I dropped the book on the floor. My first impulse was to scream at him to leave, but that is not what a seductive succubus would do. Instead, I schooled my features to calm. I even sat up a little in the bath—high enough to give him a view of the suds on the tops of my breasts.

He stood there with a sort of slack-jawed look on his face, his eyes burning into me. He really had been isolated, hadn’t he?

“Can I help you with something?” I asked. Soap slowly dripped down my arm, pooling on the stone floor.

Kratos was supposed to be the terrifying angel of death. And yet, with the stunned look on his face, I felt like the one in control.

“I should have knocked. I’m not used to…” A muscle clenched in his jaw, and he turned around, his shoulders tense. He spoke with his back to me. “I just came to check on you, and when I didn’t see you in the bedroom… How is your shoulder?”

“I’m fine. Just doing a bit of reading in the bath.”

A pulse of golden light brightened the air around him. Through his finely cut clothes, I could see tension rippling through every one of his chiseled muscles. “If you’re feeling better, I thought you might want a tour of the castle.”

Why yes, actually. That’s exactly what I want. I want to find out everything I can about you people so I can kill you.

“Are you going to show me around yourself?” I asked.

“I plan to give you the aerial tour.”

Interesting. And unnerving. I rose from the bathtub, watching him glow brighter at the sound of water dripping from my body into the bath.

“I’ll just get dressed,” I said.

“I’ll wait outside.” He strode out of the room, his golden aura trailing behind him.

It seemed I’d be flying in the arms of a death angel tonight.

* * *

While I’d stood wrapped in a towel, Elan had bustled into the room wearing a sweater knitted with the image of a grumpy cat. He’d laid out carefully selected clothing for me—black leather pants, a cream-colored blouse, and a fitted, berry-blue coat to keep me warm in the January air.

I left the coat unbuttoned and kept the blouse wide open at the collar. I didn’t want to get too close to the murderous psycho, but so far, my cleavage had been my best leverage over him.

As soon as I finished dressing, I pulled open the door to find Kratos standing in the dim hallway, torchlight dancing over the chiseled planes of his face.

“I like the way you decorated the bedroom.” I smiled coquettishly. “Lots of images of you killing people.”

He began walking, his footsteps echoing off the walls. “It’s what I do best. It’s my gift and my curse.”

Interesting. “Why your curse?”

“I was born to conquer. Killing is my sacred duty, and I’m compelled to do it. But of course, it comes with isolation.”

A lot to pick apart there. Starting with: “What do you mean you’re compelled to kill?”

He cut me a sharp look. “It’s not important.”

Oh but it is, Kratos. It’s the most important thing in the world.

I trailed my fingertips along the cold stone walls, thinking of what he’d said about isolation. Of course he couldn’t get too close to anyone if his job was to kill them all—even if he longed for contact.

As we walked on, I glanced outside. Here, the narrow windows overlooked the forest.

He took a sharp left into a winding stairwell, and we began climbing the stairs.

“What were you reading in there?” he asked.

“The Tempest. Or at least, I’d started it when an angel interrupted me.”

“I don’t suppose a succubus would be interested in the war books.”

“I’ll get to them.” Here in the stairwell, a draft rippled over my skin. “But since you’ve learned about humans mostly from books, don’t you think you should expand your collection beyond all the death, maybe? Try some romances.”

“It’s not just death books. I’ve made it a point to learn about human history. Some brilliant thinkers: Kant, Descartes. They understood duty for a higher purpose.”

“Duty for a higher purpose…” I repeated. You mean like being compelled to kill. “And what is your sacred duty, exactly, besides hunting people?”

“To restore the Earth’s natural balance. Long ago, when humans lived among the other beasts, there was a natural balance. Humans lived with a sort of peace in their minds before divine knowledge poisoned them. Their species are savages infected by a brilliance they cannot handle, that becomes a destructive force.”

I sighed. “I think maybe the savagery has gotten worse since you unleashed all the death.”

“I’m hardly responsible for all the death. In any case, the changes to civilization have only brought the brutality out into the open. The confines of human society offer their own brutality. If one group of men is given complete control over another group of men, they treat them worse than dogs. That is human nature. They are wild animals the gods mistakenly imbued with angelic cognition.”

He had a point. I thought of an experiment I’d learned about in one of my college psychology classes, when college students had imprisoned their classmates under controlled conditions. It had turned out even worse than you might imagine.

Still, Kratos had only learned about humans from books. He didn’t know the people that I did—people like Alex, who always tried to cheer everyone up, who gave Katie his extra food when she was feeling sick.

But I couldn’t tell him about Alex, could I? I couldn’t tell him anything real.

I still needed to understand his mental state. “So that’s why you’re compelled to kill.”

“No, that’s not why,” he said quietly. “If I don’t kill, agony pierces my body, and I will become fallen—warped into a demonic form and cast into an eternal hell on Earth.”

Oh. Shit. “Well, I’m not gonna lie. That doesn’t sound wonderful.”

If that was the outcome, perhaps tempting him to fall would be a no-go, even if I could bring myself to do it. But I had to wonder—was it possible that, if he’d gotten laid once in his long life, this particular angel would be out of the game? I couldn’t let myself think about that right now, or I’d end up trying to push him down the endless staircase.

By the time we finally reached the top of the stairs, my thighs were burning. Given how long we’d been walking, I thought we must be halfway to the heavens already.

Kratos pushed through a doorway, and I followed him outside onto the tower wall. Here, a cold wind whipped over the parapet, blowing strands of red hair into my face. To my right, the forest spread out before us, a vast expanse of trees. On the other side of the tower walls, I had a view of the courtyard—a cheery sward of grass with a bloodied wooden block that I was pretty sure had been used for executions. One stark, dark-stone tower stood in the center of it all.

The soaring walls connected six towers, with the seventh in the middle. At the top of the central tower sat an enormous hall of domed glass. In the darkness, I couldn’t quite see inside of it. I pointed at it. “What’s that Tower called?”

“The Tower of Silence. And that domed room is the Celestial Room, the crown jewel of my castle. I often spend time in there, staring at the stars and thinking of conquest.”

Ahhh, Kratos… definitely fun at parties.

Halfway across the tower’s high wall, Kratos stopped walking and turned to me.

“I promised you a guided tour. I thought I’d begin with a view of the grounds and the castle from above.”

A shadow passed above us, and I glanced up at a sentinel swooping through the skies.

“Will they be watching us?” I asked.

“No, not when I’m here.” Without warning, Kratos crossed toward me and scooped me up in his arms.

Cautiously, I wrapped my arms around his neck. He held me close to his enormous chest, his body warming mine.

His eyes glowed golden in the night. “Are you cold?”

“You’re warming me up.” I hated the guy, but it was the truth.

Within moments, he’d lifted me into the air. The frigid winter winds rushed over my skin as we swooped over the parapet. Instinctively, I curled in closer to Kratos.

For a moment, I closed my eyes, feeling nothing but the wind and Kratos’s heartbeat and his muscled arms enveloping me. Since the dragons had come—since I’d watched them drag humans into the skies, then drop them to the earth—I hadn’t been great with heights. As much as I loathed everything about the angels, his warm, woodsy scent was oddly soothing.

Clearly, death came in some beautiful disguises.

“You’re missing it all with your eyes closed,” he pointed out.

After a few seconds, I felt brave enough to open my eyes.

I peered over the side of Kratos’s arm. Stretching below us, loomed the seven towers, each reaching hundreds of feet into the air. Outside the ring of towers stood timber-frame stables. “How many horses do you keep in there?”

“One for each of the angels,” said Kratos. “And a three more. You wouldn’t like riding them. They’re difficult.”

We swooped lower over the battlements, heading for the forest. As my keen fae eyes adjusted in the silvery moonlight, I could make out a riot of vibrant colors in the oak and ash trees, their leaves tinged shades of dark umber and rich gold.

“Seven towers seem a bit much for three angels, don’t you think?” I asked.

“We like our space,” he said simply.

There was a time when you would’ve been able to see London’s lights glittering in the near distance. Now only a canopy of stars burned brightly around us.

“This is how it once was.” His deep voice rumbled through his chest into mine. “Don’t you remember? For hundreds of years of my memories, only starlight lit the skies. The only noise at night was the rustling of leaves, the scattering of animals through the woods. We lived in peace.”

So Kratos was one of those beings who liked to be alone with his thoughts. I counted myself among the opposite. Before the Great Nightmare, I’d liked to have music blaring, the TV on, small talk with a neighbor.

And yet I couldn’t deny the allure of the quiet midnight beauty out here, over the darkened forest.

With my arms clamped around his neck, we soared lower over a grove of ash trees. From here, I could hear the wind whispering through their boughs like an ancient song.

Was it possible that Kratos had a point? Humans craved knowledge, but as soon as Adam and Eve ate from that tree, they learned a terrible truth about themselves. As soon as they had language, they learned that all things died, and that they would too. After that, they could never feel peaceful in the silence again.

Kratos soared in a large arc over the forest, and as he did, his body glowed with a deeper, richer light. His fingers tightened around my thighs, around my ribcage, and I knew that, right now, a war was raging in his mind. He so badly wanted to give in to those “earthly temptations,” to carry me down to land and let his hands explore the rest of my body.

But that whole eternal hell thing obviously put him off.

When he met my gaze again, his eyes burned brightly. He was born to conquer—and he wanted to conquer me, was desperate to loose the leash he kept on himself.

An unwelcome flush spreading over my skin, for reasons I didn’t even want to think about.

I had to lure him to fall, to abandon his mission. What would he do if I strode into his room in the Tower of Silence and just took off my clothes?

Morality—like he’d been going on about before—sometimes meant making sacrifices for the greater good. I’d seduce him away from his stupid sacred duty while looking for the key to the angels’ deaths in the forest. Then I’d kill them all.

As I pondered this, his gaze shuttered, muscles tensing again. I was quickly getting the impression that if he let himself fantasize too much—dwell on earthly pleasures—he’d mentally punish himself immediately afterwards.

Kratos swooped around in a wide arc, heading back for the castle, as the wind whipped my hair around my face. This had been useful, but not enough. I wanted more. I wanted to learn everything I could about these angels—everything they were willing to tell me.

I studied his face again—the dark eyebrows and eyelashes framing amber eyes, the hint of golden stubble, the moonlight silvering his features. Women must have thrown themselves at him over the years, and he’d somehow resisted it all.

“How long have you been on Earth, Kratos?” How long have you been keeping this tight leash on yourself? “I never knew we had angels among us.”

“I didn’t have wings until recently, but I’ve been alive over a thousand years.”

“So… how did it work? You came to Earth from the heavens a thousand years ago?”

He swooped lower over the tower’s edge, landing gracefully on the stone wall. Gently, he put me down on the walkway. As soon as I pulled away from him, I regretted the lack of warmth. I hugged myself, pulling my coat tighter.

Kratos looked down at me, and an unearthly, celestial light dazzled in his eyes. “I was born in Denmark, the son of a Viking king. My father taught me how to navigate by the stars. He taught me how to live off the land. I’ll never forget the smell of the brine in the air, the feel of the wind in my hair. I was free then.”

Surprise washed over me. “You were born to human parents?”

He nodded. “Human parents, yes, but they knew what I was.” The frigid winds whipped at his pale golden strands of hair. “My father even tested it and had my brother split my skull open with an axe to determine my immortality. I recovered, obviously.”

I grimaced. “So the halcyon days weren’t all open seas and briny air.”

“No, but I learned about duty. I learned I was meant for something more than the human world around me. My father taught me about conquest—until other humans slaughtered him in battle. I was there. I watched them smash his head to pieces.”

And thus began his hatred of humans. “I’m sorry.”

“When I found the humans who did it, I ripped their lungs and spines from their bodies.”

My stomach dropped. “Any reasonable person would do the same.” Worried he could hear the sarcasm in my tone, I followed up with, “Nothing is more important than family.”

Something sparked in his eyes, and he took another step closer. He spread out his gleaming copper wings, forming a protective shield around me, blocking the wind. “And what about your family? You said you miss your sister.”

Through all of my lies, he’d managed to home in on one simple truth.

“Yes,” I said softly. “I miss her.”

“Nothing is more important than family,” he repeated.

I smiled up at him innocently. That’s right. And I’m here to destroy you, so my sister can return to a safer world.