Fallen in Love (19 page)

B
ack on the green, four troubadours completed their last song and exited the stage to make room for the presentation of Cupid’s Urn. As all the tittering single young men and women pressed excitedly up to the platform, the troubadours sneaked off to the side.

One by one, they raised their masks.

Shelby tossed down her recorder. Miles strummed one more chord on his lyre for good measure, and Roland harmonized on his fretted lute. Arriane slipped her
hautboy into its slender wooden case and went to help herself to a big mug of punch. But she winced as she tossed it back and pressed a hand to the bloody cloth dressing the new wound on her neck.

“You jammed pretty well out there, Miles,” Roland said. “You must have played the lyre somewhere before?”

“First time,” Miles said nonchalantly, though it was clear he was pleased by the compliment. He glanced at Shelby and squeezed her hand. “I probably just sounded good because of Shel’s accompaniment.”

Shelby started to roll her eyes, but she only got halfway there before she gave up and leaned in to peck Miles softly on the lips. “Yeah, probably.”

“Roland?” Arriane asked suddenly, spinning around to scan the green. “What happened to Daniel and Lucinda? A moment ago they were right over there. Oh”—she clapped her forehead—“can nothing go right for love?”

“We just saw them dancing,” Miles said. “I’m sure they’re okay. They’re together.”

“I told Daniel expressly, ‘Spin Lucinda into the center of the green where we can see you.’ It’s as if he still doesn’t know how much work goes into this!”

“I guess he had other plans,” Roland said broodingly. “Love sometimes does.”

“You guys, relax.” Shelby’s voice steadied the others,
as if her new love had bolstered her faith in the world. “I saw Daniel lead her into the forest, thataway. Stop!” she cried, tugging on Arriane’s black cloak. “Don’t follow them! Don’t you think, after everything, they deserve some time alone?”

“Alone?” Arriane asked, letting out a heavy sigh.

“Alone.” Roland came to stand next to Arriane, draping an arm around her, careful to avoid her injured neck.

“Yes,” Miles said, his fingers threaded through Shelby’s. “They deserve some time alone.”

And in that moment under the stars, a simple understanding passed among the four. Sometimes love needed a lift from its guardian angels, to get its feet off the ground. But once it made its first early beats toward flight, it had to be trusted to take wing on its own and soar past the highest conceivable heights, into the heavens—and beyond.

F
irst, there was silence—

In the space between Heaven and the Fall, deep in the unknowable distance, there was a moment when the glorious hum of Heaven disappeared and was replaced by a silence so profound that Daniel’s soul strained to make out any noise.

Then came the actual feeling of falling—the kind of drop that even his wings couldn’t save him from, as if the Throne had attached moons to them. They hardly
beat, and when they did it made no impact on the trajectory of his fall.

Where was he going? There was nothing before him and nothing behind. Nothing up and nothing down. Only thick darkness, and the blurry outline of what was left of Daniel’s soul.

In the absence of any noise whatsoever, his mind took over: It filled his head with something else, something inescapable: the haunting words of Luce’s curse.

She will die.… She will never pass out of adolescence … will die again and again and again at precisely the moment when she remembers your choice
.

You will never truly be together
.

It was Lucifer’s foul imprecation, his embittered addendum to the Throne’s sentence passed there in the heavenly Meadow. Now death was coming for his love. Could Daniel stop it? Would he even recognize it?

For what did an angel know of death? Daniel had witnessed it come peacefully to some of the new mortal breeds called humans, but death was not the concern of angels.

Death and adolescence: the two absolutes in Lucifer’s Curse. Neither meant a thing to Daniel. All he knew was that being separated from Lucinda was not a punishment he could endure. They had to be together.

“Lucinda!”
he shouted.

His soul should have warmed at the very thought of her, but there was only aching absence.

He should have been able to sense his brethren around him—all of those who’d chosen wrongly or too late; who’d made no choice at all and been cast out for their indecision. He knew that he wasn’t
truly
alone—more than one hundred million of them had plummeted when the ground beneath them opened up onto the void.

But he could neither see nor sense anyone else.

Before this moment, he had never been alone. He felt as if he might be the last angel in all the worlds.

Don’t think like that. You’ll lose yourself
.

He tried to hold on … Lucinda, the roll call, Lucinda, the
choice
 … but as he fell, it grew harder to remember. What, for instance, were the last words he’d heard spoken by the Throne—

The Gates of Heaven …

The Gates of Heaven are …

He could not remember what came next, could only dimly recall how the great light flickered, and the harshest cold swept over the Meadow, and the trees in the Orchard tumbled into one another, causing waves of furious disturbance that were felt throughout the cosmos, tsunamis of cloudsoil that blinded the angels and crushed their glory. There had been something else, something just before the obliteration of the Meadow, something like a—

Twinning
.

A bold bright angel had soared up during the roll
call—said he was Daniel come back from the future. There was a sadness in his eyes that had looked so
old
. Had this angel—this … version of Daniel’s soul—truly suffered?

Had Lucinda?

Daniel seethed with rage. He would find Lucifer, the angel who lived at the dead end of all ideas. Daniel did not fear the traitor who had been the Morning Star. Wherever, whenever they reached the end of this oblivion, Daniel would take his revenge. But first he would find Lucinda, for without her, nothing mattered. Without her love, nothing was possible.

Theirs was a love that made it inconceivable to choose Lucifer or the Throne. The only side he could ever choose was hers. So now Daniel would pay for that choice, but he did not yet understand the shape his punishment would take. Only that she was gone from the place she belonged: at his side.

The pain of separation from his soul mate coursed through Daniel suddenly, sharp and brutal. He moaned wordlessly, his mind clouded over, and suddenly, frighteningly, he couldn’t remember
why
.

He tumbled onward, down through denser blackness.

He could no longer see or feel or recall how he had ended up here, nowhere, hurtling through nothingness—toward where? For how long?

His memory sputtered and faded. It was harder and harder to remember those words spoken by the angel in the white meadow who looked so much like …

Who had the angel resembled? And what had he said that was so important?

Daniel did not know, did not know anything anymore.

Only that he was tumbling through the void.

He was filled with an urge to find something … someone.

An urge to feel whole again …

But there was only darkness inside darkness—

Silence drowning out his thoughts—

A nothing that was everything.

Daniel fell.

“G
ood morning.”

A warm hand brushed Luce’s cheek and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

Rolling onto her side, she yawned and opened her eyes. She had been sleeping deeply, dreaming about Daniel.

“Oh,” she gasped, feeling her cheek. There he was.

Daniel was sitting next to her. He wore a black sweater and the same red scarf that had been knotted around his neck the first time she’d seen him at Sword & Cross. He looked better than any dream.

His weight made the edge of the cot sag a little, and Luce drew up her legs to snuggle closer to him.

“You’re not a dream,” she said.

Daniel’s eyes were blearier than she was used to seeing them, but they still glowed the brightest violet as they gazed at her face, studying her features as if he were seeing her anew. He leaned down and pressed his lips to hers.

Luce folded into him, wrapping her arms around the back of his neck, happy to kiss him back. She didn’t care that her teeth needed brushing or that she probably had bed head. She didn’t care about anything other than his kiss. They were together now and neither of them could help grinning.