Page 61 of Wings of Darkness (Daughter of the Seven Circles #2)

Chapter

Forty

LUCILLE

I dream-walked, and it wasn’t the type I liked. I invaded someone’s body.

At first, I didn’t know whose. But after thinking about the questions I had before bed—and feeling the extra appendage in our pants—I had a hunch.

We stared down at a sobbing female kneeling on blinding white floors. Threadbare cloth swallowed her malnourished form, vibrating with her cries. Her eyes pleaded with us as blood trickled from the cut along her neck.

I confirmed my hunch when black shadows reached out and absorbed her blood.

Ronen and I delved into her mind, watching her memory unfold like a high-speed movie, revealing every beautiful and tragic moment.

We saw her as a cheerful child, watched her grow up and raise a family, saw their prosperity.

Then their home was destroyed, their belongings taken, and their family left destitute, trying to make ends meet.

The last image we witnessed was of her stealing from a local market.

We popped out of her head, black shadows seeping from her nose and dissipating.

“She stole a couple loaves of bread and some meat,” we said, turning our head and glancing at a male beside us.

He sat in a golden chair with luminous white wings jutting from his white robes, his long hair just as devoid of color.

Disdain twisted his lips as he sneered at the female at the bottom of the dais.

He stood and glided to the edge of the stairs, stopping right in front of her. Unfolding his hands from his robed sleeves, he reached out and hovered a finger a few inches beneath her chin.

“Such a sinful creature,” he said.

The female lowered her head and almost brushed the male’s hand. He jerked back like she was diseased.

“Kill her.”

Ronen flinched like an invisible blow had struck us. The next thing I knew, we were mentally battling a cold, all-consuming force that eclipsed every emotion he had. He fisted his hands, trying to hold onto his boiling rage, to fight against the force.

“She only stole food for her family, Etan. She isn’t evil. She’s starving!”

He tried to resist, pushing back against the force that urged his shadows to obey, but then Etan luscelered and grabbed his wrist. Pain seared into our skin.

I knew that pain. I knew that movement. Etan was carving a rune into Ronen’s inkless wrist .

“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

The invisible force he struggled against cooled his rage and silenced his desperation. His fists relaxed, and an empty, cold feeling took over. There was no more emotion, no thought, no trace of the beautiful light that had filled his mind.

A light I hadn’t even noticed until Etan carved it away.

Who Ronen was—who he truly embodied—shrunk to a pliant shell.

Etan pointed at the female. “Send her to Hell.”

A fierce command shot into our mind, and black shadows launched out.

I wanted to scream Don’t do it , but I was just a spectator.

I tried to close my eyes, to shield myself from the horror to come, but I had no control.

So I watched.

Ronen’s shadows slipped into her nose, eyes, and ears. She screamed, then seized. Blood dripped from every orifice, sliding down her face in a gory mess.

Heavenly Hell, that poor female. She had a family. She had been innocent.

And Ronen—my chest tightened for what Etan forced him to do.

“Wrath to the sinners,” Etan said, shooting a searing blue flame at the female’s corpse, reducing her to nothing. “Come. There are more to execute.”

We followed the angel, and my heart raged in time with Ronen’s as he killed ten more lives that day. Every time, we tried to resist Etan’s commands. But the Hell Rune wouldn’t let us .

So, we watched their bodies burst. Rot. Burn. Over and over.

Of the ten, only one person deserved it.

The rest were innocent, just trying to survive.

I woke up gasping, chills scattering across my skin. That was what I had felt on his wrist in the Hoar House—a Hell Rune scar.

It had destroyed all sense of self. His mind felt like I was drowning in a black hole of nothingness, ready to be filled with Etan’s machinations.

The fear and panic, even the way Ronen looked at me, made sense now. I had worked my way into his head and manipulated him just like Etan did. I’d caused him more pain than I could even imagine.

After hours of lying in bed and thinking of Ronen and Aspen, I dressed in my uniform and hurried to the moonlit roof. Alexei wasn’t there.

Did he mean morning, like at sunrise?

That wasn’t the usual protocol.

He stepped through the door a few minutes later, and I relaxed.

“You’re late.”

Alexei rubbed his chin. “I still don’t know if this is a smart idea. You dug up some of his past demons, and he’s struggling to come to terms with that.”

Hell’s chilly air nipped at my cheeks as I looked in the direction of Portal Lake. “You mean Etan?”

“How do you know that name?”

I turned back to his blatant surprise. “I understand why he reacted the way he did now. That’s all you need to know. But what I don’t understand is—if you knew about Etan, knew about Ronen’s past—why didn’t you say something? Why would you let me go through with that?”

Alexei pulled at his gloves like they needed adjusting and sighed. “I had to test out a theory.”

“About what?”

“About—” He paused. “It’s not important right now.”

I placed my insulated hands over my ears, protecting them from the wind. “Was it at least worth it?”

Alexei grimaced. “I guess we’ll see.”

He scooped me up and shot us into the air. We flew over a forest of dark evergreens weighed down by snow. The sharp scent of pine stabbed my nostrils, triggering a relentless sniffling. It was annoying, but not as bad as I imagined it’d be without Alexei’s wind shield.

After a few minutes, we rose higher, flying over a shadowed hill, and my jaw dropped at the top.

The harsh, icy grip of Hell’s snow-covered landscape melted into a surreal, glowing forest. The trees stretched taller and broader, their thick trunks more imposing than the brittle ones we’d just flown over.

Their bark pulsed with radiant blue light.

The soft glow wove through the branches, reaching for miles and casting an otherworldly hue over the land.

As we crossed the invisible threshold marking the end of one forest and the beginning of another, a blast of warm, floral-scented air hit me like a gentle slap. My uniform instantly cooled, adjusting to the change in temperature.

“Welcome to the Eternal Forest, beautiful. The only warm place in the Redemption Circle,” Alexei commented, a smile in his voice .

“It looks like Damatha Forest.”

“They’re connected. That’s why.”

“How—”

“When angels are buried in Damatha Forest, a piece of their essence infuses the earth and transfers to the Eternal Forest, and vice versa. They are spiritually connected. A way to always honor our dead.”

“I didn’t know Hell honored anything but suffering.”

Alexei laughed. “Hell would never exist without death. Of course Hell honors it.”

Right.

We continued over the warm, glowing graveyard, the blue canopy fighting the moon’s light for dominance.

A little further out, the Eternal Forest met a border of lightless evergreens.

Alexei steered us toward that dividing line and dropped us between the towering trunks, weaving through the two radically different environments.

One moment, I felt warm, cast in a blue hue, a slight hum vibrating across my skin. The next, my nose and ears stung from the cold. But I smiled through the strange ride, enjoying the contrast until we landed in the Eternal Forest.

Alexei set me down on a carpet of lavender blooms, which stretched far and wide and mixed with orange moss. I couldn’t get enough of the sight or smell. Their light, sweet scent soothed part of the ache in my chest—and my nerves.

“He should be out there.”

I lifted my head to Alexei. He pointed at the dark spot through the gaps in the trees.

“You’re not coming with? ”

“Nope. I already apologized and got thrown off the cliff.”

I worried my lip between my teeth. “Is he going to throw me off the cliff?”

“I highly doubt it. But if he does, just scream ‘beautiful,’ and I’ll catch you.” He winked.

That didn’t reassure me in the slightest. What was I even going to say to Ronen? How did I approach this?

I took one step forward, then another. The guilty sensation eased the farther I walked, but my heart rate increased.

Eventually, the forest opened to a flat expanse of snow-speckled rock, leading to the cliff I’d fallen from and to the silhouette of Rune and Ronen.

I stopped.

His magnificent black wings unfurled from his muscular back, stretching wide, a breathtaking span of power and grace. The deep, onyx feathers shimmered with a blue sheen, kissed by the forest light. They were sleek, radiating strength, much like every line in his body.

When he leaned into the wind and fell off the cliff, I held my breath, watching as he sliced through the air, his wings snapping open to carry him into the sky.

He flew high, then low, spun, and dived. At one point, his wings disappeared completely, and he plummeted. My eyes widened, and I dug my nails into my hands as he sped toward the ground.

When he passed the cliff’s edge, I sprinted out into the open.

But of course, I had nothing to worry about. He snapped open his wings and banked up, the moonlight catching slivers of his tattooed back .

It took a second for my raging heart to settle. Then he did it again, and again, like it was some kind of game.

It was fun for him. He seemed to enjoy every second in the air. And it wasn’t just the playful way he flew that made me know he loved it, but Rune’s swishing, happy shadow-tail and her perky, tilting head as she watched him.

This was his.

The illuminated space. The open air. The beauty I imagined he witnessed when he flew over the lake and trees. This was all his.