Chapter 1
Being an angel sucked.
Or at least, being a low-ranking angel sucked. The seraphim and cherubim sure seemed to live comfortably, not to mention the archangels. Of course, they had a full schedule with a truckload of responsibilities, but those were more along the lines of organizing competitions, resolving inter-angel disputes, or supervising soul storage.
Rather than shoveling unicorn shit.
I blew an errant strand of hair out of my face as I leaned against the wall of the large box in the stable where Derdekea kept her personal herd of unicorns. As cherub in charge of a sizable territory, Derdekea had amassed quite a bit of wealth, which showed in the fact that she had several of the rare animals in her possession. Not for riding them, of course. One didn’t ride unicorns.
No, they were for display only. To present them to visiting dignitaries from other territories and brag about the successful breeding program. There were always a lot of oohs and aaahs when Derdekea showed off her herd. Comments such as “spectacular silver shine” and “intricate twisting pattern of the horns.”
Just a single one of the pointy bastards was worth thousands of souls.
If only their temper didn’t rival that of a grumpy trash monster.
I eyed the particularly feisty specimen over in the far corner, who in turn glared at me with the notion of utmost offense. So much hostility, packed into the shape of an ethereally beautiful animal. Long, slender legs that moved with the grace of a dancer, fur the color of pearls—complete with iridescence—a slim lion’s tail tipped with a tuft of sparkly white hair, an elegantly arched neck adorned with the same glistening white hair for a mane, a finely sculpted head that looked like someone once saw a horse and thought “I can improve that,” and, of course, the telltale horn that rose from the forehead like an ivory tower, thicker at the base and becoming ever more slender with each twist toward the sharp end.
How sharp exactly that end was, I had experienced on more than one occasion. I’d run out of fingers to count the times I’d been skewered while cleaning the stables. The wounds might have closed within minutes, but it hurt like a bitch. And while my own body mended itself right quick, my clothes didn’t, which was why I was walking around with a wardrobe of amateurishly fixed holes. Sewing wasn’t my forte, and I couldn’t afford to have a higher-ranking angel magically mend them for me.
“Tabris,” I said, addressing the cantankerous equine across the box from me. “I’m just here to clean your stall, okay? No need to get all stabby with me.”
Tabris the Menace snorted and stomped with one front hoof.
“You know the drill,” I continued, inching forward with the shovel grasped in a white-knuckled grip. “I’m going to remove your droppings, and you’re going to be a dear and not spear me, are we clear?”
His shrewd silver eyes tracked my progress.
Slowly, I made my way over to the heap of excrements to his right. Far too close to him for my liking.
“You’d think,” I muttered, “that you beasts would be more grateful. I’m shoveling your shit”—which, contrary to popular belief, was not made out of sparkly rainbows—“making sure you don’t roll around in your own filth, and all I get in thanks is a horn through my guts.”
Tabris shifted his weight, muscles rippling underneath his pearlescent fur. A thousand pounds of pure strength, ready to jump into action.
I paused with the shovel pushed under the droppings and shot him a glare. “Do. Not.”
The beast flicked his tail, and I could have sworn his lips pulled back in the semblance of a sneer. The next second, he charged. The thing about unicorns was, they were lightning fast. They could move in the blink of an eye. One moment Tabris was several feet away from me, the next his horn came straight at my chest. My own angel reflexes allowed me to evade the strike just enough that the sharp tip only grazed my shoulder instead of lancing my heart, but unfortunately, I’d also tried to block the attack with the shovel.
The shovel full of shit.
All of which landed with a nauseating thwack smack dab in my face.
It was still warm.
I doubled over, retching and sputtering, blinking my eyes clear of unicorn poop as I stumbled out of the box. The sounds I made were so un-angel-like, I’d probably get demoted just for that alone. Tabris’s neighing followed me out into the hall, unmistakably mocking.
Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
I hated these pointy bastards.
As I stomped past the stable master’s lounge, a voice called out from within. “Are you done cleaning the boxes?”
“Yes,” I hissed over my shoulder. The boxes were clean. I wasn’t.
“Don’t forget to clock out,” Geron shouted without bothering to emerge from the stable master’s lounge.
“Yes, sir,” I yelled back and marched over to the shift recorder.
Stopping in front of the shelf with the employee cards, I pulled out mine and then held it out to the fancy bird perched on a golden branch on top of a column right next to the door. Her feathers ranging from hues of orange and red to midnight blue, with a lovely magenta thrown in as well, Karoz tilted her head, the feather crest on the top rising inquisitively.
“Punch me out, please,” I said.
She uttered a lovely chirp and then bit into the card I held out, marking the spot beside the hole where she’d punched me in earlier.
“Thank you.” I saluted her with the card. “See you tomorrow.”
Karoz trilled in answer.
I stashed the card again, threw open the large wooden doors, and stalked out of the stable building. Outside, facing the view of the rolling purple plains and meadows dotted with the white sparkles of unicorns underneath a sky caught in eternal sunset—or dawn, depending on one’s interpretation—I took a deep breath, but where that would have normally relaxed me a bit, with the usual notes of honey and lavender in the air, this time I coughed and gagged at the stink of unicorn manure that wafted up from me.
Right. I was still covered in shit.
Gritting my teeth, I forced my wings from my back. They appeared with a whoosh and a tingle of magic running over my skin, and I shook them out and stretched them once. One might think appendages that were magicked away most of the time and only appeared corporeal when summoned wouldn’t get sore while they were tucked away. Alas, that was not how things worked. My wings tended to feel stiff when I called them, and it usually took a few minutes of stretching or flying for them to become less tender.
“Here we go,” I muttered, and then I took off running.
In a maneuver that was a jacked-up parkour, I jumped, dashed, and heaved myself up the sides of the stable building, using my wings as help, until I’d scaled my way up to the gently sloped roof. There, I caught my breath for a second, my boots crunching on the slate tiles, before I ran toward the edge and then launched myself into the air. My wings beat hard, my muscles straining, but then I caught an air current—and I soared.
To my embarrassment and the unending mockery by fellow angels, I still couldn’t manage a vertical takeoff. I might have been made an angel, with all the bells and whistles that went along with it, like fast healing, some powers, wings and the general physical requirements to fly.
What they didn’t say in the New Angel Manual that they never gave me was that this whole wing deal didn’t come with the innate knowledge how to fly. No, I’d had to learn that part, like a fledgling bird.
And, like some bird species do with their young in order to teach them how to use their wings, my angel superiors had thrown me off a branch when they’d started my flight training. Or rather, off a high building, in my case.
Unlike a baby bird, I wouldn’t die if I crashed onto the ground; I’d only hurt myself. A lot. But, hey, I healed fast, right? Which was why my trainers hadn’t had any scruples about repeatedly pushing me off high buildings. Either I’d healed quickly on my own from minor injuries, or they’d mended any more serious damage with their powers.
Not getting hurt anymore by crashing down again had been a really powerful incentive for me to learn how to fly, and I’d managed eventually.
The vertical takeoff, however, was my nemesis. I just couldn’t do it. My muscles were still too weak.
So I had to resort to using whatever higher perches I could find to give me a bit of a lift, like just now with the stable roof. Once I was airborne, though, I was free.
Flying was the absolute best thing about being an angel. The sheer exhilaration of soaring high above the ground, unbound and unburdened, the wind caressing my wings, it was beyond words. I never felt as powerful, as wild and carefree as I did when I defied gravity and hurtled across the sky.
The stable building shrank to miniature size far below me, a speck of charcoal gray among the sea of white-dotted purple plains. Everything dwindled away, worries and constraints falling off me more and more with each powerful beat of my wings. Nothing mattered anymore, not the demands placed upon me, the strict schedule that chafed like an ill-fitting chain, the rules and regulations that pressed and pressed upon me until I thought I might choke. None of that mattered up here. Beneath this hauntingly beautiful sky, it was only me and the wind, and the feeling of vast, open spaces.
Sadly, today was not the day to linger up here. As much as I enjoyed dancing with the breeze, doing so covered in excrements dimmed the pleasure just a touch.
So instead of riding the wind further, I angled my wings to take me back to Derdekea’s estate proper, and soon the sprawling set of buildings made of glistening white stone came into view. The main house was a thing of filigree beauty, with slender columns and elaborately carved designs decorating corners and spires. High windows would allow the warm hues of the sunset sky to flood the rooms, and there were balconies and terraces galore from which to take flight or land on. I’d seen pictures of cathedrals on Earth, with their gothic architecture a feast for the eyes, but Derdekea’s mansion put them to shame.
I didn’t veer toward the main house, though, but instead dove for the set of smaller buildings to the right. An estate like Derdekea’s required a veritable army of staff to keep it running, and most of the lower-ranking angels in her service had their accommodations in these side buildings, out of the way of the mansion proper. Only the higher-ranked angels—seraphim, cherubim, and thrones—warranted a suite in the main house, where they were closer to the comings and goings of visiting angels and the pleasantries of the main household.
Those of the lower ranks—dominions, virtues, powers, and principalities—lived in the outer buildings, and most of us didn’t get a room of our own, let alone a suite. No, we had to share our “private” quarters with another angel. Private, my ass.
As a virtue, I only had one roommate, so at least I had that going for me. Still, my roomie sure made me wish I had just a tad more power and could move up rank to dominion—which came, among other rights, with the privilege of a room all for myself. That alone was motivation enough for me to try and work my way up.
I landed in the courtyard between the different staff buildings, tucked away my wings with a thought, and proceeded to march into the house with my room. Made of white stone like the main mansion, it echoed the estate’s overall style, though it featured fewer intricate carvings and decorations. It was more functional, after all, and less meant to impress visitors.
The dark wooden door gave way to a corridor wide enough to allow two angels to pass each other with their wings out. Skylights in the roof let in the shimmering colors of the never-ending sunset, which painted the white stone of the hallway in a sumptuous symphony of light. To the left and right, doors led to the individual rooms.
I passed several other angels on the way, all of them breaking out in a gagging fit as my eau de merde hit their noses.
“By God,” someone croaked.
“I can’t breathe,” came another strangled voice from behind me.
I would have actually enjoyed the whole thing if it wasn’t ruining my own olfactory sense, too.
Finally, I’d reached my room. If I was lucky, Selaphiel wasn’t here, and I’d get some true alone time in which I could take a long, long shower and scrub my body clean of all lingering unicorn poop. I sighed, already imagining how good it would feel to catch a break like this before my next shift.
As an angel, I didn’t really need to sleep, and I didn’t require rest as I once had done when I had been a human, which meant that, technically, I—as well as other angels—would be able to work nonstop. Given that we didn’t even have to eat or drink in order to stay healthy, seeing as we took our sustenance from Heaven itself, we wouldn’t need any breaks.
But as much as the angels in charge liked to make us lower-ranking staff toil for their benefit, not allowing us any leisure time would apparently go too far. I wondered if there had been a revolution at some point that had claimed that regulation as a victory, an uprising of the working-class angels against the tyranny of the elite, demanding labor rights like the 12-hour-work day and guaranteed free time, or else high-ranking heads would roll.
Or maybe we had unions? I paused, scrunching up my brow. I should find out. I’d been here long enough; I should know about any potential organizations working for my rights.
But first, shower.
I pushed open the door to my room, and froze at the sight of the angel perched on the edge of my bed, her innate power a hum in the air. Her auburn hair fell in loose waves around a face of light brown, and as I halted on the threshold, she raised her turquoise eyes to meet my gaze, a smile illuminating her fine features.
“Naamah,” I croaked.
Chapter 2
“Hello, Chaya.” Naamah inclined her head, then wrinkled her delicate nose. “Is that unicorn manure I smell on you?”
I cringed. Of course, on the day I got covered in shit, I’d get a visitor. Plenty of days went by without anyone coming to see me, but trust my luck to make sure I’d be as uncomfortable and unpleasant to behold as possible when a friend stopped by.
“Sorry,” I said with a grimace. “There was a shitcident.”
Naamah held one elegant finger under her nose, her eyes glittering. “Tabris, I presume?”
“He’s the worst,” I ground out.
She laughed then coughed and scrunched up her face.
I shied back. “Ugh, sorry, I’ll just go hop under the shower and get rid of the stink.”
“Please do,” she pressed out, obviously caught between suppressing more laughter and trying not to breathe through her nose.
I hurried into the small bathroom. Spartan and functional, its walls were pristine white stone, the floor gray marble, and the amenities simple but sufficient—shower, toilet, sink. The shower stall wasn’t quite big enough to get in there with one’s wings out. Should one of us be unlucky enough to soil our feathers somehow, we’d have to get them hosed off outside in the courtyard.
I peeled myself out of my clothes and then stared at the foul-smelling heap with a sneer. I’d never get the odor out of it, would I? Might as well incinerate it all.
Damn it. I liked those pants. They were my best pair. And that was my tunic with the fewest holes in it. I stomped my foot, gritted my teeth, and then accepted my fate. With a deep breath, I called on the power running though my veins and brought it forth.
Lightning erupted from my fingertips, aimed straight at the pile of clothes.
Unfortunately, my aim was shit, much like those clothes now.
The flash I’d summoned bounced off the tile a foot to the left of the pile, cracking the floor in the process, streaked right at the wall, damaging the stone, and ricocheted off it toward the mirror on the opposite wall.
The mirror shattered into hundreds of shards that hit me full frontal like a volley of knife-like missiles.
I screamed and jumped, pain slicing through me in dozens of places. My bare feet stepped onto the sharp pieces littering the floor, and I howled.
“For fuck’s sake!” Leaning against the wall, I held onto my right foot and gingerly extracted a mirror shard from my sole. The wound closed right before my eyes, but the pain sure lingered.
“Everything all right in there?” Naamah called out from the bedroom.
“Perfectly fine!” I hollered back.
With a sigh, I threw open the window, tossed the soiled clothes outside and shut it again. I’d deal with the stinky garments later. For now, I just cleaned up the mess of shards on the floor, only cutting myself three times, and then I could finally step in the shower and get the poop off my face and hair.
What felt like an hour later, I emerged clean and relieved from the bathroom, properly dressed, and my hair doing wild wavy things while it dried. I paused at the sight of Naamah rifling through Bifiel’s drawer on her side of the room.
“Snooping is frowned upon, you know,” I said with a half-suppressed grin.
“Eh.” Naamah shrugged with one elegant shoulder, squinting at Bifiel’s diary. “Let them frown. It’s not my responsibility to fix others’ faces.”
I chuckled under my breath. Naamah was…odd, in a refreshingly good way. She seemed to operate a bit outside of the usual angel hierarchy. A seraph in terms of power, she apparently had no interest in acquiring and holding lands or territory, commanding others or supervising lower-ranking angels. Nominally, she belonged to archangel Gabriel’s domain, but she didn’t appear to be bound the same way that most other angels were. She came and went as she pleased, flitting from one territory to the other, and she didn’t seem to have any tasks or work assigned to her.
I blinked and glanced around, then eyed her. “Did you ditch your guards again?”
A wicked little smile stole onto her face. “Not my fault if they can’t keep up.”
“Those poor guys,” I said with a low laugh. “They’re going to get an earful from Gabriel. Again.” At the last word, I shot her a dark look.
Naamah brushed that off. “If he wants to keep an eye on me, he needs to train his people better. Honestly, I wouldn’t be able to shake them so easily if they were actually good.” She sighed and dropped Bifiel’s diary back into the drawer. “Besides, I need some privacy every now and then.”
Naamah’s unasked-for bodyguards—usually a team of two angels—trailed her around Heaven wherever she went, a fact that had to do with her odd status in angel society. From what I’d heard, she was kind of a big deal. A pardoned demon, ascended from Hell and turned into an angel, all part of a deal struck with Lucifer—her father—in order to stop Armageddon.
Apparently, Lucifer had gone ballistic after his beloved soulmate Lilith, a human woman he’d made his queen in Hell, had been killed by a conspiracy of rogue angels and demons. The details were a bit fuzzy, as I’d had to piece all this together from hushed accounts by other angels, but rumors had it that Lilith had been the linchpin of a contract for a truce between Heaven and Hell, and once she’d been killed, all bets had been off and Lucifer had unleashed his forces onto Earth in retaliation.
Until Heaven had offered him a new deal: A pardon for his favorite daughter, Naamah. Her entry to Heaven would heal her broken mind, and in exchange for that, Lucifer would accept a new truce and call his forces back to Hell.
So here she was, living among us like some kind of celebrity. She enjoyed more freedom than other angels and wasn’t constrained by duty and expectations, but her being integral to the truce between Heaven and Hell meant that the authorities had a vested interest in her safety.
Hence the bodyguards.
The concept had been weird for me at first. Why would she need bodyguards in Heaven? Shouldn’t this place be safe for her? After all, angels didn’t kill each other. We might bicker and quarrel, but in general, any conflicts were solved by either a fight—bloody but non-fatal—or a competition.
But then I’d found out about the rogue angels who’d murdered Lilith…in order to provoke Lucifer and restart the war between Heaven and Hell. And while the authorities had weeded out and killed the angels involved in the conspiracy, apparently the whole incident had made Metatron and Shekinah—the angel pair sitting at the top of the hierarchy—paranoid enough to make sure that Naamah wouldn’t be unprotected. Just in case they hadn’t found and neutralized all the angels who might like to try to repeat history.
Of course, the guards also served as a means to keep tabs on what Naamah was doing, where she went, whom she met… It was clear that Heaven didn’t fully trust her, and viewed from a security standpoint, she was indeed an uncertain liability. Part of the deal with Hell was that Naamah got to meet with a proxy of Lucifer’s on Earth once a month, as a way to prove her continued wellbeing. Naturally, this meant that there was a somewhat uncontrollable information leak between Heaven and Hell. Naamah could be passing on knowledge to her contact from Hell, which was why she wasn’t privy to classified information and remained under such tight surveillance.
Surveillance she strained against and broke free of quite regularly.
Her ability to lose her security detail was remarkable, as was the lack of consequences she faced for it. As much as Heaven wanted to control her, no one dared really lay a finger on her. Given what I’d heard from others about Lucifer’s wrath during the almost-apocalypse, I could well imagine that the higher-ups would rather not risk his fury by harming the one person who ensured the continued truce between Heaven and Hell.
Naamah, on her part, was fully aware of how much she could get away with. She flouted Heaven’s rules and social norms with a streak of mischief and a fascinating disregard for propriety, which had earned her a reputation for being eccentric and unpredictable. She’d managed the feat of being simultaneously admired and regarded with suspicion.
In short—no one in Heaven really knew what to do with her.
“Your roommate is the most boring angel,” she now said, shutting the drawer. “No deep, dark secrets? No forbidden desires? Never stepping a toe out of line? Just a perfect facade with nothing of interest behind it.”
“That’s Bitchiel for ya.” I shrugged.
The corners of her mouth twitched up, and her eyes sparkled. “Bitchiel,” she mused, then chuckled. “Is she still giving you grief?”
“Only every time she manages something I don’t, or whenever I ‘besmirch the name of angel’ with my clumsiness.” I made appropriate air quotes. “So…pretty much every day.”
“Want me to tie her shoelaces together? Or cover her bed with itching powder?”
I sighed. “No, that’d only get me in trouble because she’d think it was me.” I paused and frowned at her. “Wait, where would you even get itching powder?”
She leaned against the dresser with a smug smile. “I have my ways.”
A strange ache shot through my heart at the sight of that smile, like an echo of something I once knew, something precious that was now lost to me.
Before I could dwell on it, Naamah spoke again, breaking my inward focus. “I’ll think of something that won’t be traced to you, then.”
She straightened and then summoned something with a flick of her hand. Usually, summoning objects was limited to items in the territory an angel directly belonged to. In my case, I could make objects appear that were within Derdekea’s domain. Naamah, however, was somehow able to call something to her no matter where she was, as long as that object had been claimed by her previously—undoubtedly a sign of her immense power.
“Here,” she said and handed me a large picture book titled History of the World. “Got it for you from Earth.”
I grabbed it with greedy hands and marveled at the high-quality photos illustrating a condensed historical timeline of humanity. I collected and hoarded every scrap of information about Earth and humans in particular that I could find. The walls on my side of the room were plastered with photos and posters of the beautiful variety of Earth’s landscape, ranging from snowy mountain peaks to sunny beaches, as well as pictures of animals and humans.
Among us angels, I wasn’t alone in my fascination for the mortal realm and its inhabitants. Visits to Earth were a coveted privilege awarded only to higher-ranking angels, and as a virtue, I was far from being allowed to go. So all my knowledge had to come from photos and books and other angels’ stories.
Naamah knew about my obsession, and she regularly supplied me with pictures and other Earth paraphernalia.
Like the small electronic device she now handed me.
“Is that…a phone?” I exclaimed. I held it this way and that, and jumped when the screen lit up.
“It has movies on it. Here, let me show you.”
She tapped on the screen, and I watched with rapt fascination as she navigated through incomprehensible-looking displays until a video started playing.
I gasped and flailed at it. “Turn it off, turn it off.” My heart hammering in my chest, I glanced around. “If anyone finds this with me, I’m in trouble.”
Like visits to Earth, possession of certain items was tightly controlled and only permissible to those who’d earned the privilege through a higher rank. Technology from Earth like this was definitely above my pay grade.
“Relax,” Naamah said. “I can ward it for you, so anyone snooping through your stuff won’t see it.”
I leaned a bit away and squinted at her. “You can do that?”
She waved a hand. “Piece of cake.”
“For a seraph with a shitload of power,” I muttered.
Naamah laughed and winked at me.
I still marveled at the fact that this powerful angel with a penchant for troublemaking had chosen to befriend me. I just couldn’t make sense of it. I was a lowly virtue, should barely be a blip on the radar for someone of Naamah’s rank, yet she’d breezed into my life one day and decreed we should henceforth be friends.
Not that it wasn’t par for the course for Naamah to ignore hierarchy and go with the flow of her whims. She did indeed hang out with other angels of lower rank as well. Her network of contacts here could best be described as eclectic, at worst it resembled the random seashell collection of a four-year-old, where one might find a rare, beautiful conch among ordinary shells and pebbles here and there.
I was most definitely a pebble.
When I’d asked her once why she was interested in being friends with me, she’d only smirked and said, “Because I work in mysterious ways.”
And that had been that. I hadn’t been able to dig any further.
So I’d just shrugged and had gone along with it. She was fun to be around, and for some reason I hadn’t been able to figure out, she felt familiar. As if I’d known her in my previous life, which was ridiculous, of course. I’d been a human and she’d been locked away in Hell, and there was no way I’d met her.
I guessed she simply reminded me of someone I’d known as a human, maybe.
My memories of my life before I’d been turned into an angel were little more than slivers of unconnected pictures and almost innate knowledge. While there were things I just knew—how to speak, how to move, general surface-level stuff about humans and Earth—I couldn’t remember any actual situations from my human life, couldn’t remember any of the people who surely must have been important to me.
I knew the melody and all the words to the Happy Birthday song, but I couldn’t recall myself or anyone else ever singing it.
More than once, I’d tried to find out who I’d been before I’d come here, to no avail. None of my superiors had a clue about my life before Heaven, and from what I’d gathered, that was the norm with new angels. Their human lives before their ascension were of no importance.
The only one who knew my human identity was the very one who’d ascended me—Azrael, the Angel of Death. And while he would sometimes show up and check in with me, getting any information about me prior to my transformation out of him was impossible.
He knew, and he wouldn’t tell me.
It made me want to punch him.
“You know,” Naamah said, derailing my rusty train of thoughts, “speaking of power. Why don’t you try again?”
“Because it would end in the same debacle as last time?” I groused, still remembering the way I’d utterly failed in the competition for more power and a higher rank. “I haven’t been able to improve my skills at all. I mean, I’ve been practicing, and I spar with others as much as time allows, but they’re not interested in helping me get better. They’re all mostly on my level, and all they want is to hone their own skills so they will come out on top during the next competition. I don’t learn anything when I spar with them. I’d need a real coach or teacher or whatever, but it’s not like anyone’s volunteering.” I pressed my lips together and exhaled heavily through my nose. “All the angels of higher rank with the knowledge and ability to help me improve my combat skills have better things to do than to do charity work for an insignificant virtue.”
There were generally two ways to move up in rank and/or power. Either an angel matured over time, and their innate strength increased naturally to the point where they surpassed their current rank, and then their status had to be corrected upward to reflect their new abilities—which was usually an evolution of thousands of years, though—or an angel could participate in a competition held precisely for the purpose of funneling deserving angels upward in rank and powers.
In these competitions, which were held regularly every couple of months, winning against an opponent bestowed additional power unto the angel. In a way, the victor kind of absorbed part of the defeated angel’s magic, supplementing their own. The increase in power warranted a higher rank for the winner, and along with it, more privileges, like the coveted visits to Earth, for example.
Lore had it that Heaven had set up these competitions as a way to keep angels hungry and ambitious, and—above all—well trained in combat…for the inevitable, if far off, moment when war would break out with Hell again.
Which, looking at the not-too-long-ago incident with Lilith’s murder and Lucifer’s subsequent attempt at unleashing Hell on Earth, wasn’t that bad an idea after all. The Devil’s forces were formidable, from what I’d heard, and he might have even won the war if Heaven hadn’t offered him to pardon Naamah.
So, obviously, Heaven was very much interested in keeping their own forces battle-ready.
The competitions were a way to fuel that, and accordingly, combat skills played a big role in the tests.
Unfortunately for me, I could swing a sword just well enough not to take my own eye out.
“Yeah,” Naamah said, pulling me out of my musing, “most of the higher-ranking chaps are really stuck up, aren’t they?”
“Not you, though.”
“Maybe it helps that I wasn’t born an angel.” She wiggled her brows. “And it is much more fun to remove everybody else’s stick from up their asses than to have one up mine.”
I choked on my breath and then bent over laughing.
“You know I’d teach you myself,” she said when I straightened again, “but I’m not that skilled at fighting, actually. I’ve got a lot of power”—she rolled her wrist and twitched her fingers, and magic sparked in the air, heavy and biting—“and I can blast any opponent from here to Earth. When it comes to fighting technique, though…eh. I’ve never had need of it.”
“I know, and I wouldn’t expect you to train me.”
She sent me a sly look. “I could still help you, though.”
I raised a brow.
“Turns out there is an angel with enough knowledge to properly train you who just so happens to owe me a favor.”
I raised the second brow.
Naamah and her favors… In the time since she’d ascended, she’d managed to build an impressive network of angels who were favor-bound to her in one way or another. Officially, everyone’s loyalty was to Heaven first, of course, and then second to the higher-ranking angel someone directly followed, and then to that angel’s direct superior, and so on.
Unofficially, a favor given had to be repaid, by magical right. Reneging on one’s word or refusing to settle a debt would be met with consequences that superseded even Heaven’s control. Promises and debts and favors among angels weren’t simply words—they were a contract enforceable by supernatural law, and we were bound to the conditions as if with physical force.
And somehow, Naamah had built a small empire within Heaven of those who were compelled to be loyal to her through the favor they owed her. When I’d asked her how she’d managed that, she’d winked and said, “I am my father’s daughter, after all.”
“You’d order this angel to train me?” I asked her now, staring at her in disbelief, my heart jumping at the prospect of maybe, finally having a real fighting chance. Literally. “You’d give up one of your owed favors for me?”
Her slender shoulders rose and fell as she shrugged, a beatific smile on her face. “It’s just one of many. It’s not like I’d feel the loss. Besides, I do hate seeing you struggle in your current conditions. The only way for you to better your station in life is to win one of the competitions and acquire more power. If you don’t, you’ll be stuck at this rank and in this”—she waved uncertainly around the room, pity pinching her expression—“sad excuse for privacy.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What’s the catch?”
I’d lived here in Heaven long enough to know everything came at a price—exhibit A: Naamah’s network of favor-bound.
“No catch. We’re friends, and I don’t charge my friends.”
I pursed my lips, suspicion gnawing at my gut. She seemed so casual about this, but there was an undercurrent of intensity humming just beneath her placid facade. Like someone who’d laid a trap and was now closely watching their prey step in it.
“As much as I would like to unconditionally trust that claim,” I said, “I can’t quite believe it.”
She rolled her kohl-lined, turquoise eyes. “Well, all right, if you need a quid pro quo to accept this offer, how about this? You will owe me one small favor for my providing you with a skilled combat coach.”
“How small?”
She waved a hand, the bangles on her wrist jangling with the movement. “Something like serving drinks at one of my parties. Or delivering a message for me to someone.”
I considered it. “Okay. Deal.”
“Splendid!” She clapped her hands. “I’ll talk to him, and then I’ll get back to you with a time and place. In the meantime, best not mention this to anyone—he’s from another territory, and I know for a fact that his superior angel won’t like him training someone who doesn’t belong to and benefit his domain. You know how the idiots in charge are.” She rolled her eyes again. “It’s all about jurisdiction, and liability, and all sorts of boring technicalities.”
“Yeah, sure.” I nodded eagerly. “I’ll keep this to myself.”
Not that I had that many people to tell it to. Naamah was pretty much my only friend.
“Good.” She pointed at me with her finger, then winked and breezed past me to the door. “So, do you have time for a quick flight and possibly a few water bombs dropped on unsuspecting angels?” As if to underscore her point, she summoned a small balloon filled with water, threw it in the air and caught it again.
I stuttered out a laugh. “I’ll get in trouble!”
Her eyes sparkled. “Only if they catch us.”
“Naamah!” I bit my lip to hide my grin.
“You’re a wicked fast flyer, and I’m capable of illusions.” She tossed the water bomb again and caught it with a flourish. “They’ll never know it was us.”
“You’ll be my ruin,” I faux-grumbled, but I toed on my boots and followed her out the door.
“No, my dear,” she said and slung an arm around my shoulders. “I’m your saving grace.”
The angels in the sunset-lit hallway gave us a wide berth as we passed, and this time it wasn’t because I stank to the highest heaven. They all eyed Naamah with a healthy amount of respect and not a little longing.
“What’s his name, anyway?” I asked as we stepped outside and into the courtyard.
“Hm?” Naamah looked at me with raised brows, folding her hands in front of her to make a launchpad for me to take flight.
“The angel you’ll get to help me.” I unfurled my wings and set one foot onto her folded hands.
“Oh.” She gave me a serene smile. “Aziel,” she said, and launched me into the air.
Chapter 3
I had that dream again.
The one with the male who felt like a lost part of myself, like the missing piece to my puzzle, yet I never clearly saw his face. Night after night, I’d dream of him—visions of warmth, of passion, of humor. Fleeting images and sensations, whispered words, and such deep yearning, and though I’d always wake with a feeling of something precious being wrenched away from me, with a pulsing hole in my chest, I continued to seek sleep despite not needing it.
Because those dreams…they were the most real thing I’d felt since opening my eyes to the reality of being angel.
Tonight, in the recesses of my mind, I found myself—not knowing how we got there, as it usually was the case with dreams—backed up against a wall by this mysterious stranger, his body hard and hot and pressing into mine in all the right places. All my nerve endings responded to his nearness with electric excitement, my skin tingling and breath going fast.
As always, I couldn’t make out his face—every time I tried to focus on his features, my vision swam, or something would happen that would pull my gaze somewhere else.
But for all I didn’t know what he looked like exactly, the feel of him was branded into my very soul. His scent, his energy, the push of his power against my senses.
He grasped my right hand and pressed something into my palm. I blinked as he wrapped my fingers around the long, slender object and then brought it up between us, his hand enveloping mine holding the item…a dagger, the black blade gleaming with iridescence in the light of the torches near us.
With wide eyes, I watched how he steered my hand to lay the weapon against his throat.
My heart pounded in my chest, my knees wobbling.
“This dagger,” the enigmatic male said into the heated space between us, “is forged in Hell. As such, it is one of the few weapons that can make me bleed.” For a moment, I could discern the swirl of silver eyes amid the vague outline of his face. “And kill me.”
I sucked in a breath. My fingers around the hilt trembled ever so softly, and he gently firmed his grip around mine.
“Now,” he murmured as he leaned in further, the blade digging precariously into the vulnerable skin at his throat, “can we talk?”
I jolted awake, yanked out of the dream by the pillow that had hit me square in the face. Heart still pounding from the tension of the scene with Tall, Dark, and Mysteriously Handsome, I blinked at Bifiel’s annoyed expression as she stared me down from where she stood next to my bed.
My roommate was blessed with looks even more enchanting than a human supermodel’s, her skin a healthy alabaster streaked with a rose blush, her golden locks framing a face of graceful lines so finely drawn, it was like God himself had breathed beauty right into her.
Unfortunately, she mostly wore an expression so sour, it counteracted the natural amiability of her features.
Like now, as she regarded me with the same countenance one would a cockroach that had inexplicably survived multiple extermination attempts and had the gall to still infest the room.
“I can’t believe how lazy you are,” she hissed. “Sleeping every single night. What are you—human?” She clucked her tongue. “Get up. Your shift’s about to start. You don’t want to be late again, do you?”
“What’s it to you?” I grumbled as I heaved my butt out of bed.
“I don’t want to live with someone who doesn’t take being an angel seriously.” She jabbed a finger into my chest. “You dishonor the Heavenly Host. Lazing around like you’re still a mortal…it’s unbecoming. A waste of powers and grace, if you ask me.”
“Well, it’s a good thing no one’s asking you,” I said and bumped my shoulder into hers hard as I passed her.
“You besmirch—” she called out after me.
“The name of angel,” I yelled as I shut the bathroom door behind me. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”
Rolling my eyes, I undressed and stepped into the shower.
Bifiel was an angel-made, like me. Not born to the privilege of serving in Heaven, but selected upon her death due to charitable behavior in life. Considering her attitude here and now, I had a hard time believing she was ever selfless as a human, but maybe the whole memory wipe thing when she’d been ascended had done a number on her character?
In any case, Bifiel was overzealous when it came to being an angel, as if she wanted to make up for the fact she hadn’t been born one, or rather, live up to the honor bestowed upon her when she’d been ascended. It was like she’d made it her whole personality. Like she wanted to win some sort of “bestest, most pious angel in Heaven” award, and at the same time audition for a position on a yet-to-be-founded Inquisitorial Angel Squad whose sole purpose it was to police other angels and reprimand them for their lack of angel-like behavior.
Perhaps I should let Naamah sprinkle her bed with itching powder after all.
Luckily for me, Bifiel was nowhere to be seen when I emerged from the bathroom, ready to go to work. She’d probably gone to brush every single one of her feathers or practice conjuring a halo over her head.
The only thing shaking up the dreary monotony of the day ahead of me was that after my shift, I would finally get to meet the angel who would train me. Naamah had sent me word yesterday, a week after we’d talked, that she’d arranged a meeting time and place with Aziel, giving me instructions where to go.
Excitement fizzed in my belly when I thought about the meeting. I both looked forward to and dreaded the encounter, because while I definitely wanted and needed someone to train me in order to rise up in the ranks, I was apprehensive about how it would go. What would Aziel be like? How would he act? He was kind of forced to do this due to the favor he owed Naamah, so would he treat me with condescension and thinly veiled resentment?
I’d met enough higher-ranking angels to know that they often openly sneered at those who ranked below them, as if someone’s position in the hierarchy immediately determined inherent worth. As if being of lower status and having less power meant one didn’t deserve to be met with respect and compassion.
There were exceptions, of course. Naamah didn’t act like that. And here and there, I’d met a cherub or even a seraph who, while acknowledging my difference in rank in terms of decision-making power or assigned tasks, didn’t make me feel inferior.
I could only hope that this Aziel dude would not be an asshole angel. Otherwise, training with him for weeks would be torture. And I couldn’t exactly say no to Naamah’s offer and just not train with him. For one thing, because I didn’t want to disappoint Naamah, but more importantly, I really needed the training, and it wasn’t like any other high-ranking angels were lining up to help me with this.
Well, I’d just go into it hoping for the best, and if Aziel gave me an attitude, I’d give him one right back. After all, he couldn’t say no to this either. Not with Naamah’s favor compelling him to train me. Depending on how Naamah worded her request for recompense, he’d be honor-bound to effectively train me until I reached my goal of winning the competition, and he couldn’t just walk away from it.
So, if he wanted to sneer at me, he’d have to face my contrary nature for the time he was bound to me. If I had one thing going for me, it was to give as good as I got. I might avoid confrontations as far as I could, but there was a limit to what I’d take when someone poked at me. My mouth had gotten me into trouble more times than not, and a snarky response was never far from the tip of my tongue when I was backed into a corner.
With these thoughts running through my head, I made my way to my assignment today—taking care of Derdekea’s souls.
*
The sunlight streamed through the windows of the apartment, painting the scene in warm, golden hues. From my vantage point in the far corner of the room, I observed how the woman reacted, adjusting the projection minutely to the cues I picked from her mind.
This wasn’t the apartment she’d lived in right before she’d died. It was the one she remembered from her youth, when she’d first left her parents’ house to brave the world on her own. It was the first time she’d been happy and carefree in a long while, her childhood having been fraught with tensions from the behavior of her parents, who—going by her memories—absolutely should have been to therapy, yet refused to acknowledge they needed it.
Consequently, the woman’s idea of heaven, of a happy afterlife, did not include her parents. They were nowhere to be seen in her projection, and they wouldn’t feature in it at any point, except maybe to give her the apology she’d never heard from them in her mortal life.
Maybe I’d make them grovel in front of her later.
I fiddled with the details of the room, subtly adding a vase I’d just spotted in her memories.
Souls never truly realized that the reality they perceived around them wasn’t actually real. That whatever surroundings they saw were merely a kind of virtual reality conjured by an angel to represent their personal idea of heaven, to give them the maximum amount of contentment and happiness.
It was so different for everybody. For some, it meant being among all their loved ones, enveloped in a constant stream of visits from the people they cared about in life. For others, it was the solitude of a small cottage amid a flowering garden, with maybe an occasional visit from a person they loved.
The souls realized they were in Heaven, yes, that they’d died and passed on into the immortal realm, but they didn’t know that what they saw around them was a very individualized projection only made for them, from their respective memories and preferences, and not what the entirety of Heaven looked like.
And they didn’t have the slightest idea that when they saw one of their loved ones…it wasn’t actually that person’s soul they saw. It was part of their individual projection, a memory of that person, an image of them plucked from the soul’s mind.
Souls in Heaven never truly interacted.
When I’d first found out about this, I’d been shocked, and a little miffed. Of course souls in Heaven would interact! Entire religions were founded on this concept, that one would get to see and hug and speak with the people one loved in life. Right? This idea that we would all get our happy ending and meet those again who’d had to leave us too soon, that we’d get to hang out together and enjoy eternity side by side.
Except, that was not how things actually worked in Heaven.
Up here, souls were kept separate from each other, each in their own little room. An angel would be tasked with creating an individualized afterlife projection around the soul, crafting this virtual reality that was authentic enough to make the soul believe it was real. Of course, the soul would know that this was their afterlife, that the environment they saw was a piece of Heaven, and that was okay. Souls were really chill about this. Something about being in Heaven, in general, put them totally at ease.
But they’d still think that the images they saw of other people were those people’s souls, as in, they’d really interact with other deceased up here. When in reality, they only ever interacted with their own memories of their loved ones.
Where at first, I’d been appalled at this, I’d come to see it from a different side after some time. The system did have advantages.
If a soul only ever talked to a projection of a loved one crafted from their own happy memories, it meant there’d never be heartbreak. There’d never be strife, or arguments, they’d never slowly drift apart over eternity, because that projection of their loved one was, as a general rule, positive only.
When we as angels drew on the soul’s memories, we never plucked details from the negative ones. And the soul’s disposition in Heaven was to lean into happiness rather than unpleasant recollections. So the image they’d see of the people who’d been dearest to them in life would never disappoint them, never leave them, never hurt them.
There was a certain kind of peace in that.
In addition to that, this system of individualized afterlife projections that didn’t interfere or touch on other souls’ ideas of Heaven meant that some potentially very cringe cases of reunions would never happen.
I mean, just imagine if a guy married the love of his life, they had children, they spent decades living together as a family until they both died of old age, and then they got to Heaven, but instead of enjoying eternity together with his wife, the poor guy then had to realize there’s this dude she’d met on a boat when she’d been seventeen and had had a hot affair with for four days until an iceberg had sunk the boat and lover boy had died, but the wife had been kind of hung up on him all her life, and now the boat dude wanted a piece of her in Heaven? Just imagine!
So much cringe.
With the individualized afterlife projections, though, it was possible to accommodate such cases. That way, the wife might have both her husband and her young lover—images crafted from her memories—with her, all of them happily living together, while the lover boy might get his own idea of heaven with the woman—as a memory—being with him, without anyone else, and the husband similarly might have his ideal afterlife consisting of living with his wife without the presence or memory of the young lover intruding.
If none of these three souls actually interacted, each could have their own version of happily ever after and never know the difference. To them, it was real, and they were content.
The door behind me—it looked like a regular door in the apartment, but it actually led out of the projection room and into the corridor of the building where Derdekea’s souls were stored—opened, and Eremiel, my direct supervisor, walked in.
He stopped just beside me, sighed, and gestured at the scene in front of us. “What is this?”
I bit my lip. “Her idea of heaven?”
“She’s covered in kittens.”
“Fluffly balls of happiness,” I corrected him with a raised finger.
Eremiel, a generally rule-loving angel with a penchant for finding everything around him annoying, pinched the bridge of his nose and then pointed at the chart he held in his other hand. It showed a graph depicting this soul’s energy production. “You need to step up your game, Chaya. This is well below average. She’s not as happy as she should be.”
I pressed my lips together, gave a tight nod and summoned a notepad and pen and scribbled something down.
“What are you doing?” Eremiel asked, his voice just this side of irritated.
“Taking notes, so I won’t forget—”
Eremiel snatched the notepad from my hands and squinted at it. “More kittens,” he read, then leveled a resigned look at me. “We’ve been over this. You can’t keep adding kittens to every soul’s afterlife projection. Baby felines are not the universal key to happiness.”
I clutched my chest and feigned a heart attack. “You don’t mean that.”
Eremiel turned away with a sigh. “I’ll take over from here. Your shift’s almost finished anyway. But I expect you to do better next time. Go.” He waved me out of the room, then growled at my back, “No more kittens!”
I saluted him and slipped out into the corridor while Eremiel re-crafted the woman’s afterlife projection to better reflect her preferences. Pausing in the hallway—bathed in soft light from the dozens of glowing crystals attached to the walls—I considered his words for a second, then nodded decisively and scribbled on my notepad again.
“He clearly said, ‘No—more kittens!’ Punctuation and intonation are very important.”
And with a grin on my face, I headed outside.
*
Naamah’s instructions where to meet led me to a small cliff overlooking more rolling meadows, with a roaring waterfall tumbling over the side of the rocky bluff. The sapphire waters of the river kept snaking through the valley below, a beautiful complement to the dark purple of the plains. The never-changing light of the sunset sky sparkled on the waves and kissed the wind-swept grass with dramatic colors.
I landed next to Naamah, who waited for me at the bottom of the cliff, on the banks of the river, right next to the gushing spray of the waterfall.
Folding my wings and then disappearing them, I walked up to her. “Quite a remote place,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the din of the rushing water. I’d had to fly for almost an hour to get here, my back muscles now screaming at me.
“All the better to hide clandestine meetings,” Naamah replied with a wink. “It’s not that easy to find a spot where you two can train without catching someone’s attention.”
I looked around the cliff face and the terrain next to the river, covered with either high grass or rocks of various sizes. “I’m not sure we can really spar here. The ground’s not exactly right for it.”
“You won’t train out here,” she said and flicked a finger against my forehead. “You’ll be inside.”
“Inside?”
She jerked her head toward the waterfall. “There’s a large cave behind it. That way, you won’t be spotted from the sky by a random passersby, and the noise of the waterfall will mask the sounds of your fighting.”
“Oooh, smart.” I rocked back on my heels and pursed my lips appreciatively. “You outdid yourself.”
Naamah regarded her nails with raised brows. “I don’t know why people keep doubting my skills.”
“So, when is he going to get here?”
“He’s here already.” She pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. “He’s waiting for you inside.”
A jolt of excitement zapped me, and my stomach decided to imitate some fizzy chemical concoction. I snuck closer to the bend around the rock underneath the waterfall that supposedly led to the cave, trying to get a glimpse of him first.
His power hit me before I could even peek around the corner. I froze as his energy washed over my senses, arresting my breath. My heart started a mad gallop, my own energy responding with a force that almost buckled my legs.
With a gasp, I tore away from the cave opening and rounded on Naamah. “You didn’t tell me he’s a seraph!” I whisper-yelled at her.
A fucking powerful one, to boot. I’d only felt a similar raw amount of strength in the presence of one of the archangels.
Naamah shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”
I flailed. “I thought you’d get me a dominion, or a throne, maybe even a cherub, at the very most. What am I supposed to do with a seraph?” I hissed, my pulse skyrocketing.
“Learn from him,” she said with an eye-roll.
“He’s going to crush me!”
“He’ll do no such thing. Trust me, giving you trouble of any sort is the last thing on his mind.” She leveled a meaningful look at me, of which I didn’t catch half the meaning, I was sure.
And when I opened my mouth to utter some other fear-sparked response, she shut my jaw with a gentle gesture. “You need someone powerful enough to teach you the skills you need to win a competition. He is that. Now quit your whining and go meet him. He hasn’t got all day, you know?”
I inhaled a steadying breath. Right, yeah, I could do this. Pumping myself up, I nodded at Naamah, who gave me a thumbs-up and waved me on, and then I turned to the cave entrance below the waterfall.
“He’s just another angel,” I whispered to myself as I walked beneath the overhang, the spray of the water misting my skin. “Nothing special. Just a bit more powerful, that’s all. He puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us.”
When I rounded the bend and stepped into the large cave that was lit by crystals dispersed between the stalagmites littering the floor close to the walls, my gaze immediately snapped to him. His presence filled out the room, made the generous space of the natural chamber seem far smaller than it was. His energy suffused the air, a heavy press of power that crashed against my senses and made my instincts quiver. But what truly stole my breath, as if someone had punched all air out of my lungs, was the sight of him.
Broad-shouldered, with muscles that spoke of regular fighting exercises and hard-earned prowess in battle, he stood with a poise that exuded effortless authority. He was dressed in the typical combat garb among angels—leather-braided armor reinforced with titanium plating that gleamed silver in the low light of the crystals, over a dark pants-and-tunic combo, his bare forearms protected by vambraces. At his belt hung a long sword, and I could make out daggers strapped to his thighs as well.
All that paled, however, in comparison to his face, to the intensity of his expression. I’d seen many a beautiful angel here in Heaven, both male and female. Our kind didn’t lack for looks, that was for sure, and I should have been well used to this level of gorgeousness, maybe even desensitized to it. I’d thought I couldn’t be stunned into silence anymore by esthetics, but clearly, I’d been wrong.
I hadn’t met him yet.
As it was, I stared—open-mouthed, to my disgrace—at the impossible mix of hard, rugged masculinity and achingly elegant beauty that was his face. Strong lines drew his features, from his jaw to his cheekbones to the straight nose, his mouth the only hint of softness. And his eyes…tempests of silver underneath black brows, broiling storms of emotion that struck a cord deep inside me.
For a second, the instance our gazes met, a connection snapped into place, so powerful that it made me sway on my feet. Everything else fell away, the cave, the crystals, the roar of the water outside the entrance, and what remained was a pulsing bond between me and this angel whom I’d never met before in my life, this angel who, in this very moment, looked at me like I was the answer to all his questions, the long-yearned-for sunrise after a night of suffocating darkness.
And there, in the depths of my soul, chimed an echo of that impression, a note of bruised-and-beaten hope for an unnameable, unknown treasure once lost.
It only lasted a heartbeat, and then the moment passed, and I blinked at the angel, confused and slightly dizzy, a headache forming behind my temples. I frowned and rubbed my forehead, closing my eyes against the throb of pain.
“For the record,” the angel said, drawing my attention back to him, “I don’t put my pants on one leg at a time.” His smooth, deep voice sounded entirely serious, the glint in his eyes the only hint at the humor behind his words. “I conjure them onto my body with my mighty seraph power.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, my face flaming hot. “You heard?”
“Every word.” Those sensual lips twitched up into a smirk.
“But I whispered! And the waterfall was so loud!”
He laughed softly, and it was utterly unfair how much more drop-dead gorgeous he became when his face lit up with genuine humor, those silver-gray eyes of his sparkling with mirth. Tapping his ear, he said, “Seraph hearing.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, then pressed my lips together to hide my growing grin at the way he’d deliberately defused my nervousness with a well-aimed joke. “Okay, fine, point taken. No need for me to be anxious. You’re not a big, bad dude.”
“That’s debatable,” he muttered under his breath.
“So, do you—” I said, and then stopped short because I’d completely forgotten protocol here. Whether he was easy-going or not, he was still a seraph, which made him my superior by three whole ranks, and here I was, just babbling at him as if he were a good buddy of mine on the same rung of the hierarchy ladder.
I uttered a small squeak and then went down on one knee, bowing my head. “Apologies, my lord. I should have greeted you properly. I meant no disrespect.”
A pulse of power—distinctly angered—throbbed through the air, raising the hairs on my arms and neck. The next second, he was right in front of me, pulling me up to standing with a gentle grip on my arm. At his touch, a faint electric shock coursed over my skin, making me shiver. His expression was thunderous, and I shrank away a bit.
Shit, I’d really offended him with my blunder, hadn’t I?
His fingers softly grabbed my chin and lifted my face so I looked straight at him again, his other hand still holding my arm. “You,” he said, his voice half a growl, “don’t ever bow to me.”
***
I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek at the first three chapters of Hell Over Heels! Don’t forget to preorder if you haven’t done so already, so you won’t miss the release: Hell Over Heels
