My lips pursed. I thought I looked way improved from last time. Then again, I hadn’t seen my reflection. “It does.”

“Okay.” He nodded at the chair. “At least sit down. I don’t care if you get it wet.”

Murmuring my thanks, I sat down. The immediate relief that shuttled through me was an indication that Nicolai’s observation on my appearance probably wasn’t far off from reality. “I don’t know how to say this other than to just come out and say it,” I said as Dez took a position against the wall. “Zayne is alive.”

4

Everyone froze. I don’t think they breathed, and no one said anything for so long I was about to say it again when Dez finally snapped out of it.

“Trinity, he can’t be,” he said, voice soft and too gentle.

“Trust me, I know how it sounds, but he’s alive. I saw him. I talked to him. I felt him. He’s flesh and bone and winged,” I told them. “He’s alive, but he’s not exactly the same. He’s a fallen angel, still in possession of his wings and a whole lot of heavenly fire. Grace.”

Nicolai and Danika stared blankly at me, and I assumed both Dez and Gideon were doing the same.

“And he’s partly responsible for this.” I gestured at myself. “And the Throne that I ended up talking to after seeing Zayne is responsible for the bleeding ears.”

The phone slipped out of Gideon’s palm and hit the floor with a heavy thud.

“You probably want to leave that there since I’m just getting started,” I told him.

“Okay,” Gideon whispered.

“Zayne found me in Rock Creek Park, and he didn’t really recognize me. It was like he did and then he couldn’t, and he went all Fight Club on me. I managed to get away—well, I sort of cut him and ran away, and while I was running, I heard this voice in my head telling me to go to the church.”

Across from me, Nicolai blinked slowly.

Knowing how out there all of this sounded, I still forged forward. “That’s where I saw the Throne, and a bunch of creepy stone angels, but they are kind of irrelevant even though the sight of them moving is going to haunt me for the rest of my life. The Throne told me what happened,” I said, and then I told them everything that the Throne had shared with me up until what I had to do. How Zayne had been given a choice. The burn upon reentry. And how, in his current state, he viewed Wardens and anything with grace in them as the enemy. I told them that the Throne had warned that Zayne...that he could become a risk to innocent people. When I finished, all I wanted to do was get back out there and find him.