As for the matter of the investigation regarding the inhabitants of the associated domicile, no records of person or persons matching the herewithin described description have been found to reside or have resided on the premises in the last six, ten, or twelve months.

If additional investigation is requested, please contact the clerk’s desk with the requested information and letter of guarantee for payment in full.

Alone in her mansion, Alisandra reviewed receipts at dusk. Her ledgers towered overhead, stacked to the rafters on the two wide tables that remained. Further annotations and notes in her own hand lay scattered across the floor.

Most of the furniture had been sold before the last voting blitz – most of the furniture but not a single book.

The result of her investigation request for the Dreamer’s Den lay by her foot, shredded into angry bits. Oliver reported that the witch had not been seen at the Den since the attack, though the fanatics continued to meet and pray.

Were Lace independent I could flex my House name to have her branded a heretic, at least, but she belongs to Reed now.

Yet another problem of the damnable election…

Alisandra let herself daydream a moment. A swift, solid kick to Reed’s front door, perhaps a furious fight in the smoking lounge, and Lace would pay for her crimes.

And will you kill Reed as well? He is certainly a nuisance, nagged Sebastian’s voice in her ear. And all the guards who see you throwing people through walls? The servants? The groundskeepers? How quickly it will spiral…

The young angel sighed.

And what of Mirielle? Even if no one else ever learns what you have done, she will know…know that you violated the accord first.

“Let us live as mortals might,” the young angel drawled, tapping her ledger. “Very, very rich mortals…”

The mine finally paid. Novia had announced her newest miracle metal, titanium, and that metal required rutile in enormous quantities. If Novian steel was the symbol of economic progress and power, then Novian titanium would be the key to the world itself!

House Mishkan held the deed to the only source of rutile in the known world.

“I should buy a bauxite source or two as well,” she mused. Having the entire Inventor program on her shelves rather ruined the surprise, but it certainly made economic predictions easier. A few well-timed purchases, and she could laugh House Visage to the bank.

Her conscience nagged at her, though. Did she truly require that much gold? Was she left this House to expand its coffers until the entire nation revolved around her whims? Was domination by economics any less a dominion than godhood?

Even Mirielle allowed an industry to slip through her fingers occasionally. Scraps for mankind.

The angel leaned back on her chair and knit her fingers through her hair. “Riches for the rich, and riots for the rest. I wish this election was over with.”

She reached for her tea and found the cup empty. As she rose, the house wards pulsed once.

Alisandra paused. Another imp?

The bare trees outside rustled ominously, and the few lights in the hallway only deepened the shadows.

Something vast and hungry growled like a diesel engine from outside the study windows.

She whipped to face her foe, but the bushes were empty.

The wards pulsed again.

Golden eyes fixated on her from the dark corner of the study.

“Ah, hells.” Alisandra leaped backwards, heart pounding. The Care of Creation warned of a creature that slipped through wards and flesh like soap bubbles. A predator built to hunt angels, myth of jungle shadow.

Sebastian never did find the rest of Lace’s toys…

The shadow panther bounded across the study, smashing through her ledgers.

Her mortal instincts screamed at her to run, but was she not an angel? Was this not her own House?!

They collided, angel and beast, and rolled in a tangle of fur and limbs into the hallway. The shadow walker clawed at her sides, shredding her shirt and skin both. She caught her feet against its belly and heaved. It rippled through the ceiling, vanishing from sight.

Alisandra staggered to her feet, settled her stance, and waited. Sure as dawn, the shadow walker would find her when it was ready.

Thirty seconds later, the pulsing of the wards warned her a split second before it burst through the wall.

She punched it in the muzzle at full strength.

The creature tumbled past, slunk upright, and shook its muzzle in annoyance.

“Well, aren’t you hardy?” she muttered. “A beast built to give the Tempest trouble.”

Snarling, it pounced, and they resumed the wild tumble. They crashed down the hall, kicking over ancient pottery and ruining the carpet.

Alisandra snatched a thousand-year-old ceremonial dagger from its display and shanked the giant cat in the neck. The copper blade crumpled against its fur.

“Hard as a cragbear and half as polite!”

They toppled through the landing banister, shattered a priceless table on landing beneath, and cracked a marble statue in a frenzy of curses and yowls.

This is a problem! she admitted, shoving back its snapping jaws before she lost her nose. A real problem!

They warred into the old hallways, dusty rooms where only linens lived. She almost never walked these back hallways, not after the scolding she received as a child for playing hide and seek here.

Gripping its brittle mane, Alisandra hurled the damned beast into the hallway wall outside the half-forgotten linens closet.

Instead of slipping through easily, the beast bounced.

A new ward resounded, a resplendent song unfamiliar to the angel’s ears.

The panther snarled in confusion, pawing once at the apparently solid wall.

Alisandra didn’t waste time questioning. She snatched the giant cat by its hindquarters and bodily hurled it through the doorway into the stacks of linens. Bloody and furious, she snatched the door and yanked it shut.

A moment later, the frame rattled with the impact of a large, angry feline.

“Thank the heavens,” Alisandra breathed, leaning against the shuddering doorway.

Her head pounded, and her limbs ached. Teeth marks through her sleeves and blood stains down her skirt; she could make quite a splash in high society with this ensemble!

The panther roared in frustration and started chewing on the door handle.

Alisandra locked the door!

“Why do we have a linen closet warded against shadow walkers?!” she demanded of the empty house. “And since we do, in fact, have such a room, why was I never informed?!”

As the adrenaline faded, her wounds began to burn. The shadow walker had mangled her right calf like a chewtoy, bites deep enough to leave her limping. Her knuckles groaned from punching its hide as hard as a car, and her blood hammered in her ears.

Still didn’t hurt as much as a pipe through the gut.

The panther rammed against the wall several more times, scraped furiously against the walls, and yowled.

“Come off it!” she snarled in turn. “I will sell you to a circus!”

Months of sword training, and a cat catches me bare-handed! Had I the Hand of God, I would have cut the beast in half on the draw.

Though if she had missed on that draw, she would likely have obliterated the mansion.

Now that the danger was past, the garage rumbled open.

Alisandra limped to the atrium over bits of marble. Her legs worked, stiff but obedient, despite the gouges in her muscles. What power did she now walk by?

Sebastian met her by the shattered table, a bag of groceries in his arm. He absorbed the bleeding Lady, the ruined banister, and the savaged carpet with equitable calm. “Has something gone amiss?”

“Are you not the angel of witness?” she demanded. “Witness for once!”

He obediently closed his eyes to listen to their house.

“There is a shadow walker in our linen closet, Sebastian!” Her voice grew crisp and cold, her anger crystalizing like a crown. “A closet that wards against astral travel!”

“Ah, yes. That was Mirielle’s ritual–”

“And nowhere in your vaunted futures did you foresee this damned beast chewing on me! Where were you today, anyways?!”

“The tenements,” the angel of witness answered. “There is a terrible hunger for witches in this city, and I thought it prudent to help a few acquaintances depart in haste.”

She opened her mouth to lash him like a schoolboy, but first a key rasped in the rarely used front door.

Gabriel nudged open the way, carrying a bag of market bread. Lynne followed, tanned dark as a chestnut and wearing an azure sarong. Finally, tethered to Lynne by a hand, a child in white and blue trailed.

Alisandra pinned all three with an imperious glare.

Her father gasped, pinions bristling, and instantly fixated on her wounds. “Are you alright?!”

“Fine,” she hissed, ears still pounding.

“What happened?!”

“Shadow panther in the linen closet,” Sebastian supplied.

The Archangel relaxed, his wings settling, and glanced at Lynne. “…Father Panther revealed at last?”

Alisandra threw her hands up and swore.

“I take it Lynne kept busy in the south,” the angel of witness drawled. “I apologize for the brusqueness, but I must insist we clean the mansion. The Inquisition is very active at the moment. Gabriel?”

He glanced anxiously at his daughter.

“She must learn to mend herself.”

Wincing, Gabriel surrendered. “I need to head south with the dawn – a small trip to follow up on my discussions with Lynne, nothing to worry over – and I know how hard the healing can be in the beginning. Let me know if you need any help at all, Ali.”

“I’ll be fine, Father,” she snapped.

Reluctantly, the Archangel followed Sebastian into the hall for tools.

Lynne jogged the girl’s hand in reassurance. Who was this kid? Skinny – scrawny! – and marked by a lock of azure hair, the girl avoided eye contact.

Yet there was such a familiar feel to the girl, something bubbling beneath the surface…

The girl turned, and her brand flashed for the world to see.

She leaves for Harvest and returns with a replacement, Alisandra thought, a surge of jealousy boiling in that thought. Scowling, she hummed, “Hello, Lynne. I’m glad to see that you have found a child to fill the void.”

Even as the words flew past her lips, she felt her own blasted pettiness.

The angel of oceans stiffened, and the waves in the harbor stuttered.

But nothing in Alisandra’s angelic strength could recall the words flung so carelessly out.

The child forced a smile. “H-hello! I’m Esmerelda Azure-touched, Herald to the Goddess. Most everyone calls me Esmie, and I’m from Resting Dragon. I’m…”

Lynne deliberately settled her hands across Esmie’s shoulders. She matched Alisandra’s tone, ice for ice. “Why don’t we visit the kitchen? We can make some lunch, dear, and Alisandra can scream some more at the linen closet.”

Chin high, she steered the child away.

Alisandra snarled. What did she care? She spun and limped back to the library to survey the damage. She found the ledgers in tatters, but that was hardly an obstacle to her memory. Books lay in heaps, pages crumpled, but that too was easy to rectify. Should she not exult at having faced a shadow panther, a beast worthy of the old gods, and survived to tell the story?

Easy to say, but what if I had not lucked upon the linen closet? Mirielle’s old ritual chamber?

A resplendent song, nothing like the lullaby of a seductress.

She held up her savaged arm and slowly flexed. Electric pain raised down her forearm, but her fingers clenched despite all the damage to the tissues in her arm.

How much more can I endure?

Would she feel so secure in victory if the shadow panther had mauled off an arm? Torn out her throat?

Would I be conscious if that cat tore me into twenty pieces?

If an angel fell to Reverie and never woke, wasn’t that just death?

She inhaled, trying to still her racing thoughts. As Sebastian tutored, she would find and seize the Light within herself…

But instead her unruly thoughts returned again and again to the exact moment Lynne flinched.

“Heal already!” she snarled to herself, eyes squeezed shut. “I will not beg Father!”

My tongue launched the words like arrows and found their mark in her heart. Her pupils contracted, and her tear ducts glistened. She held back tears.

Distant laughter echoed from the kitchen.

The woman lays her hands on Esmie’s collar like a prized puppy. So happy with her new catch!

Why should Alisandra apologize? In a few hours, the matter would pass. No one would speak of her outburst. Like a pinprick, the harmful words would seal themselves over. In a polite society, such things were simply beneath mention. She need only wait out the bad weather. Didn’t this very strategy work in her adolescence?!

The angel of oceans would take a long walk, and the matter would die.

Coal burned in her heart, and her wounds remained.

You need to apologize, whispered that obnoxious little voice in her heart.

By the icy hells, Alisandra hated nothing more! A proper Lady did not apologize! A proper Lady comported herself with such grace that the occasional slip of the tongue faded from all memory.

Apologizing is the right thing to do.

It was shame that burned her throat. She was a petulant child and a stain to her mother’s House. To her mother’s legacy.

Angrily, Alisandra wiped tears away.

Why should your skin heal when you leave her heart bleeding?

She was a Lady of the Conclave!

Then why aren’t you acting like one?

She swore softly in defeat.

Swallowing her pride like a bitter stone, she marched through the halls, still favoring her injured leg. She forced herself to intrude into the kitchen, interrupting the laughter there, and cleared her throat.

The conversation stopped. Lynne and Esmie waited uncertainly.

“May I speak with you?” Alisandra rasped.

Lynne glancing at her Herald.

“I can cook by myself,” Esmie offered. “I’ve done it lots.”

Nodding, Lynne crossed the room to the Lady Mishkan.

They hesitated together on the edge of unexplored territory. So much easier to leave matters unspoken.

The moment passed, unseized, and Alisandra led her old maid to her bedroom with eyes averted. Once inside, she shut the door.

Lynne sat on the edge of the bed, hands knit, and Alisandra leaned against the doorframe.

“Lynne, I…” she cleared her throat, working her pinky into the gouge in her arm. The pain kept her mind clear. “I must apologize for my behavior. It was shameful and untrue.”

A light rain began to patter against the eves.

Which Lynne would answer this plea? The overflowing Maiden or the overbearing Tempest?

“You are free to associate as you please,” Alisandra continued, “and it is unkind of me to malign a child I have never met before today.”

Lynne scooped a stuffed animal from the pillows and placed it on her lap like a guardian.

“No, Alisandra, your tongue is sharp but true. Esmie served my purposes well enough in Wave’s Lament, but I began to spoil her faster than a fruit at noon.” The angel shrugged. “But she wanted to need me, and I wanted to be needed.”

Such a measured response…is this Maiden or Tempest? “I maligned you as well. You were not trying to replace me.”

Her maid laughed sourly. “Oh, I absolutely was! You are full grown and an angel besides. Eternity stretches before you. What need have you for a nursemaid now?”

The rain fell delicately, sealing the bedroom in a quiet world of grey light and dripping water.

“She’s not that young,” Alisandra joked softly.

“I branded her, Ali,” Lynne said. “She is mine as deeply as if I carried her in my own womb.”

Branded as my mother was branded…

“A brand is not a neat and simple magic. We walk together now, she and I, and none may say where those currents will go.”

Summoning her courage, Alisandra crossed to the bed and sat beside Lynne. To listen.

“You deserved better as a child, Ali. The Maiden tries to love, but what child can be perfect? Then the Tempest comes, and the fear rises in their eyes. They cower. As you cowered.” The angel of oceans ran her fingers through the stuffed animal’s hair. “You did not deserve many of the spankings you received.”

A perfect girl to be loved by the Maiden and praised by the Tempest, Alisandra recalled. A lesson for a girl no older than Esmie, keenly aware of her family legacy. But I don’t think I talk to either of them now…

“You are more than that storm,” Alisandra offered.

“I might be,” Lynne agreed softly, “but it will not absolve my past actions. There is a reckoning in absolution, and I fear my people will pay in my stead.”

Neither spoke for a long time as the rain pattered.

“Verdandi and Hylas believed in me once, Ali, before your time. I betrayed that trust for no better reason than my own hubris. Now Hylas rests as a pillar of the world, and Verdandi fades into the dream of Reverie, and all that they cherished is entrusted to me.” Mostly to herself, Lynne whispered, “What did you mean, Verdandi? ‘The only hope we have’?”

“Lynne…?”

“Ah. Never mind my rambling, dear.” The angel of oceans smiled. “Verdandi was hard enough to understand when she walked mortal paths. As a seer of Reverie, she’s positively insufferable.”

Alisandra’s questing pinky caught muscle, and a jolt of pain sharpened her thoughts to an edge. She hissed, fresh blood welling, and asked a question before Lynne noticed. “What do you need from me then? From House Mishkan?”

“Please treat Esmie well. It is an imposition, both for you and your House, and I have done little to earn the right to ask it…”

Alisandra laid her hand on top of Lynne’s. “Then she is a Mishkan.”

The bitter pill on the young angel’s tongue finally faded, and they shared a smile.

“Welcome home, Lynne.”

“Yes, dear…I’m home.”

“Though I do wish that you had sent word! I would have met you at the harbor!”

Lynne laughed, furtively wiping at her eyes. “Oh, that. Esmie realized I can fly now. Once that secret flew the coop, I had no excuse to tarry on my return to Wave’s Lament. Thankfully, Gabriel invited me here for a meal, and so we detour.”

“You can fly?! What in the world have I missed?!”

Lynne shook her head. “Alisandra, you look a wreck. You have teeth marks in your calves!”

“Shadow panther. Linen closet.”

“Father Panther, indeed. One question answered, I suppose…”

“What?”

“Ah, what are you doing with your pinky, dear?”

Alisandra quickly tucked her hand away.

“Picking at your wounds again? I thought we had broken that habit, Ali!”

The Lady Mishkan flushed like a truant child.

Lynne sighed. “Honestly…You need Light, yes? Lay down.”

Reluctantly, Alisandra allowed her old maid to push her to the bed. Lynne slipped behind her, nestling the young angel’s head on her lap, and laid hands on her head.

“I’m sorry. I meant to generate the Light myself this time.”

“You are so young yet, Ali. Let your soul grow in its own time.”

“Grow into what? I call no aspect; I wield no artifact!”

“These things wait for the right time.”

Flushing, too exposed, Alisandra joked, “Do we speak of angels or puberty?”

“Are they so different? New worlds that reveal themselves in due time, teasing pleasure and terror in equal measure. I too fear what I become.”

“What is that?”

Lynne brushed back Alisandra’s hair and summoned dewdrops of Maiden’s Light to her fingertips.

“Whole.”

She brushed her fingertips against the girl’s temples.

Healing rain and gentle mist flooded through Alisandra’s mind. In that rush, she found herself thinking of her mother.

A thought like a hook that found its quarry, and two angels fell together.

***

The sky was a runny watercolor, and the flowers grew tall as towers.

“Ah, the summer estate!” Lynne exclaimed, absorbing the sight, “and such a brilliant day!”

Alisandra, meanwhile, glanced down at herself. A child in pinafore and braids. “Aw, hells!”

“If you’re going to play that role, don’t swear.”

“That is all well and good, but how did we get into my dream?!”

“Dream…?” Lynne kneeled to meet her temporarily height challenged ward eye to eye. “Ali, sweetie, this is no dream. Dreams are ephemeral as soap bubbles; an angel such as I would rupture one by breathing. No, this is your heart realm, sweetie. Your garden. We are inside you.”

Alisandra scowled. “You’re making that up.”

Lynne smiled, offering an extravagant if teasing curtsy. “Oh, Ali, I am deeply touched. This is not a place that may be breached. You have let me into your heart.”

The young angel jumped back, embarrassed, and felt her cheeks start to heat.

When she visited this place for a butterfly’s amusement, she knew that she was an actor upon the stage. Yet Lynne exerted a pressure far beyond that flittering voice, and the sensations of childhood swelled close to hand: the ache of growing bones; the uncertainty of her own untested emotions; the towering and distant future, both tantalizing and terrifying; the clashing jealousy and disdain for adults.

This child I play would never have a prayer of lifting the Hand of God.

Lynne frowned. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

Thoughts bubbled from the depths in a voice older than her own. I can hold this blade. I can bear this weight. I will stand on the front lines at the end of time. Why must I once more endure the callow weakness of my own youth?

I will stand. This is my fate.

“Have I always known my own Blooming?” she asked, reeling.

“Ah.” Lynne grimaced. “That is a question for your father. He understands the Song better than I.”

Alisandra stomped a foot. “I want to know what you think, though!”

“I suppose that begs the question of who the ‘you’ in question is. A mortal is only a fragment of a greater whole, and there is no Blooming without the consent of that higher self. To Bloom is to draw the garden down at the cost of heaven itself. Whether we wear the mantle well or not, we are awakened to never sleep again.”

“Then why do I dream of this?!”

“Perhaps your garden attempts to teach you lessons.” Lynne shrugged. “Ali, my own heart realm is a tempestuous sea with no land in sight. It is no place for quiet recollections. We are here now; tell me what you seek, and I will help you find it.”

With difficulty, Alisandra managed to stave off the whirlwind of uncontrolled emotion. Hells, how I loathed my own outbursts even as a child. “This day, I asked Father about my mother at the gazebo at the center of the lake.” Her cheeks burned to admit such weakness. “But no matter how many ways I walk this place or how patiently I play the role the butterfly requires, I can get no closer.”

“Alice…” Lynne mused.

The garden estate shuddered with the whisper of that precious name.

“Yes,” Alisandra swallowed against her yearning.

Lynne scooped up the child into her arms. “Then I will help you.”

In response, she squirmed madly. She was a child, not a babe!

“Would you let me carry you?” Lynne huffed. “You were always like this. Born a hundred years old, never to linger on anything that you couldn’t conquer!”

The young angel grit her teeth and stilled. At the very least, if Lynne insisted on carrying her, the angel of oceans could walk faster!

Lynne completed a quick circuit of the hedge maze, frowned, and hiked up the yard to the estate. Once inside, she carried the sulking angel through the rooms, taking inventory of frozen memories.

“The layout is different,” the angel of oceans noted. “Patience, my squirming charge. Let us stroll until your heart finds the right spot.”

Alisandra forced herself not to squirm, wondering when the butterfly would show up to taunt them.

A metaphor must be walked, not conquered. Does it count if I am carried?

“All the doors lead out into the flower path,” Lynne remarked. “Perhaps that is the way we should go?”

“Wherever is fine,” Alisandra grumbled.

“Now you’re just pouting.”

At last, Lynne selected a bench beneath the window that overlooked the sea. Two stained glass pieces framed the main window, their colored light as thick as honey in this dream. The angel of oceans shifted Alisandra into her lap, surrounded by the sarong like the walls to a cotton fort.

“It is no small quest to master your garden, Ali. Mortals must contend with their guardian, but that higher being is equal part judge and guide. We must walk this land as lonely kings.” Lynne drew her knees in, squeezing the child on either side. “It is a feat I still have not achieved, but there is another way to find what you seek. I will share my memories with you. It won’t hurt.”

The angel of oceans paused, grimacing, and corrected herself.

“Well, won’t hurt more than normal.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Alisandra drawled, bracing herself for a puppet show of colors and mist.

Lynne wrapped her arms around Alisandra. “One…two…and here we go…”

Gently, the angel began to draw forth the mists…

“I said I was ready!”

Lynne’s eyes sparked in annoyance. “If you say so.”

She dispensed with the preamble.

Sudden, cold tendrils of black water seized Alisandra uncomfortably tight, and…

The former Goddess scooped peas onto her plate.

Across the table, Alice Mishkan served herself pork cutlets. To her left, the Archangel buttered bread.

Outside, a gentle Spring rain pattered on the roof.

“Shall I stop the rain?” Lynne asked.

“Why?” Gabriel asked.

The Stormmother frowned. “So we might eat on the balcony, of course.”

“We can eat there anyways with an umbrella,” Alice noted, teasing.

Gabriel distributed the bread, and Alice piled pork cutlets onto the other plates.

“It has been a wet season,” Lynne continued. “The farmers worry they will lose their crops.”

“Farming is a fraught business,” the Archangel agreed.

“You cannot mean to ignore this!” the Stormmother objected. Surely these two powerful and ancient creatures could not eat a pork dinner while Ruhum faced starvation!

“We are not ignoring it,” Alice corrected gently. “We are allowing a lesson to take form.”

“Such as the folly of building one’s farms in a flood plain,” agreed the Archangel. “Alas, several prominent voices pointed out the weakness in the dykes, but last year was quite dry, and public works are always so expensive.”

“Children will starve!”

That was always her secret weapon. Wouldn’t they think of the children?

“Then perhaps you might donate to a few charities,” Alice suggested. “Sebastian will know the ones.”

These angels truly were mad!

Defeated, the Stormmother slumped in her chair and poked her pork cutlets.

Alisandra gasped for air. My living mother! No painting nor photo, but as she lived and breathed. Our faces are so alike…she must have been scarce older than me at that point.

“Are you alright, dear?”

“You said you were going to share memories!” She flexed her hands, swooning. Her palms were so small, her nails stubby and dirty, and her swirling thoughts for a moment wondered why they were not the long ovals of a goddess. “But I was you!”

“Who else would I be in memory?”

Alisandra snorted but conceded the point.

“That was not long after I arrived here. I could not understand the way they lived. How such powerful beings could walk with such careful steps.”

“Living as mortals might.”

“I needed a long time to understand. The Archangel did not forbid me – any of us! – from helping. He merely insisted we do so as servants in the night. A charitable donation here; a quiet conversation there. That is the core of your father’s vision: that angels might be a gentle finger upon the scales of history instead of demon kings.”

“And thus he avoids my questions and finds excuses to draw me from honing my power,” Alisandra muttered.

“Thus he gives you time to grow into the angel you wish to be instead of forging you into a reflection after his own visage.”

“I think he tries to find reasons for me not to train with the Hand of God,” she admitted.

Lynne considered her words carefully. “It is a powerful artifact of Eden, Ali. I would have forbidden you in the first place.”

“You would hardly let me ride a horse, much less train with a sword!”

The words could have started a fight.

Instead they laughed…admitting their mutual folly.

“That’s enough for today,” Lynne said.

“No. Let’s continue.”

The angel of oceans frowned, biting back the Tempest command to an errant child. “…If you insist. Perhaps I can show you…” Ah, but she merely bid her time. Avoided the painful truth and treated Alisandra like the child she appeared. “I’m sorry. I know what you want to see.”

She hugged the young angel closer.

“I’m sorry. Sorry for so much.”

The memories rushed forth.

“My brand begins to burn. I am not allowed to change, Goddess, but change I must.”

“Gabriel!” Lynne snarled. “You cannot continue to deny this!”

“She has not had a flow since I gave her the brand, woman. She can no more conceive than dance on the head of a pin!”

“She carries a seed in her garden. You of all people should be able to feel its approach!”

“The garden is a place of dream and meaning. The shadows there are mere echoes of the greater soul, teachers sent to elaborate on lessons of mortal life.”

“Fine, Archangel. Ignore this. I won’t.”

The Archangel sat at the breakfast table, hands folded under his chin. His wings quivered with the storm of emotions his face concealed. “The child is in no danger. She is safe amongst your garden. Amongst our love. What greater gift can there be?”

Alice waited across the table, hand on her belly. Though twenty years had passed, she barely showed the beginning of a bump. “We can gift her a life.”

“Her higher soul surely knew that she would remain unborn. She is no different than a cherubim!”

Grey eyed and worn, Alice stared at her husband with a quiet fury that made Lynne quietly step backwards.

“Is that what the Song says, husband, or merely the verse you want to hear?”

He flinched.

“There must be another way!” the Archangel shouted to the hallways.

“The brand must break for her to give birth,” Sebastian repeated stubbornly.

“Then we will find another method. There is always another way. What use are we if we cannot save one life?!”

Sebastian seized the Archangel’s raised arm, a flash of anger beneath his subservient expression. “Did you think that your Work would be free, Gabriel? Did Eden teach us nothing?!”

“Mirielle has taken a new surname,” Lynne informed her old friend. “She returned the money you sent to her account. She has informed me that further contact from Sebastian or Gabriel will be regarded as an act of war.”

“And Thea?” Alice sipped on warm tea, better to ease her aching joints.

“For no reason I understand, the doll follows Mirielle.”

Alice laughed. “I told her to, dear.”

“Why?!”

The ancient witch patted Lynne on the hand. “You still don’t understand a thing about them, do you? Fetch me another biscuit, would you? I’m hungry enough for an army.”

“I caught her in the reading room yesterday,” Lynne whispered to Gabriel. “She had not moved in three days.”

The Archangel was gaunt and worn, freshly returned from yet another voyage to the depths of the higher realms.

“The longer we wait, the more the brand strains. And what of the child, Gabriel? How must she dream, locked in a womb for nigh fifty years?!”

“Vitality can be harvested like any other mortal trait,” he mumbled.

“Gabriel!” Lynne hissed, the fury of a Tempest on her tongue. “Is this how you fall? Would you take dominion to harvest thousands so that one woman might live?!”

He stared at her from sallow, sunken eyes, and she knew her fears would become true.

A love all consuming, too brilliant to release.

She knew that story well.

“Death must be, Gabriel!” She spit his own wisdom in his face with all the venom she could muster.

He recoiled at the blow.

“The Song calls to her. You will not stop this.”

His fingers slowly drifted to his side. To the sword hilt that was not seen but felt.

Lynne held her ground, buoyed by Tempest power.

If this was how the world ended, so be it.

Then Alice approached, steps slow and a hand on her swelling belly. “Gabriel? You’re back already?”

He had been gone two years.

“Yes, dear. I’m home.”

He let his hand slide away, and the moment passed.

“I hear her dreams,” Alice whispered to Lynne in the bedroom. She rarely walked any more. Her brand was a permanent blackened bruise across her belly, straining across both body and soul, and the child beneath squirmed in a cage of flesh, locked in unborn fugue. “The Song whispers to me the things she will do.”

The angel of oceans reached to gently hold Lynne’s hand.

“She dreams of greatness. She dreams of God. So ambitious, so proud. Just like her father.”

Rain poured outside.

“We both know how this story ends, Lynne,” Alice admitted. “But does my dear Gabriel?”

“I have found a way,” the Archangel told Lynne, his voice hoarse with the weight of many journeys.

They stood in the shadow of the Conclave, watching the mortals bustle past.

“But…?”

“A way to save Alice.”

“…and the child?”

He refused to meet her gaze.

“Surely you cannot–”

“I told Alice yesterday.”

“And?”

“I wish she would have screamed,” he whispered. “She just smiled and told me, ‘You are stronger than that.’”

He rubbed at his face, pretending to a hair in his eye.

Lynne in turn pretended not to see the tears against his palms.

“We’ve decided her name will be Alisandra.”

The Foundations in their greatness defined the nature of the world. Mortal men did not remember the time before Eden – the world of unformed Light and imagination. They scarce remembered Eden itself in a handful of fairy tales from olden days. Even the angels themselves found it hard to recall the fragments from their past lives in mankind’s first home.

As though they all struggled to forget.

There were such crimes in that prehistory. Such hubris in the days before angels sacrificed themselves to bring order to the chaos of unfettered Will.

Lynne sometimes wondered why God had allowed it in the first place.

But the inevitable remained. No mortal would live forever. The magic of an Archangel thought to defy the Foundations, and they simply found another way.

Death must be.

That last year was dour and grey. Little sunshine and persistent rains. The farmers complained, but Lynne could not help herself.

She considered fleeing back to her dominion. She could retreat into ignorance, bask in the adoration of her dancers, and forget that this cursed century ever came to pass.

That she ever met a strange, wise woman named Alice Mishkan.

The Archangel wandered the halls of his estate like a ghost. If heartbreak could kill an angel, he would drop to the floor like a sack of potatoes. But he well knew that Reverie would only bring him face to face with his lost love, over and over again…

Sebastian busied himself with trivial duties, mowing the lawn and trimming the hedges for hours each day.

The demons built an empire in burgeoning Lumia and pretended House Mishkan did not even exist.

Alice mostly slept in her hospice bed, propped on pillows. Sallow and pale, she finally showed a fraction of her true age.

“Where is the Archangel?” Lynne demanded, aghast, when Alice finally called for her.

“I sent him for ice cream,” the woman confided.

“Are you mad?! If you die while he is away, he will never forgive himself!”

“Silly woman. He won’t forgive himself regardless.”

“I can heal the bleeding,” Lynne cried. “Alice, you are why I can remember my own name! Perhaps if I add my own brand to…”

A plea she should have smothered, but she was never as stoic as the men.

“I can guide you no further,” Alice said. “I can barely feel the world. The Song roars through my bones like a tide. Do you understand, Lynne? I am called for by name.”

The manor door exploded, and a man on the verge of breakdown roared, “Alice!”

“Ah, there he is.” She grasped Lynne’s hand in her own. “Take good care of her, Lynne. Let her in.”

“Me?!”

Before Alice could respond, Gabriel erupted into the room. He hurled Lynne away with a heavy slap of his wing and grasped his wife tightly.

Alice leaned in, sharing his kiss, and then whispered a few words for him and him alone.

The brand finally unraveled.

Blood and screaming.

In the end, Lynne broke. She threw the whole weight of her power against Alice, trying to stem the damage, but all her Will and fury slipped past a mortal soul like mists. Not even an angel could bar the way to the Black Gate.

In the end, Alice chose her own time.

Death would be.

The Archangel flew through the layers of heaven, chasing a brilliant comet of light as far as he could follow.

Sebastian hunched in the atrium, head in his hands.

Though they would deny it, Mirielle and Thea bowed their heads in mourning.

Lynne jostled a crying babe in her arms. An innocent life, entrusted to the manic whims of the storm herself.

“I’ll try, Alice. I’ll try my best.”

***

Alisandra stared into the distance from Lynne’s lap, numb with shock.

“Your mother faced her choice with courage,” Lynne said. “She did not merely understand mortality; she embraced it. I have no doubt she could have Bloomed, but she would rather choose her own path.”

She jostled the young angel gently.

“Sweetie? It is perfectly alright to cry.”

“I think I would like to return to the waking world now,” Alisandra offered in response, distant as a cloud.

Easily said and easily accomplished. The doors to her heart realm slammed shut, and both women woke on Alisandra’s bed in the dark of night, returned to their normal mortal forms.

Lynne released her fingers from the young angel’s head. “All healed up.”

“Yes.” Alisandra slid to her feet, walking easily once more. “Thank you, Lynne.”

The angel of oceans cleared her throat. Placid waves did not mean calm seas. “Would you like anything?”

“Not right now.”

The young angel marched out of the room. The hallways were freshly repaired from her fight with the shadow walker, and she found Sebastian with a can of spackle near the linen closet.

“Sebastian.” She spoke softly. “Where is my father?”

For the first time in his life, Sebastian did not notice her approach. He jumped in surprise at her words. “Alisandra! I didn’t…hear you.”

“My father.”

The angel of witness widened his eyes just a fraction. Then he hissed through his teeth at what he witnessed. “…in the solar.”

“Thank you.”

She marched up the spiral stairs to the solar.

The Archangel meditated before the windows, arms crossed and wings tucked. He watched the bustle of men in the shadow of the nobles’ hill, eyes half lidded, lost to the whispers of Song and night.

As she approached, his wings twitched once.

He whirled around. For a moment, Gabriel was a warrior instead of the affable, retired nobleman: he slid into a brawling stance, and his shield rose between him and his foe. This was not a soft, gleaming color to catch his giggling daughter, but a hard and unyielding Light. A Light that had caught blows from gods and Tyrants and been their equal.

Then he saw his daughter approaching. Saw something in her face.

She twisted on a hip, balling her fist.

His fingertips sank, and his shields faded.

He closed his eyes and bowed his head.

Alisandra slugged him. The impact of her knuckles against his jaw shattered the windows, burst the pots, pulped the flowers, cracked the flooring, and sent the Archangel flying through the ceiling like a cannonball through a wagon.

If only that was enough to kill him.

Tiny chunks of the halcyon solar rained around her.

Sebastian approached with care a minute later. He shoved aside the broken door with his shoulder, peered at the wreckage of the greenery, and then regarded Alisandra warily.

Like a wild bear…or an unsheathed Blade.

“Feel any better?” he hazarded. For once, his tone was sincere and equitable, neither stern teacher nor mocking servant.

She nudged the matted remains of a flower with her toe.

“Not really.”