Page 51 of As Above, So Below

I feel weightless, and I clamp down on my jaw until it aches.

My stomach dips and I begin to fall, or at least I think I’m falling.

Opening my eyes, I find myself standing at the foot of a towering sculpture. Gaze traveling upward, my neck cranes to see my mother’s face cleaved from marble.

I whirl as my head swivels.

Zuriel is nowhere in sight.

Instead, I stand before a congregation of Celesta’s devotees, a sea parted in two halves of black and silver robes. Roughly a hundred pairs of eyes set in a hundred confused faces kneel before me in this white marbled room.

A female voice comes from my right, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the crowd. Her words don’t make sense, and everything feels wrong. My chest grows incredibly tight. Gasping, I remember breathing is no longer optional.

The gasp turns into rib-seizing coughs, my chest exploding with pain. My innate lashes out in dark tendrils, encasing me protectively as I fall to my hands and knees, unable to stop the dizziness in my head. It’s then the screaming begins, but I cannot see beyond the darkness swirling around me.

Even with my palms flat against the floor, the spinning grows worse.

I lower myself, resting my forehead against the back of my hands. Another coughing fit rakes through me, and this time, my stomach muscles contract as I’m hit by a wave of nausea, forcing me to dry heave.

Nothing would have ever prepared me for all of these sensations at once.

With the next roll of my stomach, I retch upon the floor. A congealed, black, acidic substance spews from me and pools onto the white marble.

Blood.

Or at least, it looks like my blood.

My throat burns and my eyes water as I continue to cough and heave my innards onto the floor. My mind is screaming becauseI cannot breathe.

I’m going to suffocate.

It’s as if there’s a collar being pulled tight around my throat, andthe air I draw in goes nowhere.

I retch again, and it leaves me lightheaded.

I’m going to die and return to the hells.

I would start laughing if I could. Leave it to me to fail at taking my first successful breath.

Oh gods, what have I done?

Hunched over, tears streaming down my cheeks and blood pouring from my nose, I try one last time to breathe. My vision grows dark, and I fall face-first into darkness.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I awaken tosunlight warming my face through the nearby window.

Shielding my eyes with a hand, I focus on the sensation. Ifeelthe light upon my fingers. It warms my skin. The longer I leave it in the light, the more the feeling grows until it radiates over the whole of my hand.

Beams of light pierce through my flesh, creating fingers cast in a pinkish hue. Rotating my hand, I'm filled with awe as the light dances through my fingers.

I’ve stood in sunlight thousands of times before while walking through the veil, but I have neverfeltit. It’s never heated the surface of my being. It’s always just been light, a means of illuminating darkness and shadow.

Rising to a seated position, I take in my surroundings.

The warming light floods the room through the row of windows on my right, and through glimpses of the sheer white curtains as they billow in the breeze lies the green of a garden and trees. The faint sounds of birds chirping carry in, and my eyes narrow as I listen.

There are voices.