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"It’s been an education," she finally said "The first tih on my own, I was already determined to break the curse But I was overwhelmed and confused, until I started to realize that every life I visited, I learned so important about h that the suggestion of the Earth’s curve was visible at the edge of the darkening sky

"I learned that just kissing you didn’t kill me, that it had more to do hat I are of in the moment, how much of myself and my history I could take in" She felt Daniel nod behind her "That has always been the greatest enigma to me"

"I learned that my past selves weren’t always very nice people, but you loved the soul inside of thenize your soul You havea specific glow, a brightness, and even when you stopped looking like your physical self, I could step into a new lifeti whatever face you wore in each life You would be your foreign Egyptian self and the Daniel I craved and loved"

Daniel turned his head to kiss her tenize my soul has always been in you"

"No, I couldn’t--I didn’t used to be able to--"

"You did, you just didn’t know it You thought you were crazy You saw the Announcers and called the you all your life And when you first met me at Sword & Cross, or maybe when you first realized you cared forelse you couldn’t explain, so you tried to deny?"

Luce cla "You used to leave a violet haze in the air when you passed by But I’d blink and it would be gone"

Daniel smiled "I didn’t know that"

"What do you ined you saw so, but I didn’t knohat it was Whatever attraction you recognized inon how you needed to see it" He smiled at her "That’s how your soul is in collaboration with lad that’s what it was"

"What does my soul look like to you?"

"I couldn’t reduce it to words if I tried, but its beauty is unsurpassed"

That was a good way of describing this flight across the world with Daniel The stars twinkled in vast galaxies all around thee and dense with craters, half shrouded by pale gray cloud Luce arel she loved, a luxury she’d hed and closed her eyes--

And saw Bill

The vision was aggressive, invading herbeast Bill had becooyle, holding her hand to fly her down froh in Tahiti

Why that memory found her in Daniel’s arms, she didn’t know But she could still feel the shape of his srace had astonished her She re safe with hiainst Daniel uncomfortably

"What is it?"

"Bill" The word tasted sour

"Lucifer"

"I know he’s Lucifer I know that But for a while there, he was soht of hiet

I’ed her close "There’s a reason he was called the Morning Star Lucifer was beautiful Soht she detected a hint of jealousy in Daniel’s tone "He was the most beloved, too, not just by the Throne, but by els Think of the sway he holds over mortals That power flows froht "You shouldn’t be asha for hih it sounded like he hadtense between us," she adined that he could turn into such a reat light cor-rupted Look" Daniel shifted the angle of his wings and they flew back in a wide arc, spinning around the outside of a towering cloud One side was golden pink, lit by the last ray of evening sun The other side, Luce noticed as they circled, was dark and pregnant with rain "Bright and dark rolled up together, both necessary for this to be what it is It is like that for Lucifer"

"And Cam, too?" Luce asked as Daniel coht over the ocean

"I know you don’t trust hiendary, but it is only a sliver of his personality"

"But then ould he side with Lucifer? Why would any of the angels?"

"Cam didn’t," Daniel said "Not at first, anyway It was a very unstable tiinable

At the tiels who sided with Lucifer right away, but there were others, like Ca quickly enough The rest of history has been a slow choosing of sides, with angels returning to the fold of Heaven or the ranks of Hell until there are only a few unallied fallen left"