I darted toward where Cadan had fallen, and I crumpled to the ground by his side. I checked him for injuries, which healed quickly, and I held his face, searching his opal eyes.

“Cadan,” I said to him, turning his face to mine.

He grimaced with pain as he sat upright. “Did you get her?”

I nodded. “What happened?” I asked him. “Why didn’t you move the forces? Where are Adara and Anders?”

“Anders killed Adara,” he answered with a grunt of discomfort as bones cracked into their rightful positions. “The traitor tried to stop us from engaging.”

Rage boiled through me. “Where is Anders?”

“Over there,” he said with a gesture of his head in one direction and then in the other. “And over there. He’s in a few pieces after he tried to kill me too. The stupid traitor.”

I smiled at that, overjoyed that what I feared had happened wasn’t the truth. “I worried that you had betrayed me.”

His expression crushed with hurt. “No. Never.”

“Thank God,” I said, and hugged him close.

When I released him, he smiled up at me a little deliriously. “You’re a beautiful angel. You glow. And you’re badass. Just as I thought you’d be. You never disappoint.”

“Hit on me later,” I said with a grin. “We’ve got a war to win.”

I took his hand and helped him to his feet. “Where are the demonic troops?”

“Still waiting,” he said. “Anders distracted me from hearing your signal and I never sent them.”

“That’s okay. Heaven sent reinforcements. I give you my signal now to engage. Clean up what’s left of Sammael’s forces and I will find him and destroy him. My body is growing tired and I have to do this now before I’m too weak. I want to say good—”

Cadan took my hand and pulled me to his chest, making me gasp. He touched my cheek, thumb brushing my bottom lip. “No,” he said gently. “That will not be the last thing you say to me.”

His fire-opal eyes, hardened, impassioned, moved over my face, my throat, my shoulder, my wings. He opened his mouth and inhaled, but he said nothing. He just gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head and gazed at me.

“I have no words,” he told me.

I stared at him and swallowed, feeling my heart whirring in my chest. “That’s a first.”

He grinned sideways and drew my face to his. He kissed my cheek, pausing, lingering as if we had all the time in the world to just stay like that. He held me close, as if we’d just been dancing and I couldn’t help closing my eyes and leaning into him. This kind of comfort was something I’d never experienced as an angel before, this human sort of love, a friendship.

He pulled away and I opened my eyes to his face. “Thank you,” he said, all the humor gone from his expression. “For fixing me.”

“You never needed redemption,” I told him. I put my hand to his chest. “You had it in your soul all this time. I never would’ve made it this far without you.”

“You’ll make it farther,” he promised. “Don’t give up hope. Now go. Kill the Lord of Souls.”

I didn’t have it in me to tell him that I was already dying, but I understood that he knew. I just needed to find my strength and keep fighting. I squeezed the helve of the hallowed glaive in my hand. The staff was so solid that it gave not even a gasp under my strength.

Cadan turned and jogged toward the back of the hill where his forces waited. I stood, strung so tight I felt like I was about to snap, as I listened to the assembly of the legion of demonic reapers who’d pledged their loyalty to Heaven. There was a great rushing of wind as wings and talons took flight, blackening the crest of Armageddon with their shadows as they descended on the armies of Hell.

I raced through a path between crumbling buildings toward the top of a rock ledge to watch the demonic reapers descend on their kin. I searched for Sammael, but I couldn’t see him. Where he had gone when his leonine reapers had distracted me was a mystery.

“Sammael!” I screamed. “Come and show your face, you coward! Sammael!”

A hand clasped around my throat from behind me, tightening around my windpipe until it creaked. “Here I am, Sister,” he hissed, his ice-cold lips brushing my ear.

I cracked the back of my skull into his nose. He roared in anger and I twisted away, swiping the glaive through the air between us. The blade shrieked across his chest plate.

The Lord of Souls glanced down at the gleaming streak I’d put in his armor and frowned. “Azrael’s glaive.”

“Look familiar?” I taunted, circling him.

“When he and I last met,” Sammael said, “Azrael fought me with that blade.”

“He should have killed you with it,” I growled. “But I supposed he’s left that up to me.”

I charged at him, slashing and thrusting the blade, forcing him to move backward. The staff of his scythe clanged off the staff of mine, the angelfire lighting the space between us, and his demonfire exploded, the flames dancing obsidian and midnight. I caught the scythe in the hook blades of the partisan. The demonfire blazing against my skin felt more like acid than flames. My wings beat once to launch my body into the air, dragging the scythe with me as I spiraled over Sammael’s head. I forced his weapon to the ground and released it to thrust my blade toward his face. The metal ripped through his corpse-gray cheek, flinging blood. He stepped aside, scowling and wiping his cheek with the back of the obsidian gauntlet covering his hand.