All around me were the faces of Haven Valley I was so familiar with—Rose, Stephen, Evelyn, Levi, Colin, Jamie, who held the gun by his side—all of them shining with light from their very souls, exploding in a prism of soft colors. I knew they just saw me in flesh and blood—Grace, the girl who was a heretic—but I was seeing them as they really were.

They too were the light of the world; they were just blind to how their Father saw them. I was seeing with the eyes of Christ. They were seeing with the eyes of fear.

In the chaos, Sylous had left us. To where, I didn’t know yet. I still wasn’t sure how he was different from the Fury, but I had an idea.

And then I was seeing normally again and every eye was on me. For a long beat, they stared in stunned disbelief.

I took a deep breath and said what I knew to be true. “God is the light in which there is no darkness. And we are made in his likeness, light like him. But the world turned to darkness and we were blinded to our light.”

“Blasphemy!” Rose cried, her finger stabbing at me.

“No, Rose.” I took a slow step toward her. “Didn’t you see the Fury right here in the sanctuary?”

“You brought them!”

“That’s not true. They’ve always been here, feeding on us. They live in us and hover around us. Sylous opened our eyes to our own fears manifested in form and told us it was God’s cleansing, which only filled us with more fear. There’s now more fear concentrated in this valley than anywhere in the world.”

“Lies,” she bit off. Then to Jamie: “Kill her!”

“You saw my Fury,” I said. “And you saw how I as the light let them go. How could I have that power if I was lying?”

The room was perfectly still as they considered my blasphemy in the face of their sacred beliefs.

“Where did he go?” Andrew asked, looking around for Sylous.

“I suspect he couldn’t take the heat,” I said.

“Why would the angel lie to us?” Jamie asked.

I faced him, courage coursing through my veins. “Because he’s a demon, not an angel.” It was my best guess, but I was pretty sure. “And he did this because he lives on fear. He feeds on it. He manipulated us into supplying him with an endless source of fear to feed on.”

But Jamie wasn’t hearing me. I couldn’t see the darkness or the light as I had moments earlier, but I knew that his Fury were screaming in his mind, and his eyes were turning dark again.