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  “Go,” Kala says to her, pushing her toward the door. “I’ll take care of all that. Besides, I run the drills with the others, not you.”

  “You’re calling those on the outside?” I ask. “The allies that don’t live in the compound?”

  “We need them here.” Kala smiles. “For when the war comes knocking on our front fucking door. It’s time to fight back!”

  The main training room is packed. Everyone is practicing moves with each of their personal choice of weapons. There’s even a group of angels and demons on the far side of the space firing guns into wooden cutouts painted with targets. The loud pop and crack of gunfire splits my head in two and causes me to jump. I’m on edge, and I feel more useless than ever, knowing I’m not able to help Michael.

  I’ve never fought a compulsion before. I don’t know what to do to assist him in learning how, but I know I want to be near him. If I were to walk around the compound on my own, I’d go mad with worry. At least, if I watch, I’ll know if he’s picking up what Ana’s teaching him. I don’t want him to try to ease my fear by saying that he has it under control if he doesn’t. Maybe I’ll learn something, too.

  Ana moves through the room and taps someone on the shoulder. The angel turns around, and her eyes are pure white. She’s sylphlike, a wispy silhouette of long limbs and smooth movements, easy curves and controlled energy that finds its escape in her chaotic, curly, black hair. Ana leads her over to where she left Michael and me waiting in the doorway, and she introduces her.

  “Michael, Pen, this is Eiael.”

  Eiael reaches forward and shakes our hand. She eyes Michael, paying particular attention to the spot just under his ribs where his soul lies. She knows he’s incomplete. Even if she didn’t already know, she’d be able to see it in him.

  “Nice to meet you, finally,” she says. She looks over me with a similar fascination before Ana draws her attention away.

  “Eiael will be helping me,” Ana explains. “Instead of using your soul to compel you,” she says, pulling her lips thin to keep in the secret of not having his soul to work with between us, “Eiael can teach Michael to resist the compulsion by mimicking the effects. No soul necessary. She’s quite good.”

  “How?” I ask Eiael.

  “I specialized in occult study, so I have a bigger purview of magic than most.”

  “And you can compel him just as if he were compelled by his soul?” I ask. If we can work on Michael’s control without having to use his soul to actually compel him, he might stand a chance if Azael decides to try to control him again.

  She watches Michael with her milky eyes. His own eyes gloss over, and he turns to me.

  “Exactly as if he were compelled by his soul,” she answers in a monotonous tone.

  Eiael blinks and Michael comes back to himself, searching around the room like he’d forgotten why we are here.

  Ana waves us out of the main training and weapons room and walks us to one of the many other side rooms. The one she picks is less crowded—only a few pairs sparring with wooden swords, their techniques sloppy and underdeveloped. Beginners.

  Eiael and I sit on a bench pushed up against the wall and watch as Ana takes Michael and positions him so that he’s not too near anything or anyone else. She walks around him and explains the basics of how to control or stop a compulsion. Ana, I’m coming to understand, is the perfect person to teach him. Her experience working with souls goes far beyond that of anyone else.

  “What do you feel before you lose control?” she asks.

  He thinks for a moment. “A shift. Like the ground tilts slightly, and then I slip sideways.”

  “Like the rug is being pulled out from under you,” Ana says.

  He nods.

  “Have you ever tried to right yourself before you slip sideways, as you say?”

  “It happens too quickly,” Michael says.

  I pull my legs into myself and rest my chin on my knees.

  Eiael leans over to me. “He’ll learn,” she says, trying to ease my tension. “It’s not as difficult as most think. You just have to find what works for you.”

  “What if he doesn’t learn fast enough?” I ask, my voice barely a breath.

  “We have his soul now,” she says, and I turn my face fractionally away from her so she can’t see the shame. “This is just an extra precaution. A second wall of defense.”

  “Right,” I say.

  “Michael,” Ana says, “when you are compelled, the feeling you experience is an intruder entering your mind and taking over control. Your consciousness is pushed to the back of your mind and restrained. The sensation of falling, as you say, is that push from the invader.” She steps closer to Michael. “You can slow the fall down in your mind. The moment you feel the ground start to shift, you need to start thinking three times as fast as you normally do.”

  “How?”

  “Clear your mind, shut out distractions, and focus just on the tilt.” She closes her eyes and splays out her hands. “If you focus on the tilt, it slows down. It’s not meant to be noticed.”

  “Then what?” Michael asks. He rubs his hand on the scruff of his cheek, his shoulders hunched forward. Nothing about him looks secure or confident that this will work.

  “Then you right yourself.”

  “How do I right myself? It’s like I’m paralyzed and falling and I am unable to stop it.”

  “If you panic like that,” Ana says, “then you can’t. You have to imagine yourself breaking out of the paralysis—imagine ropes or chains, whatever you wish, and tear out of them. Break the bindings. Then you may stop yourself from falling. Listen to the compulsion and fight back. When it comes to mental manipulation like compulsion, it’s about believing you can do it.”

  She levels a look at him, one that speaks volumes about the importance of him managing this. He needs to find his confidence or it will never work.

  “It’s similar to a possession,” Ana says. “You recognize it’s there, you listen to the voice, and then you push back against it. Understand?”

  “In theory,” he says.

  Ana looks over at us. “Eiael?”

  Eiael stands and nods for me to follow.

  “What do we need Pen up here for?” Michael asks, an edge of nerves to his voice.

  “She’s going to be our bait,” Eiael says. “You have to have motivation to fight against the compulsion. Otherwise, you’d just let it swamp you.”

  “Can’t I just—”

  “It’s fine, Michael. If it helps you learn faster, I want to help.” I meet his eyes and nod. Please. Let me help.

  Ana pauses, and when Michael doesn’t continue arguing, she walks over to the wall and pulls two wooden swords down. She tells Eiael to begin. “Something easy at first.”

  Michael begrudgingly takes the sword from Ana, and I take the other, adjusting it in my grip. Eiael quirks her lips, watches Michael, and then closes her white eyes. It takes a few seconds before Michael’s eyes glaze over, and he strikes out at me with the sword. It’s a simple block, but I’m forced back a few steps.

  “Recognize it’s there,” Ana says. “Identify it as something foreign, and fight it.”

  Michael’s jaw tightens, and he takes another swing, slower this time. Then, all at once, his eyes clear and he lowers his sword.

  “It didn’t work,” he says.

  “It did!” Ana says. “It’s just the first time you’re trying this. It takes practice.”

  “That wasn’t fast enough,” he says. “If I can’t stop it the moment it occurs, it could be too late. I could kill her.”

  “You give my defensive skills no credit,” I say, mocking offense.

  He smiles a little and takes a few steps back. “Again?” he asks Eiael, and she obliges.

  His blue eyes lose their focus on me, and he comes at me, faster and harder than he did the first time. I block the wooden sword inches from my face, push it back, and circle around him quickly. He follows easily, charges again, and th
e sword hits me in the side. The cut, had the sword been real, wouldn’t have killed me—not unless he had swung with such force to slice me clean in half.

  I back up and position myself again as he shifts across the floor, his feet sliding and his wooden sword whirling around.

  “Try breaking him out of it,” Ana says to me. “Your voice may help. It could bring him back.”

  “Michael?” I ask, fighting off another strike. I block it low, and the swords circle high as he regroups. “You can fight this,” I say. “I know you can do it.”

  He’s about to strike again, but his eyes clear and he stops his hit just an inch away from my neck.

  “You would’ve been dead,” he says.

  “Nope,” I say. “You woke up in time.”

  “Again,” he says to Eiael.

  We repeat the exercise over and over, and eventually, a crowd starts to gather. A few angels sit down and watch us fight—some studying the way we hold our swords, the movements we make with our body to hit and block. Others are just interested in the way Eiael controls Michael, at how he shakes the veil of confusion off.

  He gets better, and then he gets worse. One round, he would have killed me, struck me straight through the heart. But other times, he stops the compulsion before he even takes the first step. He’s so erratic. I don’t know what it means.

  “I’m inconsistent,” he says, panting as he pulls back from me. He runs his hand through his hair and shakes his head. “If I’m not consistently able to stop the compulsion the moment it begins, it can go too far and I might not be able to stop it at all.”

  “Do it again,” I tell Eiael. “And make it more difficult.”

  “If you insist,” Eiael says.

  Michael’s about to protest, but then the fog slides back over his eyes. He comes at me, swinging the sword so quickly that I can only make out the blurred path it takes. I guess at where he’ll strike first and just barely block the hit. The crowd watching us gasps as our swords splinter apart.

  “Tell me if I have to stop,” Eiael says, hearing the break. She keeps her eyes closed.

  “Don’t,” I say through my teeth.

  Ana watches us carefully, and Kala and Eli come into the training room, standing next to her and observing.

  Michael strikes with the splintered edge of the sword, and I kick it out of his hands. Poor grip. I got lucky, or he’s not trying as hard. But he doesn’t need his sword. He barrels toward me, his hands extended. I throw what’s left of my sword away and drop low, sending him tripping over me. He lands on the mats with a whoosh of air, and I rush over to him. I straddle him, place my hands on his shoulders and my knees on his hands, his palms open by his sides.

  “Michael!”

  He uses his legs to gain leverage and toss me off-balance. In one quick move, he pulls his hands out from under me and we switch positions. I try to wiggle out of his hold, through his legs, by shimmying my shoulders, but he has me pinned.

  “This isn’t you,” I say, and then I climb into his head along with the compulsion. Fight it. It’s not you. Fight it. Fight back!

  Michael reaches toward one of the broken pieces of the sword. He takes it in his hand and positions it over my heart.

  “Eiael…” Ana warns.

  Fight it, Michael.

  His eyes clear and then fog over again, his pupils dilating rapidly. I can feel his muscles tensing and then relaxing over me. His forehead is slick with sweat, and the muscles in his jaw bounce with tension.

  Don’t let them win, I say.

  There’s a moment of pause, his muscles coiled so tight that I’m sure he’ll follow through with the stab. Everyone in the room leans in, waiting for my blood, waiting for orders to get me to the infirmary. Do they even have an infirmary here? But then Michael’s eyes clear, and he shoves himself up and off me.

  I let out a breath, not bothering to sit up from the mat until my head is clear again. I lean up on my elbows and see him pace in a tight circle in front of the door of the training room like he’s considering leaving.

  “Again,” he says. “I want to do it again until I get it right.”

  Eiael opens her eyes, notices me on the floor. For the first time, she sees the splintered swords, the shocked faces of the crowd. “Are you sure?” She looks at me, and I can’t tell who the question is for.

  “Yes,” Michael and I answer at once.

  She nods and starts again.

  As Michael advances, Kala breaks up the crowd of onlookers, telling them that she’ll be running drills shortly. Eli takes the time to pull Ana away.

  “You and I,” he says to her, “have some training of our own to do.”

  He hands her his shield, and they take their places across the room from us, running similar exercises—Eli with a wooden sword, Ana with his cold, metal shield, and Kala watching them, tipping forward on the balls of her feet like a grounded bird dreaming of taking flight.

  Lilith

  I’VE BEEN DREAMING OF EDEN more frequently. The memories find me in the few hours I permit myself to rest, when sleep is too heavy to fight off any longer. I leave the throne room and return to the space in which I have taken up temporary residence: the bed piled high with pillows and silk blankets in every shade of crimson and gold.

  Swallowed by the feathertop bed and cocooned in fabric, I drift away from my life in Heaven and return to before. The very earliest before I’ve ever known.

  My first breath.

  I remember it so clearly—the warm perfume of the air filling my lungs to capacity. Drinking it in, feeling myself come alive. The pinch in my chest when I inhaled as much as I could, and letting the air escape again in one long release of breath.

  I was lying on my back when I took that fateful breath that brought me to life. My eyes closed, I slowly became acquainted with my body, with the feeling of the Earth beneath me. Limbs stretched tall—as if I had to pull a stiffness out of my arms and legs. I flexed my fingers, dug my nails into the soft, wet ground, the dirt gritty and cool as I pulled it up in fists.

  When I opened my eyes, I hoped that the first thing I saw would explain the smell. Flowers—though I didn’t know that they were what produced the sweet flavor on the wind. But instead, when I lazily decided it was time to open my eyes and see, I was met with Adam’s face. Inches from mine. His eyebrows low and impatient, his mouth in a line that spoke of frustration.

  I knew his name immediately, though he never told me. No one needed to tell me who he was, just as no one needed to tell Adam who I was. One of his ribs, taken from his chest, was fused inside my rib cage. I belonged to him, and I could feel the familiarity of him. It made me immediately ill. My husband.

  Before I said a single word, I rolled over and vomited.

  Adam’s nose crinkled, and he got to his feet, giving me a terrible angle to view his naked body. He was tan and primarily muscle, but I felt nothing but revulsion toward him. It ran so deep that I felt the manic desire to dig his rib out from under my skin and return it to him. I didn’t want to belong to him, and he could take it back. My fingers were bloody before an angel stepped in to stop me.

  Uriel. In my dreams, he’s smaller than he was when I first saw him. Shorter, less intimidating. His flaming sword is just sparking embers. I stand, and I’m a foot above him. He has to look up at me now. And in my dreams, we have language—not the silent understanding we had in Eden, before Pen arrived.

  “Do not damage man’s property,” Uriel warns, grabbing my wrists and pulling my bloody hands away from the wound I was digging into my side.

  I shake him off, spit at his feet. “I am no one’s property.”

  Uriel takes me in, his eyes traveling from my toes to the top of my head, his gaze languid and intrusive. I’ll pluck his eyes from that skull of his, chew them up so he can hear them pop between my teeth like ripe grapes.

  “You are the creation of God, for the purpose of Adam.”

  “For the purpose,” I repeat.

  “To be ma
n’s wife. He grows lonely.”

  I turn to Adam, who just stands there. All brawn and no brains. With a few large steps, I cross to him, come right up to his chest, and I push him. Once, twice. A third time and he stumbles.

  “I am not here to entertain you,” I say. “You”—I push him—“are”—again—“nothing.” He falls to the ground, and when he tries to get up, I stop him, stepping on his shoulder and pushing him back into the dirt. “Stay there. It’s where you belong.”

  “Belong,” Uriel repeats, pulling my attention back to him. “What an appropriate term. As you belong to him.”

  “You’re talking in circles, Uriel,” I say, glancing at him. “We’ve been over this. I am no one’s property. I belong to no one but myself.”

  Uriel laughs, and the sound echoes through the garden long after he’s stopped. “As long as a piece of him lives within you, you will always belong to him. Your sole weakness. How do you think one might use it to exploit you later on? Surely there must be a downfall to such a fragility.”

  I take my foot off Adam and turn to face Uriel fully. “You know nothing of me if you believe me to be anything close to fragile.”

  Uriel’s face shifts, his features transforming into that of another. A face that now belongs to the dead.

  “No,” says a different voice, a slithering voice. “Lilith, the girl of stone and steel. Whose heart beat for only a few short days before she betrayed Heaven and fled to Hell.”

  He comes closer, but I don’t see his feet move. He appears to simply float across the ground. Bile rises in my throat. An unfounded anger. But it’s not unfounded—I just cannot recall what birthed such rage. I clench my fists at my sides.