The Armies of Heaven Read Free Page B

cried for some time afterward. He supposed she didn’t care for baths.
    It was far too dark and deep to see her on the bottom of the oubliette, but he imagined she must be younger than him. He felt a little sorry for her, like one might feel for a family dog put out in the cold at night. One couldn’t explain to the whining dog why it wasn’t appropriate for an animal to sleep in the house. Of course, he’d never seen a dog, or even been told about them, so this was something else he couldn’t possibly know.
    His mother told him bad people were looking for the girl and she must stay hidden to keep her safe. If she could only understand, he knew she’d accept her lot as he had.
    He was special, his mother told him, and couldn’t go out into the sunlight or play with other children, or he’d get sick. And so he’d been content to spend his brief days in little rooms like this one. It was only recently, since he’d begun to imagine this other life that wasn’t his own, that Azel had begun to wish for something else.
    §
    Pale morning rays cast watery images across the ceiling through a glass brick wall of clearest moonstone blue. Love rolled over toward the door, troubled by the distant sound that had woken her: Anazakia, crying out in her sleep. Though Nazkia had assured Love many times she wasn’t to blame—they’d all assured her—Love couldn’t let go of the guilt at having been left behind when Helga’s Cherub disappeared with Ola. As hard as the first months after their abduction had been, imprisoned with Ola in the desolate island monastery in the Russian White Sea, she’d taken comfort in the fact that at least she was there for Ola, that she could care for her and be certain no harm came to her.
    Now Ola had no one but that horrid Helga. She’d been Anazakia’s nanny, and she ought to be capable of taking care of Ola as well as Love had, but Love hadn’t seen evidence of a nurturing bone in her body. In the weeks she and Ola had been in Helga’s custody in the Citadel of Gehenna in Heaven’s Empyrean, the woman hadn’t demonstrated an ounce of warmth toward the child, refusing even to touch her. Love couldn’t stand the thought of Ola being in the care of such a cold, calculating creature.
    “You’re awake,” said Kirill beside her.
    Love turned and nestled under his arm. “Only a little.” His long beard tickled her cheek. Dear Kirill. Being whisked off to Heaven by the Cherubim had been difficult for him. He’d spent his life in service to the Church, yearning for God, only to find Heaven empty of Him. Kirill hadn’t left the monastery on Solovetsky Island since his eighteenth birthday, becoming a ryassophore monk by the age of twenty, and when Helga’s Nephilim had come to him posing as messengers from God with instructions to keep Ola hidden, he’d believed. He suffered now, knowing he’d allowed an innocent child to be taken from her mother for less than godly purposes.
    More than that, he’d lost his moral compass, and that, in part, was Love’s fault. She’d unwittingly tempted him just by being herself. He seemed simultaneously to have nearly lost the will to live because of what he believed to be his sinful heart, and to have clung to that unworthy life because of the one who tempted him. She hadn’t realized he was falling in love with her.
    When he’d confessed with shame that he couldn’t put her from his mind, she was so shocked and moved by his devotion she’d nearly let him destroy himself by breaking his most sacred vow. But as she’d touched him, kissing the flesh he’d mortified for the shame of loving her, she’d finally understood this was something she couldn’t allow him to do. No matter how desperately she ached for his touch, she couldn’t take his faith from him. She couldn’t take what he wanted to give.
    Lying in his bed with his shy, desperate hands touching her body, she’d taken those hands in hers like a prayer and kissed them, shaking her