I don’t deal with death well, you might have noticed. I don’t really deal at all—I go on autopilot. The flight to Russia felt like one long hallucination, and I didn’t eat, or talk, or cry.

It seemed like I barely breathed.

I do know that as we flew over Alaska, we were pelted with a blizzard so fierce it almost knocked Harry from the air. The cold made Dylan’s teeth chatter and Angel’s breath come in gasps, but I hardly felt any of it.

My thoughts were as blank as the snow.

Numb.

The Bering Strait was less than a hundred miles across, but the slate-colored water looked like an endless dark hole, trying to suck me down.

Once, I stopped flying completely, letting my body hang limp for a second too long. I folded my wings in and started to drop, imagining myself plunging into the freezing water, having it hit me like concrete at that speed. A fast death.

But then I saw angry clouds in the distance and jerked back up. I was sure I’d glimpsed Fang’s stormy eyes, and thought I saw his face just beyond the horizon. The wind whispered to me: Not yet. Not yet.

“Cut it out, Angel,” I mumbled. “Get out of my head.”

She didn’t look back, though. It was Fang’s voice, gravelly and insistent, that urged me on, reminding me why I was still here, and what I needed to do.

So I kept moving forward, mile by mile, and the cold feeling inside me started to heat up into rage and harden into resolve: I would get to the Remedy, whatever it took.

And I’d kill him myself.

I’d expected the Remedy’s den of death to be as wrecked as the rest of the world, but when the water became land again, the gray, barren coast of Russia turned to lush, green forests. Mountains were untouched by ash, and rivers still flowed blue. After all the devastation I’d seen, it should’ve given me hope.

But I was in no state to embrace such a positive emotion, so naturally, it just fueled my fury. He didn’t deserve this. I didn’t deserve it.

Not yet.

We were flying over a forest of tightly packed trees when I noticed Dylan scanning the ground. I broke formation and flew up next to him.

“Where is he?” I didn’t have to clarify who I meant.

“Underground. A place called Himmel.” Dylan pronounced the last word with an accent.

“Himmel?”

“Heaven,” Dylan explained. “It’s German.”

My mouth tightened into a hard line and I wondered what the German word for hell was. I was going to show Dr. Gunther-Hagen that everything has an opposite.

“Okay, let’s go,” I said grimly.