“Now that we’ve got this boat, we need to figure out where we’re going.” I plopped into one of the wing-backed chairs in the library. Yes, Lilith had even sorted out a library for her Rhode Island getaway mansion. It was complete with two long walls of built-in oak shelves packed full with reading material. There was a fireplace at the far end of the room, sandwiched between two floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out at the beach. Scattered throughout the room were several comfy reading chairs with their own little tables and footstools. It reminded me of the library back home, one of the few things I missed about Celestia.

I felt a twinge in my heart. Even though I’d gladly do everything all over again, and even though I’d choose to fall again if given the chance, there were still things about my situation that made me feel less than fantastic. The fight at the docks had reminded me of that.

The whole half-demon thing, for one. Sure, I’d learned from Lilith that not all demons are horrible monstrous creatures that want to destroy everything that is good in the world. And Az, with his horrible history, had taught me that there are a heckinbob lot of angels out there who are the absolute worst. So, I knew things were a little bit more complicated than black and white. Logically, I understood that being a demon didn’t mean I deserved to be locked up for the rest of eternity.

But logic and I weren’t always friends, and it certainly didn’t make this any easier. It was as if my entire identity had been ripped out from under me. I’d always thought I’d known who I was, and I’d been confident in it. Now, all of that certainty and confidence had gone up in flames. Literally. Who was I now? And what did it even mean?

Questions for another day, I guessed. Right now, we needed to find out where Berith might have taken that damn amulet.

“You’ve got that distant look on your face again.” Lizzie handed me the half-translated book and settled into the chair beside mine, folding her legs underneath her. She wore an all-black outfit that she liked to sport during training exercises, and it suited her. Lizzie was really starting to fit into her new place in the Order. “Are you upset about what happened on the boat?”

“I don’t know if upset is the right word,” I said, sighing. “I’m more…melancholic. I don’t know who or what I am anymore, Lizzie. I know you’re kind of going through the same thing. You chose to stay here, too, but you’re still you. The angel daughter of two perfectly normal angels.”

“The fire demon thing doesn’t make you not you, Erela.” She gave me a sad smile and pressed a long strand of silver-blonde hair behind her ear. “You’re the same girl I’ve always known. The only major difference I see is that you’ve stopped using your nonsense words, like shitoodles and heckinbob.”

A flutter of movement whispered from behind my head, and a soft, warm blob landed on my shoulder. A pair of whispers twitched at my cheek, making a smile creep onto my face. “Hi, Mr. Whiskerson.”

It was my rat. Well, he wasn’t my rat, really. He was his own damn self, free to go wherever he pleased. As it turned out, he liked my company, though that probably had something to do with the fact I’d saved him from a hungry Archdemon who had wanted to turn him into dinner. That was the reason I’d ended up in Lower Realm in the first place. And now, Mr. Whiskerson had a tendency of sticking to my side. Sometimes, it even felt like he could understand human conversation.

But that was ridiculous. He might be smart, but he wasn’t that smart.

“See, your rat pal agrees,” Lizzie said, reaching out to give Mr. Whiskerson a scratch behind his little ears. “Besides, it might not look like I’m having trouble adapting, but I am.” Her voice suddenly went very soft. “I miss Isaac.”

“Ah, Isaac.” I sighed and shook my head. Isaac had been part of our trio up in Celestia. The three of us had been inseparable. He’d had the bright idea to go out for drinks in the neutral territory the night before my initiation ceremony, and that had been the last time I’d ever laid eyes on him. I’d been worried that the Archdemon from the bar would toss him down to earth to punish me even more (just like he’d done with Lizzie), but there hadn’t been a peep from that particular pain in my ass for awhile.

Isaac would probably love it down here. He’d always had a flair for trouble.

“He’s probably worried out of his mind, you know.” Lizzie shifted in her chair, biting her bottom lip. “He was freaked out when that demon sent you down here. He said he was going to go straight to your father, but…well, you know how hard it is to get Michael scheduled for a meeting.”

Oh, did I know. My father, Michael, was one of the Archangels. As such, he had a massive web of sons and daughters that spanned centuries. He also led the Order of the Seraphim, and he routinely led hosts on missions and battles against the demons. When I’d been young, I’d rarely had any time with him myself. My instructors at the Academy had raised me. I’d always assumed his distance from me was because of his busy schedule, but now that I knew what I was, I suspected it had been more than that.

He knew I was part fire demon.

“My father isn’t going to talk to Isaac.” I shook my head, finding it hard to speak around the pain and the heavy sense of abandonment. I didn’t want to go home, but I hated that my own flesh and blood didn’t give a rat’s ass about where I was. “And he’s certainly not going to make any attempt to come make sure we’re okay. He’s probably glad I’m down here, out of his way, to be honest. That way, none of his Archangel buddies will ever find out exactly what I am. And who he slept with.”

Needless to say, an Archangel sleeping with a fire demon? That wouldn’t go over very well. In fact, Gabriel had killed Az’s family when the Archangels had suspected his father of having a relationship with a demon. Half-angels and half-demons were an abomination to them.

We were the Nephilim, practically a curse word among the Archangels.

So, yeah. My dad would make no move to get me back home.

“Fuck him,” Lizzie said.

I lifted an eyebrow. “Now, Lizzie. Good little angels don’t use that kind of language. Keep talking like that and you’ll end up as part of the…” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Evil Order of the Fallen. They like to eat puppies in their spare time.”

Lizzie snorted. “Can you believe we fell for that crap?”

“No.” I shook my head and rolled my eyes, more at myself than anything. I’d been so gullible. “I honestly can’t. It sounds so insane now.”

The scent of spice and leather drifted into my nose, and the weight of the room suddenly shifted. I twisted in my chair to find Az standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest, his icy hair tied up in a tight bun. He lifted an eyebrow, shaking his head. “I came to see if you’d made any progress, but it sounds like you’re too busy talking about puppies to bother yourself with looking through some old books.”

“Oh, don’t get testy.” I stuck out my tongue at him. “We’re working on it.”

“Need any help?” He strode into the library, the width of his broad shoulders barely fitting through the door.

“Sure. If you really want to sit in here reading some dusty books that were written in Old Enochian.”

He grimaced.

Az was good at a great many things. Archery. Swordplay. Kissing.

Language translation wasn’t really his forte.

“That’s what I thought.” But despite his expression, I leaned forward and patted the free chair opposite Lizzie’s. At first I thought he’d object, but then he sauntered over and folded his muscular frame into the small seat. He made it look like a child’s chair.

“We’re about halfway through this book.” I held up the old tome. Even though we’d spent the past few days flipping through its pages, the thick leather cover still emitted a constant fog of dust whenever it moved. “This is the one with Berith’s portrait, though that page doesn’t say much that we didn’t already know.”

Mainly that he was an asshole who liked to make deals to screw people over. Apparently, he’d spent decades trapping humans this way, far before the portal had even opened. The author of the manuscript seemed to find the entire thing incredibly amusing and had detailed a long list of his various deals.

“It’s become blatantly obvious that a demon wrote this book, so the details he’s chosen to share aren’t exactly helpful.” I pointed at a passage two pages past Berith’s portrait. “Here, he’s telling a story about how Berith made a human King think he was dying. In order to save his life, he had to repeatedly kill off his wives as sacrifices.”

Az let out a low whistle. “Henry the Eighth. I always wondered about him.”

“Yeah, well. Berith had a lot of fun with the guy. But then he eventually got bored and gave him some kind of disease.” I flipped the pages, pointing at a drawing of a coffin, presumably of the dead King.

“That’s interesting and all, Erela…” Az leaned closer, and I could feel his hot breath on my lips. It was all I could do not to stumble forward so that my lips would fall right on top of his. He hadn’t kissed me since…well, since Ramiel had yelled at us for kissing, and I wasn’t going to be the one to make the next move. “But we don’t need stories about old Kings. We need some kind of hint about where Berith would take the amulet or open the portal.”

“You think you can do better?” I asked with a flicker of irritation. Az drove me absolutely crazy sometimes. There were moments when I had the urge to plop a bucket full of water on top of his head. And then there were other moments when I wanted to actually watch rivulets of water dripping down his skin...

And, of course, a lot of the time I wanted to do both at once.

He was infuriating. And annoying. But he made me feel alive.

Not to mention the fact that he’d once told me that he loved me.

And it didn’t hurt that he was sculpted to perfection.

Az practically growled, his eyes reflecting the heat I felt in my core. “Give me the book.”

“Is this one of those times when I should politely excuse myself and Mr. Whiskerson from the room?” Lizzie asked dryly. “You know, so you and Az can be alone?”

“No,” Az and I growled in unison.

“Yeah, if you say so,” Lizzie said, not sounding convinced.

Az didn’t reply. Instead, he grabbed the book from my hands and frowned down at it. After a few moments, his eyes began to cross, and he flipped the page to read the next passage. Or, pretended to read, anyway. He didn’t know Old Enochian any better than any of the other members of this Order. Only Lizzie and I had studied any element of this language.

After a few silent moments of flipping pages and glaring, he finally sighed and dropped the book back onto my lap. “Fine. You win. I can’t read that shit.”

A satisfied smile spread across my lips. “Are you conceding that I can actually do something better than you?”

“Don’t get too smug or I’ll suggest that Ramiel start you up on some training again.”

My smile died. Ramiel’s definition of training was a lot different than mine. I happened to think of it as something that involved learning swordplay combinations, steady breathing exercises, and centering one’s mind on the task at hand.

Ramiel seemed to think that knocking me onto my ass was an appropriate teaching method. Something about learning to expect the unexpected and being prepared to bounce back after suffering from a serious blow.

I didn’t want to admit that his training had made me quicker on my feet, but it had. Just not quick enough. Yet.

“I’ll stick to translation for now, thanks,” I merely replied before glancing back down at the book before me, sighing. Az had flipped through so many pages that he’d lost my place. Most of the pages looked the same, and I hadn’t used a ribbon to mark the page I’d been translating. “Ugh, this is probably going to take me an hour to sort back out.”

“Wait.” Lizzie’s head popped closer, and she placed the tip of her fingernail against the old parchment. “What’s that?”

“It’s a castle,” Az said, stating the obvious.

The author of the book had hastily scratched out the outline of a castle near the sea. It stood tall and commanding on a cliff, the towers casting dark shadows on the beach far below. My eyes skipped down the words written just below it. For a moment, the library was full of silence while my mind worked through the translation.

I gasped when the words clicked together in my brain.

“It says that Berith once lived here, during the reign of Henry the Eighth. It was part of their deal. The King gave the demon this land in exchange for his support and counsel. This was Berith’s home, Az.”

Az gave a nod, his own eyes lighting up with excitement. “If this was his home once, he might have taken the amulet there for safe-keeping. We know where we need to sail.”