a television.
“Was it just a dream?”
“Was I there?”
I slowly nodded. “You were taken away.”
He sighed, relieved. “You remember.”
I scrambled from my spot on the sofa onto his lap, curling up and burying my face in the crook of his neck.
Without hesitation, Levi wrapped his arms around me and pressed his cheek against my hair, holding me tight. “Everything?”
“Fragments. A million bits to piece together.” I hugged him back. “You feel like you.”
He exhaled, pure contentment radiating from his body. The feeling was so strange. I had never been in love before, but I always loved Levi, this total stranger who encompassed me in his arms as if I were precious to him. We had spent a hundred thousand lifetimes together, and this would be our last. The desperation of my former self to be near him conflicted with the inexperienced young woman I was now.
His eyebrows pulled in. “You said