I squeezed my eyes shut. “Why do you always have to say such perfect things?”
“I don’t always say the right things,” he denied. “You know that more than anyone else.”
“I do,” I told him. “That’s why I know what you say is usually just perfect. I’m an expert in these things.”
“I probably shouldn’t argue with you, then,” he said, his voice thicker, rougher with what he’d lacked before. Emotion.
“Yep.” I squeezed him with my arms and legs, and for just a few moments, I let reality soak its way in. I’d helped him find his way back to me, just as he promised, and even though he came back...different, it was him. There was a whole lot of bad stuff we still needed to face, but with him by my side, there was more than just a chance that we’d defeat Gabriel. There was hope. There was a light at the end of the tunnel. He was the silver lining, and this moment was proof that miracles were possible. There was a future beyond all of this.
Pulling myself together, I slowly disentangled myself. Once I was on my two feet and ninety-nine percent confident that I wasn’t going to launch myself at him again, I said, “Okay. I need to focus. I am focused. You can answer all of the questions about Heaven later, but back to what’s important. What did the angels tell you—?” I started walking again, pulling Zayne along with me until I stopped. “Where am I walking to, by the way?”
“I figured we’d catch a ride, since I’d rather speak to Nic before I take to the air,” he reasoned, and I wholeheartedly agreed with that. “I can get high enough that humans can’t tell my wings aren’t like a Warden’s, but I want to make sure none of the Wardens think I’m going to kill them.”
The Wardens.
He’d said that like he was no longer one of them, and he wasn’t. Obviously. I already knew that, but it was still a shock to the system.
“Good call,” I murmured, and then got back on track as we started walking down the path. “Is it possible? What Gabriel claimed? That Bael and the souls would infect Heaven and that God would close the gates?”
“Yes, which basically means any human that dies would no longer be able to enter Heaven. All the souls would be trapped on Earth, either becoming wraiths or tortured by demons,” Zayne finished with a sigh. “With the spheres of Heaven closed off, demons would have no reason to stay hidden. Earth would become Hell, and parts of Heaven would be lost. What Gabriel plans is possible.”
“I was kind of hoping he was just delusional.”
“Unfortunately not,” he said. “Some of the Alphas and other angels already want to close up shop.”
“The Throne said as much.” I wondered if my father was one of them as my gaze swept over the dense, shapeless tree line. Anger flashed through me. What had become of Gabriel couldn’t have been such a complete shock to the other archangels. He had to have showed signs of being out of control, with homicidal, world-destroying tendencies. That kind of stuff didn’t just appear out of the blue. None of them had done anything. My own father hadn’t even told me that Gabriel was the Harbinger, let alone remotely prepared me to come face-to-face with an archangel.
Angels were virtually useless.
Well, except that Throne. He’d been helpful. I peeked over at Zayne, who was technically an angel but not. He wasn’t useless, but any number of the angels, from the lowest class all the way up to the archangels, could’ve done something other than standing by, playing Animal Crossing or whatever it was that angels did in all their spare time.
“You have your phone on you, right?” he asked as we reached the mouth of the park. I nodded, pulling it out of my back pocket. “Want me to order a pickup?”
“Yep.” The entrance spotlights weren’t nearly bright enough to minimize the glare of the phone, so I eagerly handed it over.
As he opened up the app, I let my gaze drift over him. I wondered what the driver was going to think when he climbed into the car shirtless. My gaze got a little hung up on the breadth of his shoulders, the clearly delineated lines of his chest, and lower, to the hint of tight, coiled muscles mostly hidden by the night. Zayne had always been in the kind of shape that made me feel like I needed to add cardio or sit-ups to my nonexistent workout routine. I trained to fight. That was enough exercise for me, but his body was proof that it could cash whatever check his mouth was writing.
And I knew I was definitely staring at Zayne a little too intensely, but I wasn’t ogling him because he was pretty to look at. That was something I’d done a time or a hundred in the past, but I was staring at him now because he was here and he was okay. The disbelief wasn’t going to go away any time soon.