As we approached our quiet house, Noel kissed Jai’s cheek. Jai grinned, and our bond flared with warmth and love and mine. Gideon’s arms slid from my shoulders as he fished out his keys.
A strange tingle shot down my spine, and I stopped. Glancing over my shoulder, I searched the houses and trees lining the street. There was just enough moonlight to illuminate a small figure standing in the shadow of an oak tree. A little boy with brown skin, dark eyes, and a gap between his front teeth.
Of course, I knew appearances were deceiving.
Our eyes met. Theirs shone with pride and love. Mine welled with tears for just a moment. I nodded. Just once. The Maker smiled.
Then I blinked, and They were gone, like They’d never been there in the first place.
“Riley?” Gideon called, and I turned away to face my angels. My family. My future.
Noel hung off Jai’s back, his chin propped on Jai’s shoulder. He was smiling dopily at me. Jai nodded toward the house, dark eyes smoldering but content. Gideon watched me with that x-raying gaze, his dimple playing peek-a-boo on his cheek.
He stretched out his hand, a humble offering. “You coming?”
And I released the breath I was holding, slipped my hand into his, and said, “Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
Fifteen years later
“Close your eyes,” I said as I paced at the front of the classroom, my limp more pronounced than usual today. “Empty your mind and relax.”
A sea of young faces looked up at me, and I tried not to show them how badly my hands wanted to shake. Even after all these years, I still had stage fright. Speaking in front of a room full of students, even if they were my students, terrified me on a level I wasn’t proud of as a man in his mid-thirties.
Granted, being in my mid-thirties was not something to brag about. According to all the angels I’d ever met, I was still a baby. Jai loved rubbing it in. At least I still looked like I was twenty-one. Immortality had its benefits.
“We need silence.” I eyed Jesse, and he sat up straighter, his blond hair flopping over his golden eyes. It was impossible not to see Lucifer in every one of his features, but the kid was nothing like his sire.
He was goofy and sweet. He wasn’t the brightest bulb in the bunch, but he was helpful and determined. Beside him, Kelly—I checked his wrist, berating myself for not doing it sooner. Purple wristband. She was Kelli today. Kelli was already closing her eyes in preparation for dropping to her center.
I tapped the wind chime hanging from the edge of my desk. It made a soft, soothing sound as the hollow pieces clunked together. Every eye in the room closed. Jesse and Kelli—the two oldest—placed their hands on their knees and started taking slow, deep breaths. They were pros at this now, but the younger ones still struggled.
Jamie screwed up her face in concentration until her skin turned a frightening shade of red. She was twelve, a daughter of a Committed Angel-Fallen pair, and she had yet to find her center.
“Relax,” I said, speaking smoothly. “For me, it was like falling through water. You swim deeper and deeper, floating with the current until you sense something in the darkness. Maybe it’s a light. Maybe it’s a sound. For some, it’s a feeling, like coming home.” I thought of Gideon. “Or a scent, like flowers in spring. Like a campfire in summer. Ride the wind until you find it.
“And when you do, accept it. Even if it scares you. Your power is yours to command and control. Accept it. Accept yourself. And see where it leads you.”
Several had found it. Jesse, Kelli, Charlotte, and Taylor. They sat in similar positions, utterly relaxed, their eyes moving behind their eyelids. Jamie was still red in the face, her fists clenched as she tried too hard to find her center. The twins, Bridget and Grant, were frowning, looking so much like their mother, Harriet, it was eerie.
The youngest hybrids, Peter and Samantha, were ten years old. They had the hardest times sitting still. Even now, Peter kept peeking through his lashes to investigate what everyone else was doing. His fingers skittered over his knees like he was playing the piano. He took lessons with Jai twice a week when my Committed wasn’t working in triage at the infirmary.
I didn’t call Peter out for his distraction this time. Instead, I pretended I didn’t see him as I stopped by the window and gazed outside. It was sunny, of course, as it always was in Utopia. The breeze was sweet and fresh as it filtered in through the open window.
Angels milled about outside, going about their days. I recognized a few Fallen as well, but no matter how many strides we’d taken in the last fifteen years, most Fallen weren’t allowed to remain in Utopia full-time.
They were needed in the cursed realm. Elected officials ran the different sectors, facilitating the arrival and subsequent fates of the souls delivered there. They kept the peace, ruling the underworld as fairly as they could.
Demons and Fallen who had been loyal to Lucifer and his campaign continued to lead rebellions. So far, they had been unsuccessful, but it was only a matter of time. Peace could only reign for so long until the pendulum swung back. A new evil would rise. A new darkness would spread. The universe was about balance, after all.
But as long as there were those of us willing to fight for what was right, there was always hope.
Mammon, Asmodeus, and Berith remained locked away in Purgatory. It had been their punishment, along with the Fallen and demons that had been captured after the battle. They had been sentenced to an eternity imprisoned in Purgatory.
Many thought it too merciful a sentence, but I knew better than most what Purgatory could do to a soul. They’d been sentenced to more than imprisonment. They’d been sentenced to a slow descent into madness. Death would have been kinder.
Beelzebub remained at large, and I had a feeling he was the one leading the rebels. Every month, there were renewed prison break attempts to free his brothers, but so far, our wards had held strong. The Fallen placed in charge of the underworld made sure of it.
Though tensions still existed between Angel and Fallen, most of the population had accepted the change in government and rules. No longer were relationships between the two angelic species frowned upon. This had allowed a reunion between many Committed pairs who had been separated or forced to meet in secret for too long.
It was why I stood in a room with seventeen hybrids, the numbers growing every season as the younger hybrids turned ten and joined my “class.” For the first time in Utopian history, we had daycares and schools, playgrounds and nurseries. An entire ward of the infirmary had been dedicated to neonatal purposes.
And it wasn’t only for hybrids. Nephilim were flooding into Utopia in greater numbers than ever before. No longer was it a shameful secret to bear a child with a human. Sure, many angels clung to the old way of thinking, but they were never the majority, no matter how loud they shouted. And if an accidental pregnancy occurred, there was a list of angels looking to adopt.
Things had changed drastically in such a short amount of time. I was probably biased, but I attributed much of it to Gideon. He had been elected to one of the Archangel seats on the High Council. A female Archangel I hadn’t known at the time, Esmerelda, had joined him. Together with two angels from every faction, along with two elected Fallen—though that came a few years later, thanks to Gideon’s insistence—they rewrote our world for the better.