Instead, cold fingers crawled up the back of her neck. “You could join me.”
Arriane lurched away. Her skin crawled.
“Join me as my soul mate, Arriane. Join me and take your place among the ranks of Hell.”
TWO
INFERNAL DESIRES
Arriane recoiled. “No,” she whispered, certain of its impossibility. “I could never.”
Tess’s blue eyes pleaded with a fierce intensity. “We can end our secret affair and proclaim it to the universe.”
The way her voice boomed, echoing off the rafters in the barn, made Arriane nervous.
“Don’t you want that?” Tess cried. “Don’t you want to be together, to snap the arbitrary shackles that prevent us from being our true selves?”
Arriane shook her head. This was unfair. Tess was out of her mind. She had the most sublimely beautiful soul Arriane had ever seen, but this time, she had gone too far. If she cared for Arriane at all, Tess would already know what her lover’s answer would be.
But then—
Arriane wavered, allowing herself for a moment to see the situation from Tess’s point of view. Of course Arriane wanted to love Tess openly. She always would. What else did she have to do to prove it?
No! How could Tess ask this of her? To side with Hell over Heaven! That wasn’t love. That was insanity.
“Maybe the rules are right,” Arriane said tentatively. “Maybe angels and demons shouldn’t—”
“What?” Tess cut her off. “Say it.”
“Lucifer would never allow it,” Arriane finally said evasively, turning away from Tess to pace the barn. She passed the horses in their stables. The cows in their pen. Everything had its place. She looked across the barn at Tess and had never felt further away from the soul she loved the most.
“Lucifer might allow it—” Tess started to say.
“You know how he feels about love!” Arriane snapped. “Ever since …” But she trailed off. That old story didn’t matter, not right now.
“You don’t understand.” Tess laughed a false laugh, as if Arriane were failing to understand something as simple as an arithmetic problem. “He said that if I brought you with me—”
“Who said?” Arriane’s head snapped up. “Lucifer?”
Tess stepped away, as if afraid, and for a moment, Arriane thought she saw something in the rafters of the barn. A stone statue … a gargoyle. He seemed to be watching them. But when she blinked he was gone. She found Tess’s wild eyes again, and she felt betrayed.
“You told him?”
Now Arriane marched toward Tess, stopping just short of her lover’s breast. It heaved with surprise at being confronted, but Tess did not back away.
“How dare you,” Arriane spat, spinning on her heel.
Before Arriane could run out of the barn, Tess grabbed hold of her wrists. Arriane wrenched away, feeling Tess’s fingers drag against her skin.
“Leave me be!” Arriane shouted, not meaning it, but Tess wasn’t listening anyway. She came at Arriane again, yanking on the sleeve of her gown so hard the fabric ripped.
“Yes, I told him!” Tess bellowed, shouting right into Arriane’s face. “Unlike you, I don’t care who knows!”
Arriane pushed her. She pushed her so hard, Tess fell backward into a tower of stacked milk pails. They toppled over, falling on her with a clatter, splattering her pale skin with a few white drops.
Tess kicked the pails away and rocketed to her feet. And then—Arriane had not been expecting this—her wings bloomed out behind her shoulders.
They never exposed their wings to each other; it was something they’d agreed on ages ago. It was too plain a reminder that their love was not meant to be.
Now Tess’s broad demon wings filled the barn with shimmery light. They were the gold of the last moment of a sunset, tall slopes that rose high behind her shoulders like twin mountain peaks. They beat lightly at her sides, fully extended, rigid, with the tips curled slightly outward in Arriane’s direction.
The ritual fighting stance.
The horses whinnied and the cows began to bleat as if they could sense the tension, the brink of something bad.
What happened next, Arriane did not intend—but she also could not help it: Her wings responded to the call. They bloomed out from her shoulders in a rush that felt so innately good, she let out a heedless cry of joy. But in the next moment she choked with regret to see them billowing out at her sides.
Tess beat her great golden wings, and her body rose. She hovered in the air for a fraction of a second before she lunged down, tackling Arriane. The two of them rolled to the floor of the barn.
“Why are you doing this?” Arriane cried, gripping Tess’s shoulders, straining to hold her back as they wrestled.
Tess had a fistful of Arriane’s long hair. She jerked it backward to look Arriane in the eye. “To show you I would fight for you. I would do anything for you.”
“Let me go!” Arriane did not want to fight her love, but her wings felt the old magnetic pull toward the eternal foe. Arriane screamed out in pain and slapped the face she’d only ever wanted to dote on.
“Once you join me,” Tess fumed, pinning Arriane’s hands to the ground, “he will accept you. He will accept our love.”
Arriane shook her head, cowering beneath her lover. She was afraid of what Tess would do next, but she had to tell the truth.
“It’s a trick.”
“Shut up.”
“A trick to get me down there. One more soul is all he wants.” Arriane strained against her lover’s grasp, against her own leaden wings, which cast sparks each time they brushed against Tess’s. “Lucifer is a merchant,” she shouted over the din of their brawl, “staying in the market after sundown just to make one last sale. As soon as I joined you—”
Tess froze, her flushed face an inch above Arriane’s. She let go of Arriane’s hair, unleashed her from where she was pinned to the ground. She cupped a hand to Arriane’s cheek. “So you’ll consider it?”
There was so much heat in Tess’s blue gaze that Arriane’s heart melted.
“I can remember the first time I said goodbye to you,” Tess whispered. “I was so afraid I’d never see you again.”
Arriane shivered. “Oh, Tessriel.”
How could she resist one final kiss? The fight dissolved as her head lifted toward Tess, whose whole face changed. Love flooded back in, filling the space between their bodies until there was no space between them. They threaded their fingers through each other’s hair, limbs entwined, and held each other close. When their lips met, Arriane’s whole body ignited with frustrated passion. She drank her love in, never wanting to break from this embrace, knowing that when it was over …
They would be over.
Her eyes drifted open and she gazed upon her true love’s peaceful face. Arriane could never really think of Tess as a demon. Never.
She would remember her like this.
Without her realizing it, her lips had pulled away from Tess’s. Her heart was heavy, cumbersome, and sad.
She sat up slowly, then rose to her feet. “I—I cannot join you.”
Tess’s eyes narrowed and her voice grew shockingly cold, the way it did when her pride was wounded. She didn’t get up from the ground. “You’re a fallen angel, Arriane. It is time you realize it and come down from your altar.”
“I am not that kind of fallen angel.” I am not like you. “I fell because I believe in love.”
“That’s a lie! You fell because Daniel dragged you and me and everyone else down with him.”
Arriane flinched. “At least Daniel’s brand of love doesn’t require that one person betray her nature.”
“Are you so sure of that?”
The question hung in the air. Arriane walked to the trough against the far wall and added feed and a bucket of well water to the horses’ bins. She heard Tess sigh.
“I believe in Daniel’s cause,” Arriane said. “I believe in Lucinda.”
“Wrong again, you were assigned to them. You have to look after them or those idiots from the Scale will come for you.”
“It doesn’t mean I don’t believe! I won’t give up on Lucinda and Daniel.”
“Instead you would give up on us?” Tess was crying now; she sat in the center of the barn and wiped her tears on her muddy handkerchief. “Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, Arriane.”
“I know. We agreed to fly to Saint Valentine’s Faire, where Lucinda and Daniel and all the others will be.” Arriane’s voice wobbled. “We were going to be merry.”
“Merry? Pretending I am not your love and you are not mine? Pretending to search for what we already share?” Tess scowled.
Arriane didn’t answer. Tess was right. Their predicament was excruciating.
Tess stood at last and drew close to Arriane. She took the pail from her hands and set it on the ground. She cupped a hand to Arriane’s cheek. “Let Luce and Daniel have their Valentine’s Day. Let us have ours. Celebrate true love by making a covenant with me. Join me, Arriane. We could be so happy together—if we were truly together.”
Arriane swallowed the fear rising in her throat. “I love you, but I can’t turn my back on my promises.”
She moved from Tess’s grip. Arriane’s eyes raced to capture every detail about Tess: the slow sway of her red hair in the breeze, her pale bare feet in the rough straw, her hand making the shape of Arriane’s hand’s absence, tears rising in her bright blue eyes.
Even the spectacular golden gleam of her wings.
This would be the last time they would see each other. This would be their last goodbye.
TWO
THE FIRST CUT IS THE DEEPEST
Never.
Never.
Never.
Arriane’s soul was heavy as she flew. She should have known this was coming! She had known. Something in her soul had long felt that a day like this approached, when Lucifer would call Tessriel back.
But she had never expected Tess to ask her to give up her place in Heaven—to trade it for the fires of Hell!
Her temper flared now and her wings flexed and strained in response.
Sometimes when Arriane stayed too long in mortal guise, she forgot how vast her wings were, how strong, how deep the pleasure of letting them out from her shoulders, the winged energy of delight. She should have been feeling the exaltation she always felt when soaring through the sky, but now her silver wings were just sad reminders of what she was, and of what her love was, and of how she and Tess could never be together.
Never.
I can remember the first time I said goodbye to you, Tess had told her in the barn. I was so afraid I’d never see you again.
Arriane remembered it, too: thousands of years ago. She and Annabelle and Gabbe had been hovering in a dark rain cloud on the outskirts of a place called Canaan, watching a mortal celebration led by a man named Abraham, when the angel appeared out of nowhere and hovered before them in the sky.
“Who are you?” Gabbe was hostile, addressing the angel with the bright-red hair and crystal-blue eyes. To Arriane, the unknown angel’s wings were lovely, and her body looked as soft as a cumulus cloud. Lightning flashed across her radiant white skin. Arriane remembered wanting to reach out and touch her, as if to make certain the angel was real.