The mist cleared as Eden walked.

Glided was probably a better word. As if this misty world had no friction, and her bare feet could just slide along the clouded crystal floor. She heard children, and it made her smile inside, although her face was frozen—stiff like it was straining too hard at something unknown, unseen. But holding fixed that way was essential. She knew this. One laugh would undo her. One frown might unravel her like a skein of yarn just waiting for someone to pluck a string, and then she would spin and spin and spin…

She was spinning now, and the mist swirled around her.

The children’s laughter grew.

Eden flung her hands out to stop. She wore a white gown, and it had twirled with her, but now it came to a rest, winding around her legs then swinging back.

She held still.

The spinning had stopped, so it was safe to go on.

She kept her blank expression fixed and glided forward, waving the mist away. It parted and revealed a playground of clouds. Children with tiny white wings bounced from one to the other, some game, but a kind one. Bouncing and catching and bouncing again, they were chasing each other and laughing, laughing… their laughter was a song, filled with beauty and harmony. A tiny one crawled along the mist-kissed floor, stirring the nascent clouds with her perfect little body clad only in a diaper. The baby reached for the cloud-things, which were as substantial as cushions then misty like air but definitely out of reach.

Eden hurried forward to lift the little one. Her skin was delightfully soft, and her big eyes turned to Eden with wonder, the cloud forgotten. A tiny-fingered hand reached for Eden’s face, and the child’s touch made her want to weep with happiness. But she couldn’t. She must show no emotion, not a single crack in her façade, even as the child’s bright-eyed wonder lifted her heart. The baby’s hands explored her face, touching it everywhere.

One child on the clouds called for her, and the baby turned. She reached her short arms toward the playing children, and tiny wings burst forth from her back. Their feathers were soft as down and brushed Eden’s arms as the baby struggled to escape.

To be free.

Eden lifted her high and released her, even though it left a vacuum, a quiet emptiness, in her arms. A chill washed over her, raising goosebumps as if the tiny hairs on her arms wished to fly away as well. She folded her arms against her chest, hugging herself to stay warm, careful to keep her face fixed, immobile, unfeeling.

To feel is to spin. To spin is to unravel. To unravel is to be undone.

And she had a cloud full of children to care for.

One called to her, perched on his fluffy white seat—a young boy, bare feet dangling from the diaphanous ledge. He smiled, and it captured her—his child-sized teeth, perfectly straight. His brilliant blue eyes, alive and intelligent.

He called her name, beckoning her with a slight curl of his fingers.

Her feet glided across the misty floor until she reached him. She had to look up, he was perched so high above her. She wanted to ask him, What do you need? But her face was fixed so she could form no words. Instead, she just peered at him, trying to understand his perfect smile, his angelic face, the words that were falling from his rosy lips. She couldn’t—they were in the child-language. Angel-speak. For she knew what they were. Pure and innocent. Belonging to God. She was just their guardian, but that was okay. That’s all she had ever wanted to be.

The one who watched over.

The one who protected.

The one who saved.

“Eden,” the boy-angel said, his voice suddenly clear but coming from far away, like a bell rung in the distance. “I’ve come to help you.”

She couldn’t frown. Couldn’t speak. Her face must remain fixed. But she tilted her head, studying him. He was just a child. He was confused. Because she was here to help him.

She lifted her arms to him, reaching for the perfect boy on the cloud—

Everything faded.

The children, the clouds, the mist—all lost color and brilliance and faded into nothingness as if they had never existed. Her arms were still reaching—but for a man.

A man humming with power.

She gasped and pulled back, hastily reeling her arms in, heart lurching as she folded them across her chest and buried her face in her hands. Everything inside her constricted. No, no, no. The room telescoped down to a tunnel of darkness with the man’s face at the end. She slid a hand down to protect her belly—her child—and kept the other shielding her face, squeezing her eyes shut. If she didn’t look at him, didn’t acknowledge him, maybe he would go. Maybe he would leave her alone.

But she knew that was stupid. He would do what he wanted.

Her whole body convulsed with the anticipation of his touch.

No, no, no. Please, go away. Please don’t…

She didn’t know this man, but it didn’t matter—she knew his kind. Eyes deceive, words lie, but that hum in the air, that power emanating from him… her heart knew what he was.

And he had come for her.

She twitched with his nearness. Her lungs burned. She gasped because she had to breathe. Had to keep breathing. Had to keep her heart beating. No matter what. She must live until… until the baby could live… beyond that…

“I’m sorry.” A deep voice. The words echoed in her head. Sorry, sorry, sorry. They made no sense.

She stayed huddled in her chair. She could endure this. She would endure this. She would escape to somewhere else inside, again and again, as often as necessary to stay alive. There was no other option. She would go there now… back to the misty land, the place where the children were sweet and innocent and pure…

“Eden, I will not touch you.”

Touch.

The touching was the worst. Not the actual act of violation because by that time, she was already lost in the revulsive pleasure the angel’s touch had brought. Elyon. It always started with him touching her… and at that moment, she could still remember herself. She knew she had no choice, that she did not wish for his touch or the pleasure that came with it, but it was forced upon her, like a lollipop jammed down her throat, making her choke, until… eventually… the choking subsided, and the pleasure swamped her mind. Then her body did his bidding. Willingly. It was a nightmare, uncontrolled and surreal, her body jumping and jerking against the overwhelming, humming force of his, all his power taking over her mind, her body, her will.

When it was done, she was spent and sick and in pieces, she had to slowly gather herself, bit by bit, to reassemble the person she was. She knew she had no choice—that she could stop none of it—but that didn’t keep her from burning with shame that she hadn’t. That, somehow, miraculously, with her meager human body, she should have been able to stop the enormous demonic power of his. It was stupid. Worse, it was damaging. She knew that. Yet, she felt it all the same.

Her mind had practiced running away—it was the one thing she could control—and now she had gotten so good at it that the misty world seemed like home and the nursery was the nightmare.

“Eden, I promise you.” The angel was still near her, still talking. Her eyes were still shut. “I won’t touch you at all. I just want to help the baby.”

The baby.

She gasped in air—she’d been holding her breath again, willing him away. She opened one eye, peering at him between her fingers splayed across her face.

His gaze was intense—blue eyes like the sky at dusk—but he had moved back. Out of arm’s reach, both hers and his. And his body… it wasn’t the oversized, dominating one that Elyon had always used with her. She’d seen the angel in many forms. It was part of her degradation for him to take her in that way—the head of a goat but the body of a man. Hooves and haunches of a horse, head of a dragon, but always a man where it mattered—the parts he used to violate her and bring that horrifying, shameful pleasure, again and again. She shuddered, reflexively, at the memory, but this man before her—the one beseeching her with his eyes but keeping his hands to himself—this angel appeared nothing more than a man.

Oh, she knew what he was—the power was rolling off him and trembling the air—but he chose to appear as merely a man. If she didn’t know better, if she hadn’t spent months in a hellish underworld, she could have mistaken him for an ordinary twenty-something human. Blue eyes. Long jet-black hair tucked behind his ears. Not ordinary in any real sense—in the outside world, his kind of beauty would grace magazine covers and major motion pictures. But he could be confused for mortal in this form he had taken.

Why?

“Will you let me?” he asked.

Her body automatically twitched in response, and she almost closed her one eye again.

“Let me help the baby, I mean,” he added hastily, frowning, eyes roaming her tucked-up form. But he wasn’t lascivious with that gaze. He wasn’t caressing her with it for his own pleasure. He was looking for something.

The baby.

Elyon had only asked about her child—his child—once. It was after he had finished with her, and the violence of it had left her bruised and unable to move without gripping her belly to keep the contents inside. If you lose this one, he’d said, I will simply make another.

Another chill ran through her with that memory. But that moment was when she had vowed to live—to endure it all so her child could be born and escape. Even if she never would. Even if she knew it would destroy her in the end.

Yet this angel wanted to help her baby?

She stopped squinting and opened both eyes. She even let her hand fall a little from her face so she could see this angel… this different angel. He wasn’t whisking her away from the nursery. He still sat, kneeling down on the carpet, with an earnest expression, waiting patiently for her to respond.

“The baby?” Her voice cracked. How long had it been since she’d spoken? She couldn’t remember.

“Yes, the baby.” He seemed relieved that she was speaking, even if it was just a croak. “I have a blessing I’d like to give. I won’t have to touch you—I can do it from here.” He held his hands open, palms up as if to show he was unarmed.

But she knew better. She knew what he was. “No blessing.” She shook her head no in small motions, and she dropped her hand the rest of the way from her face. Behind him stood a female angeling. Laylah, her memory told her from one snatch of conversation she’d caught between the angeling and Ren. Eden’s heart quickened, and her gaze darted around the room… Ren was by her side.

“It’s okay,” Ren said, her eyes wide and her hand braced on the back of Eden’s chair. She was kneeling as well. “Micah has given me blessings for the baby before. It’s a good thing, Eden. I promise.”

Ren was her sister—well, her sister in imprisonment, although she didn’t endure it the way Eden had. The two plus Molly… three sisters… and they’d almost made their escape. A small taste of freedom. Then an angeling brought them back to Hell.

Molly had escaped again, but she’d left them behind.

There was a time when she trusted both Molly and Ren with her life—now, everything was a blur. Confused.

“I have to protect the baby,” she said to Ren. She couldn’t be more clear than that. It was all she lived for.

“I know, sweetie.” Ren’s face twisted and tears glistened at the corners of her eyes. “That’s why you need a blessing. For the baby.”

“For the baby,” she repeated, dully, her tongue thick. Whatever this was, whatever this thing this angel wanted from her, she would only do it if it actually helped the baby. Ren wouldn’t steer her wrong on that. She hoped.

“That’s right,” Ren said then looked to the angel-man kneeling a few feet from her.

Eden’s gaze followed, but he was still waiting, holding back, looking for a sign from her. Somehow that made the difference—he was allowing her the choice.

She nodded, once and slowly, to him. “For the baby.”

Relief washed over his face, transforming it from taut male beauty to something more serene for being relaxed. A natural expression of warmth enlivened it and made her stare.

Then he closed his eyes and held out his hand.

She felt it right away, sucking in a breath of shock and clutching both hands to her belly. Life. Energy. Hope. The words floated in her mind, bubbling up from the pulsing sensation deep inside her. It went on and on, her heart fluttering with it, her hands holding her belly snug. Then the most extraordinary thing—the baby leaped in her womb. She gasped again, her breath now ragged with wonder. She hadn’t felt the baby move yet, but now… it danced with this burst of angel energy, this blessing.

It ended, and the angel opened his eyes.

His gaze captured hers and held it. Not by magic, but by the flush of heat in her cheeks, the new life in her belly, the uplift that spilled over and embraced her heart. She had no words. He didn’t seem to need any, but the way he looked at her, she could tell—he was peering into her soul. When the others had done so—the angelings scrutinizing her, even Elyon and his piercing stare, it had always felt like being flayed alive, pulled apart, piece by piece. Before, she couldn’t take it and had to look away. But now, with this one… it was different.

He looked at her like he wanted to put her back together, not pull her apart.

She just returned his stare.

“When the baby needs more,” he whispered, “I’ll return.”

She didn’t reply. Didn’t say a word or give a nod or anything. She was transfixed by him. The frozen part of her—the part that couldn’t move a muscle or smile or frown without shattering her tenuous hold on this life—was awash in the reflected glow of the blessing for the baby. The tiniest bit of her thawed. Just a small edge… not enough to risk… anything.

He nodded, then rose and turned toward the door.

Eden curled up again, knees falling to the side, her arms folding around her belly. She stared at the nothing spot in the center of the carpet, but her urgent need to disappear into her misty world was lessened. Her body hummed.

He had given her some of his power.

Her heart still pounded with it, her face still flushed, her breathing still ragged.

She heard him speak. “Bring her everything she needs.” His deep voice rumbled through the words.

“Yes, my lord.” That was Laylah’s higher-pitched voice. “But I can’t make her take it, Razael.”

Razael. He has a name.

He said something more, but it was outside the nursery, the soft swish of the door closing and covering their words like a blanket.

Her mind drifted on the hum buzzing her body. The baby within her squirmed a little, flush with this new energy. It sparked something else inside her—something deep and hollow. Something she’d not noticed before in the urgent, necessary need to hold everything together.

She blinked, and the nursery came back into focus. Ren was watching her closely, bouncing little Eva as she fussed. Baby Ralphie slept in his crib next to where Ren stood.

An ache, deep in Eden’s belly spoke even more insistently, so foreign she’d almost forgotten what it was. But an instant later, she knew. For the first time since she’d been dragged back to this shadowy, hellish realm…

Eden was hungry.