“Me?” The blood chilled in my veins despite the fire. “Why?”

“That was my fault. I trusted him.”

His mouth forming a hard line, Michael focused on the object in his hands. His sword expanded from it, faster than a switchblade and at least as long as his arm. It made me jump.

“Where did that come from?” I said.

“A sheath between my wings.”

Between his wings? Had it been there all the time?

The sword’s blue light glinted in his eyes. Something about it turned his expression from grief to something quiet and determined, deadly even.

“Let me guess, it’s inter-dimensional too?”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It can’t hurt you.” He moved closer to me and held out the blade.

It seemed to be made from some kind of metallic light, blue but not a laser; there was a silver, steely quality to it as well. Slowly he moved it toward me. “Touch it. You’ll see what I mean.”

I reached a fingertip to the blade and my finger passed right through it, like it was a hologram. There was a cold tickle where it had connected, but no pain. “How does it work?”

“By intention. It can’t hurt humans, but it’s fatal to demons.” To illustrate his point, he ran the blade through his own arm. There was a rippling of light, but no damage. Raising his sword, he readjusted his grip. “Try it again.”

I reached for the blade expecting nothing to be there, and this time it was a cold steel, icy beneath my fingers, but not sharp. The blue light buzzed and arced around them.

“My intention can make it into a blunt instrument, but that’s as much damage as it can do. We’re meant to protect humanity, not harm them.” There was something in his tone—guilt perhaps—that made me wonder what he’d done.

He transferred the blade to his left hand and rotated his wrist, the weapon a silent extension of his arm. So that was how he’d managed to dispatch Damiel without hurting his vessel, Giulio.

“What happened between you and Damiel?” I asked, wanting to know what Michael was talking about before he’d changed the subject. It was an area I had no memory of. “How is trusting him your fault?”

“He saw my obsession back then and tried to keep me away from you, but I wouldn’t listen. His sin was envy. That envy made him competitive, so he wanted everything I had. My rank and position…” He glanced at me and I could tell it still shook him to speak of it. “You. He wanted you because you loved me. It became a compulsion.”

Envy. I thought about how Damiel had sent hellhounds to look for me but only appeared in person after I was hung up on Michael, and it made me shudder.

“He fell quickly,” Michael continued. “Since we were close once, fighting him was especially hard. But I managed to keep him away from you.”

“You protected me from him.”

He stopped moving the sword but didn’t retract it. “For purely selfish reasons.”

“Are you worried about fighting him again?”

“I’m used to dealing with monsters. I’ve been one.” He retracted his sword and sheathed it, and his face held all the weariness of someone who had lived a long life of pain and war. Although his body had healed, these were different scars and they haunted him still. “But I can’t be everywhere all the time, and if he’s after you—”

“You’ve protected me before.”

“If it weren’t for me, Damiel would never have come after you. We wouldn’t be in this mess if I’d stayed away. I should have left when I saw you again.”

His words sliced through me. Was that how he felt? That his life would be better without me in it? “Fine,” I said bitterly. I was used to being alone. “Why don’t you leave, then?” Everyone else does!

He crouched before me, his expression filled with regret. “I can’t.”

“Why, because Damiel’s coming? Because you have to protect me?”

“It’s what I do, Mia.” He took both of my hands in his and bowed his head as though in prayer. “Let me do that, at least. Let me do it right this time and protect you because you deserve it. Because it’s the right thing to do.”

I pulled my hands away and got up. “I don’t want you to stay with me because it’s your job as an angel or because you feel obligated to get it right this time.”

His face flooded with what looked like thousands of years of self-loathing and punishment. “Is that what you think?”

“Isn’t that what you’re saying?” I said, realizing that I didn’t know what I thought. I didn’t even know where I stood with him from one day to the next. “You stay because you have to.”

“No, I stay with you because…” He took a deep breath, but when he spoke it was barely a whisper. “I can’t stand being away from you.”

“You can’t?”

Hardly able to believe what I was hearing, I fought the urge to cry. I’d never known anyone who wanted to be around me before. Since my parents’ divorce, I’d been alone. The family I’d come to rely on had all but fallen apart. Mom worked all the time to look after us. Dad had no time for me. I’d moved, made new friends, but it wasn’t the same. I may have been used to being alone, but being used to something wasn’t the same thing as being okay with it.

Michael had focused only on the danger, made it explicitly clear that it was real, not only from Damiel and an army of demons, but even from himself if he enthralled me or lost his way. I thought he had to protect me from all of it, that I was just something from his past he had to resolve. I accepted it, because being near him made the pain and loneliness of my life go away. But it was more than that. I couldn’t bear being away from him either, and I’d never stop loving or wanting him.

Standing before me, he inched closer, and the pull to be near him tugged at my skin and tightened my lungs until I was short of breath. Then, as though he could read my mind, Michael drew me to him, wrapping his arms around me as though I were on fire and he was extinguishing the flames.

“I thought you knew,” he whispered.

His arms tightened around me, and with the warmth and strength of his body pressed against mine, his heartbeat pulsing against my cheek, I felt completely safe. I crushed myself into him, matching my breathing with his.

He stroked my hair, and I raised my hands from around his waist and slid them up his back, between his shoulder blades. Sinewy muscles vibrated under his shirt, scalding my hands. They tingled and burned from touching him.

He let out his breath softly. “Your hands are cold.”

“Is this…?”

“Where my wings join? Yes.”

“Does it hurt when they come out?”

“No.” I could hear his smile. “But I’ve never carried another person before.”

“Really? Not even way back when?”

“Especially not then.” As he said it, an image flashed in my mind of his wings, white and beautiful, outstretched behind him. Same as the wings in the dream I’d had years ago. They were his wings that someone was trying to take—not mine. Why did I dream it, then? Had I actually been there when it happened?

The next thing I saw were bloody wounds on what must have been his back, the skin dark red and puckered as it healed. “You had scars,” I said, wincing, unable to think about what had caused them.

Hearing my pained expression, he backed away from me, his hands gripping my elbows. “You remember that?”

“How could anyone do that to you?”

“I chose to fall,” he said harshly. “I deserved it.”

“Nobody deserves that!”

“You don’t know the whole story…” Crossing his arms, he leaned against the mantel, his eyes downcast, as though he couldn’t face what he was about to say. “The Grigori were terrible when they—when we fell. Without remorse. We took whatever we wanted.”

I wasn’t sure what he was saying. Had he attacked me? Is that what had happened? “And you wanted me?”

“Beyond all reason. The creature you gave birth to was my fault.” His gaze shot through me like he was waiting for me to hate him; clearly, he hated himself. “Something that horrible could only be conceived through coercion…or worse.”