Madeleine looked over at Will before returning her gaze to Cadan’s. “I never meant to hurt anyone, but I did what I had to do. You must understand why I left him.”

He gave a miserable smile. “Better than anyone.”

“I warned him that I would go,” she said. “He did things that were unforgivable. When I realized that I would bear a son by a demonic sire, I had to get out and away from Bastian and the others. I loved Bastian, but he was dangerous. If he knew I was with child, then he would have tried to take William from me. You knew he wanted me to join his cause, and you know he would have raised my son to follow in his footsteps the way he raised you. Yes, Cadan, I’ve done things I’m not proud of, but hiding William from Bastian isn’t among them.”

Cadan exhaled, deflating a little. “I wouldn’t wish what I lived through on anyone.”

“Look,” Madeleine said. “This is neither the time nor the place to settle old conflicts—very old conflicts. Ellie needs to summon Azrael. She’s come a long way and we’re running out of time.”

“Yes,” he said. “Right now, we’ve got more important things to take care of.”

I touched his arm and offered him a supportive smile. “Thank you. Madeleine, we appreciate this.”

“Let’s go,” she said to all of us now. “I can take you to a part of the castle that’s big enough for the angel to come through. A lot of energy will be required to bring him to our world.”

Madeleine led us to the great hall whose ceiling had caved in long ago. The stars in the night sky glittered so clearly, and the moon was heavy, low, and gigantic.

I drew the leather cord from over my head and closed my fist around the Pentalpha, feeling the power of the relic flow through my veins as if it were an extension of me. “I am the Messenger, Gabriel, she who is set over all the powers,” I called out to the empty space above. “I evoke thee, Azrael, the Destroyer, lord of the shepherds of the dead.”

It took a single instant for the ring to light on fire around my finger. The white flames licked over my fist but they didn’t burn me. My heart slammed against my rib cage and the power erupted from the relic clenched around my lungs as it coursed through me, making me gasp for oxygen. The space seemed to shimmer and wave like air boiling over hot pavement, and something invisible tore a hole through the air, allowing for a single beam of light to blaze through. The light grew, forcing itself through the opening in the sky, and became so blindingly bright that I couldn’t look right at it. I squeezed my eyes shut against it, turning my face away. When the light dimmed and I could see once more, a figure had come through the seam in space and his wings spread wide and shining as his boots settled to the ground. His dark skin and silver armor gleamed in the moonlight, corporeal and wholly in our world. He held out his hand and examined his open palm.

“It has…,” he said softly to no one in particular, “been a long time. The air feels cool on my skin. I can smell the trees.”

I wondered if the last time he’d been corporeal on Earth was the day he cast Sammael out of Heaven. “Azrael,” I called to him. “We need your help.”

His gaze traveled across the faces of the reapers at my flanks. “I am at your service, Sister.”

“We need an angel to fight with us,” I explained. “What we are isn’t enough. You’ve beaten Sammael twice before. We need you.”

“When Sammael joined Lucifer and the other Fallen, he kept his archangel strength,” Azrael replied without missing a beat. “He is now more powerful than any angel below that rank. I would last only moments if I stood against him.”

I stared at him in shock. “You won’t fight?”

“I cannot.”

“You won’t even try?”

“Ellie,” Will said next to me in his soothing voice. “Just because he can’t fight doesn’t mean he won’t help.”

“I may be outcast and weakened,” Azrael said, wearing a gentle smile at Will, “but I never stopped serving. Michael chose well, Guardian. Faithful found among the faithless, faithful only he.”

Will watched the angel as his words sunk in. “How can you help us?”

Azrael held out a hand and a staff shimmered into being out of a flash of light and energy, much like the way our own weapons appeared when we called them. The staff was longer than Azrael was tall, and at the head of the staff was a triple-bladed weapon reminding me somewhat of a trident, but the two outer blades were crescent-shaped and double-edged like a partisan. The weapon was vicious, but elegant in its design.

“The hallowed glaive,” I murmured, recognizing it immediately. This was the weapon Cadan said Bastian had feared. This was the weapon I would use to kill Sammael and Lilith.

“Correct,” Azrael said. “I will give you the weapon that banished Sammael from Heaven. However, you will not be able to wield the hallowed glaive in your human body. You must ascend to your archangel form in order to even touch the glaive.”

I tried not to look at Will, whose eyes were glued to me and keenly felt. I wasn’t ready to face the possibly of becoming the being again who was now a stranger to me, and to face what being an archangel meant. “But my angelfire doesn’t work with any weapon other than my Khopesh swords.”

“When you are an archangel, you will have no limits to your power. Any blade you conjure to vanquish the demonic will accept your angelfire. But you must wait to use the hallowed glaive until the moment you need it to conserve your archangel power. You must ascend, summon me at Armageddon, and I will give you the hallowed glaive. The armies of the Beast will await you there, and you will sing a requiem for a war.”