Chapter 37

CHAPTER37

AZAZEL

“What?” Zoe’s mouth fell open, her pupils enlarging and contracting as her gaze struggled to focus on me—more signs of her turning? “I thought—you said it would take decades. Why is it happening so fast?”

Her words sounded slurred, as if she had trouble forming them.

I shook my head and ground my teeth. “I don’t know. Normally it takes longer—but you’re not a normal ghost. None of this is normal.” Frustration and fear warred within me, my chest too tight to breathe. My mind still hadn’t quite caught up to the devastating turn of events, my thoughts reeling. “Maybe it has to do with your soul being separated from your body because you stayed too long on Earth, rather than dying a natural death. Maybe it has to do with how we bonded, and how it might have changed you. Or perhaps Lilith’s power altered you in some fundamental way.”

All of them fair guesses, all of them born of trying to make sense of something that threatened to rip my very heart and soul from me.

None of them held a solution for this disaster.

Before my eyes, the marks of decay on Zoe’s skin spread, her energy changing. A toxic kind of darkness whispered through her aura.

“Azazel,” she murmured, her head lolling against my shoulder, “I don’t feel so good.”

Terror seized my thoughts. I couldn’t think straight.

I, the strategist, ever so unflappable, swift of mind and never at a loss for ideas, stood there unable to move, incapable of formulating a thought other than I’m losing her.

My mind a wasteland of fear, I watched the signs of deterioration in her grow like visible cancer.

She was going to turn into a wraith, and there was nothing I could do. With the speed of her decay, even if I shot through the hellgate and flew home as fast as I could, I’d never reach her body in time—let alone have a moment to figure out how to even reconnect her soul with her physical form.

That would take hours, if not more.

Zoe didn’t have hours—she’d be gone in a matter of minutes.

The woman I loved more than life itself would disappear, in her place a shadow of her former self, a malevolent spirit driven by instincts and pain.

And then the only merciful thing would be to end her pain.

I shuddered, icy claws of panic shredding me from the inside while my mind still refused to process what was happening and help me find a way to save her.

I couldn’t lose her.

I wouldn’t survive it.

I couldn’t fucking lose her.

In the periphery of my vision, color flickered over my wings. My illusion faltered, white feathers peeking through and weaving the tapestry of my heritage. Black and white, demon and angel, incongruously combined.

My heartbeat stumbled.

Heritage.

Angel.

An idea sparked in my ravaged mind. A plan as mad as it was desperate.

And yet, it was the only way out that I could see.

If he agreed.

Holding Zoe in my shaking arms, I closed my eyes and focused inward, pulling on the power worked into familial ties, bonds of blood that defied the rifts in relationships, persisted throughout thousands of years of estrangement.

As much as I might have liked to pretend those bonds severed, in truth they’d never disappeared, only lain dormant, suppressed.

I’d had no need for them.

I’d had no need for him.

Until now.

I spoke his name, tugging on those bonds, and called him forth in a summoning of age-old magic, the kind only accessible to relatives of flesh and blood. It wasn’t the sort of invocation that would force an appearance, unlike using a true name.

It was a request, one that could be denied.

I waited, my only company my racing heartbeat and Zoe’s weakening form in my arms.

She was getting worse by the minute. Already, I feared that her condition had progressed too far for her to be saved.

And still I waited, for what else was I to do? Either my madcap plan would work, or I’d hold her through her last moments of being herself, and then I’d see to her swift end.

I wouldn’t allow her to suffer, even if destroying her would destroy me, too.

Pulling her closer, I pressed my forehead against hers, my heart in splinters.

A vibration in the air heralded his arrival.

My breath stuttered as I raised my gaze, as I watched his form take shape before me. Unique among his kind due to his duty and curse, he could move and manifest outside of laws of space and distance. He could traverse the world in the blink of an eye, split his attention between millions of places.

After all, the Angel of Death needed to be everywhere, all at once.

I studied him as he stood before me, the pristine white wings, silver lightning dancing over the feathers, the gleaming armor, the proud set of his shoulders…those features that, despite my not having seen him in two thousand five hundred years, were achingly familiar. Because they were a mirror image of my own.

“Father,” I greeted him, my voice rough.

He’d come. I hadn’t believed it until the last second. Hadn’t thought he’d heed my call. Then again, I’d never tried to contact him before now. Perhaps his answer to my summons was borne of an irresistible kind of curiosity. Millennia of silence, only for me to request his presence now.

Because he was my last resort.

“Azazel.” He regarded me and the woman I held in my arms, his eyes of silver storms so reminiscent of my own. “Speak.”

To the point. No polite intro, no inclination to chat. Not that I cared for any of that either. It wasn’t the reason I’d called upon him.

“I need you to get her into Heaven,” I said without further ado.

His gaze fell once more onto Zoe, his expression unmoved. “She is not eligible. Her soul is slated for Hell.” He looked at me and narrowed his eyes. “You were bonded. I cannot ferry her into Heaven when her soul still bears the mark of a bond to a demon. She would not pass the gate.”

I resisted from baring my teeth at him, old resentment rising to the fore. “I don’t want you to ferry her soul—I want you to draft her.”

Azrael blinked, his eyes widening in shock, an almost comical slip of his stoic mien. He caught himself quickly, though, his gaze turning flinty. “Surely, you must be joking.”

I clenched my jaw, the thought flickering through me that Zoe would have a quip for this situation and reply with a cheeky, “I’m not, and don’t call me Shirley.” My heart fractured imagining I’d never hear her witty remarks and quirky repartees again.

I needed her in my life, needed her more than my next breath.

Which was why I was ready to beg on my knees in front of the father who’d abandoned me eons ago.

“I am,” I ground out, “deathly serious. Ascend her. Please.”

“She hasn’t made a sacrifice. She’s not a candidate for ascension.” He slashed his hand through the air. “There are rules.”

“It’s in your purview to interpret those rules!” I shot back. “You’re the Angel of Death. This falls in your jurisdiction—you can decide to turn her.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off.

“I have never”—my voice broke—“asked you for anything. You turned your back on us without a second glance, and I have not come to you for anything. For two thousand five hundred years, I have not had need of your help, your presence, your care. I have made no requests of you, though God knows I would have had cause.”

He winced at that, revealing a glimpse at some long-buried vulnerability.

I hefted Zoe closer, my soul aching at how she kept slipping away from me. “But I am asking you this now. Help her. Please. Help her, and I will ask no more of you, ever.”

Azrael examined me for the span of a few heartbeats, then he quietly asked, “If I do this for you, will you absolve me of my dereliction?”

I stared at him. In disbelief, in confusion, in simmering outrage. To ask me for forgiveness, after all this time, in exchange for saving the woman I loved.

To negotiate with me, when I had already begged him to help me.

The fury emanating from me made my wings tremble.

This, I knew well. Wrath, the heat of rage flowing through me, the urge to draw blood. This, I could handle.

What was harder to contend with was the hurt.

The corrosive ache of disappointment. The teeth-gritting anger at myself for even still having the capacity to be disappointed in someone who’d shown long ago that he was beyond hope.

I swallowed it all down, pushed it hard into the corners of my heart where I locked away the deepest pain.

This wasn’t about me.

“You have my forgiveness,” I grated out.

“Sworn in truth?”

I took a deep breath, my nostrils flaring. “I swear it on my mother.”

He flinched.

Good.

A last, vindictive thought before I let go of age-old resentment, of a grievance held on to for thousands of years. Not a feat to be done in seconds, but rather the start of a process that would take a lifetime.

But I’d sworn it in truth, and I would not break my word.

Azrael nodded once. “Then I will ascend her. Lay her on the ground and step back. I need space.”

Gently, I placed Zoe’s form on the floor, in a clear spot of pavement between the debris. Her eyes were unfocused, fine cracks spreading over her arms, creeping closer to her chest. She was running out of time. With trembling fingers, I pushed a strand of hair out of her face, then I backed up, giving Azrael the space he’d demanded.

He crouched next to her, and I reined in the protective impulse to lob off his hand as he laid it over her chest, right over her heart.

Closing his eyes, he murmured, “Rise to power, remade and reforged, bound in duty and privilege to God.”

Below his hand, light gleamed. Magic threaded around us.

“Rise in glory, reborn and refined, in humble service to our Lord.”

My skin began to itch. The white of my feathers glowed.

The light beneath Azrael’s hand spread, engulfed Zoe’s form…and erased all traces of decay on her skin, in her aura. Power charged the air, tasting both alluring and repulsive—the opposing forces of my dual heritage wreaking havoc on my senses.

“Rise, angel,” Azrael intoned and withdrew his hand, his voice vibrating with magic.

With a flash, the light pulsed through her. Zoe bucked, her back arching as she rose into the air as if pulled by a rope fastened around her middle. Power exploded from her, as if every single cell had been shot through with divine energy that now poured from her in a fiery shower of sparks.

The light became blinding, and I had to shield my eyes from the glare, the heat of heavenly power scorching my skin.

When the energy lessened, the glow fading, I lowered my arm from my face and stared—at the newborn angel before me.

Her dark hair flowing in a phantom breeze, her eyes closed, features smooth as if in a peaceful sleep, she was at once familiar and yet not—it was still Zoe, though every line and curve of her face and body was now ethereally enhanced. Gone was her ghostly form, that echo of her earthly body that she’d left behind in Hell. In its place floated a newly made, naked, truly physical body, crafted right from her soul, for that was the unique way angels and demons were created—our soul was our body. Unlike humans, we couldn’t separate the two.

I couldn’t stop staring at this new shape of her, at her glow of grace, the kiss of divinity evident in the silver sheen on her skin, the whisper of power in her aura…the sparkling white of her wings.

Her wings.

Awe-struck, I drank her in, at once marveling at the stunning changes to her appearance…and grieving the loss of her imperfections. That scar on her right knee where she’d crashed the first time she rode a bicycle. The fine white lines on the inside of her thighs, her skin showing how her body had grown into her own. That one toe on her right foot that was weirdly shorter than the one next to it.

All those little flaws that had made her beautifully human.

All of it had smoothed out, had been glossed over and “perfected”—despite the fact she’d been perfect already.

Profound sadness filled me as I realized I’d never again see the version of her I’d fallen in love with. That I’d lost this part of her forever.

Though it was, of course, tempered by the relief of not losing her entirely. She’d live, and that was all that mattered.

The last glow of her change faded from her form, and all of a sudden, she fell onto the ground, as if the power that had held her aloft had been switched off.

I jumped forward, ready to gather her into my arms, but Azrael moved into my way, blocking me with his body and wings.

“She is not yours any longer,” he said quietly, his eyes hard and cold as ore. “All bonds have been severed, all ties cut. You and her are now on different sides. She belongs to Heaven.”

I pressed my lips together, primal possessiveness heating my blood to boiling. My power made the air glimmer.

“Even should you try,” Azrael said in a low voice woven with warning, “she will not remember you.”

My energy stilled. My breathing flattened. “What do you mean?”

“All newly made angels start with a blank slate. The change wipes their memory. No knowledge of their former mortal life remains.” His features softened the slightest bit. “So I’d suggest you cherish the memories of your time together, for she has none left. The woman you loved is no more, and will never be again.”

My gaze fell onto Zoe, lying unconscious on the ground, her white wings draped over her naked form.

She will not remember you.

Tight bands wrapped around my chest, arrested my breath.

“You asked me to ascend her,” Azrael said, speaking into the dull silence of my rising despair, “and now I ask you to respect her new life in the service of Heaven. You have to let her go.”

I swallowed hard, my throat feeling like sandpaper, my eyes still on Zoe. My fingers twitched. “Allow me to say goodbye.”

A moment, suspended in time, then he nodded and stepped aside.

I sank to my knees next to her, reaching out with shaking hands. The moment I touched her, an ache pierced my heart, right where the bond we’d shared had once originated. Like the phantom pain after an amputation.

I gathered her up into my arms, pressed her close and buried my face in her neck. Breathed in her scent, both familiar and new. Felt her warmth, the weight of her, how her body still fit against mine as if crafted for that purpose alone.

Steely resolve strengthening every beat of my bruised heart, I pressed a kiss to her neck and then whispered into her ear, too low for Azrael to hear, “I’ll come for you, love. I will make you remember. You’re mine, Zoe, and no power in the world or beyond can keep you from me. You’re mine.”

I laid her back on the ground only for a moment, only long enough as it took me to loosen the leather plates of my fighting gear, strip them off and drop them next to me. I wore a tunic underneath, and I ripped it right off me and used the material to wrap it around Zoe’s naked body, creating a makeshift dress. She was still so much smaller than me that my tunic was large enough to cover her adequately.

Like Hell would I let my father carry her naked.

And when she woke, she’d be wrapped in my scent—even if she wouldn’t remember me.

Yet.

I picked her up once more, rose to my feet and then handed her over to Azrael, even though every single muscle and instinct within me protested the action. I wanted nothing more than to tear her from his arms and take her straight to Hell with me…only she wouldn’t pass the gate. Not with those wings of gleaming white.

So I stood back, reining in the urge to claim her again, and watched how Azrael launched into the sky with her, my only solace the knowledge that this was not a farewell forever.

Because I sure as fuck intended to corrupt a certain newly made angel.

* * *

Thankyou for reading Till Heaven Do Us Part!

I know, I know, it’s a mean cliffhanger! *ducks and runs away* Zoe and Azazel will return soon in the final book in the Infernal Covenant trilogy, Hell Over Heels, which is set to release on April 26, 2024. You can already preorder it here: Click!

And if you don’t want to miss any updates, be sure to sign up for my newsletter! Subscribers get an exclusive bonus scene for my books every month and are the first to hear about book news.

I also have an active reader group on Facebook where I usually post teasers of my work-in-progress and interact with my fans.

Much love,

Nadine