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"Well done, Daniel" Dee sh Qayoues to pronounce than--" She uttural noises Luce couldn’t have replicated

"I never knehat it meant," Daniel said

Dee looked out the open , at the holy city’s afternoon sky "Soon you will, my boy Very soon you will"

THIRTEEN

THE EXCAVATION

Throosh of wingbeats overhead

Tendrils of a across darkness, deep in the drug-like tunnel of another flight She eightless as the wind

A single star hung in the center of a navy sky, ht near the horizon

Twinkling lights on darkened ground see into infinity, lit up by the glow of brilliant silver wings

They beat again, thrusting forward, then back, carrying her higherhigher

The world was quiet up here, like she had it all to herself

Higherhigher

No h, she was always canopied by the warht overhead

She reached for Daniel, as if to share this peace, to caress his hand where it always rested, clasped around her waist

Her hand met her own bare skin His hand wasn’t there

Daniel wasn’t there

There were only Luce’s body, and a darkening horizon, and a single distant star

She jolted froain--one holding her waist, the other higher, draped across her chest Right where they alere

It was late afternoon--not nighttime She and Daniel and the others climbed a ladder of puffy white clouds that obscurred the stars

Just a drea Everybody had these drearound But Luce, who flew in real life every day, had awakened when she realized she was flying under her oer Why hadn’t she looked up then, to see what her wings looked like, to see if they were glorious and proud?

She closed her eyes, wanting to return to that si toward theone

"I don’t know if I can do this," Daniel said

Her eyes shot open, back to reality Below, the red granite peaks of the Sinai Peninsula were so jagged they looked like they were lass

"What is it you can’t do?" Luce asked "Find the location of the Fall? Dee’s going to help us, Daniel I think she knows exaclty how to find it"

"Sure," he said, unconvinced "Dee’s great We’re lucky to have her But even if we find the Fall site, I don’t knoe’re going to stop Lucifer And if we can’t"--

his chest heaved against her back--"I can’t go through another six thousand years of losing you" Throughout her lives, Luce had seen Daniel brooding, frustrated, worried, passionate, brooding again, tender, diffident, desperately sad But she had never heard him sound defeated The dull surrender in his tone cut into her, sudden and deep, the way a starshot sliced through angel flesh

"You won’t have to do that"

"I keep picturing e’re looking at if Lucifer succeeds" He fell back slightly fro the lead, Arriane, Roland, and Annabelle just behind, the Outcasts fanned out around theels choose sides, why people join teahs too heavily to soldier on alone" There was a time when Luce would have turned instinctively inward, ested a weakness in their relationship But now she was armed with the lessons from their past She knehen Daniel was too tired to remeo through it all again All that ti, my foolish optimism that someday it would be different--"

"Your optimism was justified! Look at me Look at us! This is different I know it is, Daniel I saw us in Helston and Tibet and Tahiti We were in love, sure, but it was nothing like e have now" They’d dropped back farther, out of earshot of the others They were just Luce and Daniel, two lovers talking in the sky "I’m still here," she said "I’m here because you believed in us You believed in me"

"I did--I do believe in you"

"I believe in you, too" She heard a smile enter her voice "I always have"

They were not going to fail