Passion

“Look at her clothes. She’s clearly—”

“Shut up, Cam, she might not be,” Arriane said, but she looked fearful, too, that Luce might be whatever Cam was about to say she was. Another shrieking from the air, and then a blast of artillery shells raining down on the buildings across the street, deafening Luce, igniting a wooden warehouse. The angels had no concern for the war going on around them, only for her. There were twenty feet now between Luce and the angels, and they looked as wary of her as she felt of them. None of them drew closer.

In the light from the smoldering building, Daniil’s shadow was thrown far ahead of his body. She focused on summoning it to her. Would it work? Her eyes narrowed, and every muscle in her body tensed. She was still so clumsy at this, never knowing what it took to get the shadow into her hands.

When the dark lines began to quiver, she pounced. She gripped the shadow with both hands and started twirling the dark mass into a ball, just as she’d seen her teachers, Steven and Francesca, do on one of her first days at Shoreline. Just-summoned Announcers were always messy and amorphous. They needed first to be spun into a distinct contour. Only then could they be pulled and stretched into a larger flat surface. Then the Announcer would transform: into a screen through which to glimpse the past—or into a portal through which to step.

This Announcer was sticky, but she soon pulled it apart, guided it into shape. She reached inside and opened the portal.

She couldn’t stay here any longer. She had a mission now: to find herself alive in another time and learn what price the Outcasts had referred to, and eventually, to trace the origin of the curse between Daniel and her.

Then to break it.

The others gasped as she manipulated the Announcer.

“When did you learn how to do that?” Daniil whispered.

Luce shook her head. Her explanation would only baffle Daniil.

“Lucinda!” The last thing she heard was his voice calling out her true name.

Strange, she’d been looking right at his stricken face but hadn’t seen his lips move. Her mind was playing tricks.

“Lucinda!” he shouted once more, his voice rising in panic, just before Luce dove headfirst into the beckoning darkness.

TWO HEAVEN SENT

MOSCOW • OCTOBER 15, 1941

“Łucinda!” Daniel shouted again, but too late: In that instant she was gone. He had only just emerged into the bleak, snow-swept landscape. He’d felt a flash of light behind him and the heat of a blaze nearby, but all he could see was Luce. He rushed toward her on the darkened street corner. She looked tiny in someone else’s threadbare coat. She looked scared. He’d watched her open up a shadow and then—

“No!”

A rocket smashed into a building behind him. The ground quaked, the street bucked and split, and a shower of glass and steel and concrete gathered up in the air and then rained down.

After that, the street went deadly quiet. But Daniel barely noticed. He just stood in disbelief among the debris.

“She’s going further back,” he muttered, brushing the dust from his shoulders.

“She’s going further back,” someone said.

That voice. His voice. An echo?

No, too close for an echo. Too clear to have come from inside his head.

“Who said that?” He dashed past a tangled mess of scaffolding to where Luce had been.

Two gasps.

Daniel was facing himself. Only not quite himself—an earlier version of himself, a slightly less cynical version of himself. But from when? Where was he?

“Don’t touch!” Cam shouted at both of them. He was dressed in an officer’s fatigues, combat boots, and a bulky black coat. At the sight of Daniel, his eyes blazed.

Unwittingly, both Daniels had drawn closer, stepping around one another in a cautious circle in the snow. Now they reared back.

“Stay away from me,” the older one warned the newer. “It’s dangerous.”

“I know that,” Daniel barked. “Don’t you think I know that?” Just being this close made his stomach lurch. “I was here before. I am you.”

“What do you want?”

“I’m—” Daniel looked around, trying to get his bearings. After thousands of years of living, of loving Luce and losing her, the tissue of his memories had grown ragged. Repetition made the past hard to recall. But this place wasn’t so long ago, this place he remembered—

Desolate city. Snow on the streets. Fire in the sky.

It could have been one of a hundred wars.

But there—

The place on the street where the snow had melted. The dark crater in the sea of white. Daniel sank to his knees and reached for the ring of black ash stained on the ground. He closed his eyes. And he remembered the precise way she had died in his arms.

Moscow. 1941.

So this was what she was doing—tunneling into her past lives. Hoping to understand.

The thing was, there was no rhyme or reason to her deaths. More than anyone, Daniel knew that.

But there were certain lifetimes when he’d tried to shed some light for her, hoping it would change things. Sometimes he’d hoped to keep her alive longer, though that never really worked. Sometimes—like this time during the siege of Moscow—he’d chosen to send her on her way more quickly. To spare her. So that his kiss could be the last thing she felt in that lifetime.

And those were the lifetimes that cast the longest shadows across the eons. Those were the lifetimes that stood out and drew Luce like filings to a magnet as she stumbled through the Announcers. Those lives when he’d revealed to her what she needed to know, even though knowing it would destroy her.

Like her death in Moscow. He remembered it keenly and felt foolish. The daring words he’d whispered, the deep kiss he’d given her. The blissful realization on her face as she died. It had changed nothing. Her end was exactly the same as always.

And Daniel was exactly the same afterward, too: Bleak. Black. Empty. Gutted. Inconsolable.

Gabbe stepped forward to kick snow over the ring of ash where Luschka had died. Her featherlight wings glowed in the night and a shimmering aura surrounded her body as she hunched over in the snow. She was crying.

The rest of them came closer, too: Cam. Roland. Molly. Arriane.

And Daniil, long-ago Daniel, rounded out their motley group.

“If you’re here to warn us about something,” Arriane called, “then say your piece and go.” Her iridescent wings folded forward, almost protectively. She stepped in front of Daniil, who looked a little green.

It was unlawful and unnatural for the angels to interact with their earlier selves. Daniel felt clammy and faint—whether that was because he was having to relive Luce’s death or because he was so close to his previous self, he couldn’t say.

“Warn us?” Molly sneered, walking in a circle around Daniel. “Why would Daniel Grigori go out of his way to warn us about anything?” She got in his face, taunting him with her copper-colored wings. “No, I remember what he’s up to—this one has been skipping through the past for centuries. Always searching, always late.”

“No,” Daniel whispered. That couldn’t be. He’d set out to catch her and he would.

“What she means to ask,” Roland said to Daniel, “is what transpired to bring you here? From whenever you’re coming from?”