Page 24 of Oath-Maker

“Do you not?” he posed in response.

“I think it’s the bare minimum,” I replied, annoyed at first. But then I saw the genuine question in Cornelius’s eyes. As though he, very clearly a full celestial, did not have a full understanding. He was so… alien in the weirdest of ways. Stranger still that no demon had ever given me the same impression.

“Interesting,” Cornelius said without his expression changing even a little bit. “Regardless, giving yourself over to what you consider the enemy requires courage.”

“It’s not the first time.” I glanced over my shoulder at Alastia. “Although I’d prefer this to be the last.” There was a growing part of me that recognized it would be, one way or another.

Cornelius nodded at me. “You possess wings, correct?”

My brow furrowed at the odd question. “Yes, I am a paladin. Why?”

“Were,” Cornelius corrected. I let him, although my molars gnashed together. “We will fly to Lightport.”

He was kidding, right? I knew he was a celestial, that he’d probably come straight from their home world, Soltar, to here. But surely, he must have known how this worked?

“I can’t fly all the way to Lightport,” I said dryly. “You should have brought a carriage or something.”

I’d make it to the Singing Hills, but wings were a magical privilege with a very short time limit. It was possible that now that my magic had merged with Lucius’s, I could hold my wings for longer, but that wasn’t something I wanted to test high in the sky over the Singing Hills.

Cornelius considered me for a moment. He then lifted one hand to me. The lines of his open palm were lined with golden, radiant magic. “Take my hand. I will give you the power to fly to Lightport.”

It was my turn to study him, and for the life of me, I couldn’t discern what about him was genuine and what was an act. If he even had the capacity to act. Cornelius seemed so one-dimensional. Just a tool of the celestial court sent to heal Lucius and retrieve me. But then there were parts of him, like this, that made him seem… different.Layeredwas a strong word for it. But I couldn’t figure out how else to phrase it.

I glanced back down at Cornelius’s glowing hand. His magic still wasn’t tainted red. At all.

Cornelius was a full celestial. Not a Fallen.

He was an agent of the Light who, for some reason, was working with the Guardian and the other Fallen.

I bit the inside of my cheek as I placed my hand in his. “The Light is a Fallen, isn’t it?” That was the only explanation because a truly good celestial like Cornelius would have had no other reason to work with the Guardian and the Fallen. And while there were many other high celestials in our world besides the Light, the Light was the celestial who’d claimed Serenia and the surrounding areas. The Light had saved most of the humanlands from Lucius and Alastia. From the demons.

The Light had created the Paladins Order.

Cornelius nodded humbly. “That is correct. And the Light is so proud of the work you’ve done for the Order, and in getting close to the Angel of Death. So that you might bring about his destruction as intended.”

The prophecy.

My body felt numb. Suddenly empty. Devoid of reason and oath, of purpose. The Light was a Fallen.

The Lightwas aFallen.

And if they knew about Basara’s prophecy, if she had also been a Fallen, she must have been working with the Light.

My mind stumbled over this new information. Its weight. Its importance. Things I’d guessed over the last day but couldn’t dare believe to be true. And yet, it was so logical as to not be arguable.

Everything we’d known was a lie. A twisted truth or reality.

And Merek—the Guardian—whatever—wanted me not just to end Lucius and destroy Alastia. No, that was only the beginning.

So too was opening a new tear in the Veil, one much larger than the one over Alastia the other day and the one now over the Singing Hills.

With the power of potentiality—even just one half of it—Merek could do anything.

My thoughts swam as my wings sprouted from my back. As a sort of autopilot kicked in and I flew in the direction of Lightport beside Cornelius. Over the Singing Hills and toward the coast, all the while wondering how it was possible we—humansand now celestial-kins—ever thought we’d gained an understanding of demons or celestials. Of their war and their home world.

Of anything.

We’d been so collectively ill-prepared for a war we hadn’t seen coming, one that had spilled over from a world we hadn’t known existed.

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