‘What is it?’ asks Beliel. ‘Can we eat it?’ I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything more disturbing than empty eye sockets, especially on someone I know, even if it’s Beliel.

He puts a pointy ear in his mouth and chews on it. It looks a lot like a hellion’s ear. I wonder what happened to the hellion I rode.

Then I see what’s left of it on the ground, all smashed and torn apart. It’s hardly recognizable anymore.

Where’s Raffe?

‘It’s a Daughter of Man,’ says my captor. His voice is ominous, like those words have some deep meaning.

There’s a long silence as everyone stares at me.

‘Which one?’ Beliel finally asks.

The one holding me looks around at the others. He doesn’t ease up on my hair. ‘Is this one of yours? She’s not mine.’

‘There’s no reason to believe she would be one of ours, Cyclone,’ says Beliel. His voice is raspy as if he’d either been screaming himself raw or someone had choked him.

‘I’m through with them,’ says one. ‘The thought of them makes me ill.’

‘Yeah, maybe Big B’s right,’ says another. ‘Maybe we’re better off eating her. We could use some meat to help us heal.’

I squirm trying to get out of the nonangel’s grip. Where is Raffe?

‘Let her go,’ says another. This one has blue-tinged feathers.

‘Thermo, if we let her go, she’ll wish we had cooked her up and eaten her. Setting her free here is not a mercy.’

That’s not what I wanted to hear.

‘And is that a sword?’ Several of them lean down to look at my sword, which lies on the ground just out of reach.

One of them tries to lift it and grunts at the weight. He lets it go.

They all stare at me, scrutinizing.

‘What are you?’ asks Cyclone.

‘She’s a Daughter of Man, can’t you see that?’ says Thermo.

‘If she’s a Daughter of Man, where’s her pack of hellions?’ says a guy with black feathers and sharp eyes. ‘Where are her chains? Why does she look so healthy and whole?’

‘And how does she have an angel sword?’ asks one who has brown wings streaked with yellow.

‘It can’t be hers. Somehow, it got here. And somehow, she got here. But that doesn’t mean it’s her sword. We haven’t been here long enough to believe things that are that crazy.’ They all look at Pooky Bear with longing, but none of them tries to pick her up.

‘So whose is it?’ They all look at me.

I shrug. ‘I’m just a Daughter of Man. I don’t know anything.’

No one argues with that.