I didn’t know, but I felt that fiery blade as if it had been shoved deep in my own chest, piercing through my heart and my soul. Panic fluttered through me, mixing with soul-deep grief. I wanted to rewind time. I wanted to go back and to have never done this, because if it didn’t work, I wasn’t sure...I wasn’t sure I could survive this even if it was the right thing to do. I’d been foolish to think I could weather this—that I was strong enough, brave enough. I wasn’t. I wasn’t inhuman, and I was sure my father would be disappointed to realize that, but it was true. If this didn’t work, the look in his eyes, the shock and disbelief, would haunt me long after my body was nothing more than dust. It would kill me. Maybe not in the physical sense, but it would devastate every part of me that made me who I was. I wouldn’t be the same, and in a moment of startling certainty, I realized that this was what Gabriel had meant by my rage being my ruin. I would become something as cold and terrible as Sulien.

And then...then time was no longer frozen.

Zayne’s eyes closed as he threw his arms back, a terrible scream splitting the night air. His wings lifted, each beautiful, lush wing spreading wide. His head kicked back, causing those tendons in his neck to stand out even further.

From the center of his chest, where the sword was buried deep, a pulse of energy rippled out, washing over his shoulders and arms in streaks of rolling, golden light. There was a brief second where he was awash in the heavenly fire, his body and features completely lost in the blaze. I could no longer see him.

Terror seized me as a tremor coursed through my body. Fearing the fire would swallow him whole, I tried to pull the sword free. It wouldn’t budge, and the sound—oh God, the sound that was coming from Zayne... It was animalistic and raw, shredding through me. My heart lurched as I stepped back with my right leg, bracing myself and tugging. There was no give. The sword seemed lodged, as if it were now a part of his body as it was an extension of mine, and nothing like that had ever happened before.

The whirling, whipping fire suddenly retracted, sucking back to where the blade was embedded deep.

Silence.

No screams.

No calls from nearby birds or insects.

Nothing.

Where the sword met his chest, divine energy built and throbbed. Zayne’s arms fell to his sides, his wings lowered and the mass of golden-white light stretched out, wrapping itself around the length of the blade, churning and twisting its way back to me. Instinct screamed that I let go of the sword, but I couldn’t, because the grace was mine—a part of me—and it wouldn’t allow it. But there was something else in there that didn’t belong to me. The first tendrils reached the hilt and then whatever it was licked over my fingers, obliterating every thought on contact.

The heavenly power hit the center of my chest, and it was like a bomb detonating. It washed over my entire body, drenching my skin and soaking into my muscles, entrenching itself deep in my bones and entwining itself around my organs. The divine energy stole my breath, curling itself around my heart and then settling in my back, rooting in my shoulders. There was no ability to process if what I was feeling was pain, a pleasure so acute that it became pain or both as it swept me off my feet. I was falling before I could even realize what was happening.

I didn’t feel the impact with the ground. I didn’t see when the Sword of Michael collapsed or feel the exact moment my grace retracted. I didn’t even realize that my eyes were closed or that there was a high likelihood that I’d been knocked unconscious, and that had to have happened, because when I managed to open my eyes, there was a sense that time had passed and an immeasurable confusion, loss.

Drawing in each short, shallow breath as my senses slowly, painstakingly pieced themselves back together, I stared up at a dark sea full...full of dazzling, twinkling lights. And there were so many of them. Thousands. Millions. Numerous and countless constellations of luminous, celestial bodies, and I could see them. All of them. I saw them in a way I had long since forgotten, with a clarity that proved my memories of them hadn’t done them justice. They were so beautiful, so endless. Tears filled my eyes as I lay there, overcome by the simple splendor of a night sky full of stars, each one representing infinite wishes and boundless dreams. I didn’t dare blink, not even as each and every one of the lights dimmed until they were nothing but blurred specks of distant light, until that, too, faded beyond my sight. I closed my eyes then, instinctually knowing that I’d been given a gift greater than I could probably ever realize. One last clear memory that would never fade, and I suspected I would never see the stars again.

Zayne.

That was the first rational, coherent thought that took form and made sense to me.

Opening my eyes, I didn’t look at the sky as I forced my sore body to move, to respond to the commands my brain was firing off. My muscles and nerves were slow to act, but once they seemed to get with the program, I clambered to my knees and hands. Every fiber of my being focused on the shadowy shape several feet from me.

Zayne.

He was on his hands and knees, like me, his head bowed. I could still make out the shape of wings draped along his shoulders, resting against the ground.

He was alive.

Trembling, I almost broke down right there, but somehow I managed to keep it together. He was still alive and breathing, but I had no idea what kind of state he was in.

I inched forward, squinting. His hair had fallen forward, shielding his face. I opened my mouth to say his name, but a childish sort of fear silenced my tongue.

What if it didn’t work? What if it somehow did something worse?

He moved then, his large body shuddering. Slowly, he lifted his head. Strands of hair slid back from his face. His eyes were closed, and his features still seemed clearer to me, even with the limited light, but this time I knew it was the luminous glow to his skin, the grace that hummed under the surface. Those wings twitched and heaved, lifting. Grace still streaked the feathers like currents of electricity. His eyes opened, hazy and unfocused, but they were still that unreal shade of blue as they focused on me. Cleared. I couldn’t breathe as I tensed, desperately trying to prepare myself for...for anything.