What a time of terror and grief. When I think of how close it waw, I feel as cold as if a Fallen were breathing down my neck. We were very blessed tonight to avoid disaster.
In the past week, I have discovered and stopped three potential attackers of Freya, two Violences and a Nightmare. I was not pleased with these victories, however, as all three seemed too pleased to have been captured. It was my opinion, and Anathalie agreed with me, that they were decoys. Well, the real attack came tonight, and it was brilliantly planned. I am not certain Ruhamah could have done better.
Orison was on guard with Freya this evening when she met George and Kara for dinner. He was hanging back a bit, trying not to distract her, since she wanted to give her full attention to them. Still, nothing could have gotten past him if he had not been drawn away.
It was a Violence, and a strong one, who struck hard and fast in the alley below the restaurant. A man seized a woman as she waited for her husband to bring the car, dragging her into the darkness. The Violence ensured that no one saw her capture except Orison.
He could not, and should not, have ignored this. Of course he called me as he leapt to intervene, and of course I came immediately. But there were a scant few instants before I arrived that Freya was alone, and that was all it took.
The Cynic was a tiny nothing of a creature which scrambled into the room and leapt at Freya even as I came in. I had my bow in hand, but I was not quick enough, and it laid hands on her and cut deep into her soul before my arrow pierced its heart. Its dying shriek was triumphant.
Freya jolted as if she had been the one struck with an arrow. I landed behind her, catching at her shoulders, frantic to see the severity of the injury.
“Cobb, you good?” Kara asked, having seen her flinch.
Freya stared at her friends. Her mind and heart were both racing. Behind the two of them was a mirror, and Freya lifted her eyes to it. There was no one standing behind her, but she could clearly feel my touch, felt the force of my attention on her.
“I—” She pressed her hands to her face, knowing how strange her friends would find her behavior. It was coming down on her, hard, that this here, this evening which she had looked forward to so eagerly, was real life. This was true, and what she had been doing all week—talking to thin air, trying to sense demons and angels—that was madness.
“Freya,” George said, setting his hand on hers.
“Freya,” I said, “let me help you.”
She stood up abruptly, shuddering. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said and fled for the bathroom.
I went with her, of course, trying to speak to her, but this bathroom was not as private as in the last restaurant where she’d been attacked. And Freya was blocking me out, something she had not done for a very long time.
I felt as if my soul were the one that was bleeding. I know well the damage that a Cynic can do, but I never thought of this possibility. Freya’s faith in me was badly shaken by its touch, and so it followed that her faith in herself was crumbling, too.
“Am I going crazy?” she whispered. “Oh, God, I’ve gone crazy.”
“No,” I begged her, “no, this is real, I am real.”
It was only in that moment, when I faced the possible loss of her faith in me, that I realized how precious it had become. To have her as a real friend, to be able to speak to her and share my thoughts and feelings, has been all I could have wished, and the thought of losing it shook me to my core.
In much the same way, Freya was shaken by the thought of revealing her weakness to her friends, and so she played it off when Kara came to check on her. She said that she must have just eaten something bad earlier in the day, apologized with admirable calm, and asked to be driven home. Kara suspected nothing—Freya’s pallor and shakiness could easily be attributed to physical and not mental illness.
As George and Kara took her home, I called out desperately to Orison, to Brid, to Anathalie, trying to find someone who could tell me how to fix this. In time, Brid and Perrine came to join me, both looking grim.
“This was a masterful stroke,” Perrine said, studying Freya as she sat stiffly in the back of George’s car. “Any other injury, Freya’s own faith could have cured in a matter of hours. But this strikes at faith itself.”
“Can you not help her?” I pleaded.
“Not if she will not let me,” Perrine answered. “I believe you might be the only one who could get through to her now.”
Which, in this moment as well as that one, is a horrifying thought. In such a situation, I have failed before.
“Freya,” I called out to her as soon as she had closed the door. “Freya, please listen to me.”
She shook her head hard, dropping her bag by the door and staring into the living room, where a spinner rested on the table. Gritting her teeth, she snatched up the paper and tore it to shreds, cursing herself.
“Please,” I begged, following her into the kitchen. “Freya, I know that you can hear my voice, if not my words.”
A second spinner was destroyed as I watched, and this time she also snapped the pencil in half that had been its hand. “You are just a voice in my head,” she muttered.
“You know that I am more.” In desperation, I switched on the radio sitting on the counter, but it only managed a few notes of song before she tore the batteries out and hurled them across the room.
“Leave me alone,” she snarled, then clutched her head. “Oh, God, oh, God.” She reached for her phone, thinking wildly of her mother and a psych ward.
I couldn’t let her go to such a place. I knocked the phone out of her hand.
“Oh, God, oh, God,” she chanted, her voice getting louder. Tears were streaming down her face.
“Please, please, my Freya, my friend.” I wrapped my wings around her and poured love into her soul, but she threw me off as easily as if I were a fly.
Spinning around, she went running up the stairs, and I followed. I opened the laptop for her, hoping that she would listen, but she slapped it shut again. Then she huffed out a sob and opened it again.
“No, no, no,” she said, seeing my scrambled words rolling across the page. Savagely she closed the document, then opened up a file and selected it in order to delete it.
At this, my heart shattered, and all my grief and terror burst from me. “Freya, I cannot lose you, too!” I screamed.
My friends have told me that half of heaven heard that cry. And somehow, Freya heard it, too.
Her finger stopped short on the delete key, her whole body paralyzed with shock. “What?” she finally whispered.
I collapsed at her feet, feeling too weak to move. My voice was shaking with tears as the story spilled out of me—how I had been assigned to Shannon and the cold, dismissive things I had thought about her at first; how her strength, pride, and glimmering potential had gradually won me over; how she had turned away from me, slipping out of my reach in an instant; how I had resisted her loss, but eventually had to step away; what I had discovered about her past; and yes, her terrible and tragic death, which I had also been unable to stop.
At some point I realized that Freya had opened our conversation again and was watching the unwieldy story race across the screen. She read the words almost as quickly as they appeared, and while her heart was still beating quickly, her panic was fading as she felt the keenness of my grief. I kept going, unable to stop the words now.
I should have saved her. I wanted so badly to save her, but I was unable to reach her. She shut me out, but maybe if I had loved her better I would have broken through. Because the cruelest truth of all, Freya, is that even when I loved her, it was not entirely for her own sake. What I loved most in her was the way that she resembled you. I cast her into your shadow from the first, which was unjust and made me blind to who she was. I failed her, Freya, because I loved you too well, and perhaps it would be true justice that I should lose you in the same way, but I cannot bear it, Freya, I truly cannot bear it.
I was prostrate at her feet, weeping, crushed with shame and loss.
Freya swallowed and opened a search window. She typed in Shannon’s name, and soon she had found an obituary, and then an article about Shannon’s death. The sight of the inverted car, the plume of smoke, filled her with horror and pain, and I felt it all again as if I once more stood on the slope watching the Gather collect her soul and take her where I could not follow.
“She fell?” she whispered.
I could not answer, but she felt the deepening of my pain, and that was answer enough.
Now weeping herself, Freya set aside the computer and slid off the bed, kneeling beside me. “Ace,” she said, her voice breaking, “Ace, you didn’t kill her. You aren’t to blame.”
I jerked away from her mercy, but she reached out as if she could take hold of me. “No, listen to me,” she commanded, and I was still. Her eyes stared fiercely through me. “Shannon made her choice. She wasn’t willing to open herself up even to your love, which is the truest thing in the world. The truest thing,” she repeated, and I realized that she was writing the words on her heart. Her aura was ablaze, and it was as if the Cynic had never touched her.
I wilted with relief, falling to put my head in her lap, and her hands hovered just above my brow. “You gave her a gift,” she told me. “You loved her as no one else did, and you remember her even now with love and kindness. She’s just a shadow in the world now, but you imbue her memory with light, and that’s a wonderful thing.” Her tears were falling through me, leaving tracks of her in my soul.
We wept together for some time, unable to put together any more words. Eventually, however, I drew back, and Freya went to wash her face—and, I think, to breathe a moment in the wake of such strong emotions. I too appreciated the quiet and the chance to gather myself.
When she came back, there were new words on the screen.
I am sorry that you were hurt. I am sorry that that thing ever laid hands on you.
She sat down on the bed again, still a bit shaky. “I was so convinced that I’d imagined the whole thing,” she said. She laughed a little bit. “How could I have thought that? I’m not imaginative enough to have come up with you. Or optimistic enough,” she added. “But I’m okay now. Aren’t I?” she double-checked.
I see no trace of injury on your soul. And I was told that you would have the strength to heal yourself, if you could recall enough faith to direct your will in the right direction.
“That I owe to you,” she said. She hesitated, then went on, “Thank you for telling me about Shannon. I know that can’t have been easy for you.”
If it helped you, then I cannot regret the pain.
I could not deny it, either, nor that I still felt it. Despite Freya’s comfort, despite what we avoided tonight, there will be a part of me that always blames myself for what happened to Shannon.
And that was before the bitter thought that came to Freya then, a thought that worried her so deeply that I could see it immediately. I had to persuade her to tell it to me, and when she had, I wished she hadn’t.
“Isn’t it possible that this answers some questions for us?” she said finally. “We’ve known for a while that we have an enemy on the other side, specifically directing her hate against you and me. What if it’s—?”
She didn’t speak Shannon’s name, but the words still horrified me. My reply was immediate and sharper than it should have been.
It’s not possible. Shannon fell only months before Asoharith appeared, and no Fallen can rise through the ranks so quickly.
“You did,” she pointed out gently.
In a family full of trust and hope, yes. The Fallen are not so. It takes them far longer to prove themselves. In any case, Shannon would have no real knowledge of me, and certainly no knowledge of you.
“I thought you said the Fallen remember their lives as angels.”
But they know nothing that they did not know as humans, and Shannon never knew my name. No, at best Asoharith has used Shannon for information.
And the thought of what the Fallen might have done to Shannon to extract this information will always haunt me.
Sensing my distress, Freya stopped pressing, but I could see that the thought was still on her mind. It is simply not possible, though. Shannon may have reason to blame me for what happened to her, but she has no way of knowing that.
If she had known me at all, maybe I would not have lost her.
Freya and I did not say much more to one another, but I stayed with her for a long time. When I finally tore myself away, Brid stayed behind to ensure that Freya’s sleep would be deep and restorative. She assured me that Freya would carry no lasting damage for the night’s work. I am not so certain of that for myself. It was far too close, and it will be some time before my heart recovers.
One thing is certain, though: I will find Asoharith, and when I do there will be no mercy for her. She will die in terror and pain for what she has done, to me, to Shannon, and to Freya. I will see to it myself.