“Be careful,” she told him. She was drifting away from him, trailing tatters of fog. The solid gray was turning to shreds under the weight of a new reality that was full of harsh light and hard edges. It was disorienting and frightening, enough to make him close his eyes. He had never encountered anything stronger than Patience.

Except the angels.

Some angels. Sometimes. He had never truly understood them, and they had never felt the need to explain themselves. It had not been Patience who had called him out of the depths of his human dreams at midnight to walk as undying through a changeable past. It had been the angels, and he still did not know why.

He opened his eyes.

A sphere of unnatural stillness centered on a motionless figure in a bed—Miranda. Uriel was there, bending their imposing presence to the limits of the small, surgically white room. There was another angel facing Uriel, identical in their terrifying utter reality, identical in the sword held drawn but at rest.

“You?” Chance gasped. He kept cautiously still, knowing himself overmatched.

“Yes. Us,” the angel said simply. “Uriel could keep her safe while she was in your world. Beyond that, the usual rules apply.”

“What rules?” Chance demanded. “Why should you want her to die? There have been more than enough deaths. What use is she to you?”

“The question is what use she will be to you. You were given the potential for immortality, and she may help you reach that potential, as Patience well knows.”

“They fear being supplanted so very much,” Uriel murmured to Chance, glancing briefly at the other angel.

“We have reason. It is unprecedented. Unplanned,” the adversary replied to Uriel with a frown so mild they might have been disagreeing on the likelihood of rain. “We have had enough trouble with humans without encouraging more of this experimental behavior.”

“They speak as if Heaven’s borders were finite,” Uriel said with a sigh, “and as if its hierarchies were set in stone.”

“Or as if we had a place and a role and a reason for being,” came the adversary’s cool rebuttal. “We will not let anyone usurp us.”

The debate was delivered with the boredom of familiarity, age-old positions casually stated and no resolution in sight. Chance shut them out. He could not oppose them—he had no power for that—but he would do what he could. He came close to the bed and looked at Miranda, rested his hand lightly against her bruised cheek and listened with all his senses for her breathing. He began to speak, not as witness before the angels nor even to convince himself, but for any part of Miranda that might still be awake and able to understand.