Passion

were gathered around the bright-orange fire. From a distance, the circle of their wings looked like a giant halo on the snow. Daniel didn’t have to count their shining outlines to know they were all there.

None of them noticed him crossing the snow toward their assembly. They always kept a single starshot on hand just in case, but the idea of an uninvited visitor happening upon their council was so implausible it was not even a real threat. Besides, they were too busy bickering among themselves to detect the Anachronism crouching behind a frozen boulder, eavesdropping.

“This was a waste of time.” Gabbe’s voice was the first one Daniel could make out. “We’re not going to get anywhere.”

Gabbe’s patience could be a short-fused thing. At the start of the war, her rebellion had lasted a split second compared to Daniel’s. Ever since then, her commitment to her side had run deep. She was back in the Graces of Heaven, and Daniel’s hesitation went against everything she believed in. As she paced the perimeter of the fire, the tips of her huge feathered white wings dragged in the snow behind her.

“You’re the one who called this meeting,” a low voice reminded her. “Now you want to adjourn?” Roland was seated on a short black log a few feet in front of where Daniel crouched behind a boulder. Roland’s hair was long and unkempt. His dark profile and his marbled gold-black wings glittered like embers in the dusk of a fire.

It was all just as Daniel remembered.

“The meeting I called was for them.” Gabbe stopped pacing and tossed her wing to point at the two angels sitting next to each other across the fire from Roland.

Arriane’s slender iridescent wings were still for once, rising high above her shoulder blades. Their shimmer looked almost phosphorescent in the colorless night, but everything else about Arriane, from her short black bob to her pale, drawn lips, looked harrowingly somber and sedate.

The angel beside Arriane was quieter than usual, too. Annabelle stared blankly into the far reaches of the night. Her wings were dark silver, almost pewter-colored. They were broad and muscular, stretching around her and Arriane in a wide, protective arc. It had been a long time since Daniel had seen her.

Gabbe came to a stop behind Arriane and Annabelle and stood facing the other side: Roland, Molly, and Cam, who were sharing a coarse fur blanket. It was draped over their wings. Unlike the angels on the other side of the fire, the demons were shivering.

“We didn’t expect your side tonight,” Gabbe told them, “nor are we happy to see you.”

“We have a stake in this, too,” Molly said roughly.

“Not in the same way we do,” Arriane said. “Daniel will never join you.”

If Daniel hadn’t recalled where he’d sat at this meeting over a thousand years before, he might have overlooked his earlier self entirely. That earlier self was sitting alone, in the center of the group, directly on the other side of the boulder. Behind the rock, Daniel shifted to get a better view.

His earlier self’s wings bloomed out behind him, great white sails as still as the night. As the others talked about him as if he weren’t there, Daniel behaved as if he were alone in the world. He tossed fistfuls of snow into the fire, watching the frozen clumps hiss and dissolve into steam.

“Oh, really?” Molly said. “Care to explain why he’s inching closer to our side every lifetime? That little cursing-God bit he does whenever Luce explodes? I doubt it goes over so well upstairs.”

“He’s in agony!” Annabelle shouted at Molly. “You wouldn’t understand because you don’t know how to love.” She scooted nearer to Daniel, the tips of her wings dragging in the snow, and addressed him directly. “Those are just temporary blips. We all know your soul is pure. If you wanted to at last choose a side, to choose us, Daniel—if at any moment—”

“No.”

The clean finality of the word pushed Annabelle away as quickly as if Daniel had drawn a weapon. Daniel’s earlier self would not look at any of them. And behind the boulder, watching them, Daniel remembered what had happened during this council, and shuddered at the forbidden horror of the memory.

“If you won’t join them,” Roland said to Daniel, “why not join us? From what I can tell, there is no worse Hell than what you put yourself through every time you lose her.”

“Oh, cheap shot, Roland!” Arriane said. “You don’t even mean that. You can’t believe—” She wrung her hands. “You’re only saying that to provoke me.”

Behind Arriane, Gabbe rested a hand on her shoulder. Their wing tips touched, flashing a bright burst of silver between them. “What Arriane means is that Hell is never a better alternative. No matter how terrible Daniel’s pain may be. There is only one place for Daniel. There is only one place for all of us. You see how penitent the Outcasts are.”

“Spare us the preaching, will ya?” Molly said. “There’s a choir up there that might be interested in your brainwashing, but I’m not, and I don’t think Daniel is, either.”

The angels and demons all turned to stare at him together, as if they were still part of the host. Seven pairs of wings casting a glowing aura of silver-gold light. Seven souls he knew as well as his own.

Even behind his boulder, Daniel felt suffocated. He remembered this moment: They demanded so much of him. When he was so weakened by his broken heart. He felt the assault of Gabbe’s plea for him to join with Heaven all over again. Roland’s, too, to join with Hell. Daniel felt again the shape of the one word he had spoken at the meeting, like a strange ghost in his mouth: No.

Slowly, with a sick feeling creeping over him, Daniel remembered one more thing: That no? He hadn’t meant it. In that moment, Daniel had been on the verge of saying yes.

This was the night he’d almost given up.

Now his shoulders burned. The sudden urge to let his wings out almost brought him to his knees. His insides roiled with shame-filled horror. It was rising in him, the temptation he’d fought so long to repress.

In the circle around the fire, Daniel’s past self looked at Cam. “You’re unusually quiet tonight.”

Cam didn’t answer right away. “What would you have me say?”

“You faced this problem once. You know—”

“And what would you have me say?”

Daniel sucked in his breath. “Something charming and persuasive.”

Annabelle snorted. “Or something underhanded and absolutely evil.”

Everyone waited. Daniel wanted to burst forth from behind the rock, to rip his past self away from here. But he couldn’t. His Announcer had brought him here for a reason. He had to go through the whole thing again.

“You’re trapped,” Cam said at last. “You think because there was once a beginning, and because you’re somewhere in the middle now, that there is going to be an end. But our world isn’t rooted in teleology. It’s chaos.”

“Our world is not the same as yours—” Gabbe started to say.

“There’s no way out of this cycle, Daniel,” Cam went on. “She can’t break it, and neither can you. Pick Heaven, pick Hell, I don’t really care and you don’t, either. It won’t make any difference—”

“Enough.” Gabbe’s voice was breaking. “It will make a difference. If Daniel comes home to the place he belongs, then Lucinda … then Lucinda—”

But she couldn’t go on. The words were blasphemy to speak, and Gabbe wouldn’t do it. She fell to her knees in the snow.

Behind the rock, Daniel watched his earlier self extend a hand to Gabbe and raise her from the ground. He watched it play out before his eyes now, just as he remembered:

He gazed into her soul and saw how brightly it burned. He glanced back and saw the others—Cam and Roland, Arriane and Annabelle, even Molly—and he thought about how long he’d dragged the whole lot of them through his epic tragedy.

And for what?

Lucinda. And the choice the two of them had made long ago—and over and over again: to put their love above everything else.

That night on the fjords, her soul was between incarnations, newly purged from her last body. What if he stopped seeking her out? Daniel was tired to his core. He didn’t know if he had it in him anymore.

Watching his earlier struggle, sensing the imminent arrival of absolute breakdown, Daniel recalled what he had to do. It was dangerous. Forbidden. But it was absolutely necessary. Now, at least, he understood why his future self had taken him that long-ago night—to lend him strength, to keep him pure. He had weakened at this key