Lauren Kate - Rapture

“Daniel.” She knew him as the sixth Archangel, charged with watching over lost souls. “Why have you come to me?”

“Because I have been watching you.” Daniel stared and Luce knew that before then, no one had ever seen an angel cry. Lucinda’s tears were the first. “What is happening to you?”

For a long time she searched for the words. “I feel like I’m losing my light.”

The story poured out of her, and Daniel let it come.

No one had listened to Lucinda in a very long time.

When she finished, Daniel’s eyes were wet with tears.

“What you call love does not sound very beautiful,” he said slowly. “Think of the way we adore the Throne.

That adoration makes us the best versions of ourselves.

We feel encouraged to go further with our instincts, not to change ourselves for love. If I were yours and you were mine, I would want you to be exactly as you are. I would never eclipse you with my desires.” Lucinda took Daniel’s warm, strong hand. Maybe Lucifer had discovered love, but this angel seemed to understand how to build it into something wonderful.

Suddenly, Lucinda was kissing Daniel, showing him how it was done, needing for the first time to give her soul entirely to another. They held each other, Daniel’s and Lucinda’s souls glowing brighter, two halves made better as a whole.

Flash.

Of course, Lucifer came back to her. The rage within him had swelled so much that he was twice as tall as her.

They used to stand eye to eye. “I can stand the yoke no longer. Will you come before the Throne with me and declare your sole allegiance to our love?”

“Lucifer, wait—” Lucinda wanted to tell him about Daniel, but he wouldn’t have heard her anyway.

“It is a lie for me to play adoring angel when I have you and require nothing more. Let us make plans, Lucinda, you and I. Let us scheme for glory.”

“How is that love?” she had cried. “You adore your dreams, your ambition. You taught me how to love, but I cannot love a soul so dark it eats up others’ light.” He did not believe her, or he pretended not to hear her, because Lucifer soon challenged the Throne to gather all the souls in the Meadow for the Roll Call.

He’d held Lucinda in his grip when he made the challenge, but when he started to speak, he was distracted and she was able to slip away. She walked into the Meadow, wandered among bright souls. She saw the one she’d been seeking all along.

Lucifer bellowed at the angels:

“A line has been drawn in the cloudsoil of the Meadow. Now you are all free to choose. I offer you equality, an existence without an authority’s arbitrary rankings.”

Luce knew he meant that she was only free to follow him. Lucifer might have thought he loved her, but what he loved was controlling her with a dark, destructive fascination. It was as if Lucifer thought Lucinda was an aspect of him.

She huddled next to Daniel in the Meadow, basking in the warmth of a burgeoning love that was pure and sustaining, as Daniel’s name rang out across the Meadow.

He had been called. He rose above the riot of angelic light and said with calm self-possession, “With respect, I will not do this. I will not choose Lucifer’s side, nor will I choose the side of Heaven.”

A roar went up from the vast camps of angels, from those who stood beside the Throne, from Lucifer most of all. Lucinda had been stunned.

“Instead, I choose love, ” Daniel went on. “I choose love and leave you to your war. You’re wrong to bring this upon us,” Daniel said to Lucifer.

Then, to the Throne: “All that is good in Heaven and on Earth is made of love. Maybe that wasn’t your plan when you created the universe—maybe love was just one aspect of a complicated and brutal world.

But love was the best thing you made, and it has become the only thing worth saving. This war is not just.

This war is not good. Love is the only thing worth fighting for.”

The Meadow fell silent after Daniel’s words. Most of the angels looked dumbfounded, as if they did not understand what Daniel meant.

It had not been Lucinda’s turn. The angels’ names were called by the celestial secretaries according to their rank, and Lucinda was one of a handful of angels higher than Daniel. It didn’t matter. They were a team. She rose to his side in the Meadow.

“There should never have to be a choice between love and You,” Lucinda declared to the Throne. “Maybe one day You will find a way to reconcile adoration and the true love You have made us capable of. But if forced to choose, I must stand beside my love. I choose Daniel and will choose him forevermore.”

Then Luce remembered the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. She turned to Lucifer, her first love. Without being honest with him, none of this would count. “You showed me the power of love, and for that I will always be grateful. But love ranks a distant third for you, far behind your pride and rage. You have begun a fight you can never win.”

“I am doing all of this for you!” Lucifer shouted.

It was his first great lie, the universe’s first great lie.

Arm in arm with Daniel in the center of the Meadow, Lucinda had made the only possible choice. Her fear paled in comparison to her love.

But she never could have anticipated the curse. Luce remembered now that the punishment had come from both sides. That was what had made the curse so binding: Both the Throne and Lucifer—out of jealousy or spite or a loveless view of justice—had sealed Daniel and Lucinda’s fate for many thousands of years.

In the silence of the Meadow, a strange thing happened: Another Daniel soared up next to Lucinda and Daniel. He was an Anachronism—the Daniel she had met at Shoreline, the angel Luce Price knew and loved.

“I come here to beg clemency,” Daniel’s twinning spoke. “If we must be punished—and, my Master, I do not question your decision—please at least remember that one of the great features of Your power is Your mercy, which is mysterious and large and humbles us all.”

At the time Lucinda had not understood this—but in Luce’s memory, finally, everything made sense. He had given Luce the gift of a loophole in the curse, so that someday in the distant future, she could liberate their love.

The last thing she remembered was clutching Daniel tightly when the cloudsoil boiled black. The ground dropped out from under them and the angels began their fugue, their Fall. Daniel had slipped from her reach. Her body had fixed into immobility. She lost him. She lost all memory. She lost herself.

Until now.

When Luce opened her eyes, night had fallen. The air was so cool her arms were trembling. The others huddled around her, so quietly she could hear crickets whistling in the grass. She didn’t want to look at anyone.

“It was because of me,” she said. “All this time I thought they were punishing you, Daniel, but the punishment was for me.” She paused. “Am I the reason Lucifer revolted?”

“No, Luce.” Cam gave her a sad smile. “Maybe you were the inspiration, but inspiration is an excuse for doing something you already want to do. Lucifer was looking for an entrance into evil. He would have found another way.”

“But I betrayed him.”

“No,” Daniel said. “He betrayed you. He betrayed all of us.”

“Without his rebellion, would we have fallen in love?”

Daniel smiled. “I like to think we would have found a way. Now, finally, we have a chance to put all of this behind us. We have a chance to stop Lucifer, to break the curse and love each other the way we always wanted. We can make all these years of suffering worthwhile.”

“Look,” Steven said, pointing at the sky.

The stars were out in droves. One, far in the distance, was particularly bright. It flickered, then seemed to go out altogether before returning even brighter than before.