19. WEN

The memory is vague, but certain.

Lucifer did this to me, in the Imperium Realm.

But it was a far more overwhelming experience. Either it was over a much longer distance and time, or my body has already been conditioned to it.

Ormaybe Azrael, with his extensive history in transporting untold billions of souls, is a much better driver.

That doesn’t mean I’m not feeling undone, and desecrated on levels I can’t yet fathom. But I can’t even be mad at him. He did ask permission, and I practically gave him carte blanche.

As my every cell struggles to settle back into place, I look around. Gideon is gone. So he wasn’t included in the invitation here, the archangels’ conference room.

The memories of first meeting them remain crystal-sharp, but now they’re also poignant, every single one revolving around Godric. They needle my eyes even as spikes of dread pierce my lungs, that his absence might be permanent.

The possibility is unacceptable, unbearable.

“Ms. White.”

My heart rams the base of my throat as I whirl around, only to splotch in my gut. Not him. Not him.

For a split second, the similarity of Azrael’s voice fooled me. That, and my raging hope. His resemblance to his son as he approaches me like a calm shockwave of eternity, especially in a getup similar to Godric’s Praetor uniform, tightens the barbed fist squeezing my heart.

“My son tells me you’re in urgent need of my counsel.”

Feeling swamped yet again by that elusive—kindred quality I’ve felt from him before, I gulp down a lump of agitation. “I’m in urgent need of info. About the whereabouts of your other son.”

“I am not privy to such information.”

His dismissive tranquility, and those same damn words his sister spouted the day before Godric disappeared, smear rage across my vision.

And I yell at him. “Is that the standard answer they taught you to stick with in archangel kindergarten? Do you take pleasure in watching us mortals squirm in uncertainty at your feet, begging for answers you always claim you don’t have? And if you really don’t have them, then what good are you? The all-knowing beings who know nothing of any use?”

I stop, panting, some of Godric’s last words blaring in my skull.

I didn’t think anyone could be this self-destructive.

Azrael doesn’t even blink at my outburst, but those fathomless eyes regard me with something I haven’t seen before. Something that disturbs the Hell out of me. Disquiet.

It’s almost an emotion, and I hate how much more it makes him look like Godric, even when he still feels totally different.

But I’ve managed to disrupt his endless equanimity. When I’m here as a supplicant, begging his help.

Great job, White. Keep it up. It’s only Death Incarnate you’re pissing off here.

I’m probably still on this mortal plane because he needs me. What for, I still have no idea. I only hope Jophiel was right when she suggested he let me get away with “disrespecting” him, because I entertain him with my lack of dread and decorum. I hope jolting him out of his eternal ennui counterbalances his current displeasure at my rudeness.

He finally inclines his head at me. “You misunderstand me, Ms. White. I have no knowledge of Godric’s whereabouts, because he never reports them to me.”

So not even his dad and superior can make him toe the line? He goes rogue whenever he pleases?

Before he pulled that disappearance stunt, knowing that would have made me even hotter for him. Now I wish he were a good little soldier who reported his every move.

If—when he returns, I’ll make him report and get approval for every breath. From me. So I can always know where he is, that he is okay, and that he’ll come back to me. Always.

I feel Azrael’s awareness leaving me, probably looking across the realms to his “post,” wherever that is. He hasn’t even asked why I thought finding Godric warranted demanding a private audience with him. He answered my question, and now considers the matter over.

Before he blinks away, I stumble to close the gap between us, barely stopping myself from grabbing him. “Surely you must keep tabs on him, regardless?”

His focus returns to me, still tinged with dismay. “Surveillance would preclude free will.”

“But he’s your son and subordinate, not to mention your premiere soldier. Free will has no role in any army’s hierarchy.”

He nods, his gaze seeming to probe my depths, until I’m suddenly afraid he might sense the void beyond my mortal flesh.

But when he speaks, he only answers me. “We do have rules, but those seldom apply to him. He is—different.”

Tell me about it.

Any other time, I’d revel in Azrael’s admission, that even to him, Godric is one-of-a-kind. Now I want him run-of-the-mill, if it would get him found and ordered back.

But what if he can’t be found or ordered back?

Foreboding slices sharp talons into my chest again. “What if something happened to him?”

Azrael’s gaze lengthens. I wonder if he can read emotions, or if being devoid of them makes them opaque to him. Not that he needs any discernment to read my turmoil. Or its cause.

“If you’re implying Godric might be dead, he isn’t.”

My knees buckle, and I crumple on the nearest chair at the massive round table.

The moment my weight hits the seat, it hums beneath like a haywire tuning fork, as if enraged at my transgression. Which it must be, since it has never met anything but archangel butts.

Azrael watches me in grim silence as the frequency spreads out like a succession of sonic blasts. Everything vibrates and blurs under their onslaught, until I think the vast chamber will phase out of existence.

I jump up on wobbling legs, and the disturbance stops at once.

Exhaling my fright, I look up into his eyes, hoping I look imploring, not impertinent. “Do you have proof of that?”

A ghost of a smile, the first one I’ve seen from him, crosses his lips. “Do you think if my son’s soul had departed his body, I of all beings, wouldn’t know?”

Right. Yeah. Touché. Archangel of Death right there. The one being with an exclusive access to the ledger of souls.

Still, he’s not presenting any proof of Godric’s continued existence. He’s giving me nothing but his word.

“So you’re sure?” I persist. He nods. “And he’s not incapacitated or incarcerated? Here or in any of the other realms?”

In response, he looks into the distance, as if scanning said realms. Which I’m sure he is.

Then he says, “He’s none of these things.”

I don’t know how I stop myself from bursting into tears.

Godric isn’t dead. He isn’t imprisoned and injured. He’s somewhere out there, free and whole.

But—if that’s all true, then he’s staying away on purpose. Because he’s an irredeemable monster. And I’m the stupid fool who probably risked my life accosting his kin of angelic fiends for news of him.

“If you can see that,” I grit, unable to temper the anger in my voice, at him, at Azrael, and at myself. “Then you can reach him. Order him back!”

“No.”

That single syllable, out of everything he’s said to me, punches home just who he is, whom I’ve been taking such liberties with. The inexorable personification of entropy. The entity every being since the beginning of existence dreaded, and had no power against. The one thing that will be here when everything else is gone.

How do I keep forgetting that?

That human form of his, and its resemblance to Godric, has a lot to answer for.

Before I can push my luck even further, he says, “My son must have his reasons for being away from you, his charge. He might be forging a plan for the next critical phase in your mentorship.” He pauses as his gaze sweeps me, and that dismay intensifies. “I would advise you to occupy yourself with—restoration until his return. You will need every ounce of your resilience and fortitude to navigate what’s coming, and to withstand the rising tide.”

With that, I feel the overpowering current of teleportation take hold of my every cell, unmaking me.

After an eternity and a blink, I find myself back where I started, in Oriphiel Woods.

The moment my components and awareness slide back where they belong, and I’m me again, I scream.

“You better come back right this second, you vile Angelhole!”

The silence that has never been there, not since Godric crash-landed into my life, is deafening.

I always felt him, even across the realms.

Now, I no longer do.

What if Azrael was wrong? Or was lying?

He might not have ordered him back because he couldn’t, and Godric is really beyond reach. He might never come back, and I might never know what happened to him.

The possibilities drive me to my knees. I fall to the ground, unable to hold back the tears.

I don’t know how long I stay crumpled on the forest floor, until every bone feels dislocated, and every muscle torn, with the force of my sobs.

Once the storm passes, something else floods in its wake.

The memory of Azrael’s parting words.

You will need every ounce of your resilience and fortitude to navigate what’s coming, and to withstand the rising tide.

What in his fucking Heaven did he mean by that?

Not that it matters. I can’t navigate or withstand anything without Godric. I’m still in the first stages of being forged by him. In that, and in every other way, I can’t be without him.

And I wail. “I didn’t mean it when I said run and hide, you semi-Celestial miscreant. If you come back now, I promise I will—behave, okay? I will keep my hands to myself, and I won’t provoke or exasperate or frustrate or stymie you for—for a whole week. Just come back to me!”

Only absence answers me.

And it’s the most terrifying thing I have ever felt.