I sit beside Caila’s bed, watching as Michael tosses and turns as the toxin eats its way through his system. The blankets are a tangled froth of white and pink around him, the fluffy pillows and delicate fabrics looking out of place around his muscular body.

Sweat beads on his chest, soaking through the bandage Grace hastily taped over the wound, and his hands shift restlessly on the covers, his fingers clenching and unclenching on the fabric. I’ve never seen Michael look so vulnerable. . . so human. His brow furrows, and his eyes dart back and forth beneath his eyelids.

Do angels dream? I lean forward, brushing my fingertips across his brow, the skin clammy as his body fights off what infects him. There were so many things I never asked.

A year. One bright, beautiful year out of two thousand. After so much time, memories start to blur. The names and faces of the background players in my life recede into hazy recollections, but every day, every minute of that year still stands out in glorious Technicolor as the only period in my life where I was truly happy.

Just happy.

I wasn’t desperately striving for something I didn’t really believe I could attain, carving out a fortress on the edge of the world to protect my heart.

One single year. And somehow even after I’ve watched the world I grew up in disappear into the ocean, and we’ve both seen a dozen other empires rise and fall, we can’t move on.

It feels inevitable that one day we would end up back here.

The jaded broken part of me whispers that this wasn’t supposed to happen.

I was supposed to rip out the offending arrow and wait for the Archangel constitution to heal him while the four of us plotted and planned how to break Caila out of this prison. I’d sit across from him, cold and unforgiving, as we worked. I’d make him suffer and regret.

I’d make him feel weak.

But I’d be the bigger person and put my antagonism on hold. We’d tear through the wards, our collective power no match for the vicious witch in her mansion, and once the battle was won, Michael would fly off back to Heaven once again. My life would return to what it had been for so long, and he would slip back into memories and dreams.

Instead, I sit in the dark, perched on an overstuffed ottoman at the edge of the bed. The weak yellow light of the one grimy streetlight still working filters in through the blinds, and I count his shallow breaths and hold my own as I wait for his eyelids to flicker open.

Lucifer hovers in the doorway, and I’ve never understood him more than tonight in this darkened house. His seething hatred for his brother’s crimes against him bonded us so long ago. Grace tempers that boiling rage, but he doesn’t know how to reconcile century upon century of despising Michael with this abrupt reminder of the elder brother he once loved.

Join the club.

His footsteps recede away from me, and a moment later the back door slams. I can’t blame him for that. I spent more years than I can count running away.

“So. You and Michael.”

Grace doesn’t skirt around the elephant in the room, doesn’t couch her questions in subtleties because she’s afraid of offending me. I appreciate it. When dawn breaks, I don’t doubt I’ll be back to my old self, burying anything real under an armor of black leather and deflection, but not tonight.

Tonight, I indulge myself and brush my fingertips across his forehead and remember.

“Yeah. Me and Michael.”

Grace sits down on the ottoman next to me. It’s too small to accommodate us both comfortably, so I move to the edge of the bed, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from Michael as he restlessly shifts. She has a white coffee mug in her hand, and she offers it to me.

“Tea?” I ask.

“Bourbon.”

I chuckle. “Girl after my own heart. Give it here.” I take a hearty sip of the liquor, barely noticing the burn. I’m just glad for anything to wash out the taste of copper and rot that still clings to my tongue hours later.

A pile of plaster and dust rests on the floor beside the wardrobe, nothing more than a mound in the darkness, but before I dared bring Michael in here, I jammed my knife into the wall, cutting apart the sigil until half the wall lay crumbled at my feet.

I know I should clean it up, sweep the last remnants of that poisoned blood out of here, but I can’t bring myself to move. Not yet.

Grace waits, that same unnerving stillness that Michael had when he was trying to puzzle something out. And just like back then, I’m the mystery.

“Granted, I’ve only met four angels,” she says, “And one was trying to kill me and the other two were Fallen, but Michael just didn’t strike me as the type to-” Grace’s voice trails off as she tries to search for the polite way to describe my broken relationship.

“The type to toy with a human?”

Grace shakes her head, her golden curls hiding her face for a moment before she raises her head, politeness and pretense quickly put aside. “To fall in love.” I scoff, but Grace ignores me as she soldiers on. “Look, I don’t know any of the history between the three of you. Lucifer wouldn’t say anything except that it’s your story to tell or not tell, but I do have eyes.”

Michael groans as he turns on the bed, and one of his hands twitches, a graceless spasm that looks so wrong on him that I’m reaching across his body and clasping his hand before I can stop myself.

So much for cold detachment there, Elissa.

“He was different,” I say, forcing myself to look away from him and turn to Grace. I take another sip of the bourbon, the ice cubes clinking softly against the ceramic of the mug. “I was young. The whole world was young. Of course, I haven’t had much time to judge who he is now. Lucifer certainly has changed.”

“What happened?”

I want to brush her off, to ignore the query that threatens to bring back the one memory I desperately want to avoid reliving.

My voice is clipped when I reply, “Heaven forced him to make a choice. He didn’t choose me.”