Previously on…

AKA a recap of Zoe’s further fabulous adventures in Hell, for those who read the second book a while ago. If you just read Till Heaven Do Us Part, feel free to skip this. (It’s kind of long.)

So, let’s get a refresher on what went down that led to Zoe getting some pretty wings of her own at the end of Till Heaven Do Us Part.

*cracks knuckles*

All right, so our girl Zoe has been living in Hell for a year already, happily in love with her boo Azazel, and everything is hunky-dory, right? If only it weren’t for the fact she sticks out of Hell’s hierarchy and power dynamic like a sore thumb, and, of course, the other fact that she has to keep this huge secret for Lucifer, her infernal grandfather-in-law.

You know, the secret about Naamah—Azazel and Azmodea’s mother—still being alive, albeit not in the best mental state, and therefore kept confined and strictly supervised.

Lucifer bound Zoe to silence about that, especially toward Azazel. And, despite Zoe suffering from having no filter between her brain and her mouth, she actually managed not to tell Azazel about it for a whole year. Which, wow, you go, girl!

So on the topic of Hell’s hierarchy and all that, Zoe has been on the struggle bus with that for a while because as a lowly human without significant powers and being far weaker than all the demons around her, nominally she should be on the lowest rung of the ladder.

But, due to her marriage bond with Azazel, she has been elevated to the same rank as him—cherub, which is the third highest rank, after archdemons and seraphim—and now all the demons around her have to treat her with the requisite respect, which galls most of them.

So, for the past year Zoe has been trying to navigate this cesspool of Hell’s politics and gone with a grin-and-bear-it attitude, opting to not even tell Azazel when some of the demons make snide comments or let their real disdain for her show, because every time Azazel does find out, he makes an example of the perpetrator, which has led to him losing allies and trade partners left and right.

Zoe’s trying to protect him from being overprotective, while Azazel comes barging in with an undeniably romantic, if a bit ambitious, I’ll-raze-all-of-Hell-and-kill-them-all-for-you mentality. Which both frightens and charms Zoe.

Mostly frightens, though.

In the course of Azazel’s streak of teaching his fellow demons to respect his wife, he wages war against Inachiel, who subtly insulted Zoe at a party, ending the whole episode with a ceremonial wing-chopping performance in front of dozens of warriors—and Zoe. When Azazel hands Zoe the freshly severed wings, she promptly vomits on them.

Which Mephisto, the surly hellcat, deems perfectly in accordance with ancient laws of dominance. (Zoe doesn’t agree.)

Lilith, Lucifer’s beloved soulmate and co-ruler of Hell, has taken an interest in Zoe and has been visiting her regularly, much to Zoe’s unending bafflement. Their unlikely friendship reaches a new height when Lilith decides to give Zoe a leg up in terms of power, rips a kernel of her own energy out of herself and plants it inside Zoe in a slightly traumatizing act of punching holes in chests.

When Zoe’s birthday and her one-year anniversary in Hell comes around, she finds out that her mom has cancer. Distraught, she asks Azazel to heal her mom, to which he replies that he isn’t allowed to do so without a deal—and he won’t condemn the soul of Zoe’s mom.

Zoe demands to go back to Earth and see her mom again, and while there, she shows herself to her mom for the first time, against Azazel’s protests. But not just that, Zoe proceeds to tell her mom that she won’t have to die of cancer, that Azazel can heal her, that she just needs to make a deal with him.

Azazel, who is keeping the kind of cool head Zoe is incapable of in that moment, interrupts her to reveal to her mom exactly how detrimental a deal would be for her soul’s health and afterlife prospects, leading to Zoe’s mom tearfully rejecting the deal.

Zoe breaks down, not even able to say a proper goodbye, and Azazel takes her back home to Hell.

Where she promptly rounds on him for not having her back when she talked to her mom. The fight becomes so emotional for Zoe that she lets slip that itty-bitty little tidbit about Azazel’s mother still being alive.

Big uh-oh.

Azazel is unsurprisingly shellshocked at this revelation, but besides reeling from knowing his mother is alive, he is mostly scared AF of Lucifer’s response to Zoe breaking her vow of silence. He knows Lucifer will likely come for Zoe, and there will be nothing Azazel can do to protect her.

After talking to Azmodea, Azazel tells Zoe that they won’t ask Lucifer to be allowed to see their mom. Azazel thinks that by not challenging the status quo and not bothering Lucifer, maybe he won’t come to punish Zoe…yet.

Zoe, unable to accept the weight of being the reason Azazel and Azmodea won’t see their mom, decides to take that leverage away by…*drumroll*…going straight to Lucifer and asking him to punish her.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

*sips tea*

She makes it into Lucifer’s palace and in front of him, more or less badgers him to exact his punishment and get this whole thing over with, only for Lucifer to subsequently find out that he is apparently unable to harm her physically—because of the spark of Lilith’s power Zoe carries within her.

Zoe’s relief is short-lived, as Lucifer is well-versed in the art of non-physical torture as well. Which he subjects Zoe to for the next few days, until Lilith finds her. Irate at the treatment of someone who holds her favor, Lilith gives Lucifer a piece of her mind about that and then claims Zoe for herself, saying Zoe can work off her punishment with Lilith.

But Lilith being Lilith, that punishment skirts the literal definition of it, and Zoe ends up having to straighten up Lilith and Lucifer’s personal library (oh, the horror!).

While cleaning up in the library, Zoe stumbles upon a stack of letter drafts indicating that Lucifer has been planning to ask for a pardon from Heaven for his daughter Naamah, and Zoe files that information away to revisit later.

During lunch with Lilith, one of Lilith’s handmaidens, Destatur, covertly asks Zoe to convince Lilith to visit Earth, which she hasn’t done in thousands of years. Destatur hopes it will revive Lilith’s spirit even more, citing the already positive effects that Zoe’s friendship with Lilith has had on Lilith’s emotional and mental health.

Zoe agrees and manages to persuade Lilith to visit Earth with Zoe as her guide.

After a heartfelt and passionate reunion with Azazel, during which he and Zoe clear the air and deepen their bond even further, Azazel escorts Zoe during her visit to Earth with Lilith. As soon as they set foot on Earth, a squad of angels descends on them, attacks and manages to kill Lilith—with the covert help of two demons in Lilith’s entourage, Destatur and Enaia.

It turns out that the whole thing was a long-planned setup—a collaboration of like-minded angels and demons—in order to push Lucifer into canceling the truce between Heaven and Hell and starting the apocalypse. Because if it’s angels who killed Lilith, Lucifer will see red and consider the peace broken. And with Lilith gone, he will have no reason to hold back and instead unleash his full force onto Earth and Heaven.

During the fight, Azazel is knocked out, leaving Zoe to face Destatur alone, who is the only one left standing. But before Destatur can kill both Zoe and Azazel, the spark of Lilith’s power inside Zoe explodes and protects them both, incapacitating Destatur momentarily. Zoe then saws off her head, and once Azazel wakes, they try to reach another hellgate to escape before Lucifer comes barging onto Earth.

They don’t make it.

Lucifer, out of his mind with grief and rage just as expected, unleashes the forces of Hell on Earth in revenge for Lilith’s murder. Even though angels descend right away to fight him and his army off—with the archangels taking him on together—the odds are in Lucifer’s favor, especially as the archdemons join him. He might just win, and looking at the destruction he’s already wrought, that would spell the end for humanity.

Just then, Zoe remembers the letter drafts about Naamah’s pardon she discovered in Lucifer’s library, and she realizes that if Heaven knew about his intention, they could offer him the pardon in exchange for a new truce. Azazel takes off toward the archangels to somehow relay this information while Zoe tries to hide in the rubble of New York.

Unfortunately, she is found by none other than Inachiel, who still has a bone to pick with her. He stuffs her into the box used for transporting souls, intent on taking her back to Hell and using her as leverage to regain his rank and standing which he lost when Azazel stripped him off his wings.

Stuck in the box, Zoe misses how Azazel actually manages to give the information about Lucifer’s plan for a pardon to the archangels—with the help of his grandmother Daevi—and how a new truce is struck between Heaven and Hell that ends the fighting, based on Naamah being pardoned and allowed to become an angel, which will heal her mind.

After struggling to find her strength, Zoe realizes how to use Lilith’s kernel of power to break out of the box—only to find Inachiel fatally wounded. He explains that several days have passed, the war has ended and a new deal is in place, and Zoe panics because she fears that she’s spent far too long in her spirit form. If she doesn’t get back to Hell and her body ASAP, the connection between her physical form and her soul might sever, and she’ll die.

Inachiel pleads with her to drag him to a hellgate so he can heal back in his home realm, and Zoe agrees, in return for him owing her a life debt.

She pushes Inachiel through the gate, and then Azazel finds her—but their relief is cut short when Zoe feels a ripping sensation in her soul, and then her spirit form starts to change.

To both their horror, it turns out that the connection between Zoe’s body and her spirit has indeed severed. To make matters worse, she is rapidly turning into a wraith, which is the evil, destructive version of a ghost, unable to be redeemed. Zoe has minutes before all that she is will be gone, and only a poltergeist shadow of herself remains.

Azazel, knowing there isn’t enough time to bring her back to Hell and attempt to reconnect her soul with her body, only sees one way to save her—he calls upon his father, Azrael. As the Angel of Death, he is tasked with ascending worthy humans to angels, and that is exactly what Azazel now asks of him.

Reluctantly, Azrael agrees, in exchange for Azazel’s forgiveness for how Azrael abandoned him as a child.

Azrael transforms Zoe into an angel, but when Azazel wants to gather her unconscious form into his arms, Azrael holds him back, saying that they are now on different sides. She belongs to Heaven, and all fraternization between angels and demons is forbidden. Plus, as a newly made angel, Zoe won’t even remember Azazel and their time together—her memories will have been erased during the transformation.

Grudgingly, Azazel backs off, but not without a whispered promise to Zoe that he will make her remember. She belongs to him, and he will get her back.

After all, every angel can be made to fall…

I hope this recap helped jog your memory of book 2, and now you’re ready to tackle book 3!