Page 49 of As Above, So Below

Empty, barren lands surround us.

Not a single soul in sight.

Purgatory, I realize. The first layer of the hells.

Jagged rocks, countless craters, and dim red skies. The sound of running water reaches my ears, it’s faint, but it’s there. The Lethe flows, coaxing souls deeper into the hells.

“Go!” she shouts, shoving me.

I careen backward, my heel catching on a rock, and land on my ass as she vanishes. Staring at where she’d stood moments ago, I stammer incoherent sounds. Trying desperately to form something, tosaysomething.

She’s left me.

The ground vibrates, cutting through my stupor with a clarity I lacked seconds ago. I know Netharis is at the epicenter of the vibration, his rage rippling through all nine layers of the hells.

Piercing the pad of my thumb with a fang, I press it against the top of the jar. Black blood is drawn across the surface into the recessed runes, and a red line of light races around the center. The obsidian splits in half, falling open. As the lid clatters on the rock near my feet, white light streams from the jar, blinding me. I shield my eyes with a hand, squeezing my eyes shut, but even then, the light blinds me still.

“It’s been a long time, Vestaris,” a resounding deep voice greets me, and I hear the crunch of footsteps on the ground.

Forcing my eyes open, the seconds it takes for my sight to return feels like years. A pair of ebony-skinned legs stand roughly a footaway. Trailing my eyes upward, over muscled thighs, and higher still over a tunic exposing a heavily muscled chest, I meet the intense dark amber stare of Zuriel.

My shadows rebuke.

Whisking me away, I place twenty feet of distance between the gods damnedLife Bringerand myself. Darkness billows underfoot as the feathers of my wings begin to ooze a black fog.

I expected a nameless nyraphim.

Not. This.

Not Gaia’seldest son.

The last time we’d encountered one another, it had been roughly two hundred and fifty years ago. I lost a contracted soul to this creature.Heis the reason I spent fifty years in obsidian.

“I am not a threat to you,” he says, holding his hands out as if he were trying to calm a wild beast. “And we have precious little time if you truly want to leave this place.”

I cannot stop the warning snarl that rips itself from my throat.

The ground rumbles. More intensely this time.

Netharis is going through the layers. Searching.

The scowl on my face remains.

Laughing, he rolls his shoulders, flexing his gleaming white-feathered wings as I stare. He looks no different than the last time we met, donning the same white and gold robes. Seemingly unchanged by his imprisonment, he stands smiling—fucking smiling—as he swings his wings wide. Three massive sets protrude from his back, the uppermost set the largest with a wingspan of easily fifteen feet.

He should be a broken, incoherent mess.

As I had once been.

How? How is he not?

A gale of wind rushes over me as he beats his wings, once, twice, a third time. Keeping my wings tucked tightly, my feathers, robes, and hair rustle.

“Do you wish to remain?” he asks, beginning his approach.

Innate screaming in my veins, I clench my jaw, retaining control.

“How?” I demand, my voice pure ice.