It was Gabriel’s grace, returning to the source. The next breath I took felt too thin.

The heavenly fire slammed into something I didn’t think any of us could see. It was like an invisible...force field? That sounded stupid, but it hit something. The whitish-gold fire exploded with a clap of thunder that echoed. The grace rippled outward.

There it was.

Unsteady, I staggered back a step. God was doing it. Even though God had sent those angels down to fight off the horde of demons, God had done it. Punted the tainted grace back to Earth. Dizzy with horror, I watched it crawl across the sky in an endless wave stretching as far as I could see.

How in the world could anyone explain this sight away?

A hysterical giggle rose up and only by sheer force was I able to stop it as the twisted mass spread. We did it. We stopped Gabriel. We saved Heaven.

And now a different kind of Hell would reign on Earth.

I started to turn to Zayne, my body so incredibly weary. Vaguely aware of others approaching us, I heard Zayne inhale sharply.

“God,” he whispered, staring up at the sky.

My head jerked upward, and I blinked, because I wasn’t sure if I was seeing what I thought I was or if it was some kind of trick of the imagination.

The grace had stopped moving.

“Can you see it?” Zayne asked, moving to my side. “It’s like...it’s frozen.”

“I can see it.” I didn’t dare take my eyes off it. “What is this, Lucifer?”

He didn’t answer.

Or maybe he did and his response was drowned out. The sound reminded me of fireworks sizzling and crackling as they shot into the sky—if there were a thousand of those kinds of fireworks going off at once. It was all I could hear for several moments, and then the mass of tainted grace shattered into millions of sparks of light.

I jerked, reaching out and grabbing Zayne’s arm. His skin was steady and hot under my hand as my fingers dug in.

“Trin?” Zayne said.

Was this it? The end of the world as we knew it came in a beautiful display of golden light? “What?” I asked as the sparks began to drift downward.

“Your hand.” Zayne turned to me, one of his wings brushing across my arm. He folded his hands around mine. “It feels like a chunk of ice.”

How my hand felt didn’t seem like a huge priority at the moment. Vaguely aware of him rubbing my fingers between his, I struggled to remain standing under the weight of what we were watching. The shining filaments were beautiful, reminding me of fireflies, but the moment they landed—the moment a human was touched by one of them, they’d be corrupted by what was inside Gabriel.