Daughter of Smoke and Bone (39 page)

She is in battle. Seraphim plummet from the sky, trailing fire.

She is in love. It is bright within her, like a swallowed star.

She mounts a scaffold. A thousand-thousand faces stare at her, but she sees only one.

She kneels on the battlefield beside a dying angel.

Wings enfold her. Skin like fever, love like burning.

She mounts the scaffold. Her hands are tied behind her, her wings pinioned. A thousand-thousand faces stare; feet stamp, hooves; voices shriek and jeer, but one rises above them all. It is Akiva’s. It is a scream to scour ghosts from their nests.

She is Madrigal Kirin, who dared imagine a new way of living.

The blade is a great and shining thing, like a falling moon. It is sudden—

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S
UDDEN

Karou gasped. Her hands flew to her neck and wrapped around it, and it was intact.

She looked at Akiva and blinked, and when she breathed his name, there was a new richness in her voice, an infusion of wonder and love and entreaty that made it seem to rise out of time. As it did. “Akiva,” she breathed with the fullness of her self.

With longing, with anguish, he watched her, and waited.

She dropped her hands from her neck and they trembled as she stripped off her gloves to reveal her palms. She stared at them.

They stared back.

They stared back—two flat indigo eyes—and she understood what Brimstone had done.

She finally understood everything.

Once upon a time,
there were two moons, who were sisters
.

Nitid was the goddess of tears and life,
and the sky was hers
.

No one worshipped Ellai but secret lovers
.

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