I will try to write it, though words could never hold it all.
We were celebrating too soon. We knew that it wasn’t over, but Asoharith had been the face of the enemy for so long, and we were all so glad to be rid of her at last.
I could feel Ace’s hurt, but I knew that he didn’t grudge us the relief. And I really did feel it. It felt like the end, like all the weight had lifted off of our shoulders. And I was glad, too, because finally Ace was out of the center of it all. Maybe he would be safe.
Famous last words, huh?
The angels were celebrating, too, looking on as we raised our glasses, cheering with us. Salathiel had just leaned in to tell me that there was something in wine that could touch angels—the fragrance, maybe, or just all the meaning humans have imbued into it over the years. She was telling me that it tasted like joy to them.
The taste of joy was literally on our lips when it was snatched away.
I felt the pain first. The ache that was Ace in my chest suddenly grew to a searing, breaking pain, and I felt his terror and confusion. I took a breath to scream but didn’t have time, because just then the world lurched around us, and every angel staggered. Mom’s glass fell from her hand and shattered on the floor, and George and Kara froze in place. I couldn’t feel Ace anymore.
Into the silence, Salathiel whispered, “Heaven is breached.”
The words made no sense.
All of the angels threw back their heads and keened in unison, a deafening outpouring of grief and terror. And then they were gone in a blink, leaving us in terrifying isolation.
“What the actual fuck,” Kara demanded.
“Heaven is breached?” George repeated, his face white as paper. “They can’t possibly mean—”
I jumped to my feet and seized their hands. “I can’t feel Ace,” I cried, the tears already stinging my eyes. “Please, you have to help me find him.”
They tightened their grip on me, and I felt the energy rush up my arms from them. My friends, giving me what I needed as they had for so long.
It’s still frightening to open up that place in me through which Ace—and everything else in the universe—can come through, but the silence, and the pain that had come before it, was scarier. I remembered feeling the way that Brid and Inca shot up to heaven when Ace was hurt, and I tried to follow that trajectory now.
For an agonizing moment, I was there with him. He was so cold, colder than I had ever felt, and as rigid and motionless as he had been the night Neige came to kill me. She was there again, standing in a gap in the sky, her one eye fixed on him. Her hands were stretched to either side, closed into fists, holding onto nothing.
No, not nothing. I could feel it on the other side of Ace—the thread that tied his heart to mine and to Asoharith’s. Somehow the dark side of the thread hadn’t snapped when Asoharith had died. Somehow she had given it to Neige, and now Neige was using it to—
“Freya.”
I snapped back into my body, shuddering and gasping. Brid was standing before me, and behind her were Inca and Eburnean, all of them stricken with the same horror I felt. Brid was trembling.
“Why did you call me back? I was with him! I saw—”
“What did you see?” Eburnean demanded.
“There’s no time, I have to get back—”
“We need to understand what is happening, Freya,” they said with maddening calm. “For the first time in memory, the Fallen are in heaven. We need to know how this happened.”
“Asa’el is at the heart of it, we know,” Inca whispered, and I could see in her eyes flashes of the battle raging above us—Harbingers leading the way to the most vulnerable, Nightmares scrambling into the Asylum, angels scattering before enemies they could not see. Violences by the dozens, hungry Apostates with their weapons bared, and the terrible Breakers climbing high above in search of greater prey. “You may be the only one who can tell us how to stop it.”
Even seeing all that, it was hard to shake off the fear for Ace. This was bigger than both of us, and yet… But I knew what he would want. So I told them everything, as completely as I could.
They listened, and when I was finished, Eburnean turned their face upward, and then Orison was there, his spear crackling and blowing out the light in my mother’s kitchen. Darkness fell over us, and the only light was from the spear, making the new ugly gash on Orison’s brow look even worse.
“Asoharith was brilliant indeed,” he said bitterly. “She felt the strength of the thread that Asa’el forged between you, and she saw a use for his love. That love that never died, that love he felt for her, she has made it into a rope for the Fallen to climb, and as it is made of love, it can reach even into heaven. Now Neige, who saw the nature of that love for herself, can hold the doorway open, and as long as Asa’el lives, he is an anchor for them.”
The solution he was proposing came to all of us at the same moment.
“No,” George said.
“Fuck no,” Kara emphasized.
“There has to be another way,” Mom protested.
And all the fire that Ace has ever seen in me sprang up all around me. “You will not hurt him,” I snarled.
Orison shook his head, his eyes filled with tears. “It is what he has asked of me, Freya.”
“No! We’ll fight—”
“With Asa’el paralyzed as he is, you can do nothing. This is not your battle.”
“Like hell it isn’t!” Kara cried.
“Precisely,” Orison replied. He looked down at me. “Freya, the longer we wait, the more of my sisters and brothers will die. Please, I have come only to see if there is a farewell you wish to say.”
I clenched my fists. I was on fire, and yet there was nothing to burn but me. Orison was right—with Asa’el locked in ice, I could only fight what was right before me, and there was no way I could get up to heaven.
But I couldn’t accept Ace’s loss. I would not allow it, even at the cost of all of heaven.
Then, impossibly, there was a knock on the door.
—
I knew that I would never be warm again. The presence of a Fallen, Neige’s claws on my eyes, the pain of Asoharith’s bloodied blade in my heart—all of it was gentle and sweet in comparison with this calculated malice, carefully prepared in hatred and vicious anticipation of the suffering of my loved ones.
I could not move, could not breathe, could not speak. I was locked into place, and from my heart hung the ladder up which they were all scrambling, the Fallen, all the more hideous in the light of heaven. They grinned and laughed as they climbed through the gap that Neige held open, crawling over me as they went.
I could hear the screaming of my siblings, feel their pain. Of course the Fallen targeted the weak, the wounded, the young. And though the stronger ones, my friends and teachers, came to battle only moments after the breach, though they fell to fight with all the desperate power of their hearts, still more and more of the Fallen came through the gap.
Jaahiliyah met my gaze as she entered heaven, her wings tearing the gap still wider. What I saw in her eyes made me wish I was dead. She leapt into the air, and just over my head there was Syebo, stooping to meet her. The crash of their weapons together made the very skies shake.
I had done this. I had done all of this. Even knowing what she was, still I opened my heart to Asoharith, and she used my love against me. Now every death in heaven was on my head.
It had to end. I had to end it.
My heart yearned for Freya, even as I cried out to Orison, my first teacher, my guardian and friend. Even for this I could trust him.
But how would Freya cope, with her worst fear realized? How would she go on alone?
Please, Father, if there is another way, let it come to us before Orison’s blade falls.
—
The door opened before any of us could move. “Excuse me,” said a bright, cheerful voice, “but we’re a little tight on time, aren’t we?”
It was the strangest thing. I had seen that face somewhere before, but I couldn’t think where. And though he looked like a perfectly ordinary guy, there was a light behind his face that reminded me of angels.
George sucked in a breath. “Jesse?” he whispered.
“Hey, buddy,” the guy said, grinning. “Heard you needed some help, so I brought a few friends.”
He threw the door open, and behind him came three equally impossible people. Kara cried out and launched herself into the arms of a middle-aged man, sobbing, “Daddy!” And he laughed and hugged her back. I recognized from pictures my mother’s best friend Kate from college who’d died of cancer before I was born, and there was my cousin Michelle, completely unmarked from the bicycle accident that had killed her when I was eleven.
All of them looked normal and whole and real, and yet something about them made my heart beat quicker. And at the sight of them, all of the angels went to one knee, bowing their heads with respect.
“Saints,” Mom breathed. “You’re Saints.”
Michelle put her arm around my shoulders and gave me a little shake. “You said it, didn’t you? Saints can fight if they want. You asked for help, and here we are. You need a lift?”
Somehow, I got a breath into my chest. “You’ll save Ace?”
“No, you’ll save him,” she said to me. “There’s a right way to do everything, and this is it.”
“Freya, your power is overwhelming to angels,” Kate explained, arm-in-arm with my mother. “In the same way, ours will be to you. If we take you up there, you’re going to need George and Kara to help protect you from being consumed by it, and you’re going to need an anchor to bring you all back home.” She looked at Mom. “It will be the hardest thing any of you have ever done. Will you—”
“Yes,” George said.
Mom grabbed hold of both of my shoulders.
“Let’s go already,” Kara demanded, though she kept hold of her father’s hand.
Our Saints looked at one another and laughed. “I thought you might say that,” Michelle said, and she held out her hand to me.
And then we were flying.
—
It was in the moment that I thought I was dead that grace came to me.
I had just realized that this would kill me anyway, that the touch of so many Fallen, their weight on my heart, would tear me apart, and that it was only Neige’s will that had held me together this long. I knew that I was dead already, and I yearned only to die more quickly, so that they could no longer use me.
And then, impossibly, Freya was there, standing in the air, her fire bursting around us. Neige shrieked and fell back, and through the gap I could see her falling to earth, hands and wings ablaze.
And I fell into Freya’s arms, and George and Kara’s too, and they were putting their hands over my heart, holding me together. They were holding me. I didn’t understand, but I was never so grateful for anything.
“Ace, Ace,” Freya was whispering, her tears falling on my face.
There was someone standing behind Freya, a young woman with blond hair and glasses who had her hand on Freya’s shoulder. She smiled at me, and in her eyes glimmered the light of a life well-lived, full of art and kindness and love. Similarly, both George and Kara were supported by someone else. I recognized Jesse, who winked at me, and then I understood.
Neither an angel nor a human’s power could bring a human into heaven, but a Saint could. They and they alone had the power to bring the physical and spiritual together, to understand that paradox and bypass it.
And in Freya’s arms, the agony in my heart faded away. Her fire burned off all of the hate and heaviness, and her love restored all of my strength.
Soon I felt strong enough to fight again, but I lay still, because the battle had fallen silent all around us. It was not just my imagination in this distracted moment—the combatants were falling back from one another, the angels with eagerness, the Fallen with dread.
When the voice spoke again, I could not see where it was coming from, but it didn’t matter. I knew who it was, and I understood the peace that I felt in my heart.
Enough,
they said, and though their voice was gentle, it rang through all of heaven.
I banish you all, each of you by name.
And they spoke, and somehow a hundred different names were spoken at once, and each of the Fallen heard their own name distinctly. They wailed and pleaded for mercy.
Mercy was offered and refused,
the voice said, not without pity.
It will not be offered again. Go now, and take nothing else from heaven.
And they were gone, and the Cherubs fell to their knees, exhausted, but still singing. I lifted my voice with them, grateful for our rescue.
“Whoa,” Kara said. And then, “If they could do that, why didn’t they do it sooner?”
“If the combatants had been separated before Asa’el was freed, it would have destroyed him,” Kara’s father answered.
I stopped singing, and tears came to my eyes. “Then everyone who died—”
Freya tugged her companion close so she could put her arm around my waist.
Jesse turned to me with brows raised. “No one died, Ace,” he said.
I stared at him.
“No one died,” he repeated. “Saints don’t fight the same way that angels do, but we still fight. Not one of the Fallen was permitted to strike a killing blow. There are injuries, of course, and there is healing to be done, but no one died.”
All three of them looked at me with compassion, and they spoke in unison. “The Enemy has failed. They have been banished once again, and they took no one from us.”
I fell to my knees, and Freya fell next to me with a squeak. Pulling her closer to my side, I started to sing again.
“All right,” said Freya’s companion, tugging her a little away. “We need to get you back. Stay too long and it will begin to change you.”
I could not put her at risk, but neither did I want her to go. I turned to her, and she stared back at me, and her hand brushed my face.
And then she was gone, and I could not tell whether my tears were from sorrow or joy.
—
When I am a Saint, it will feel a lot like being human. Saints have a body, but the body serves the spirit, and not the other way around. The body makes no demands of them, only gives them shape and joy.
It was hard to land back in myself and feel aches and pains, exhaustion and hunger. It was hard to hold on to the sensation of Ace’s cheek under my hand, his lips just brushing against mine in the last moment before I was taken away.
Michelle and the others were gone. It was only the four of us, sitting on the floor in the darkened kitchen, staring at one another.
But I could still hear the singing in heaven. They were hurt, traumatized, and yet they still sang. All of them. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.
“Okay,” Kara said at last. “Now it’s over.”