by Lauren Kate
But how could she forget the curse they had been suffering through for eternity? And the quest she was on to break it? She had come too far to forget that there were obstacles still in the way of her truly being with Daniel.
Every life had taught her something so far. Surely this life must hold its own key. If only she knew what to search for.
“We had word the king would arrive here to direct the troops down below,” De said. “The rebels had planned an ambush of the king’s cavalry.”
“They’re on their way,” Luce said, remembering Huang’s instructions. “They’ll be here any moment.”
Daniel nodded. “And when they get here, the rebels will expect me to fight.”
Luce winced. She’d been with Daniel twice already when he was gearing up for battle, and both times it had led to something she’d never wanted to see again. “What should I do while you’re—”
“I’m not going into battle, Lu Xin.”
“What?”
“This isn’t our war. It never was. We can stay and fight other people’s battles or we can do as we have always done and choose each other over everything else. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes,” she whispered. Lu Xin did not know the deeper meaning of De’s words, but Luce was nearly sure that she understood—that Daniel loved her, that she loved him, and that they were choosing to be together.
“They will not let us go easily. The rebels will kill me for deserting.” He replaced her helmet on her head. “You will have to fight your way out of this, too.”
“What?” she whispered. “I can’t fight. I can barely lift this thing”—she gestured at the halberd. “I can’t—”
“Yes,” he said, imparting profound meaning with the single word. “You can.”
The carriage filled with light. For a moment Luce thought that this was it, the moment when her world would ignite, when Lu Xin would die, when her soul would be exiled to the shadows.
But that didn’t happen. The glow shone out of De’s chest. It was the glow of Daniel’s soul. It wasn’t as strong or as radiant as it had been at the Mayan sacrifice, but it was just as breathtaking. It reminded Luce of the glow of her own soul when she’d first seen Lu Xin. Maybe she was learning to truly see the world as it was. Maybe, at last, illusion was falling away.
“Okay,” she said, stuffing her long hair back inside the helmet. “Let’s go.”
They parted the curtains and stood on the platform of the chariot. Before them, a rebel force of twenty men on horseback waited near a hill’s edge maybe fifty feet ahead of where the king’s chariot had been overtaken. They were dressed in simple peasants’ clothing, brown trousers and coarse, filthy shirts. Their shields bore the sign of the rat, the symbol of the Zhou army. They were all looking to De for orders.
From the valley below came the rumbling of hundreds of horses. Luce understood that the entire Shang army was down there, thirsty for blood. She could hear them chanting an old war song Lu Xin had known since she could speak.
And somewhere behind them, Luce knew that Huang and the rest of the king’s private soldiers were on their way to what they thought would be a rendezvous at the overlook. They were riding into a bloodbath, an ambush, and Luce and Daniel had to get away before they arrived.
“Follow my lead,” De murmured. “We will head for the hills to the west, as far from this battle as our horses can take us.”
He freed one of the horses from the chariot and guided it to Luce. The horse was stunning, black as coal, with a diamond-shaped white patch on its chest. De helped Luce into the saddle and held up the king’s halberd in one hand and a crossbow in the other. Luce had never fired or even touched a crossbow in her life, and Lu Xin had only used one once, to scare a lynx away from her baby sister’s crib. But the weapon felt light in Luce’s hands, and she knew that if it came down to it, she could fire it.
De smiled at her choice and whistled for his horse. A beautiful brindle mare trotted over. He hopped onto its back.
“De! What are you doing?” an alarmed voice called from the line of horses. “You were to kill the king! Not mount him on one of our horses!”
“Yes! Kill the king!” a chorus of angry voices called.
“The king is dead!” Luce shouted, silencing the soldiers. The feminine voice behind the helmet brought gasps from all of them. They stood frozen, uncertain whether to raise their weapons.
De drew his horse close to Luce’s. He took her hands in his. They were warmer and stronger and more reassuring than anything she’d ever felt.
“Whatever happens, I love you. Our love is worth everything to me.”
“And to me,” Luce whispered back.
De let out a battle cry, and their horses took off at a breakneck pace. The crossbow nearly slipped out of Luce’s grasp as she lurched forward to clutch the reins.
Then the rebel soldiers began to shout. “Traitors!”
“Lu Xin!” De’s voice rose above the shrillest cry, the heaviest horse’s hoof. “Go!” He raised his arm high, pointing toward the hills.
Her horse galloped so fast it was hard to see anything clearly. The world whizzed by in one terrifying whoosh. A tangle of rebel soldiers fell in behind them, their horses’ hoofbeats as loud as an earthquake that went on forever.
Until the rebel came at Daniel with his halberd, Luce had forgotten about the crossbow in her hands. Now she raised it effortlessly, still unsure how to use it, knowing only that she would slaughter anyone who tried to hurt Daniel.
Now.
She released her arrow. To her shock, it stopped the rebel dead, knocking him off his horse. He collapsed in a cloud of dust. She gazed back in horror at the dead man with the arrow through his chest lying on the ground.
“Keep going!” De called out.
She swallowed hard, letting her horse guide her. Something was happening. She began to feel lighter in her saddle, as if gravity suddenly had less power over her, as if De’s faith in her was propelling her through it all. She could do this. She could escape with him. She slipped another bolt onto the crossbow, fired, and fired again. She didn’t aim at anyone except in self-defense, but there were so many soldiers coming at her that she was soon nearly out of arrows. Just two left.
“De!” she cried.
He was almost fully out of his saddle, using an ax to beat down hard on a Shang soldier. De’s wings weren’t extended, but they might as well have been—he seemed lighter than air, yet deadly skillful. Daniel killed his foes so cleanly, their deaths were instantaneous, as close to painless as possible.
“De!” she shouted, more loudly.
At the sound of her voice, his head shot up. Luce leaned over her saddle to show him her nearly empty quiver. He tossed her a hooked sword.
She caught it by the hilt. It felt strangely natural in her hand. Then she remembered—the fencing lesson she’d taken at Shoreline. In her very first match, she’d destroyed Lilith, a prissy, cruel classmate who’d been fencing all her life.
Certainly she could do it again.
Just then, a warrior leaped from his horse onto hers. The sudden weight of him made her mount stumble and made Luce scream, but a moment later, his throat was slit and his body shoved to the ground and the blade of her sword shone with fresh blood.
There was a warm flush across her chest. Her entire body buzzed. She charged ahead, spurring her horse to full speed, faster and faster until—
The world went white.
Then slammed into black.
Finally it flared through a blaze of brilliant colors.
She raised her hand to block the light, but it wasn’t coming from outside her. Her horse still galloped beneath her. Her dagger was still gripped in her fist, still slashing right and left, into throats, into chests. Enemies still fell at her feet.
But somehow Luce wasn’t quite there anymore. A riot of visions assaulted her mind, visions that must have belonged to Lu Xin—and then some visions that couldn’t possibly have belonged to Lu
Xin.
She saw Daniel hovering over her in his simple peasant’s clothes … but then, a moment later, he was bare-chested, with long blond hair … and suddenly he wore a knight’s helmet, whose visor he lifted to kiss her lips … but before he did, he shifted into his present self, the Daniel she’d left in her parents’ backyard in Thunderbolt when she stepped through into time.
This was the Daniel, she realized, she’d been looking for all along. She reached for him, she called his name, but then he changed again. And again. She saw more Daniels than she’d ever thought possible, each one more gorgeous than the last. They folded into each other like a vast accordion, each image of him tilting and altering in the light of the sky behind him. The cut of his nose, the line of his jawbone, the tone of his skin, the shape of his lips, all whirled in and out of focus, morphing all the time. Everything changed except his eyes.
His violet eyes always stayed the same. They haunted her, hiding something terrible, something she didn’t understand. Something she didn’t want to understand.
Fear?
In the visions, the terror in Daniel’s eyes was so intense Luce actually wanted to look away from their beauty. What could someone as powerful as Daniel fear?
There was only one thing: Luce’s dying.
She was experiencing a montage of her death over and over and over again. This was what Daniel’s eyes looked like, throughout time, just before her life went up in flames. She had seen this fear in him before. She hated it because it always meant their time was over. She saw it now in every one of his faces. The fear flashed from infinite times and places. Suddenly, she knew there was more:
He wasn’t afraid for her, not because she was walking into the darkness of another death. He didn’t fear that it might cause her pain.
Daniel was afraid of her.
“Lu Xin!” his voice cried out to her from the battlefield. She could see him through the haze of visions. He was the only thing coming in clearly—because everything else around her was lit up startlingly white. Everything inside her was, too. Was her love of Daniel burning her up? Was it her own passion, not his, that destroyed her every time?
“No!” His hand reached out for hers. But it was too late.
Her head hurt. She didn’t want to open her eyes.
Bill was back, the floor was cool, and Luce was in a welcome pocket of darkness. A waterfall sprayed somewhere in the background, drizzling on her hot cheeks.
“You did okay out there after all,” he said.
“Don’t sound so disappointed,” Luce said. “How about explaining where you disappeared to?”
“Can’t.” Bill sucked in his fat lips to show that they were sealed.
“Why not?”
“Personal.”
“Is it Daniel?” she asked. “He’d be able to see you, wouldn’t he? And there’s some reason you don’t want him to know that you’re helping me.”
Bill snorted. “My business isn’t always about you, Luce. I have other things stewing in the pot. Besides, you seem pretty independent of late. Maybe it’s time to end our little arrangement, bust off your training wheels. What the hell do you need me for anymore?”
Luce was too exhausted to pander to him, and too stunned by what she’d just seen. “It’s hopeless.”
All the rage left Bill like air being let out of a balloon. “How do you mean?”
“When I die, it’s not because of anything that Daniel does. It’s something that happens inside me. Maybe his love brings it out, but—it’s my fault. That has to be part of the curse, only I have no idea what it means. All I know is, I saw a look in his eyes right before I died—it’s always the same.”
He tilted his head. “So far.”
“I make him miserable more than I make him happy,” she said. “If he hasn’t given up on me, he should. I can’t do this to him anymore.”
She dropped her head into her hands.
“Luce?” Bill sat on her knee. There was the strange tenderness he’d shown when she first met him. “Do you want to put this endless charade to rest? For Daniel’s sake?”
Luce looked up and wiped her eyes. “You mean, so he won’t have to go through this again? There’s something I can do?”
“When you assume one of your past self’s bodies, there is one moment in each one of your lives, just before you die, where your soul and the two bodies—past and present—split apart. It only happens for a fraction of an instant.”
Luce squinted. “I think I’ve felt that. At the moment when I realize I’m going to die, right before I actually do?”
“Exactly. It has to do with how your lives cleave together. In that fraction of a moment, there is a way to cleave your cursed soul from your present body. Kind of like carving out your soul. It would, effectively, extinguish that pesky reincarnation element of your curse.”
“But I thought I was already at the end of my cycle of reincarnations, that I wasn’t coming back anymore. Because of the baptism thing. Because I never—”
“That doesn’t matter. You’re still bound to see the cycle to its end. As soon as you go back to the present, you could still die at any moment because of—”
“My love of Daniel.”
“Sure, something like that,” Bill said. “Ahem. That is, unless you break the bond with your past.”
“So I’d cleave from my past and she would still die as she always did—”
“And you would still be cast out just as you’ve been before, only you’d leave your soul behind to die, too. And the body you would return to”—he poked her in the shoulder—“this one—would be free to live outside the curse that’s been hanging over you since the dawn of time.”
“No more dying?”
“Not unless you jump off a building or get into a car with a murderer or take a whole lot of Unisom or—”
“I get it,” she cut him off. “But it’s not like”—she struggled to steady her voice—“it’s not like Daniel would kiss me and I’d … or—”
“It’s not like Daniel would do anything.” Bill stared at her purposefully. “You wouldn’t be drawn to him anymore. You’d move on. Probably marry some dull sweetheart and have twelve kids of your own.”
“No.”
“You and Daniel would be free of the curse you so despise. Free. Hear that? He could move on and be happy, too. Don’t you want Daniel to be happy?”
“But Daniel and I—”
“Daniel and you would be nothing. It’s a hard reality, okay, fine. But think about it: You wouldn’t have to hurt him anymore. Grow up, Luce. There’s more to life than teenage passion.”
Luce opened her mouth but didn’t want to hear her voice break. A life without Daniel was unimaginable. But so was going back to her current life and trying to be with Daniel and having it kill her for good. She had tried so hard to find a way to break this curse, but the answer still eluded her. Maybe this was the way. It sounded awful now, but if she went back to her life and didn’t even know Daniel, she wouldn’t miss him. And he wouldn’t miss her. Maybe that would be better. For both of them.
But no. They were soul mates. And Daniel brought more into her life than just his love. Arriane, Roland, and Gabbe. Even Cam. It was because of all of them that she’d learned about herself—what she wanted, what she didn’t, how to stand up for herself. She’d grown up and become a better person. Without Daniel, she would never have gone to Shoreline, never have found the true friends she’d made of Shelby and Miles. Would she even have gone to Sword & Cross? Where on earth would she be? Who would she be?
Could she be happy one day without him? Fall in love with someone else? She couldn’t bear to think about that. Life without Daniel sounded colorless and grim—except for one bright spot that Luce kept circling back to:
What if she never had to hurt him again?
“Say I did want to consider this.” Luce could barely muster a whisper. “Just to think it over. How does it even work?”
Bill reached behind him and sl
owly unsheathed something long and silver from a tiny black strap on his back. She’d never noticed it before. He held out a dull, flat-tipped silver arrow that she immediately recognized.
Then he smiled. “Have you ever seen a starshot?”
EIGHTEEN
BAD DIRECTIONS
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL • 27 NISSAN 2760
“So, you’re not actually that bad of a guy?” Shelby said to Daniel.
They were sitting on the lush bank of the old Jerusalem riverbed, watching the horizon where the two fallen angels had just parted ways. The lightest breath of gold-hued light hung in the sky where Cam had been, and the air was beginning to smell a bit like rotten eggs.
“Of course I’m not.” Daniel dipped his hand in the cool water. His wings and his soul still felt hot from watching Cam make his choice. How simple it had seemed for him. How easy and how swift.
And all because of a broken heart.
“It’s just that when Luce found out you and Cam struck up that truce, she was devastated. None of us could understand it.” Shelby looked to Miles for affirmation. “Could we?”
“We thought you were hiding something from her.” Miles took off his baseball cap and rubbed his head. “All we knew of Cam was that he was supposed to be pure evil.”
Shelby made claws with her fingers. “All hiss! and rawr! and like that.”
“Few souls are pure anything,” Daniel said, “in Heaven, in Hell, or on Earth.” He turned away, looking high in the eastern sky for a hint of the silver dust Dani would have left when he unfurled his wings and flew away. There was nothing.
“Sorry,” Shelby said, “but it’s so weird to think of you as brothers.”
“We were all a family at one point.”
“Yeah, but, like, forever ago.”
“You think just because something’s been one way for a few thousand years, that it’s fixed across eternity.” Daniel shook his head. “Everything is in flux. I was with Cam at the Dawn of Time, and I’ll see him through the End Times.”
