“You will not,” Azazel said, but I ducked away from his grasp and skirted the fire. The cavern loomed before me, seeming more like the mouth of a large creature that wanted to swallow me whole.
Gripping my sword, I climbed up the slight incline and climbed inside.
“There you are,” a raspy voice whispered. “Come in, come in. I can give you all the knowledge you seek… for a price.”
I blinked, letting my eyes adjust to the abrupt darkness.
The outcast oracle was a crone, her back humped in several ridges. Rotting black fabric covered her in layers, hiding much of the shape of her body, but a leathery face seamed with deep grooves turned up to me.
She was crouched on the ground inside a cave that was far more spacious inside than it looked from the outside. Chests and boxes were piled on the floors in the back, scattered haphazardly over each other, but my breath caught when I saw the mirror.
It had to be the mirror Wayland spoke of; it was no wider than a foot across and a foot high, and gilt nymphs were frozen forever in a dance on the frame. The mirror itself wasn’t reflective, but pure black, seeming to absorb all the light around it.
The oracle extended a wizened hand from her robes and tossed a handful of objects on the floor. I watched as bones, twigs, and stones clattered in a circle inscribed on the stone.
“Oh, the things I see,” she rasped. “A history of pain, a future of… turmoil.”
The oracle looked up at me and smiled. “Bloodshed. Despair and agony. Do you keep a close eye on the friends of your heart?”
“That’s none of your business,” I breathed. The light was temporarily cut off as the others ducked inside the cave after me; Tascius was taut, his hands clenched.
The oracle’s gaze searched us and landed on Lucifer. Her wizened face split into a grin.
“Morningstar. You honor me. Was it worth giving up the light to serve in the dark?”
Lucifer said nothing, his silver eyes cold. He shifted closer to me and raised his chin. The oracle’s gaze roamed along us, catching Azazel next.
“I smell the ancient ones on you. Do you know what you traffic with, Grigori?”
Azazel inclined his head, a small, secretive smile on his lips. “I’m perfectly aware. There is nothing you can frighten me with, oracle.”
She licked her own lips with a pale tongue. “You have no fear of opening forbidden doors and looking into the abyss, but do you not wonder- did the abyss look back into you?”
He lifted a shoulder, still smiling. “I was a monster long before I opened that door.”
The oracle grimaced, twitching in irritation that her barbs had failed to strike Azazel. I suppressed the urge to smile at him; if he could come back from the insanity of looking on cosmic horror and trading his wings, there was nothing this bitch could say that would bother him.
My stomach sank as her gaze roamed again and landed on a likely target.
“Angelspawn.” Her voice was a menacing hiss. “Such anger. Do you see him when you look in the mirror?”
She pointed to the gilt-framed mirror.
“I see nothing,” Tascius said tonelessly.
The oracle laughed, and ended in a cough. “I think you lie. I know what I see. The cruelty of Heaven, the sorrow of an abandoned woman.”
He pulled out a dagger, so fast my eyes hadn’t been able to track the movement, but held himself still. I felt the tension emanating from his massive form and didn’t have to look to know the darkness was rising inside him.
“He turns to the blade first,” the oracle said with another cackle. “Hide the truth with violence. Like father, like son.”
“Stop talking,” I said quietly, and her gimlet eyes returned to me. “We’re here for the mirror you stole.”
She gathered her bones and twigs and threw them again. “Doesn’t he seem familiar, little angel?”
She was about to get very familiar with my knife.
“Morningstar, I offer a trade.” The oracle scooped her bones up and tucked them in a pouch somewhere under all those rotting layers. “You’ve always been hungry for knowledge. I hear things, I see things-” She tapped her ears and eyes. “You want to kill the Dragon and wear his hide. A commendable aspiration. I divined my future from the entrails of my own tutor. It takes a strong student to surpass the mentor.”
She showed blackened teeth in a wide smile. No wonder Visionary Xrita was so complacent about us killing her.
“Give me your little angel. Let me slice her open and divine your path from the inner workings of her heart. I would consider this a fair trade to upend Hell.” She cast a mournful gaze my way. “It’s been so long since I had anything to eat besides rat. She looks delicious. I would even share.”
Tascius was on her before I even realized he’d moved. The crone shrieked and he pinned a bundle of fabric to the wall with his knife, driving it straight into the stone.
She slithered beneath him, shedding most of her robes like a second skin and revealing a skeleton-thin body under the bulk of the cloth, and shot towards the door.
Tascius turned, ripping his blunted dagger from the wall, and his eyes were completely black, lips drawn back over his teeth in a feral snarl. He tore after the fleeing oracle, disappearing through the mouth of the cave.
“Fuck,” Lucifer muttered. “Azazel, Melisande, take the mirror and find the ebonite. I need to stop him before he shreds her hands.”
I was frozen in place, astonished by how quickly the change had overcome him. Lucifer squeezed my hand and vanished, blazing with light as he launched into the air outside.
Tascius hadn’t even tried to hold it back. One moment he’d been himself, then he’d been a snarling animal, hellbent on blood.
I managed to unglue my feet from the floor and stepped to the back of the
