I stared at him in shock, letting what he’d just said settle heavily on my shoulders and thoughts. “I was forced to become human?”

“Most likely your orders came from God. Angels only obey. It’s your nature—how you were designed.”

“But I make my own choices every day. I can do whatever I want.”

“You’re human now. Only in Heaven are you Gabriel, who must obey without question. Here on Earth, you have the soul and free will of a human girl.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

His gaze was intense, boring into my own. “Because I want you to know that you have a choice now. You will always have a choice, because you are human.”

I shook my head. “But my Guardians—and Will—they all obey me, but they can also choose to not obey me.” The memory of Will refusing me the night he rescued me from Brian came to mind. He had struggled to say no to me but he did choose to walk away.

“That is because your Guardian is never an angel,” Nathaniel replied. “Reapers have free will, which is why they must accept the role of relic guardian. They can’t be forced. But this is the beauty of it: In Heaven you are bound to obey without question, and there you are forbidden to feel any emotion, even love for God. You’re not in Heaven anymore.”

“Are you saying I’m allowed to love anyone, then?” I asked carefully, trying to decipher his cryptic words. “Will?”

He smiled. “Theoretically. But Will, on the other hand, having chosen his duty and the terms, is still forbidden to do anything but protect you. While you may get off on a technicality, he must still obey Michael, and I can’t imagine your brother being very pleased with his divine sister and an Earthbound reaper.”

“Would Michael really execute Will?” I asked fearfully.

Nathaniel’s smile faded. “By law, he would have every right to.”

Ice rushed through my veins, nearly paralyzing me. “Then why would you tell Will to love me if you know that?”

“I didn’t,” he answered. “When he and I had our … discussion about you two, I told him that Michael would come for him. I also told him that I wanted him—and you—to be happy, and that when it comes to love, rules were made to be broken. I told Will he needed to make a choice, and he chose loving you.”

“I won’t let Michael kill him,” I promised. “I need Will. How can anyone be killed for love?”

Nathaniel gazed thoughtfully out onto the lake. “Acting on love is forbidden with the divine. Angelic reapers are descended from Fallen angels, the Grigori, and because of that they are no better than worms in the eyes of many angels, especially some archangels. After you had forgotten that you were Gabriel, you’d married human men in your past lives and had children. But even I know most angels believe the offspring of the fallen Grigori to be the vilest of vile, no matter that we aren’t demonic. We’re unnatural to them. Unnatural, but useful.”

Every word hit me hard, one after the other. Once I got past the idea that angels would kill Will for touching me, I was struck completely dumb by that last bombshell: I’d had children. A baby. Babies. When he said it, I remembered them, but I couldn’t remember the faces of the men I had loved before Will.

“Where are they?” I asked blearily. “My children.”

“Their descendants still live,” Nathaniel said. “You haven’t had a child in at least three hundred years. I don’t keep track of them as well as I used to, but there is one bloodline in America that I know of.”

“Why do you keep track of them?”

“The mortal scions, your children and their descendants, have always possessed some sort of power that manifests in different forms. They are stronger than any psychic, and much of what they can do resembles a bit of your own abilities, though much more diluted and, of course, no angelfire. A handful of angelic reapers have been selected to watch the scions, in case they become dangerous. Anything with great power is potentially dangerous.”

As I wondered what it would be like to know them, I was brought back to thoughts of myself loving someone other than Will. He told me he’d always loved me, and that meant that he had loved me even when I loved someone else. It broke my heart. If I had been with other men in my past lives, how could I think it was wrong for Will to have been with other girls?

“Ellie,” Nathaniel said suddenly. “Are you all right?”

I realized I’d been staring at the ground, and my hand was clamped tightly on the arm of the sofa. I let go and blinked at Nathaniel. “Yeah. It’s just a lot to digest.”

He rested a hand on mine reassuringly. “I don’t mean to wear you out. You should be resting.”

I shook my head. “I have to go after Bastian and make sure he pays for what he did to my parents.”

He beamed at me. “I have to run to the library to check up on a few leads. I may have figured out where my copy of the grimoire is. One of your more active scions is quite the collector of divine artifacts. If I can get it back, we can look into restoring you to your archangel form.”

“Do you think it’s possible?” I asked.

He smiled and stood. “Anything’s possible.” Then he was gone, leaving me to my thoughts.

The house was quiet and sure enough, it began to rain, just as Nathaniel had predicted. After my conversation with him, I retreated to the study to read. I’d come to love curling up in the window seat of the big bay window in that room.