He swallowed and gasped for air. “You have the Pentalpha?”

“For many years.” She released him and peered around him at me. “Who are you? You’re not a reaper—that much I can sense—but your strength is incredible. I don’t know what you are.”

“She is the Preliator,” Will said.

Madeleine exhaled sharply and stared at me. “You…” She trailed off and turned her gaze back to Will. “That means you’re…”

He gave a single nod, his expression hard. “For five hundred years, I have been her Guardian.”

“You are the Guardian,” she said, blinking in shock for a few moments before smiling at him. “I’m so very proud of you.” Her green eyes returned to mine. “It is a boundless honor to stand in your presence, Preliator.”

“I’m just Ellie,” I said with a warm smile. “It’s an honor to meet you too. Will has told me about you.”

Madeleine reached into the collar of her shirt and pulled out a gold ring strung on a leather cord around her neck. Even in the low light, caught between her fingers, the ring seemed to glow. “You must want this.”

There were no words for the relief and excitement that made my blood sing when I saw the Pentalpha at last. I recognized it immediately, but couldn’t remember forging it since I could recall nothing of my time in Heaven. But this ring…This was what we came here for. “Please,” I said. “We need to summon an angel.”

She lifted the ring, pulling the cord over her head and free of her hair, and held it for a moment, gazing at it. “I’ve had this for a long time. It will feel strange not to be its protector anymore.”

“That should be an enormous weight off your shoulders,” I said.

She eased toward me and placed the ring in my palm. I felt its power on contact, the jolt of electricity and heat searing right up my arm and into my chest so fast I gasped. I knew I would be able to summon an angel with this ring that had, until now, controlled demons alone. I knew that I was the only one who could wield absolute power over it, that it was a part of me and of my own angelic magic.

“I have heard,” Madeleine said, “from the tongue of the one who is my eyes and ears to the outside world, that the Preliator is truly the archangel Gabriel in human form.”

“It’s true,” Will confirmed. “We intend to summon Azrael so he can fight on our side against Sammael and Lilith.”

“So the beast is unbound.” Madeleine wore a thoughtful, intense look. “Please, come to my rooms. I’m sure you have questions for me, as I do for you.”

Madeleine led us back up the stairwell we’d destroyed, down a hallway bright with moonlight, and into a room that had a few candles lit. There was a small round table in the center of the room with a lit candle and a single chair pushed in against it. on the far wall, there was a narrow bed with a worn quilt folded neatly across it. A generator hummed gently beside a dresser topped with another candle and a radio that was turned off. A stove and sink sat on another wall, and I wondered if this room may have been a tiny private apartment during the period the fortress was used as a school. From the cabinet above the stove, Madeleine collected a teakettle and filled it with water. The stove crackled until a small flame lit and she placed the kettle over it.

“Why did you leave without saying good-bye?” Will asked suddenly, blurting it out like he’d been trying to hold the question in for a while.

Madeleine gestured for us to sit on the bed while she took the chair at the little table. The mattress springs groaned beneath us. “I couldn’t let anyone know that I’d become the guardian of this relic,” she said, her voice sad. “Even you. I loved you so much and it broke my heart to leave, but I couldn’t refuse Michael. When the relic’s previous guardian died, he chose me for a reason. He placed something important into the most capable hands he could find. You, of all people, would understand.”

“You could’ve said something,” Will said. “Anything. You didn’t have to tell me why you had to leave, but at least told me you were leaving. I thought you were dead.”

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she murmured. “I never meant to cause you pain. I only wanted to protect you in case our enemies learned that I was the Pentalpha guardian. I feared that, if you knew anything, they would harm you to get to me.”

He shook his head. “They would try. It would get them nowhere.”

She smiled. “You’ve always been strong, William, and here you are, the Guardian of the Preliator.”

“You never knew?” he asked.

Madeleine seemed sad. “No. I’ve been in seclusion for a long time in order to protect this relic. I’ve trusted Evolet to keep me informed of what was happening in the world every few months. I assume she’s the one who led you to me. Where is Nathaniel?”

“He’s dead,” Will replied. “It’s been a few months now.”

Madeleine closed her eyes for several long moments. “I would have liked to see him again. I owe him everything. This war has given and taken so much from us all.”

“How much do you know?” I asked. “About the war.”

“Very little,” she confessed. “I did not know until tonight that Sammael and Lilith are in our world. I’ve heard whisperings that Bastian had been searching for Sammael’s sarcophagus.”