The heavy double doors slam, cutting us off from Lucifer and Michael, and everything freezes.

The zombies back off immediately, staggering away through the other open doorways without giving us a second look. As soon as the last walking corpse disappears down the hallway, Grace and I practically sprint to the door.

“Don’t touch it,” I order, crouching down to inspect the handle. “You can’t trust anything in this house.” I hover my hand over the ornately carved silver handle and feel the whisper of magic curled around it. Sighing, I duck my head. Of course. Why would anything be easy?

“Lucifer? Michael?” I call.

“Are you two all right?” Lucifer’s muffled voice is barely audible through the screen of magic and the thick layer of oak.

“We’re fine,” Grace replies. “The zombies backed off as soon as the door shut.”

“The door’s warded from the outside.” I lean as close to the door as I dare, straining to hear them both. “I’m not even sure what it is, but it’s nasty. I can try to get through it, but-”

“Don’t risk it,” Michael interrupts, and I relax just a bit more at the sound of his voice. “Don’t worry about us, just watch yourselves.”

Walking away from them feels like a terrible decision, but it’s the only choice we have. Grace and I turn away from the door and head deeper into the house, feeling like every clichéd horror movie heroine deciding that the best option is to split up and cover more ground.

At least no one said, “I’ll be right back.”

The sense of wrongness builds with every step, a thick dread that catches in the back of your throat like a sickness. Every inch of the house is decorated in flowers or golden filigree, a Victorian level of absurd opulence with the juxtaposition of death in the air that makes my skin crawl even more.

A vacant warehouse or a crumbling cabin would make sense. China cabinets and gold-lacquered mirrors don’t.

For all that she suffered during the spell to strengthen their bond, I envy Grace. Lucifer’s presence wraps around her like a balm, a comforting reminder to each of them that the other is still breathing.

I don’t have that protection, and I already feel like every nerve is stripped raw after casting spell after spell. It’s like I’m still caught in the blood memory that lead me here, the heavy scent of decay lingering in the air that no amount of flowers can cover up.

Grace doesn’t comment, but I know she senses that soul-deep rot as well.

I could have chosen this path. If Lucifer hadn’t come to me, I might have chosen this in my search for power and buried myself so deeply in vengeance and corruption that no light could reach me again.

This could have been me.

And Caila is here – kind, loving Caila who devoted her eternity to protecting those who needed it most. Not for vengeance or anger or even a misguided sense of guilt. Because it was the right thing to do.

We pause at the foot of the curved staircase, the emerald green of the carpet directing us upward just like an arrow. The zombies are gone, leaving nothing behind but the few hacked off limbs littering the foyer, and there’s nowhere to go but up.

The stairs are silent, the thick pile of the carpet muffling our footfalls, and Grace and I keep to the center of the stairs, avoiding the banisters out of pure habit. At the top of the stairs are several rooms with heavy wooden doors, closed and no doubt locked, but at the end of this hallway the largest hangs open, the dazzling rays of the afternoon sun streaming through.

I glance at Grace, and she nods, taking a step forward until she’s beside me instead of a few steps behind.

Whatever’s coming, we face it as equals.

We walk through the door into another room straight out of a high-end home décor magazine. Except I’ve never noticed iron chains bolted to the floor gracing the pages of Town and Country.

“Elissa. Grace. I’ve been waiting.”

I barely notice the small brunette that speaks. I only see Caila. A heavy iron chain is fastened to the collar around her neck, every link etched with spells and sigils. When she hears our names, her head snaps up, a look of pure alarm flashing across her dirt and blood streaked face.

Another figure is chained a few feet away, this one male. His arms are wrapped around his knees as though he’s trying to make himself as small as possible. He looks up for a moment and I hear Grace gasp the name, “Phenex.”

Phenex. I squint my eyes, trying to reconcile this dirty, broken creature with the beautiful angel that followed Lucifer’s steps. His clothes are little more than rags, the once-white suit stained with blood and filth and pock-marked with slits and holes.

What has she been doing to them?

“Now that we’ve all made our intros, I have a proposal for you both.”

I take a deep breath, summoning every shred of restraint I’ve ever had to keep from launching myself at this woman. . . this creature and tearing her apart.

She’s lounging between the two chained angels on a chair that can only be described as a throne, high-backed and white except for the golden lion’s paws holding it up, it’s as ostentatious as everything else in this house. Her legs are slung over the chair’s arm, the white silk of her pants flowing over a pair of nude patent pumps with blood red soles.

“Oh Elissa,” she tuts, the haughty tone of her voice infuriating familiar. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember me.” She climbs to her feet with an ease borne of centuries of pampered living, and I look beyond the uptown pretension, beyond the Louboutins and the impeccably styled chestnut brown of her hair to remember powdered wigs and corsets and yards of impractical lace.

“Brielle?”

“Glad to see you still remember some things.”

Oh yes, I remember.

The Sun King is at the height of his power, and his glittering palace of Versailles has barely been completed for a season when I first lay eyes on Brielle Carrette.

The first seeds of the revelation have already been sewn when the glorious structure rose up, casting its golden shadow on the starving peasants, but the time of reckoning and guillotines is still years in the future, and the elite still wield their power without discrimination, seeking endless increases to their wealth and influence.

And none are so pious as to bar a witch from a place in their court provided that witch is beautiful and talented enough to earn her seat at the table.

We three more than met those criteria.

Brielle is the daughter of a minor country lord who hungers for more and finds it in Roux Baptiste. The wildness that drips from the two of them like so many jewels proves intoxicating to the members of the court already bored with the decadent excesses of their small lives. Even buried under powdered wigs and with their skin painted the color of fine porcelain, there is no mistaking those two for just another pair of striking nobles.

Scraps of rumors about a comely young witch and her even more powerful lover have been filtering down to me for the better part of a year. I haven’t been searching for them, but I’m far from unaware of who and what they are when our paths finally cross.

Any who can claim a drop of noble blood make the pilgrimage to Versailles to curry favor and gaze upon the majesty that the ego of Louis le Grand has wrought, and even I am not immune to the draw of that spectacle.

Nor am I immune to the charms of Brielle and Roux.

What Brielle lacks in discretion or breeding she more than makes up for in beauty, and it’s the talk of the court that winter how her father allows her to gallivant across the country unchaperoned and unmarried.

Roux is not the marrying type.

In those early days, no one knew where he came from or who his family was. He snatched the name Baptiste from the air, claiming it as his own with the same rashness that lead him to claim Brielle.

But the first moment I lay eyes upon them, I know that Roux isn’t just another witch. He’s something much more powerful and much more terrifying.

Nephilim.

The angelic offshoots are as varied as humans in their personalities and their abilities, but they all have one thing in common.

Short lifespans.

Some are strong as a dozen men, some see visions of the future, some can heal or kill with a touch. But no matter what powers their Heavenly parentage might have bestowed upon them, they never have long in this world before Heaven finds them and cuts them down like a dog in the streets.

Roux is already living on borrowed time, and he knows it, so he uses those stolen days to live as he wishes. I can find no fault in that, even if his methods are less than orthodox.

Roux cannot lift oxen over his head, nor does he have visions of the future. His touch can incite desire as any handsome man’s can, but he doesn’t hold life and death in his uncalloused palms.

But his voice? His voice can remake the world in whatever image he wishes.

It takes only a whisper of suggestion from Roux’s lips and the words become a worm tunneling into the quarry's brain, subverting their will and replacing it with Roux’s own.

My first true sense of his power came a scant few weeks before our first encounter. Roux had selected a viscount, nearly at random, and with a few honeyed words convinced the man that he was a long forgotten bastard son. The viscount had the misfortune to have bred three daughters but not a single boy, and suddenly Roux found himself in possession of a bloodline and an ancient ancestral home.

And just like that the whispers about Brielle’s behavior were abruptly silenced. Lack of propriety never seemed to matter much as long as the right name is attached to the sins.

I wasn’t blind to the danger of the games they played. Brielle shucked off her innocence at the first chance, and I could hardly blame her for wanting to be free of the stifling world she was born into. And once Roux set his eyes on her, decorum and obedience gave way to mutual obsession.

And when they chose to make room in their little circle for me, it was intoxicating and impossible to resist.

Brielle’s charms went many miles beyond a pretty face and pleasing company. She learned to read fortunes at the feet of her family’s servants, awakening abilities long dormant in her bloodline.

The women who scoured the stone floors and cooked the meals taught the pretty dark-eyed child how to pry the future from bones and shells and wisps of smoke, filling her ears with memories of Barbados, of freedom in a land without the bitter cold.

I never learn their names, those servant women who risked violence and abuse to mold Brielle’s young mind to their liking, but I can’t help admiring them, even if they were the ones that put her on the path to darkness. Stolen away from their homes and their lives, it seems only fitting that they steal their captor’s daughter away from the life he imagined for her.

And when Roux caught Brielle’s scent, there was no turning back.

I meet them the first time at a soiree after one of the tedious court dinners. The unmarried girls preening themselves as they search for a wealthy husband have been sent to bed in the care of their hawk-eyed mothers, leaving the men, the harlots, and the lucky widows to sip brandy and play cards.

Snow falls outside the palace, adding another layer to the thick blanket of white coating the countryside. Tiny chunks of ice cling to the hem of my petticoats, weighing the heavy lace of my skirts down even more.

Laughter rings out like a bell as I enter the drawing room, and when I scan the crowd for the source, there they are. A few strands of Roux’s russet hair peek out from beneath the powdered wig, but I don’t need to know his name or see that unusual hair to know him. Even seated his height is apparent, and when he stands as one of the women leaves the table, the other men look like children beside him. The power flows around him, so strong the air shimmers like the stone of the roads in the summer heat, and it’s like looking at Michael again, uncanny and still so beautiful.

There is no mistaking Roux for anything but something other.

His slate blue eyes flick up from his cards and meet mine. His mouth curls into a wide smile, his teeth a white slash through the pink of his full lips. Without breaking my gaze he leans closer to Brielle and speaks loud enough for me to hear from across the room, “I believe the one you saw is finally here.”

Brielle rises from her seat and strides across the room toward me, the satin of her emerald green gown rustling with each measured step. One her age rarely wears such dark colors. Even I clothe myself in light blues and shades of silver to hide my own otherness in plain sight.

Not Brielle. A walnut sized emerald rests in the hollow of her throat, the same stone I saw around the wrinkled neck of a dowager countess a few weeks past. No doubt the old woman would declare it a gift if asked, but I know better.

She stares at me as though appraising the value of a new gemstone she wishes to acquire or a prized racehorse she’s considering betting on. The tendrils of her mind press against mine as her dark eyes rake across my body, and I almost mentally bat her away out of pure reflex.

Almost.

Something about them both intrigues me even though every instinct screams at me to keep my distance from their madness. I’ve barely spent five minutes in their presence, and they have both proven that the word discretion is not in their vocabulary. Already whisperings in the church from as far as Rouen speak of their exploits across the countryside.

Heaven has no place for half-breeds, and if God’s servants here on Earth are beginning to question him it will only be a matter of time until the angels take notice and come down to mete out their own idea of justice.

And yet, I still sit down beside them and pick up my own hand of cards, tossing a fistful of silver coins into the growing pile of wagers.

“I’m Elissa.”

Roux bares those white teeth in a smile again, and I think of wolves and tigers, beasts that show their teeth as a reminder that their clenched jaws are just waiting for the chance to close around the next yielding throat.

“We know.”

Brielle laughs again, the sound high and free like the breaking of glass, and I know how dangerous the forces they’re toying with are. I know that it’s not a matter of if Heaven finds them, but when.

But then Roux presses a glass of brandy into my hand and Brielle whispers to me in that musical voice unbroken by loss and deprivation that “we can learn so much from each other.” I toss my cards down onto the table, barely noticing the bad hand as Brielle leans closer, the heady scent of roses floating around her and adds, “You and I will be like sisters. I’ve seen it!”

Underneath the powder caking her skin is the flush of youth and the maddening excitement of freedom. Her eyes linger on Roux, and he feels her gaze. Without looking, he slides his cards from one hand to the other, twining the fingers on his free hand with Brielle’s before pulling her closer and kissing each delicate knuckle.

She’s so young, her heart still so breakable, and when Heaven takes him from her, she’ll be alone.

A witch alone and shattered can do terrible things.

“I’d very much like to hear more about what you’ve seen,” I say, and Brielle beams. I wonder if I ever carried such trust in my heart.

For one golden year, I did.

I don’t need the sight to see Brielle barreling heedlessly down the same path I trod so many years ago, but perhaps I can keep history from repeating itself.

Winter still clings to the land with its corpse-cold fingers when the angels come for Roux.

Two months have passed since that midwinter eve when I met them both, and since that night the three of us have been thick as thieves. Slowly but surely my guard has dropped away, and the wild and careless pair have clawed their way into my affections.

That all ends one night with the scent of fire and the screams of horses.

I’m ripped from sleep by the sound of frantic voices echoing through the darkened inn, and when I throw back the heavy velvet curtains the grounds are lit as bright as day, the sky orange with fire. Roux and Brielle are missing, and I don’t need to see wings to know that the angels have found us.

I barely pause to grab a shawl to wrap around the thin shift I wear. The icy March wind cuts through me but I barely feel it as I follow the trail of blood through the snow, away from the inn to where the burning stable lights the night skies.

The sharp crisp scent that has always whispered Heaven to me cuts through the scents of smoke and the scorched fur from the dying beasts trapped in the barn, and I rush towards the blaze. With each step closer the snow melts more under my feet, soaking through my thin slippers, my skin already numb.

Under the frantic shrieks of the dying horses I hear Brielle screaming, “Get back!”

The doorway looks like the gate to Hell the clergy so loves to speak of, but I don’t hesitate as I rush towards it. I’m close enough that the heat singes the edge of my shawl when two arms yank me backward, nearly pulling me off my feet.

“You can’t save them, madam!” the innkeeper yells as he drags my struggling form away from the fire. More and more of the snow melts into a slick mire of mud as men rush with buckets of water from the half-frozen well to toss uselessly into the blaze.

I struggle free, striking him with an elbow and twisting away from his well-meaning grip, but I barely make it two steps before the roof caves in and Brielle’s voice is abruptly silenced.

I drop to my knees in the mud, filth soaking through the white cloth of my shift. The men rush around me as they fight the desperate battle to beat back the flames before the wind can carry a stray ember to the roof of the inn.

Somewhere underneath it all, I hear wings.

“You died,” I blurt out, and a crumpled copy of a smile crosses Brielle’s face at my words.

“Did I now?”

Her accent is different, centuries away from her homeland dimming the French, but the cadence is still the same. The wigs and corsets are gone, traded for a sleek blowout and white silk, but underneath it all it’s still her. Even the decorations make sense. Brielle always did hate the cold, so she found somewhere warm to build her own private Versailles. She even gave herself a throne.

And something in the back of my mind whispers, never trust a survivor until you find out just what they did to stay alive.

“You died,” I repeat, taking a step closer.

Brielle tosses her hair back over her shoulder with the same defiance she showed centuries ago. “Roux taught me many things before Heaven slaughtered him, and so did you. Obviously, I didn’t die in that stable.”

Her fingers tighten on Caila’s chain, yanking her upward. Caila lets out a pained yelp as the collar cuts into her throat, and it’s only Grace’s hand gripping my arm that keeps me from ripping the chain from Brielle’s hand.

“Imagine my surprise when I discover you call one of them your friend,” she spits. She grabs the other chain from where it pools on the floor, dragging Phenex closer. He stumbles as he tries to rise to his feet, keeping his eyes downcast.

Even from a few feet away he looks so much worse than Caila. His wings drag on the ground behind him, one hanging at an awkward angle, the delicate bones obviously snapped, and the downy white feathers are broken and twisted and as filthy as the rest of his body. The charred odor of brimstone hangs in the air, almost blocking out the clean ozone scent of angel.

“He’s Fallen.” Grace’s voice rings out. “He’s not one of Heaven’s.”

Brielle chuckles, wrapping a few more links of Phenex’s chain around her hand and tugging him closer. He nearly falls again but manages to shuffle forward. She reaches her hand up to brush his matted hair off his forehead, and he flinches violently. “I’m well aware,” Brielle coos, gripping his chin in her thumb and forefinger and forcing his head up. His sky blue eyes gaze blankly at nothing.

“This broken little phoenix had the terrible luck of being in the wrong place.” She drops the chain and Phenex staggers backward, pressing himself into the corner again, the trembling of his slim frame visible from across the room.

Brielle continues as though nothing happened. “He fought me quite a bit in the beginning, so I had to teach him his place. It took a few decades, but I’m nothing if not patient.”

No. No, she can’t have.

“Decades?” Grace sputters. “I saw him two weeks ago.”

“I do forget how very human you still are,” Brielle sniffs, but doesn’t elaborate.

I feel ice pouring into my veins, colder than kneeling in the snow that day. Colder than riding away from the inn alone and burying Brielle’s stolen jewels by the road, whispering apologies to the frozen dirt because I certainly wasn’t going waste breath on prayers.

I mourned her. I mourned them both and cursed Heaven until the icy wind stole the breath from my lungs.

Heaven wronged her, but this. . . she couldn’t have done this.

“You opened a door.” She dips her head in a quick bow, looking so proud of herself I want to scream, but instead I hiss, “Are you insane?”

“Oh Elissa, we’re all mad here.”

Grace tenses next to me, but I keep my eyes on Brielle’s smug face when I speak. “Time flows differently in Hell. A few hours here is a year there. It’s the same in Heaven.” I can’t keep the tightness from my voice when I continue. “And she made a door.”

Brielle drops Caila’s chain, the heavy links clattering on the floor, and Caila is crawling across the floor to Phenex’s side as quickly as she’s able. He whimpers when she says his name. I hear snatches of the musical lilt of Enochian, but the rest of the room seems forgotten as Caila tries to soothe the shattered angel.

“They’ve gotten quite cozy. It’s almost cute. Or it would be if I didn’t know what their kind was capable of.” Brielle turns back to me. “I didn’t make a door, dearest Elissa. More like my own private suite.”

“But Phenex was in Hell,” Grace interrupts. I want to tell her to be silent. To turn and run from this room while she still can, but I can only watch and listen as Brielle answers her.

“He was in Hell, yes, but not his Hell. It took him years to stop begging for Lucifer to save him.” Brielle settles herself back on the white chair, looking as calm as if we were just two old friends sitting down for tea. “And the other one? She barely lasted a week before she kneeled. And now that you two are here, we’re finally ready.”

My mind races, and I search for an escape. The spells and sigils are carved into each link of the chains and end to end on the collars, leaving no weak spots to exploit. Even if Grace and I could escape unscathed, we’d have to leave Caila and Phenex behind and there’s no way that’s happening.

Caila’s soft voice filters back to me as she strokes Phenex’s dirty hair. The blond fallen angel resided in Hell for millennia, taking his place as Lucifer’s right hand. I’d heard all the rumors. It was a spot earned by fondness and familiarity and not by skill as a torturer, but none dared to question Lucifer for his choice of head lieutenant.

To break a Fallen so thoroughly. . . what torments had Brielle subjected him to? She had to have heaped more and more anguish upon him for years, for decades to reduce him to this shattered creature trembling in Caila’s arms.

She made a door, and now it’s unguarded.

“You cannot be seriously thinking you can claw into Heaven as easily as you tunneled into Hell,” I challenge, hoping Brielle’s arrogance will force her to keep talking and give me the time to think.

She sighs, rolling her eyes as though being forced to explain herself to a child. “Of course I don’t think these two will be enough for me to tear through the gates.” Brielle glances disdainfully over at Phenex and Caila, her nose wrinkling at the state they’re both in even though her manicured fingers were what caused it. “But they will give me enough power to take those two delightful treats you brought me.”

Brielle smiles, and I wonder how I missed seeing the seeds of this in her years ago. I’d spent all my worry for how she might suffer after Roux’s death. She had seemed so young, so in love and so very breakable, but I’d been so wrong.

Brielle Carrette was never fragile like a flower.

She was fragile like a bomb, and all of Heaven, Hell, and Earth falls in the blast zone.

“Two Archangels,” she continues. “Hell will bleed, and Heaven will kneel, and they will regret the day they touched him.”

“I won’t let you do this.” It’s an empty threat, and we both know it, but it still has the desired effect of incensing Brielle.

“You’re going to fight for the angels then?” she spits, standing up from her throne and stalking to window where the first rays of the sunset have dyed the skies the same flame-red of Roux’s hair. She turns her back on us like we’re nothing to gaze out at the sunset.

“That’s rich coming from the one who dreamed of watching Heaven burn. You hate them as much as I do. The Elissa I knew doesn’t forget, and she certainly doesn’t forgive.” Brielle turns away from the glass, her entire attention focusing on Grace. “And you! Heaven ripped apart your family, and you take one of them to your bed?”

“And I killed the angel that did it,” Grace snaps. It’s easy to forget that hidden beneath the golden curls and the pretty dresses is a spine of pure iron. Grace looked the Archangel that murdered her family in the face and ended him. She doesn’t need me or Lucifer shielding her.

“All of Heaven and Hell knows just what you did to Uriel,” Brielle replies, stalking towards us. “All that power wasted though.” She shakes her head. “Raziel was the one who held the sword. It took me nearly ten years after Roux but it was worth the wait.” She presses her lacquered pink lips together at the memory. “It took so many bargains, but one day the demons brought him to me, and I knew what I was going to do with him.”

She doubles back to where the angels crouch and she grabs Caila, twisting her fingers in the tangled mane of the angel’s pale hair. The knife slides out of her sleeve, blackened metal, thin as a fireplace poker but wickedly sharp.

Forged in Hell.

She draws the blade across Caila’s cheek, but she doesn’t react as a bright streak of blood appears along her skin.

“If Heaven takes one of mine, I take one of theirs, but the power, Elissa. It was intoxicating. I know why Roux was too much for the world. I know why the angels had to kill him.” The tip of the knife trails down Caila’s neck before pausing at the hollow of her throat. Brielle could shove the blade through before I could move.

Brielle looks up at me and smiles. “If humanity felt that power, we would bleed Heaven dry for another taste. But I barely have to lift a finger. I just need to open a few more doors.”

“You want to pit Hell against Heaven?” I stammer, barely able to believe she’s suggesting this. “You want to start another war.”

“The war’s already started,” she replies. “With both Heaven and Hell’s generals locked in my living room until I bleed them dry, it’ll be chaos. Roux did always appreciate a good mob. Pity he missed the revolution.”

Brielle was always a survivor. She lived through the wrath of Heaven to be reborn through the fire and didn’t flinch from selling bits of herself to demons in exchange for the chance to cut down an angel. She could kill us all and sleep peacefully tonight.

And somehow I never noticed that seed of cruelty within her.

I’d been right all those years ago. A witch alone and heartbroken can do terrible things.

“Do you have any idea how many humans are going to be caught in the crossfire?” Grace demands. “You were mortal once, weren’t you?”

Brielle rolls her eyes. “I got over that. They’re all dead already. They just don’t know it yet.”

She presses the knife deeper into Caila’s throat, and the angel holds her breath, her blue eyes wide as the saucers of those ridiculous teacups she loves so much.

“Please!” I beg, fighting back every urge that tells me to do something. “You killed Raziel. Let that be enough!”

Brielle laughs, and it sounds like broken glass. “Raziel was nothing but the sword. A foot solider. Your precious Michael gave the order. It’ll be slow for him.”