Page 47 of Obsidian and Frost
I was pulled back to the immediate moment by the sound of that weakening voice, one that I registered as more than raspy or strained, but also decidedly sultry.
I blinked to see her stunning eyes on me, staring at me with incomprehension.
“You’re an… angel. A… real one? You… heard my… plea?”
“I heard you.”
She sucked in a stilted breath. “I’m not… going to… Hell when… I die this… night?” She frowned up at me. “I thought…” Tears fell unrestrained then, and she choked as the upset put a strain on her body with that wound, the knife even still embedded in her flesh.
She thought I was here to take her up to salvation.
And she’d believed it couldn’t come to pass for her, believed she was damned and slated to be sentenced to an afterlife of torment.
All because of what she was?
Something she had no control over.
I brushed my fingers against hers and pulled on my power a little.
And then I felt it.
It was worse than that.
She’d been made into this hybrid form. It had been forced upon her.
I pulled a little harder.
Memories flooded into me. Just surface memories, because I couldn’t delve any deeper while she was in this state, or it could undo her.
Crossborn.
Loneliness.
Hopelessness.
Grief.
Devastation.
And through all of that, the urge to do good, to make the lives of others better than hers had been thus far, rose above the rest.
And she’d still believed she was damned?
I gritted my teeth.
No.
It wasn’t how it should be.
There was no righteousness in that.
It was all… wrong.
I’d also registered that she’d been propelled out here due to the Hellfire I’d seen Ariana battling. Hellfire from a manufactured weapon that shouldn’t exist.
This wasn’t her fate.
That weapon wasn’t supposed to be.
