The crowd burst into chaos.
Angelus stepped forward. “Enough!” The room fell silent again. This time he spoke alone. The other Keepers looked at me but said nothing. “The bargain was for the Cataclyst alone. We have made no such pact with a Mortal. Never would we return a Mortal to existence.”
I remembered Amma’s past, revealed through the black stone I still had in my pocket. Sulla had warned her that Angelus hated Mortals. He was never going to let me walk away. “What if the Mortal was never meant to be here?”
Angelus’ eyes widened.
“I want my page back.”
This time the crowd gasped.
“What is written in the Chronicles is law. The pages cannot be removed,” Angelus hissed.
“But you can rewrite them however you want?” I couldn’t hide the rage in my voice. He had taken everything from me. How many other lives had he destroyed?
And why? Because he couldn’t be a Caster?
“You were the One Who Is Two. Your fate was to be punished. You should not have brought the Lilum into matters that were not hers to resolve.”
“Wait. What does Lilian English—I mean, the Lilum—have to do with any of this?” My English teacher, whose body had been inhabited by the most powerful creature in the Demon world, had been the one who showed me what I had to do to fix the Order of Things.
Was that why he was punishing me? Did I get in the way of whatever he was planning with Abraham? Destroying the Mortal race? Using Casters as lab rats?
I always believed that when Lena and Amma brought me back from the dead with The Book of Moons, they had set something in motion that couldn’t be undone. It started the unraveling that ripped the hole in the universe, which was the reason I had to right it at the water tower.
What if I had it backward?
What if the thing that was supposed to happen was the unraveling?
What if fixing it was the crime?
It was all so clear now. Like everything had been lost in darkness, and then the sun came out. Some moments are like that. But now I knew the truth.
I was supposed to fail.
The world as we knew it was supposed to end.
The Mortals weren’t the point. They were the problem.
The Lilum wasn’t supposed to help me, and I wasn’t supposed to jump.
She was supposed to condemn me, and I was supposed to give up. Angelus had bet on the wrong team.
A sound echoed through the hall as the great doors on the far side pushed open, revealing a small figure standing between them. Talk about betting on the wrong team—I wouldn’t have made this bet, not in a thousand lifetimes.
It was more unexpected than Angelus or any of the Keepers.
He smiled broadly; at least I think it was a smile. It was hard to tell with Xavier.
“He-hello.” Xavier glanced around the intimidating room, clearing his throat. He tried again. “Hello, friend.”
It was so quiet, you could’ve heard one of his precious buttons drop.
The only thing that wasn’t quiet was Angelus. “How dare you show your defiled face here again, Xavier. If there is anything of Xavier left, beast.”
Xavier’s leathery wings shrugged.
Angelus only looked angrier. “Why have you involved yourself in this? Your fate is not intertwined with the Wayward. You are serving your sentence. You don’t need to take a dead Mortal’s battles on as your own.”