by Alexa Black
“Does that please you, little human? To see us brought low? To behold our scars?”
“It’s supposed to. I know what I’m supposed to think. That you can’t repent. That you don’t deserve to be forgiven.”
“That forgiveness is for humans,” Kara put in, “and for humans alone. Or so the One told us when we were sent away.”
“So we were reminded,” the Lightbringer said, “when the first of our children was born in exile, without wings and with scars.”
“Look, I don’t”—Sue ran a hand through her hair, wanting something to do with her hands—“I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know what you deserved or what you didn’t. I don’t know why you fought or why you lost. But forgiveness…forgiveness is weird. It’s a hard thing to find, if you don’t give it to yourself first.”
“You’re wiser than you look, little human,” the Lightbringer said.
“That’s the thing.” Sue put her hand down and stepped closer, trying to look brave. But she couldn’t keep from chewing her lip. “I’m not wise. I don’t know anything about anything. Or at least I didn’t before I got here. I’m not a demon, not an Outcast, not a warrior. I wanted, years and years ago, to go into the military, but there was no way I could. I don’t even know if I’d be good at it, not really.”
She sighed. “I know what it’s like to make mistakes. Big ones. I know what it’s like to deserve to be knocked down. Maybe you really are too arrogant, like the One said. But I know what it’s like to want to be knocked down. To think you don’t deserve anything better.”
“Like the dead,” Kara said.
“Like the dead,” the Lightbringer echoed. “Did I say we’re arrogant? We are. None of us who fought regret it. We fought for our people, for our dignity, for our pride. But we were torn from the only lives we knew and sent here.” He shook his mighty head. “Yes, human Sue, we know regret.”
“Then you know why I went with Kara to the obelisk. To one of the temples. And you know why I told you she saved me when I walked in.”
Chapter Thirty-two
“Is that so?” The Lightbringer’s eyes flickered. “My people aren’t usually called saviors.” He grinned, all fangs and fire.
Sue couldn’t hold back a laugh. Not even in front of the Devil. “Yeah, I guess you aren’t.”
“Repentance is for humans,” the Lightbringer said. “It was never offered to us.”
“Repentance is for the humans who don’t damn themselves,” Kara said, stepping closer to the throne. “We wouldn’t have accepted it even if the One had offered it.”
That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it? That’s what you wanted me to know.
But that’s part of what I like about you.
“The old religion…it tells you all about forgiveness. And that’s good, I guess, that you can be forgiven. If you’re human, anyway. But it doesn’t tell you how you should forgive yourself.”
The corners of Kara’s mouth turned up in a ghost of a grin.
“And my soldier showed you this?”
“I forgave her.”
“And she forgave you?”
“No. She beat me up.” Sue unwrapped the jacket from around herself and let it fall. Then she slipped off her shirt. She didn’t need armor. Not anymore.
She turned away from the Lightbringer, letting him see the marks on her back.
He stood up behind her. She felt the heat, pouring forth from his scarred body like he couldn’t hold it in. It warmed her, but that made her nervous. He wasn’t warm like Kara. He burned like he’d sear her if he got too close.
Then she felt hot stone against the skin of her back.
She shuddered, and only forced herself to stop when she remembered the Devil had claws even bigger than Kara’s.
But his touch didn’t burn her, just like Kara’s hadn’t, and his claws didn’t pierce her skin. “Kara did this.”
Sue nodded. “She did.”
“You’re a living human. According to the rules, you’re still able to repent for your sins.”
“Yeah, that’s how I was told the story. But I’m sure you remember it better than me. I never paid much attention.”
The Lightbringer laughed. He traced a fingertip over one of her welts, its passage a little trail of flame over her skin. “Then why would you choose this, when you don’t have to?”
“Because when she did it, she showed me I was real.”
The Lightbringer chuckled again.
“I was frozen. I was cold. I was stuck, replaying my every sin over and over in my head. Kara stopped me from doing that. Kara chased me all the way to the surface to stop me from doing that.”
“And that saved you?”
“The old religion says forgiveness comes from…somebody. We say God, you say ‘the One.’ That’s how I always thought it worked. You look at yourself and at the things you’ve done wrong and you beg for forgiveness, ask for something that’ll change your heart.”
Kara nodded. “That is so. That is what our Enemy wanted from us. And knew that he would never get.”
“And punished us accordingly,” the Lightbringer said.
“That’s what I always thought. That if I couldn’t do it—couldn’t beg or couldn’t change—I’d never be forgiven. I didn’t see the point. I thought all I deserved was punishment. Like the dead ones. I tried to do what the old religion said, but I just couldn’t. Couldn’t forgive myself, couldn’t ask for forgiveness from anybody else.”
“I too am unforgiven,” Kara said.
You asked me for forgiveness. I said you didn’t need it. Don’t forget that. “You didn’t try to forgive me. You just came after me because you knew I wouldn’t forgive myself.”
The Lightbringer’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “And that saved you.”
“I needed to let go. Kara knew it. Knew it better than the One, who just…waits.”
Sue bit her lip. She didn’t like this. She’d never been especially religious, but this made her uncomfortable. Talking about the god she’d been raised to worship like a deadbeat or an Enemy. “I don’t know. It works for some, I’m sure. It’s lasted for longer than I can imagine. But I was looking to let go, and I found that here, not there.”
“We are a proud people.” The Lightbringer curled his claws over his armrest, digging in deep enough to leave a melted mark. “At first, we were prideful because we were made that way. How could we defend the One unless we had the strength to do it and the arrogance to believe we should?”
“I don’t know,” said Sue. It made sense. She’d wanted to be a warrior once, too. Wanted the pride that these people had.
Did she still? Now one of them was calling her a pet and she wasn’t even bothering to get angry.
“Now we are proud because we have nothing else left,” he finished.
“Why are you telling me this?” said Sue. “I’m just a human.”
“You are precious to the One. You are not damaged as we are, and you were never exiled from your home.”
“Maybe. But you’re so much more than I am.”
Now it was Kara’s turn to laugh. “The One would say you’re more for being less.”
“I’m just a human. I’m not good at angels’ riddles.”
“Neither are we. I didn’t know what the One meant by that either. I railed against it for eons. But now that I have met you, I think perhaps I understand.”
The Lightbringer’s wing shadows flickered, casting their darkness over Sue. “You are both mad, by our people’s lights. And you were always a guardian, Kara. Guiding and guarding the legions you led. Is this human just someone else to protect?”
I chose to protect you. Was that what this was? A fallen soldier looking for a way to be what she’d been once before?
Sue looked over at Kara, who licked her fangs. “Part of me hopes that she will stay. Even though I know it is unwise. And that my lord will bless it.”
You chose to protect me. “I could’ve stayed anyway,”
Sue said. “I would’ve stayed anyway. Unless there’s some law that says you had to tell him.”
The Lightbringer roared with thunderous laughter, his breath a wheeze laid over it. “You sound like one of us, little human.”
Sue stood up taller, willing her bad leg to hold her up as straight as possible. What would a starfighter pilot do? “My name is Sue Jones.”
Chapter Thirty-three
“Very well, Sue Jones,” the Lightbringer said, with a mocking little bow of his horned head. “But what is it you want? My blessing?”
Kara lowered her head again. “No. That’s what I wanted.”
Sue blinked. “Then what is this about, Kara? Why bring me here in the first place?”
“I’m doing exactly what I said I would do. Asking you what you really want.”
“Kara, I’m stuck here. You know that. And there are worse fates than being stuck here with you.”
“Stuck here?” The Lightbringer laughed. “Maybe so. Finding the way between worlds is never easy.”
Kara lowered her head. Then she raised it again, fire flaring in her eyes and in her scars. “But, my lord, she does not belong here. This place is not her home. Shouldn’t we at least try to find the gateway and return her to her people?”
“We could do so, yes.”
“And with your power, we would succeed.”
The Lightbringer chuckled again. His wing shadows shifted in time with his laughter. “Eventually, yes, we would.”
Sue turned to Kara, something heavy filling her throat. “You do want me to leave.”
“I lost my home, Sue Jones. The gates closed after me and all my people. I can never return. Neither can my lord. Neither can the comrades in arms who fought with me. Neither can our young ones, born with the mark of our disgrace. The ones I should be welcoming to our ranks, and training and leading. We lost the war, and nothing remains to us of the life we once knew.”
Kara stepped closer to Sue, her chest inches from Sue’s own. Sue realized, with a pang, that it might have been erotic. If what Kara was saying wasn’t terrible.
“Your situation is different, Sue. You still have the choice of going home. Of being with your people. Of living with your own kind.” She curled a hand into a fist. “Don’t squander that.”
“Not even for you?”
“Not even for me.”
“It’s my choice, Kara. You understood that before.” Sue put her hands on her hips. “You told me you brought me here to help me make that choice. Not to stop me.”
“You don’t know what you are choosing. Not yet.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Kara’s eyes flickered gold. “Sue. Listen to me. I couldn’t protect my people. My soldiers. I led them to disaster. But I can protect you.”
Sue froze, an angry retort dying on her lips. “Protect me? This is about protecting me?”
“You keep saying it yourself: You’re mortal. Your life is just a breath to me. Your life, and the lives of other humans. What if you stay too long? Then when you return, you’ll be going back to a changed world. A world that isn’t your home any longer.”
“I’m not sure it ever was,” Sue answered. She squinted at Kara. It made the cracks look even brighter.
“You have very little time, Sue Jones. On this world or any other. I will keep you, if that is truly your wish. But you’re mortal. Living mortals age. Do you really want to waste that little time you have remaining here, far from your home and your own kind—” She stopped, her voice breaking. “While I watch you die by inches?”
Sue let out a slow breath. She hadn’t thought of that. She knew Kara was immortal, of course, and that she was something different. She knew Kara was old, unimaginably old. Old enough to see the birth of humankind, if all this religion stuff was true. But she’d never thought about how young she was to Kara. “Is that what this is about? Is that why you want me to leave?”
“I don’t want you to waste what you have. I don’t want you to realize what you have given up when it’s too late to return. You will age. As will the people you know back home.”
Sue swallowed hard. She thought of that old boyfriend, his face and hands gnarled with wrinkles. Of that first girlfriend, her hair gone white and her eyes misted and murky. Of her friends, their movements hobbled and slow, their voices shattered. “So?” she said with more bravado than she felt. “If I’m old by the time I go back, I’ll know that they are too.”
“Humans are mortal. Some of them will be dead.”
Right. I was hoping you wouldn’t mention that. Sue tried to will away the images that came with that thought.
“I want to keep you here, Sue. But I don’t want to send you home to a world you no longer know.”
“So you’re not going to let me decide for myself.”
The Lightbringer chuckled and stepped closer to them. “It seems your human is like us. Sure of what she wants and willing to act on it whether it is wise or unwise.”
Sue grinned. “Thank you. I think.”
“Don’t thank me too soon. Kara was one of my bravest lieutenants. She is wiser than you think.” His shadows flared out again, a flood of velvety black. He pointed a clawed finger at Sue and pressed its tip just over her left breast. “But mortal or not, you know your own heart.”
The too-warm claw pricked Sue’s skin. She fought not to wince as a bead of blood welled up from the wound. Had the Lightbringer meant to prick her? Or was he like Kara, not always remembering just how fragile human bodies were?
“My heart is with Kara,” she said.
He nodded. “That’s what I expected you to say. But Kara’s question is a good one, little creature.”
Sue closed her eyes. She let the images come. Not her visions of the boy, but pictures of everything else. The cracked pavement of the colony’s streets and runways. The rusted metal of the buildings, the sputter of an old billboard monitor that needed repair. The graffiti sprayed on buildings and bridges. It was ugly compared to the polished Rings. Worn down, where they were pristine.
But it testified to the people who lived there, too. Loud, maybe a little too lazy, maybe a little too angry. A little too prone to breaking things and not bothering to fix them afterward. But alive. Real. More willing than Sue to make mistakes and own them.
Had the Outcasts made mistakes? They’d challenged the One and lost. And paid a price they’d never get away from. But they were unrepentant. Unforgiven. Unforgivable.
At least if you believed what the old religion said.
And the Outcasts said the same thing. Kara had said it herself. We Outcasts were born a prideful race. She’d even said that is both a good thing and a bad one. And young Outcasts like Dehek were born wingless, punished for their race’s sins. Born with scars where those wings should have been. Born wounded.
It made Sue shudder. But the One was a god. Did he know things Sue didn’t?
She looked over at Kara, the dark stony skin like a sculpture, the shadows curled around her, the bright fire of her scars.
I’ve done many things, Sue Jones. Some of them I regret.
I don’t regret fighting for my people. But I do regret war.
Kara had regrets. She’d said so. To a human. That was change, wasn’t it?
“I know what I’m losing,” Sue said at last. She licked her lips. “I don’t know everything. Not like you do. But I’ve made my choice. I made it before I even came here, and if you’re as stubborn as you say you are, you know what it is.”
Chapter Thirty-four
The Lightbringer’s mouth curled into a grin. “And you hope for my blessing?”
“No,” Sue retorted. “I hope that Kara will stop being a fool and take me home.”
She turned away from the Lightbringer and walked to stand in front of Kara. A thin trickle of blood ran from the spot where he’d cut her. It curled over her breast and dripped down her stomach.
“Sue,” Kara said.
“I know my own mind. I’m no
t just some stray.” She reached out and curled her fingers over Kara’s shoulders.
She closed her eyes and thought of the riots, the boy, the sight of his body on the pavement. The memory filled the space behind her eyes, but when she opened them again it didn’t burn through her mind the way it had before. “I don’t think it was built for any of us.”
She slid her hands lower. Maybe it should have embarrassed her, but Kara was always naked. And the other guy in the room was the Devil. He’d seen it all before.
“Don’t pull away from me,” Sue whispered, sliding her hands down Kara’s breasts. “Don’t look for an excuse and toss me aside.”
She slid her fingers over the pebbles of Kara’s nipples. Unlike a human’s, they didn’t harden under her touch. But Sue could tell from the flare of light in Kara’s cracks that her body was responding.
Sue leaned closer and nestled her head against Kara’s neck. A scar glowed with warmth, and she nuzzled it with her head, rubbed the hair Kara had shorn against the crack. She slid her hands down Kara’s stomach and wrapped them around her sides.
“Take me back with you,” she whispered into Kara’s neck. She curled her hands around Kara’s hips and wrapped them over her buttocks. “Take me home.”
Kara reached out to wrap her hands around Sue. Her claws pressed into Sue’s back, their tips a biting kiss against the bare skin, against the memories of welts.
“If we can know our own minds, so can this human,” the Lightbringer said. Sue lifted her head to look at him, and the shadowy remnants of his wings unfurled.
A velvety black promise, like the blessing she’d been looking for.
* * *
Kara’s apartment was dark. Sue hadn’t thought much about it, other than that it made Kara’s cracks glow, and that was kind of sexy. But after the Lightbringer’s room, the dim light felt like a balm.
“Welcome home,” Kara said, but there was something wry in her tone.