Page 74 of Till Death

“Eli, you have to do this for me. For the good of the world. For your duty.” I repeated the word and, in the next breath, he reached out and grabbed Bertha from me.

“You’re absolutely sure.” His voice held more of a question than anything else.

Kay was screaming at me and begging me to reconsider.

“Just do it.” My lungs seized and my own tears blurred my vision.

But I squared my shoulders, hoping I appeared more resolute than I actually felt, when every part of me squirmed. This was it. This was the last leg of my fight, and I made the choice despite knowing I’d end up in Hell once I died. And I would die once I gave up my light. No more reincarnation.

No more anything.

The ultimate end.

If it meant that the world would be saved for Kay, for Cole…then what other choice did I have?

“Fine,” Eli agreed.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Kay faced Eli with a glower. “What the actual fuck? You’re not about to kill her in front of us. Jade, hold on,” she begged.

I knew, though.

It had to be Eli because no one else would be willing to go through with what I asked.

Love versus duty. Well, love had to win. And I made this last choice with nothing but love in my heart.

“Thank you,” I told Eli in an undertone. To Kay? “I love you.”

He understood everything I didn’t say. Everything I wasn’t sure I’d be able to say out loud for obvious reasons. I’d never be able to repay what he and the other angels had done for me, or the fight my friends fought to the death right now. Plus, I was shit at goodbyes.

He nodded once and acceptance settled over him before he shoved my sword straight through my gut and the world exploded.

CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE

Did it work?

My last coherent thought echoed once before it faded

Logically, I expected the wound to hurt.

And it probably did, but I was too far gone to realize the extent of the agony. Every part of me ignited along with a flash of light exploding outward from the sword. Cold splintered through me from the entry point and the light that drowned me shifted slowly into darkness that took me along with it. The last of the strength left my body until the cold seeped through my veins and left me powerless. Unable to reach up to even place my handsaround the wound.

The last of the shimmering light died and Bertha’s glow was no more. I curled in on myself, whimpering out of habit because the stabbing pain I expected had never been, taking all my other pains with it until I was empty.

Grief fell by the wayside as well, until I was left with a blissful numbness.

My body dissolved around me into a pile of ash only to be lost in an invisible breeze. Gone forever.

I thought about the friends I would never see again but who would live. Would be able to thrive and have so many more adventures now.

A loud ringing began in my ears before even that disappeared as well.

My eyelids drifted closed of their own accord as the darkness grew and swallowed me whole. Nope, scratch that. No eyelids. Nothing left but the dying pieces of my consciousness as I returned to the darkness at the birth of everything.

I floated.

I reconciled.

Distantly, I remembered this kind of emptiness in my own mind, this blissful and comforting black space where nothing mattered and nothing stuck. It was the same sensation I’d experienced when I first got my Archangel powers.

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