“You don’t have the protection we have.” His silvery eyes were far away, still distant and gleaming with the internal light of his soul.
I snorted, trying my hardest to clamp down on my anger. He just wanted to know I was safe, but I hadn’t made it this far to turn my back and run from a fight. “I might not be a big, strong man with inherent capabilities, but I have you three at my back, and that’s more than enough protection for me.”
He let out a hissing breath of exasperation through his teeth, and I strode to Tascius’s side, summoning the white fire of my healing magic. It sank into him, glimmering under his skin and swirling around the wounds the Nephilim had made.
Tascius wrapped his arms around me and held me tight. “He has a point, friend,” he said softly in my ear.
“Not you, too.” When the last of the wounds had sealed themselves, leaving nothing but a fine glaze of blood behind, I rose up to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, then turned around. “Let’s make this clear once and for all. I refuse to leave while you stay behind and fight. This is what I was made for. I didn’t spend years in Heaven being tortured by Gabriel to run like a coward at the first sign of trouble.”
Azazel’s shadows were slipping back under his skin, his features taking on his usual austere cast. “Then you’ll practice your shields.”
I glared at him mutinously for a moment.
“That’s not a request,” he added, his voice sharp, and I finally nodded.
“I’ll practice, if all of you agree to let me do what I have to do. If you try to keep me back, all that’ll do is make me weak and out of shape when I need it the most.”
Lucifer’s eyes flashed. “We’ll discuss this further when we get to the City of Sight. For now, I want us out of this forest in the next five minutes.” He gathered the last pack, and his wings quivered, ready for flight. “Tascius, you’re flying. We’re cutting this journey short.”
As much as I knew my Nephilim loathed depending on others for flight, for once, he didn’t have so much as a grimace about it.
He glanced at me, and I realized it was because he was in firm agreement with Lucifer: if it meant getting me out of here faster, there was nothing he wouldn’t do. Of them all, I was the one most likely to sustain a mortal wound against a Nephilim.
One was bad enough. If I was surrounded by three on my own, I knew I wouldn’t live to see the next sunrise. I wished I’d thought to ask Belial to borrow his knife.
Azazel touched Tascius’s shoulder, and the two of them became shadows. They didn’t rise until I spread my wings and flapped hard, pelting upwards until I burst through the canopy overhead in a spray of leaves and twigs.
The pale sun glimmered off the bluish-green leaves, making the spread of the forest look like a glimmering, oddly-rippling sea.
Lucifer exploded through the trees, leaving a sizable gap, and the sun lit him up like a halo. I felt the shadowy presence of Azazel and Tascius at my side, though the stars were faded by the sunlight.
“That way,” he said, pointing west. “To the City of Sight.”
He glanced back down through the canopy at the bodies below. “Others might come looking. When they find their brethren dead, we don’t want to be anywhere near this place.”
I took his hint and caught a gust of air, riding it to the west as my shadow flickered over the treetops. Lucifer joined me only moments later, ducking under me and playfully flicking me with his wingtips.
“Melisande, I don’t think you’re fragile.” He rose to fly near me, his hair tousled by the wind. I was sure my own was a mess after all the last day had entailed. “But I couldn’t stand to see you needlessly hurt, understand?”
“I understand.” I glanced at him sideways and smiled, just enough to let him know he was forgiven. “But I also meant what I said. I wasn’t made to hide behind you.”
Lucifer drifted closer, so the shadows we cast far below merged almost into one. “I know. And that’s one of the reasons you were meant to be mine.”
21
Melisande
We flew for almost a day straight over a sea of unending trees, and when the City of Sight finally came into view, first as a glimmer on the horizon, and resolving into an enormous tree that towered over the rest, I found a burst of energy I hadn’t known I had.
My muscles ached from flying so far, but we’d cut three days off our journey. I released a deep breath as we passed over a gap in the trees overlooking a broad lake of perfect blue water, with tiny demons in white robes gathered at its edge.
“Sibyls,” Lucifer said, drawing closer again. “We’re almost there, Melisande.”
The City itself seemed to be made from glass spires and domes that were fused to the trunk of the enormous tree and spilled out into the surrounding forest. Several platforms of clear glass had been hoisted in the branches, and as we rounded the city, looking for a clear place to land, I saw more of the white-robed sibyls lying on the panes of the platforms, staring at the ground far below.
“What are they doing?” I looked up as we descended, spiraling towards a broad courtyard of deep blue glass.
“They don’t have our enthusiasm for open air,” Lucifer said dryly. “They’re wingless. Some of the sibyls use sensations like extreme vertigo to induce visions.”
We sank into the depths of the City, our
