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“Yes. This island was her cage once. In escaping it, she used this staff to mutilate herself.”

Rowan’s own wings quivered. They were so sensitive she couldn’t imagine the pain Uzziel must have endured.

“I thought that was her end. But when you cleansed the witch, I realized she’d found her way into you.”

Rowan’s fingers settled over her heart where she felt a hole from where the foreign magic had existed for so long that it felt strange now that it was missing. When had the archangel settled there?

“What happened to her?”

He told her everything.

From her contrasting friendships with Michael and himself. To the similarities between Rowan and the angel. To the guilt he’d carried for centuries for not coming to her aid when she most needed him. He was only alive because of her interference. A choice that cost her freedom.

“How did the staff do this?” She whispered, crouched over the cuts of the wings that were building a morbid fascination within her.

“The staff can take any shape.” He held the weapon for her to hold. “But only for its true wielder. You claimed it. It’s now yours.”

Rowan furrowed her eyebrows as she took it. She didn’t have the first idea of what to do. Using the methods she used for her magic, she tried to imagine it changing shapes. She then tried filtering a bit of the reluctant magic into it, but it stayed in its initial shape.

“Blood?” She asked, turning to Lucifer, who’d remained silent.

His smile was sad. “No. Rowan, all you have to do is ask.”

Rowan lowered the weapon so she could wipe the tears that trailed down his face.

“I’m sorry you lost her.”

It was like breaking a dam.

He covered his face with both hands, his shoulders shook and his sobs rocked him from the deepest part of his soul.

Enraged by the injustice of Uzziel’s fate, Rowan glanced down at the wings that hadn’t decomposed with centuries of existing next to the corrosive air of the ocean. Then over to the flora, whose leaves shuddered in the light breeze.

It was as if time had come to a screeching halt once Uzziel walked out into the waves. It kept the horror alive.

Activating Odin’s eye, she found the bars of the cage that had once contained the woman who’d helped her overcome the curses of the staff.

Determined, she ascended to the brightest point available. The apex of the criss-crossing spell of a god clumsy with magic.

Uzziel should have been able to break it if she’d been as well versed in magic as Lucifer implied she was. But, perhaps fighting the circumstance of her existence was no longer worth it.

Rowan gripped the crest and began the grueling task of tearing the threads of magic apart. Much like untangling a collection of necklaces. It was tedious work, but Lucifer joined her as soon as he realized what she was doing.

Together they undid it all by the time the sun reached the center of the sky the next day.

Sweating, hands burning from handling the magic of a god, they returned to the beach. As soon as Rowan touched down, thecorner of her eye caught the moment her Cabin appeared, snug against the treeline.

They fell into the two oversized chairs on her porch, as silent as they’d been when they were working.

Then Rowan heard it before she saw it. A seagull’s call overhead.

Lucifer heard it at the same time.

They looked at each other before scrambling to the banister of the porch and looking up.

A flock of seagulls.

Rowan grinned and when she looked at her godfather, he was staring at her, half horrified, half awed.