Rage was soon tempered by the long, cold night as Valeria paced the halls of Manor Saffron. She didn’t want to face the truth of why her child was gone.

He wasn’t ours to begin with.

Nile’s bitter words broke her heart. The child’s body had dissipated into fine motes of dust just like the demons and angels who had died on the Obsidian Sea. All magic had been consumed around the vicinity of Manor Saffron when her son had followed magic into the Ether. That was the place where Light lived, and after everything she’d learned about the Light, this was nothing more than a failed attempt to solidify its foothold in the world of men and angels.

Now that her child was gone, the phenomenon of magic dilution was ebbing. Her Light glowed fiercely at her shoulder until her skin burned with heat. The Dark fed off of her suffering and wound in snake-like tendrils around her wrists. She didn’t try to stop the growth of power. She was going to need it for the battle that came next.

Having cooled off as much as she was going to, she found Nile peering into the courtyard that teemed with her songbirds. They glittered in the soft silver moonlight, their feathers glinting with motes that reflected her own growing power.

Then she noticed how Nile had changed as well. Gold wasn’t only apparent in his gaze, but snaked through his veins with a subconscious display of power.

“What’s happening to us?” Valeria asked.

Nile turned to her, the building might of his power pouring over his cheekbones. He was so beautiful that he could have been an angel, and that thought both excited and frightened her. “The world is out of balance. Angels have returned and a great evil has been awakened.”

His voice hummed over her and her skin prickled with bumps. She approached him and placed a hand on his arm that burned with magic and fever. His gaze remained distant. “You’re speaking prophecy,” she observed.

His lips curled downward. She’d never seen him so sad and it broke her heart. “I’ve always believed that this world could be saved.” His fingers traipsed over hers and he gripped her. She didn’t pull away even as the burn melded with her own emerging gifts. “If you weren’t here, I fear what I would become.”

Valeria had never had anyone rely on her like that. She’d had the love of her parents, but when Nile looked up at her with a flicker of hope yet remaining in his eyes, she knew that she couldn’t fail him.

She was about to make promises that she couldn’t keep when the ground trembled.

Light billowed into their private chamber that banished the comforting shadows they’d been whispering in. A howling wind roared and a vortex appeared with two forms that emerged.

Valeria stared as she witnessed the impossible. An angel—a female—with Light and Dark that unfurled from her in such unabashed waves she feared the stones beneath her feet might give way. And then the tiny hand that gripped hers… a boy with magnetizing eyes with on black as pitch and speckled with stars, the other a golden blaze so like his father’s as if she looked into the heavens themselves. Behind him were two magnificent wings. One black. One white.

She knew without a doubt that this was her son, but now she couldn’t deny the truth. Her son wasn’t hers at all. This was the Light itself, and it had found a way to get back to her.

“Angel,” Valeria hissed and snatched her dagger from her thigh. Blind rage enveloped her as she went for this creature that dared to twist her heart until it broke into a thousand tiny pieces.

“Valeria, stop!” Nile shouted and blurred from his place at the slitted window. He appeared before her and gripped her wrist. Before she could speak, his voice caressed her mind. Don’t let the magic control you.

“I know you don’t know me,” the female angel said, “but I’ve come seeking aid.” Her midnight wings spread to reveal magic that glittered from the metallic sheen of her feathers. A faint golden glow burned from her shoulders as if a store of Light burned at her back.

To Valeria’s surprise, the angel bent to one knee. As her head bowed, she glimpsed a miraculous swirling tattoo that bled Light across her shoulders and sent a glow illuminating the base of her wings. Valeria had only seen a mark like that once before, and it had been Nile’s magic that had embedded Light into her skin, giving her a link to the Divine that she wasn’t sure she wanted. But this creature, this angel, something rang familiar about her. When her eyes looked up into hers, one a breathtaking blue and the other a dazzling green, she saw a soul that matched Nile’s desperate hope, and her own fueled passion for justice.

Listen to what she has to say, Nile pleaded.

Valeria pinched her lips before responding aloud. “I’m listening.”

* * *

The angel rose and offered a friendly smile. Valeria didn’t like how the child clung to her.

“You’re Valeria,” the angel observed, then nodded to Nile whose heat and magic hummed at Valeria’s side, “and you’re the most powerful Hallowed to have ever lived: Nile of the Coterie.”

Nile stiffened at the title. Valeria knew he’d never consider himself part of the Coterie, but something about her rang foreign and her words frighteningly sure. She’d come through a portal with their son grown years from the newborn babe he’d been just hours before.

Valeria wasn’t the only one who sensed the strangeness of this angel. Nile took a step forward and curled his fingers into a fist. “So, you know who we are, yet we’ve never heard of you.” He appraised her with an expert sweep of his gaze. The angels had thrown their most powerful legion at the demons. “If the angels had something like you among their ranks, they would have thrown it at us by now. Where do you come from?”

Valeria stepped in front of him and gave the angel a derisive snort. “It’s not ‘where,’ my love, it’s when.”

The angel grinned as if amused by some joke Valeria didn’t get. “I come from a time where Creation itself has been uncovered. The veil between our world and that of the Divine has grown thin. In an effort to save my people, I fear I have doomed them all.”

Valeria finally allowed her gaze to fall to the child that the angel had named “Creation.” It was the perfect word and she knew she couldn’t deny that truth. This wasn’t her son. This was indeed Creation itself. Everything came together with clarity she wanted to push away. If Creation were to take form, it would need to be Created just as all humans were Created. It would need to be Born.

Valeria, Nile’s voice caressed her again laced with worry. We can’t let her know this is our child.

Valeria closed her eyes as a shiver ran up her spine. Nile’s fingers found hers for a fraction of a second and gave her a squeeze.

As if reacting to their magicked whispers, the child squealed and ran to Valeria. She shot her eyes open and her heart flung her chest when little hands reached for her. No matter the truth that burned as a cold cinder in her chest, she gave in and drew the child up onto her hip. To hear him cry out in excitement made her heart twist. She reminded herself that this wasn’t her son, but when little hands pulled at her hair, hot tears stung her eyes.

“You’ve brought Creation to our world,” Nile said, his words so light and airy that she would have thought him someone else.

She’d never expected Nile to be an adept liar, but she should have known better. He’d hidden humanity in himself from the Coterie and all of Leocivat. Lies came easily to a Hallowed who’d held onto hope.

“This is a power unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” He brightened as Light cascaded through his body like lightning. The angel’s eyes went wide with wonder, but Valeria knew that Nile was barely keeping his emotions under control. “He’s just what we need. This is how we can defeat Mehmet.”

The angel frowned, but she’d bought the facade. “Mehmet is powerful in my time,” she warned. “He’s an immortal force that cannot be destroyed. We should focus on how to save lives, not how to tear them apart.”

Valeria bit her lip. She didn’t care about Mehmet. Angels and demons cared, but all she wanted was a place to call her own with Nile at her side. She wanted to foster the hope in him that had touched her unlike anything else in this cruel world. She wanted to be free of fear and the oppression that came with the forces of magic trying to use her for their own means. Her gaze fell on the child at her hip that couldn’t be her son. It shredded what was left of her heart to know what she was going to have to do. She was going to have to use this power if she wanted her dreams to come true. There were other children counting on her. All the unborn that fell from the sky, discarded from the angel city just as she had been. Those were her children now, and she had to do anything she could to protect them.

The female angel’s frown deepened and her gaze grew distant. “Using the powers of Light and Dark isn’t the solution; it’s the cause.”

Such hypocrisy. This angel burned with power from both sides of the realms. Where magic seemed to overtake Valeria, this angel displayed calm control. “I see Light and Darkness within you. It’s more powerful than anything in our time. Even from me.” Her gaze shifted to the child and reminded herself that Nile needed to hear the truth. “And you bring me the purest source of Light itself. Yet you suggest we don’t use it?” Nile’s emotions brushed against her mind, but she pushed him away. He would come to terms that this wasn’t their son and was only a tool made to manipulate them. Valeria hardened her heart and made a plan for what needed to be done. She had to convince this angel to leave the child here, with them. She knew that if they tried to run, or tried to banish her on their own, they’d fail. And this angel would never believe the truth. No one would believe that a lowly outcast survivor and a Hallowed who held onto hope could have acted as a conduit to bring Light into this world in the form of flesh and blood. But bargains, schemes, and demands for justice would settle well with this angel who burned with power.

She sheathed her dagger in the leathered scabbard her father had made for her. “What kind of aid do you seek, young angel?”

The angel flared her wings and Valeria knew she’d hit the mark. While power swarmed over her in waves, her eyes said she was young. There was too much emotion there, fires and determination that would eventually be tempered by the hammering of time. “I beg of you, keep Creation safe. Don’t use the powers of Light and Dark. It will only give it momentum until it runs rampant in my time.”

Valeria shrugged. “If I had followed that advice, I would be dead.” She stared the angel down. A single thread kept her clinging to the child, and Valeria knew what she wanted to hear: the truth. “Your kind are coming soon, and without power, we will be skewered on their golden spears, only to have what remains of us feasted on by the demons that lurk on the Obsidian Sea. “No, unnamed angel, I will not follow your advice. I will fight, because I must fight.”

With those final words, Valeria turned and moved as if to leave the room. She knew this angel wouldn’t agree with leaving the child here, not unless she understood the dire situation they faced. No matter her own past with Light and Dark, it was a force that needed to be used if they were to survive.

She paused and glanced over her shoulder at the angel, and held no lies in her heart when she spoke her next words. “I will safeguard this child with my life, for that is the aid you seek, yes?”

The angel nodded. Worry painted across her face as her brows scrunched. “Do you think he’ll be safe, even in the future?”

Valeria shrugged and squeezed the child settled onto her hip. She whispered a silent prayer that, for once, the Light would do as she commanded. “There’s only one way to find out. Go back whence you came.” She nudged the child that had started napping on her shoulder. “Did you bring her here, little one? Why don’t we send her back, hm?”

Her son sleepily opened his eyes and landed an eerie gaze on the angel as power hummed through the air. “Return,” he commanded with an eerie echo that assured Valeria this was Creation and Light itself with powers to be feared.

Golden strips appeared and wrapped around the angel’s wings, yanking her hard into a swirling void that appeared from summoned layers of magic that obeyed the single word from this little boy. With a cry, the female angel was gone, cast into the folds of time and leaving them alone with the child.