Mal ignored him and carried on. “Anyway, the system is vast, running beneath the whole of the Keep, and there are several access points into the Keep proper. Now, most of them are locked but there was one that was left open, an entrance the service staff used to get in and out of the Keep when they were up to no good.”
“Of course, you’d know about that,” Conah drawled.
Mal shot him a shut-it look. “There’s an access point into the sewers at the Swan and Boar tavern, close to the Keep. It’s where the staff would come out.”
Conah shook his head. “A huge breach. Just imagine if Mammon had known about this. Or our enemies. We could have been under attack from within and been none the wiser.
“Fuck. He has a point,” Hunter said. “You should have said something.”
Mal bristled. “Hindsight is a bitch, but it’s just as well I didn’t report it, or we’d have no way in now.”
“He has a point,” Cora said.
“Besides,” Mal turned to Conah. “It was the blue jackets who used the route, and we know how loyal and closed-lipped they are.”
“So closed-lipped that they told you?” Conah retorted.
“Enough!” Azazel snapped. “We have a way in, and we’ll use it. We move now. It’s early morning, and the troops will be exhausted from the battle. Mammon won’t expect us to move during daylight. We take the backstreets. We move one troop at a time and gather at the Swan and Boar. Samael has picked out the troops. Five troops of five demons and us. We go in fast and we work in stealth mode. We find Mammon and we kill him. Simple. Lilith will remain here with troops to guard her and—”
“No.” Lilith joined us. “I will see Mammon fall with my own eyes.”
Samael came up behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Together, we will claim back the Keep.”
Lilith’s gaze slid my way, top lip curling slightly. “No need for the Seraphim.”
There was a smugness to her tone that made my hand itch to slap her. I couldn’t believe I’d felt sorry for her at one point, that I’d even entertained that we might reach some kind of tentative truce one day.
Azazel slid his arm around my waist and tucked me to his side, as if reminding his mother who I was and what I meant to him.
“The Seraphim may still come through,” Azazel said. “Uriel is one of them.” He looked down at me fondly. “He is also one of us, and he won’t let us down.”
Lilith’s expression smoothed out. “We’ll see.”
As we gathered our weapons and headed out into the early morning light, I couldn’t ignore the chill of foreboding that tickled my spine.
Would we be enough?
Uri…Where are you?
Chapter Forty-Six
Uri
We materialize over snow-capped mountains. The air is thin and so cold it leaves frost on my lashes.
My celestial form is resistant to extreme temperature, but I feel the bite of winter here, and I’m grateful for the furs loaned to me by Azazel.
“Not far now,” Esmael says.
We’ve travelled miles in a blink, I sense that much, and below us is a mountainous region filled with deadly cliffs and sharp edges.
Esmael begins to lose altitude. We drop toward the peaks before we’re flying just above them. Snow and ice lashes at my face, making it impossible to see, and the next thing I know, we’re flying into a crevice in the mountain. The chill air lessens, and the snow is gone. Esmael continues to drop, and then we soar into a lush green clearing where the air is warm and winter is far behind.
We land lightly in the grassy clearing that seems to stretch for miles, while on either side we’re surrounded by a wall of mountain, icy and snow covered.
How is this possible?
I’m about to ask when the clearing erupts in flashes of light and Seraphim of all shapes and sizes materialize around us. Some are large and dark like Esmael, others are smaller, dappled gray and black, or silver. Some have batlike wings, others have feathered ones, but my heart recognizes them all.
These are my keepers and all eyes are on me.
Whispers break out, gathering heat and volume, until the clearing is a cacophony of sound. I slip from Esmael’s back and stride forward, allowing them to surround me.
“Uriel.”
“It’s him.”
“Unmarred.”
“Untainted.”
“He left us…”
“Abandoned us…”
So many voices and so many thoughts. I raise my hands. “Silence.”
The command comes from within, a boom that echoes outward from my soul and swells in the clearing.
The keepers obey instinctively.
I am their lord. I am their general.
They remember. They remember because they see me. They feel me.
“No.” A silver Seraphim with inky-black wings steps forward. Her cobalt eyes fix on me with anger. “You left us to rot. You promised salvation then you didn’t return.”
I recognize her. “Lisandra.”
She shivers as I say her name. “Lisandra is dead. She died centuries ago when you left.”
“I was lost. My memories buried. I would not have willingly abandoned you.”
“I told you this,” Esmael says. “I saw this in his mind. He did not abandon us. He was taken from us by a divine who threw us aside.”
More murmurs skitter throughout the gathering. Their dissent, their ambiguous emotions waft over me.
How can I convince them to help me? How can I quell their anger?
With the truth of my heart. “For the longest time I’ve felt lost and alone, even though I was surrounded by celestials. They made me into a Grigori and gave me a new purpose, but I never felt whole. I always felt as if there was something missing and I searched for it in the human world, over and over, never finding it until now. Now, in your midst, I finally feel I’m home. I am yours, and you are mine, and we are one.”
The mantra trips off my tongue as if I’d uttered it only yesterday.
The silence around me deepens and a small, dappled Seraphim steps forward.
Vargus, deadly with a spear and fast as lightning. He looks up at me with deep brown eyes. “I am yours, and you are mine, and we are one,” he repeats.
Joy blooms inside my chest.
“I am yours, and you are mine, and we are one.” Another Seraphim repeats, then another and another until the clearing is filled with the echo of the keeper oath.
The joy in my chest is now a steady heat stealing my breath.
Vargus gasps. “Uriel, what is that?”
I look down to see an orange glow spreading across my abdomen, brighter and brighter, and suddenly, I know what it is.
Suddenly, everything makes sense.
This was the gift the divine gave me, and it will right the wrong that was done to the keepers.
I close my eyes and let the light fill the clearing.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Fee
The trek through Imperium was a silent, dismal one. Mammon’s troops had decimated the beautiful city. Most of the buildings were damaged in some way—smashed windows, doors off hinges, smoke-filled and charred. Demon bodies littered the ground. They’d spared no one that got in their path. As we huddled in the shadows between two buildings, looking onto the main market square, I pulled my gaze away from the smaller bodies, the children who’d been trampled in the chaos.