Of course Freya was furious with me for accepting Asoharith’s offer.
“You’re going to sit there and let her tear you to shreds for the chance that she might let something slip?” she demanded. “Why would you do that when you know something bad is going to come out of it?”
“If I can get any information from her that will help us, it will be worth the pain. There is still so much we don’t know—how many allies she has, when and how she plans to attack next, whether she has other ways of finding targets now that Sofala is gone. Forewarned is forearmed.”
“Let someone else go,” Freya said.
I did not dignify that with a response. She knows as well as I that Asoharith will speak to no one else, and indeed she would likely harm anyone who tries to go in my place.
“Then let me go with you,” she said.
“I have said that I will go alone.”
“Asoharith won’t keep her word! Why should you?”
“I think that she will this time, and Salathiel and Orison both agree with me. Sofala foresaw it.”
“And you trust a Fallen’s word?”
“Coming to me was the one hope she had of a merciful death,” I said, more softly. “She had no more reason to lie to me.”
Freya sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Ace, I hate every bit of this. I think this is the stupidest idea you ever had.”
“You are human,” I said fondly. “You find it difficult to trust. But I am confident that this time it will be nothing but talk.”
She lifted her eyes to me. “Human or not, I know that words can be just as damaging as weapons.”
I knelt in front of her and held out my hands to her, and she rested her own palms just above mine. “If you really do not want me to go, I will not,” I whispered. “But we believe the risk is minimal, and the possible reward great. Even one little slip from her may save lives—one of the first of which would be yours.”
Freya shook her head. “Which is the main reason you want to go, right?”
“Yes.” Most of all I wanted to know what dangers Freya will face once this endless battle is over. What traps has Asoharith set for her that may survive her own demise?
“Fine,” Freya said at last. “But only because I’d do it for you. You get ten minutes, and you come right back here. And try and stay in contact with me while you’re gone, please?”
“I would have done that anyway,” I said, and I brushed her brow with one of my wings as I left her.
It did feel like I was drawing her with me as I flew, fast and far to keep Asoharith well away from anyone I loved. I could still feel Freya sitting cross-legged on her bed, eyes closed and heart reaching.
It was a very different feeling from the one that waited for me.
She was flying over a dark patch of trees, winging low enough that at any moment she could dart into the shadows and be lost. The moment I came into sight, she flew up a few meters and hovered, her eyes tracking my flight. I came to a stop several wing-lengths above her and returned her baleful gaze.
Her mouth twisted, but she knew what I needed her to say. “His peace be with you,” she said, as if each word tasted foul.
“And with you,” I answered calmly, and I circled down to her level. She perched in the branches of a tree, and I did the same in one next to it.
For a long moment we simply looked at one another.
“New scars,” she said at last, looking at the marks around my eyes. “Neige?”
“Tabanca,” I corrected, “yes. Freya made her pay for it.”
“Hmm,” Asoharith grunted. “She has a penchant for eye-ripping. I wonder if everything we do is in vengeance for what pains we’ve suffered in the past?”
“Not all of us are driven by pain and vengeance.”
“Sure about that?” she asked. “What is comfort if not the absence of pain? What is love if not opening yourself to other people’s pain?”
It was a disturbing viewpoint, mostly because there was an element of twisted truth to it. “Did you call me here to discuss moral philosophy?”
“No.” She continued to look at the scars—in fact she had yet to actually look me in the eyes. “I was angry when I heard what Neige had done. That she had hurt you.”
It is strange how persistent hope can be. It was merely the faintest surprised lifting in my chest that responded to those words, but it revealed to me that not all of my heart has given up on the possibility of Shannon’s love.
“It makes me angry that I’m not the only one who’s put scars on you now,” she went on, in that same dispassionate voice.
Thus was the echo of my last hope crushed. It hurt more than its insubstantiality would have implied.
“I hope that I will live through many more scarring battles,” I said wryly, “and with other enemies than you.”
“You probably will,” Asoharith said, hunching forward. I tensed, but she was only stretching her wings. From the way she grinned at me, though, she knew what I’d been thinking. “Do you know, it’s been almost exactly four years since you first came to me? Funny how time can change people.”
“Sofala told me you had something of importance to say,” I said. “Say it and be done so I can go.”
“Back to Freya?” she asked, lifting one eyebrow. “I know she’s listening, you know. What a tangled little web you’ve made of the three of us.”
I didn’t respond to that, though far away I could feel Freya clenching her fists.
Asoharith shrugged and dropped her teasing air. “I know I’m going to die in this battle,” she told me. “I know it will be soon. Most of the time that makes me furious, and I’m going to do everything I can to avoid it.”
“Such as?” I asked.
She ignored this. “But there’s a part of me that will be glad to go down in flames. There’s a part of me that will be glad to die before you do.”
I wasn’t certain how to respond to this.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” she said, and now, at last, she looked directly into my eyes, and in hers I could see the same despair that had driven Sofala to spend her freedom seeking out my arrow. “To be abandoned by God, to be entirely without hope, and surrounded by those who are also hopeless… There is so much pain, so much cruelty. But the worst part is the nothing—nothing to look forward to, nothing to care about. Hating you was the only thing I had that set me apart from the rest who are just waiting for oblivion.
“I thought that killing you would make me happy,” she went on, “and for a while, after I thought I’d done it, it did. But that faded quickly, and I was still in that gray nothing. No matter what I do, succeed or fail, I’ll still be in that nothing. So I was glad to learn you were still alive, because my anger and hate made me something again, and anything is better than nothing.”
She fell silent, and I could not move, could not breathe, because through the thread I could feel the nothing—the silence and stagnation of wandering beyond the created world, outside of the presence of love. The loneliness was staggering, made worse by the knowledge that you are beyond hope, that there is no one who will rescue you now, and that you have no one but yourself to blame.
No wonder so many of the Fallen try to deny that, to deflect their despair onto someone else.
“Then why?” I asked. “If you know this, why still try to kill me?”
“Because you deserve to die,” she answered. “You deserve to be nothing too, and if I can kill you, you’ll be even more nothing than I am. Maybe that will be enough to keep me going.”
Freya could feel my pain, though I was trying to keep it from her. She was calling to me, asking me to come back. But I wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
“Then,” I said, “what if you do succeed, and I am killed? What will you do then?”
She smiled a bit, as if she couldn’t help it, and shrugged. “Pay my debts. Though if I’m very lucky there won’t be many of the old Apostates left, which will give me more prestige. So I will find new targets, new people and angels who deserve to die and to suffer.”
I stored each of these words away, and in the distance I felt Freya scrambling for something to write with.
For a moment my thoughts lingered with her, steadying myself. Then I closed my connection with her, because I did not want her to hear what I said next.
“What will be the point?” I asked Asoharith. “There will be no real satisfaction for you once I’m gone. If I die, you might as well just give up to the nothing.”
Asoharith smirked at me. “And why is that?”
“Because,” I said, the words burning me even as I said them, “you will never hate anyone as much as you have hated me.”
And when her wings stiffened and her smirk twisted into a scowl, I noticed a rill of triumph in my chest, and shuddered. I had done too well in trying to think like the Fallen.
Asoharith leapt into the air and hovered overhead, pointing down at me. “There is still a victory for me in this,” she snapped. “Keep your life, and your little girlfriend too, if you want. All of it will turn into ash in your mouth when you lose everything else.”
And she turned and vanished away, leaving me feeling cold and hollow.
I have discussed her words with Freya, and later with my seniors, and we have come to the same frustrating conclusions—that there is something more planned than an attack on myself and Freya, but what could be that target, I am not certain. What could it be that would force me to lose everything else?
There is a great deal of uncertainty in my life just now, but I am sure of one thing. I will not speak to Asoharith again before our final battle. And that is coming soon.