“I agree,” Allie said. “You’re grasping at straws, Azazel. If she is your bonded mate, we all would have known it. If you agree to this, you’ll kill both of you.”

“Uh, explain that,” I broke in, my voice sounding even rougher. “You said my blood would poison him.”

Allie said nothing, and Azazel continued, “If you aren’t my chosen mate, there’s the possibility that I might drain you before I die. In some circumstances the need becomes more and more powerful, uncontrollably so. It happened a few years ago, with Ephrael.”

“We can’t afford to risk Azazel,” Raziel concluded.

Not to mention me, I thought grimly. “No.”

At the same time, Azazel said, “Yes.”

“You can’t make me.” This came out sounding like a playground taunt, but I was past caring.

“I could,” Azazel said smoothly.

Before I could protest, Raziel broke in. “No, we can’t make you. Indeed, there is no question but that the body and the blood must be freely given. If you say no, the discussion is at an end.”

Dead silence reigned again, making me feel guilty and edgy. “It’s not as if the fate of the world is hanging on this,” I protested.

The expression on Allie’s face gave me the answer.

“Azazel,” Raziel said, “you must find another partner. Clearly you are mistaken in thinking Rachel is your chosen one. You must look elsewhere.”

“No!” I looked around me, not able to believe that protest had erupted from my damaged throat. It had nothing to do with rational thought. The idea of Azazel claiming another sent a white-hot rage through my body. Which was another surprise.

“I beg your pardon?” Raziel said.

I wouldn’t look at Azazel. I knew his expression would register triumph, and I couldn’t bear it. “I said no,” I repeated. “You don’t have time for him to find some hypothetical chosen mate. It’s like looking for true love—it never shows up when you go searching.”

“Rachel, a chosen mate is a Fallen’s true love,” Allie explained.

I squirmed. Nothing like digging the hole deeper. “If he goes searching, he’s even more likely to find the wrong one, and he could die,” and damned if my broken voice didn’t crack on the word die.

“Then what do you suggest?” Raziel’s voice dripped sarcasm. “We just wait for the world to end?”

Shit. So it was all coming down to me? I felt as if I were suffocating, all the millennia crushing me, and I couldn’t breathe. “I need to get out of here,” I said in a panicked voice, which of course could barely be heard. “Please. I need to think.”

The hands around my wrists released me, and I moved before he could change his mind, pulling away from the table. No one tried to stop me, and I ran from the room, practically falling in my haste to get away.

The sun was shining through the eternal mist that covered Sheol. Everyone was in the council chamber—the only living things outside were the seagulls wheeling and mewing overhead. I walked down to the water’s edge, staring as the waves crested and spilled toward me.

I knew now why I was afraid of the ocean: I had been drowned by a man I thought loved me, hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

I made myself sit on the sand, watching the roiling water as the tide came in, closer and closer. So the fate of the world came down to me? I would have laughed if it weren’t so damnable. Why did it have to come to this?

I hadn’t smothered babies. I hadn’t lured men to their doom. But I had done other reprehensible things in my rage as the Lilith. I was a storm demon in ancient Mesopotamia, whipping up wind that buried towns and all their inhabitants in sand. I had brought down hurricanes and typhoons and tornadoes; I had rained destruction on those who had hurt me over the years. Once I’d escaped from my sexual servitude to the demons, my rage had been monumental, and I had visited it upon everyone.

I had penance to complete. On the one hand, the entire world might be destroyed and an evil old man would triumph. On the other hand, I could pay for my sins and save the world, simply by having sex with a creature who made my bones melt, no matter how much I hated him. I wanted him just as much as I wanted him dead, and no common sense seemed to talk me out of it. In truth, I might not be his chosen one. But whether I liked it or not, he was mine.

The answer was clear. It might kill him, which was fine with me. It might kill us both, which was, oddly, equally acceptable. But I knew it wouldn’t. I knew the truth, though I refused to face it head-on.

The only thing I didn’t like was the blood part.

I rose. The tide had come in far enough to touch my bare toes, and they tingled, flexing, almost drawing me in. I pulled back, though. I was afraid of the ocean, I reminded myself. Afraid of drowning.

I walked back into the house, kicking the sand off my feet as I went. I could hear their voices raised in argument, too many people talking at once. I pushed open the door, and everyone fell silent.

My eyes went to Azazel’s. His face was impassive, pale, and beautiful. He already knew the answer. I looked away.

“I’ll do it.”

AZAZEL WATCHED THE CONFUSION ABOUT him with a calm he hadn’t felt in years. He wasn’t going to think about when, or how, or why. He distrusted prophecies. But he knew this was meant to be.

The assembly room had emptied quickly after Rachel’s blunt announcement, with Allie and the women spiriting her away and the other Fallen heading off. Only Michael and Raziel remained. Michael, the warrior, the loner, who seldom mated and subsisted on the bare minimum of the Source’s blood. He had that lean, hungry look, his hair shaved close, his muscled, tattooed arms tight with anger. Raziel was looking equally disturbed, ready for another kind of battle. Azazel knew what was coming.

“You needn’t bother trying to talk me out of it,” he said. “The decision has been made.”

“You can change your mind,” Raziel said. “We’ve barely made do without you for most of the last seven years. I don’t know what we’d do if you died.”

“You have a death wish,” Michael said in a rough voice before Azazel could argue. “We’ve all seen it.”

Denying it would be useless, even if he could. And these were the two men he trusted most in the world. “Had a death wish,” Azazel corrected him. “And you’re a fine one to talk of death wishes, Michael. You storm into any battle you can find—it’s a wonder you’ve survived so long.”

“Don’t change the subject,” he said. “Battle is in my nature; it’s my purpose in life. Yours is to rule.”

“Not any longer. Raziel rules, and rules wisely. I have another role to play, and I no longer fight it. As for my death wish—it would be useless to deny it. Sarah’s death was … too much. I had no warning, no preparation, and I was tired of it all. But I’ve changed my mind.”

“Because you’ve fallen in love with a demon?” Raziel arched an eyebrow. “Forgive me if I find that difficult to believe.”

“She’s no more a demon than I am. Which I suppose is a possibility, if you read certain scrolls,” he added with uncharacteristic humor. He had begun to find certain things oddly amusing recently, which still managed to astonish him.

“That still begs the question. Are you telling us you’re in love with the woman whose death you’ve been seeking for the last seven years?”

“No. Of course not. But there remains a connection, for good or ill, and it’s our only hope.”

“And if you die?” Michael said.

Azazel shrugged. “Then I die. I’ve lived an endless life; I’ve been on earth for millennia. I am not afraid of death, even if I no longer embrace it.”

“What if death is some eternal damnation we haven’t figured out?” Raziel demanded.

“Even then. But I doubt that will be the case. I think for those of us who are cursed, our fate will be an eternal nothingness. With just enough awareness to recognize it.”