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But she did not follow through.

I frowned as I watched her drop her hand in defeat instead.

She stared up at the sky and I heard her raspy voice, “Deliver me from this anguish. The world has no place for me. There’s just… fight. Darkness surrounds me and I… I can’t… become that.” A tear trickled down her cheek. “I’m ready. I’mdone.”

I felt a pull in my chest.

I didn’t care for it.

But simply willing it to leave me didn’t have it abating.

In fact, it grew ever stronger as I continued staring out at her.

Her anguish.

The tears of defeat rolling down her cheeks.

Her desperation to be delivered from this life.

In the next moment, I let my wings carry me the distance between us.

And then I was there, crouching down beside her.

She was a slight thing at a cursory glance—barely five feet tall, with a petite frame. But looking closer I saw her toned muscle, the kind that spoke to her engaging in regular combat, or training, perhaps. Black leather pants clung to her legs, now soiled with dirt, crushed stone, and blood. Her breasts heaved as she panted, pushing against her corset-style top that was decorated pleasantly with silver chains and baubles. Blackshadows covered her grayish-tinted skin, and she was wearing smoky makeup and lipstick that only added to that effect. Her hair was a contrast in itself, a stark white near the top, yet ending with black tips.

And her eyes… her eyes were enchanting, a shimmering amethyst.

I started as I registered that reaction to her, that I found even her eyes captivating.

I shouldn’t be having a reaction.

It was absolutely outlawed.

I’d just laid eyes on one who had been torn from the Celestial Plane for committing the act of falling for a being of the mortal world. It should have served to reinforce my commitment to stand at a distance to anything like that while I remained here to complete my mission.

Not to mention, I was already out of favor withthemas it was for my beliefs not aligning with theirs.

It was why I’d been sent here to undertake such a lowly task as functioning astrainer. It was more than that, actually. They didn’t believe I would succeed in readying my charge for her duty. They believed she would either defy me andtheirwill, or that it would escalate and she would target them in order to free herself from the bargain that had been made in her name. I suspected that they wanted the latter to occur. Right now, as the bargain was in effect, it would be a violation of their own Laws if they broke it on their end by coming for her. So they wantedherto do so. And then they would do what they’d really intended—wipe her from existence.

Of course, they would wait until she’d done what they needed her to do—vanquish the threat they had made it her destiny to.

A threat I didn’t know the identity of.

They’d kept it from me.

No matter, that could be rectified while I was here.

“You… heard me?”

I was pulled back to the immediate moment by the sound of that weakening voice, one that I registered as more than raspy or strained, but also decidedly sultry.

I blinked to see her stunning eyes on me, staring at me with incomprehension.

“You’re an… angel. A… real one? You… heard my… plea?”

“I heard you.”

She sucked in a stilted breath. “I’m not… going to… Hell when… I die this… night?” She frowned up at me. “I thought…” Tears fell unrestrained then, and she choked as the upset put a strain on her body with that wound, the knife even still embedded in her flesh.