Rapture

marked with a five-pointed star of blood. Now . . .” Dee was talking but Luce could no longer hear what she was saying. So this was what it was going to take to stop Lucifer. This was what Cam meant she had to do.

This was why Daniel wouldn’t look at her. Her throat felt like it was stuffed with cotton. When she opened her mouth, her voice sounded like she was speaking underwater. “You need”—she swallowed in pain—“my blood.” Dee choked on her laugh and pressed a cold hand to Luce’s hot cheek. “Good heavens, no, child! You keep yours. I’m going to give you mine.”

“What?”

“That’s right. As I am passing out of this world, you will fill the Silver Pennon with my blood. You will pour it into this depression just east of the golden arrow marker”—she indicated a dent at the left of the goblet, then fanned her hands out dramatically toward the map—“and watch it follow the grooves here and there and here and there until you find the star. Then you will know where to meet Lucifer and thwart his plan.” Luce cracked her knuckles. How could Dee speak about her own death so casually? “Why would you do this?”

“Why, it’s what I was created for. Angels were made to adore and I have a purpose, too.” Then, from the deep pocket of her brown cloak, Dee withdrew a long silver dagger.

“But that’s—”

The dagger Miss Sophia had used to kill Penn. The one she’d had in Jerusalem when she bound up the fallen angels.

“Yes. I picked this up in Golgotha,” Dee said, admiring the craftsmanship of the blade. It shone as if freshly sharpened. “Dark history, this knife. It’s time it was put to some good use, dear.” She held out the knife, its blade flat on her open palm, its hilt pointing toward Luce. “It would mean a lot to me if you would be the one to spill my blood, dear. Not only because you are dear to me, but also because it must be you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You must kill me, Lucinda.”

FIFTEEN THE GIFT

“I can’t!”

“You can,” Dee said. “And you will. No one else can do it.”

“Why?”

Dee looked over her shoulder in Daniel’s direction.

He was still seated, looking at Luce, but he didn’t seem to see her. None of the angels rose to help her.

Dee spoke in a whisper. “If you are, as you say you are, fully resolved to break your curse—”

“You know I am.”

“Then you must use my blood to break it.” No. How could her curse be bound up in someone else’s blood? Dee had brought them up here to the Qayom Malak to reveal the site of the angels’ Fall. That was her role as the desideratum. It didn’t have anything to do with Luce’s curse.

Did it?

Break the curse. Of course Luce wanted to; it was all she wanted.

Could she break it, right here, right now? How would she live with herself if she killed Dee? Luce looked to the old woman, who took her by the hands.

“Don’t you want to know the truth of your original life?”

“Of course I do. But why would killing you reveal my past?”

“It will reveal all kinds of things.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Oh dear.” Dee sighed, looking past Luce at the others. “These angels have done well to keep you safe—

but they have also protected you into complacency. The time has come for you to awaken, Lucinda, and to awaken, you must act. ”

Luce turned away. The look in Dee’s golden eyes was too pleading, too intense. “I’ve seen enough death.” A single angel rose in the darkness from the circle they’d formed around the Qayom Malak. “If she can’t do it, she can’t do it.”

“Shut up, Cam,” Arriane said. “Sit down.” Cam stepped forward, approaching Luce. His narrow frame cast its shadow across the Slab. “We’ve taken it this far. You can’t say we haven’t given it every kind of shot.” He turned to face the others. “But maybe she just can’t. There is only so much you can ask a person to do.

She wouldn’t be the first filly anybody lost a fortune on.

So what if she happens to be the last?” His tone did not match his words, and neither did his eyes, which said with desperate sincerity, You can do this.

You have to.

Luce weighed the dagger in her hand. She’d seen its blade slice the life out of Penn. She had felt it sting her flesh when Sophia tried to murder her in the chapel at Sword & Cross. The only reason Luce wasn’t dead now was that Daniel had crashed through the roseate window to save her. The only reason she bore no scar was Gabbe’s healing touch. They’d saved her life for this moment. So that she could take another.

Dee perceived how far away fear had carried Luce.

She motioned for Cam to sit down. “Perhaps it would be better, dear, if you didn’t think of this as taking my life.

You would be giving me the greatest gift, Lucinda. Can’t you see that I’m ready to move on?” She pressed her lips together in a smile. “I know it’s hard to understand, but there comes a time in a mortal body’s journey when it seeks to die in the most advantageous way it can. They used to call it a ‘good death.’ It is time for me to go, and if you give me the gift of this very good death, I promise you won’t regret it.”

With tears stinging her eyes, Luce looked past Dee.

“Dan—”

“I can’t help you, Luce.” Daniel spoke before she’d even finished saying his name. “You must do this alone.” Roland rose from his seat and examined the map. He looked east at the moon. “If it were done when it is done, then it would be well it were done quickly.”

“There isn’t much time,” Dee interpreted, resting a frail hand on Luce’s shoulder.

Luce’s hands were shaking, sweating on the heavy silver hilt of the dagger, making it difficult to hold. Behind Dee she could see the Slab with its half-drawn map, and beyond the map, the Qayom Malak, in which the glass halo was secured. The Silver Pennon sat at Dee’s feet.

Luce had been through a sacrifice before: in Chichén Itzá, when she’d cleaved to her past self Ix Cuat. The ritual made no sense to Luce. Why did something dear have to die so other dear things could live? Didn’t who-ever made these rules think they deserved an explanation? It was like Abraham’s being asked to sacrifice Isaac.

Had God created love to make pain feel even worse?

“Will you do this for me?” Dee asked.

Break the curse.

“Will you do it for yourself?”

Luce held the knife between her open palms. “What do I do?”

“I’ll guide you through it.” Dee’s left hand closed around Luce’s right, which closed around the dagger.

The hilt was slick from the sweat on her palms.

With her right hand free, Dee unbound her cloak and slipped it off, standing before Luce in a long white tunic.

Her upper chest was bare, revealing her arrowhead tattoo.

Luce whimpered at the sight of it.

“Please don’t worry, dear. I’m a special breed, and this moment has always been my destiny. One quick